Soul Meaning (A Seventeen Series Novel: An Action Adventure Thriller Book 1) (13 page)

My eyes widened. I broke his move with the daisho, my mind reeling from his words. Olsson grunted. His knuckles whitened as he pressed down with his blade.

Bullets struck my left flank. Though they hit the vest, I still hissed at the stinging pain. My knee gave way beneath me. Olsson grinned as I was slowly forced to the floor.

There was a flash at the edge of my vision. By the time Olsson turned, he was already too late.

Reid leveled the Glock and shot him point-blank in the neck.

The longsword clattered onto the polished floor. Olsson’s eyes flared in shocked surprise, his hands grappling desperately at the wound in his throat. Crimson spurts escaped between his fingers. He dropped to his knees and thudded face down on the floor. A dark pool spread out beneath him.

‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’ Bruno shouted from the exit.

He held a bleeding Anatole under the shoulders. The Bastian driver had acquired a second gunshot wound to his lower abdomen.

I scanned the lobby. The Crovirs were down. A crow flew through the open doors, its shrill screech shattering the deadly silence. Another appeared near the ceiling and spiraled down to the marble floor, before skipping onto the body of a dead Hunter.

The Austrian officers hesitated, eyes swinging nervously from us to the black birds. Reid and I moved toward the exit.

‘Stop!’ Lacroix yelled behind us. A warning shot went off above our heads.

The crows screeched and flapped their wings. A third bird materialized through the doors.

I stopped and turned. ‘I suggest you let us leave. They’ll come after us again. If we stay, all of you will die.’

Lacroix scowled, the gun in his hand aimed unwaveringly at us. Blood oozed from a cut on his face and the wound on his shoulder.

One of the fallen Hunters coughed and blinked. A second man groaned.

Lacroix and the Austrian officers were still gaping at them when we headed out of the building.

‘You could have finished him off,’ Reid observed as we bolted down the steps of the police headquarters.

I knew he was referring to Olsson.

‘Yes, I could have. But first, I need answers.’

I still didn’t understand what Olsson had meant, nor did I know to whom he had alluded. I had already dismissed Pierre Vauquois as a possibility. To my knowledge, that left no one else.

We followed the bodyguard and the wounded driver across the road to the gloomy interior of a parking garage under the university building. Gunshots erupted behind us just as we entered the shadows. We started to run.

Some fifty feet ahead and to the left, an elderly gentleman was locking the door of his Volvo estate. He looked up at our footsteps. His eyes grew wide when Reid lifted the Glock and leveled it at his face.

‘The keys, please!’ my partner snapped.

Confusion washed across the old man’s face.

Bruno repeated the order in German. Anatole leaned heavily against the bodyguard; the immortal had turned an ashen color and was bleeding profusely from his wounds.

The Volvo owner’s hand shook as he passed the keys across. They dropped from his grasp. Reid cursed and leaned down to pick them.

The bullet missed him by a foot and thudded into the old man’s shoulder. He cried out and staggered to the ground.

I turned and fired at the dim figures some hundred feet away. A panicked scream rose from elsewhere in the underground car park.

Reid finished unlocking the estate and threw the keys at me. ‘You’re the better driver!’ he shouted.

I helped Bruno load Anatole in the back seat while he propped the injured car owner against a concrete pillar. A young woman cowered behind a van a few yards away.

‘You, come here!’ Reid beckoned.

She blanched, her eyes dropping to the gun in his hand. She hesitated before crawling across the narrow gap between the vehicles.

‘Here, apply firm pressure!’ Reid grabbed her hand and pressed it against the old man’s wound. The young woman nodded tremulously, tears spilling over and coursing down her face.

Shots pinged on the hood of the Volvo. I started the engine and engaged the transmission. ‘Reid!’

He turned and dove inside the car. I stepped on the gas.

The wheels spun madly before gripping the asphalt. The smell of burning rubber filled the air as the car shot forward.

A Crovir Hunter stepped in our path. Flashes erupted from the muzzle of his gun.

‘Hang on!’ I jerked the wheel sharply.

The Volvo’s bumper caught the immortal across the legs. He landed on the hood with a sickening crunch and rolled off to the side. Further shots thudded into the car. The passenger window cracked.

‘Get us out of here!’ shouted Reid.

‘I’m trying,’ I retorted between gritted teeth.

The Volvo skidded around a corner and grazed a row of cars in a shower of sparks before barreling down an empty lane. The exit appeared in a flood of daylight at the opposite end.

Four figures emerged from the shadows on either side.

I floored the accelerator.

We crashed through the security barrier in a hail of gunfire. Bullets slammed into the boot of the car. Spider web cracks appeared in the rear window.

A tortured squeal of brakes suddenly rose from the left. I looked around. My stomach dropped.

A tram was coming up the road; we were directly in its path.

I spun the steering wheel to the right. Metal shrieked as the Volvo made contact with the flank of the carriage and scraped alongside it for some fifteen feet. The left wing mirror crumpled and disappeared under the tramcar. Half a dozen shocked passengers gaped through the windows while I pulled away.

I swerved around a fire hydrant and sent the car juddering back onto the road.

A trio of black sedans appeared in the rearview mirror.

‘Reid,’ I said urgently, my gaze shifting to the busy traffic ahead.

He glanced in his side mirror. ‘Gotcha.’

He rolled the cracked window down, leaned out of the estate, and fired a series of shots.

The front right tire of the leading car went out in a burst of fragmented rubber. It pitched sideways, flipped onto its roof, and careened toward the center line in an explosion of sparks. The second vehicle swung around it and crashed into a truck in the other lane.

The third sedan drove past the wrecks, clipped the bumper of a van, and kept on coming. Police sirens tore the air in the far distance.

A bridge appeared up ahead. The lights were red at the end of a queue of stationary vehicles.

Reid slid back in his seat. His eyes widened when he saw what lay in front. He glanced at me. ‘Tell me you’re not thinking of—’

‘Hang on!’ I yelled.

I ignored Reid’s and Bruno’s shouts, swerved onto the verge, accelerated, and shot across the junction between the contra flow. A blare of horns erupted around us. It was followed by irate yells and the ricochet of bullets bouncing off the back of the Volvo.

I angled the car into the right lane and overtook a truck.

The black sedan stayed on our tail. Seconds later, the rear window acquired another crack from a bullet.

‘Goddamnit!’ yelled Bruno.

He pushed Anatole down on the seat, twisted around, smashed the tempered glass clear with the butt of the Steyr AUG, levered the rifle through the gap, and fired.

I glanced at the rearview mirror at the sound of an explosion.

The rounds had penetrated the front grille of the sedan and ignited something under the hood. The car braked and slewed to a stop in the emergency lane. Figures staggered out of the vehicle in a billow of black smoke.

I wondered whether Olsson was among them.

The bridge disappeared behind us. I looked over my shoulder at Anatole.

‘How’s he doing?’ I asked anxiously.

Though I had known the Bastian for only a short time, I liked him. Besides, I did not wish to be responsible for the death of yet another person. I had enough blood on my conscience as it was.

‘Not so good,’ said Bruno. He observed the buildings flashing outside the window with a troubled expression. ‘Head north. I know a place where we can hide.’

Chapter Twelve

T
he Bastian safe house was
a hunting lodge deep in the woods around Hollabrunn, some twenty-five miles outside Vienna. We drove to the hotel in Landstrasse and swapped the Volvo for our Audi before setting off.

Anatole drifted in and out of consciousness for most of the drive up. By the time the car rolled to a stop on the pinecone-covered clearing outside the cabin, his breathing had turned shallow.

We carried the wounded immortal inside the lodge and laid him on a couch in the front room. Bruno brought in logs and kindling from the porch and lit a fire in the hearth. He emptied the bag of supplies he had picked up from a chemist near Landstrasse; rolls of bandages, a sewing kit, a disposable scalpel, and a couple of bottles of pills slipped onto the surface of the coffee table.

‘Get the bullets out and stitch him up,’ he told me curtly. ‘He’ll live if he makes it through the night.’ He turned and headed for the front door.

‘Where are you going?’ said Reid.

Bruno paused with his fingers on the handle. ‘I need to get in touch with Victor.’ He indicated the cell phone in his hand. ‘There’s no reception here. I’ll have to make the call from a phone box.’

‘There’s a public telephone in the woods?’

‘No. It’s about an hour’s walk away.’ His eyes shifted to Anatole before he left.

Reid did a perimeter check around the hunting lodge while I searched the rooms. I discovered a bottle of gin at the back of a cupboard in the kitchen and was pouring a generous amount of it down Anatole’s throat when he entered the cabin.

I followed the alcohol with painkillers and antibiotics.

‘Isn’t that a bit much?’ Reid indicated the half-empty bottle of liquor.

I threaded a needle and turned to the semi-conscious immortal. ‘He’s going to need it.’

By the time Bruno returned some two hours later, Anatole was sleeping soundly in front of the fire.

‘They made it to one of the hideouts.’ The bodyguard crossed the floor with an armful of logs and set them by the grate. ‘Victor’s coming to meet us. He’ll be here tonight.’

We made a meal from the cans we found in the larder. Bruno unearthed a dusty bottle of whisky from a hidden stock I had overlooked and passed it around.

I finally broke the silence that had befallen us. ‘Do you know why the Crovirs are after Anna Godard?’

‘No,’ Bruno replied with a shake of his head. ‘Victor received an urgent request for help from Tomas Godard late yesterday afternoon. They arrived at the Westbahnhof in the evening. We took them straight to the hideout under the Hofburg.’ He gazed into the flames. ‘We got word that a group of Crovir Hunters were asking questions about the Godards a few hours later. We decided to move them to another safe house. That’s when you guys turned up.’

‘Grun mentioned a name at the canal last night,’ said Reid. ‘Someone called Marcus?’

Bruno’s face hardened. ‘Marcus Pinchter. He’s a Bastian noble and a member of our Second Council. He works for Victor.’

I rolled the glass in my hands. ‘Why would he betray you?’

‘I honestly don’t know,’ said the bodyguard.

‘And Tomas Godard?’

Bruno observed me for a silent moment. ‘I guess there’s no harm in telling you.’ He swallowed a mouthful of whisky. ‘Godard is the oldest surviving member of one of the most ancient families of Bastians in existence today.’ He gave me a levelheaded look. ‘He is true nobility, if you know what I mean.’

The meaning behind his words sank in.

‘You mean he’s a pureblood?’

The bodyguard nodded.

Reid frowned. ‘What’s a pureblood?’

‘It’s an immortal who can trace his genealogy all the way back to the very origins of our races,’ I replied.

Bruno shifted under my unrelenting stare. ‘Godard used to be the Head of the Order of Bastian Hunters. He abdicated his position in the fifteen hundreds, for reasons unknown to immortals outside the First Council. Victor’s father, Roman Dvorsky, was elected the next Head of the Hunters.’

‘Is Victor the current leader?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Bruno. ‘Victor’s the Head of our Counter Terrorism Section. Most of us believe he will be the next Head of the Hunters though. Roman is still alive, if somewhat frail.’ He grimaced. ‘It was several decades before the full effects of the Red Death manifested themselves in him.’ He leaned forward and threw another log onto the flames. ‘In the eyes of most Bastian Hunters, Victor is our de facto leader, even if he has not officially been sworn in by the First Council yet.’

Anatole stirred on the sofa and mumbled something in his sleep.

‘Godard mentioned another name last night,’ I said curiously. ‘Who is Vellacrus?’

Bruno scowled. ‘Agatha Vellacrus is the Head of the Order of Crovir Hunters.’ Amber liquid splashed inside his glass as he poured in more whisky. ‘She’s a pureblood and a nasty piece of work, if I say so myself,’ he added with a snort. ‘If it was up to her, the immortal war would still be going on to this day.’ He caught the wary glance I exchanged with Reid. ‘What?’

‘Several members of the Crovir First Council attended a secret meeting in Washington a few weeks ago. A fortnight after that, a Crovir Hunter made contact with us in Boston.’ I hesitated. ‘Forty-eight hours later, he killed me.’

Bruno’s eyes widened at my words.

‘Twenty-four hours after that, he killed him again,’ Reid added drily.

Bruno looked suitably impressed. ‘How many is it now?’

I knew what he alluded to without him having to clarify the question. ‘Sixteen.’

A low whistle escaped the bodyguard’s lips. ‘That’s not good.’

‘No, it isn’t.’ I sighed. ‘I would like to get to the bottom of whatever’s going on before my final death.’

The logs crackled and hissed in the hush that followed.

‘I’m only on my tenth,’ said Bruno. He glanced at the unconscious driver. ‘Anatole here’s on his eighth.’ He made a face. ‘He’s turned into a bit of a pacifist in the last couple of centuries.’

‘I heard that,’ murmured Anatole.

Bruno straightened. ‘Hey. How’re you feeling?’

‘Like shit,’ said the immortal. He opened his eyes and sat up slowly. A groan escaped his lips. His gaze alighted on the bottle on the table. ‘Here, pass me the whisky.’

‘I don’t think you should be drinking,’ said Bruno. ‘You already had half the gin.’

‘What are you, my mother?’ retorted Anatole. ‘Besides, that was strictly for medicinal purposes. Now shut up and give me the bottle.’

Dusk had fallen across the forest when the roar of an engine finally rose in the distance. Bruno crossed the room with his gun in hand and peered through a gap in the curtains.

‘It’s Victor,’ he said, shoulders visibly relaxing.

Headlights appeared between the trees. Moments later, a black Volkswagen minivan rolled to a stop next to the Audi. The passenger door opened.

Victor Dvorsky stepped out. There was a bandage around his left wrist and a nasty bruise on his face.

‘You guys ready?’ he called out.

‘Yes,’ said Bruno. He closed the front door behind us.

We headed down the porch steps.

Victor peered at Anatole. ‘You look like hell.’

‘Thanks, boss,’ muttered the Bastian driver. ‘You don’t look so hot yourself.’

Dvorsky’s gaze shifted to Reid and me. ‘Put your stuff in the van. We’re leaving the car.’

We emptied the Audi and climbed inside the minivan. The vehicle turned and started back up the path that led out of the woods.

‘Where we headed now?’ said Reid.

‘Vilanec,’ said Victor from the front passenger seat.

‘Oh. Where’s that?’

‘It’s in the Jihlava District,’ said Victor, ‘in the Czech Republic.’

Pinecones and twigs snapped loudly under the wheels of the van in the silence that followed.

‘We sure travel a lot, don’t we?’ Reid told me woodenly.

‘Consider it your first European tour,’ I said.

He scowled. ‘Anyone got a smoke?’

It was another half hour before we crossed the border into the Czech Republic. The van skirted around the Podyji National Park and headed north.

‘How’s Godard?’ I said after a while.

Victor glanced at my reflection in the rearview mirror. ‘He’ll live,’ he said with a grunt. ‘He’s a tough old man.’ His tone clearly discouraged further conversation.

I ignored it. ‘Did he tell you why the Crovirs are after his granddaughter?’

Victor sighed. ‘I’d rather Tomas did the explaining. He was hoping to spare you from the Crovirs, but you’re in too deep for him to put it off any longer.’

It was my turn to be quiet while I tried to decipher the meaning behind his words. ‘Do you know a man called Mikael Olsson?’ I said finally.

Victor thought for a moment. ‘I can’t say I’ve heard the name before,’ he replied. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘He’s an old friend who’s now working for the Crovirs. He tried to kill me in Boston a few days ago and posed as an officer of the Austrian State Police at the Bundeskriminalamt this morning.’

Victor scrutinized me in the mirror. ‘Does he bear a grudge against you?’

I shook my head. ‘Not that I was aware of.’ I looked out the window as we drove past a hamlet. ‘You and Godard seem to be good friends.’

Victor snorted. ‘You could say that. Tomas Godard is my godfather.’

I was still brooding over this shocking revelation when we reached the outskirts of Vilanec. The van turned down a country lane outside the sleepy village and headed west across a series of dark fields. The land gradually rose up ahead. A wooded hill appeared on the skyline. The road was soon replaced by a rutted dirt track.

Aside from the eerie glow of the eyes of the wild animals that fled the glare of the headlights, the forest seemed uninhabited. Two miles later, the trees thinned out.

A clearing appeared at the end of the track. It was fringed by the woods on three sides, with a dark ridge soaring behind it to form the crest of the hill.

A house stood in the lee of the gray rock face. The limestone walls looked pale under the light of a crescent-shaped moon. Dark windows reflected the star-studded sky.

Victor suddenly stiffened. ‘Stop!’ he barked.

The driver slammed on the brakes. Pebbles peppered the underside of the van as it juddered to a halt at the edge of the clearing, jolting us all forward. Anatole swore behind me.

Victor frowned. ‘Something’s wrong.’

Unease flooded my mind. ‘What is it?’ I scanned the woods outside the windows of the vehicle.

‘I told Tomas to turn off the porch light if there was any sign of trouble.’ He took the Beretta from his coat and checked the magazine.

I examined the house through the front windshield of the van. The lantern above the front door was dark.

‘I could’ve sworn Marcus didn’t know about this place,’ Victor muttered.

The words had barely left his lips when the windows on the first floor blew out. The white glow of the explosion bloomed brightly in the night and shot through the roof, blasting tiles and part of a stone chimney toward the sky. The shockwave rocked the van on its suspensions.

We sat stunned for a moment before scrambling for the doors.

Burning bricks, scorched wood, and smoldering debris drifted down around the clearing. Flames erupted on the ground floor of the house. Glass popped and cracked inside the building as further explosions shook its foundations.

‘We need to get out of here!’ Victor took a step toward the van.

I grabbed his arm, stopping him in his tracks. ‘What about the Godards?’ I snapped.

‘There’s a hidden passage in the basement. If Tomas detected the Crovirs’ presence in time to warn us, he would have gotten out through there.’

The conflagration engulfed the house. Heat from the flames washed over us.

Despite the immortal’s reassuring tone, I could not stop the icy lump of fear forming in my gut.

‘Where would they have gone?’ I asked doggedly.

‘Not far. They’ll probably lay low for a while and catch up with us later.’ Victor scrutinized the woodland. ‘We need to leave. The Crovirs must be close.’

I hesitated; although it pained me to admit it, I had no choice but to trust the Bastians. I turned to cast a final glance at the burning building.

A faint flash erupted from the trees to the east of the clearing. My eyes widened.

‘Get down!’ I shouted.

A second later, a rocket-propelled grenade smashed into the side of the van and detonated. The pressure waves from the explosion sent us tumbling across the pinecone-covered track. Hot shrapnel and blazing fragments erupted from the wreckage and rained down from the sky. A tire hurtled out of the fiery wreck and rolled toward the trees, leaving a flaming trail in its wake.

I pushed myself up to my knees, my ears ringing from the blast. Blood dripped past my eyes where a jagged shard had slashed the flesh on my forehead.

Reid groaned and climbed dazedly to his feet.

A muffled curse sounded to our right. The driver of the van rolled desperately in the dirt, his legs engulfed in flames. Victor staggered unsteadily toward him.

Gunshots rang out from the trees. I looked over my shoulder and saw figures emerge from the woods next to the house. Muzzles flashed in the darkness.

A bullet slammed into the dirt by my hand. I dropped to my back, fingers on the Smith and Wesson, and shot the Crovir Hunter crouching some twenty feet away in the grass.

‘
Move!
’ Victor shouted.

He hauled the wounded driver upright and dragged him into the tree line to the west. Bruno and Anatole followed, spent rounds from their guns dropping soundlessly to the ground as they fired at the Crovirs.

I grabbed Reid’s arm and pulled him after the fleeing Bastians.

Dead leaves and twigs snapped beneath our feet as we entered the forest. The footsteps and shouts of our pursuers soon rose behind us.

The woodland thickened, the gloom beneath the crowded trees deepening with each passing second. We stumbled and tripped over invisible roots and burrows, the undergrowth snagging at our clothes and limbs.

Gunfire erupted on our left. Reid grunted and clutched at his arm. I drew the Glock and fired blindly in the night. More shots whistled through the air from the right and scored a tree as we darted past it.