The Nightlife: London (Urban Fantasy Romance) (The Nightlife Series) (12 page)

With his right hand he slipped a knife under her shirt,
right between her breasts, and flicked upward, cutting through her bra.  Then
he sliced off her shirt to stare at her naked chest with a mean, hungry look.

Fucker liked fear.  He enjoyed hurting women.  Bloody
sadist.  Might enjoy killing this one.  He needed to die.

Then he let go her hands and put the knife to her throat. 
“Don’t move, and it’ll all be over real quick.”  His free hand began undoing
the buttons on her jeans.

“Fuck off!”  She slammed a double fist into his nose,
feeling the gratifying crunch of his broken face.  As she knew would happen, he
dropped the knife and reeled backwards in agony and shock.

She shoved him off and he tumbled to the floor.  “
A la
verga!
”

She scrambled for his knife and grabbed it just in time to
slash at his swinging arm.

“
Puta madre!
”  He backed away, inspecting his arm,
trying to distance himself from her.

“What?  Don’tcha want a piece of me?  Come on you greasy
bugger, let’s get it on!”

He backed up and bumped into the door.  That’s when she
heard the sounds of shooting and men shouting.  Ivan had arrived.  She sensed
him in the building, making his way towards her at this very moment.

Luis looked to the door, then back to her.  Realization of
the truth dawned on his face. “
Pinche diabla!
”

His eyes telegraphed his move.  He lunged.  She dodged and
slashed across his shoulder.  He hissed and cursed her.

An urgent knock came at the door. 
“
Luis, ellos
están aquí!  Nos chingan!
”

His momentary distraction gave her all the time she needed. 
She leapt on him in a primal scream of rage and buried her knife in the side of
his neck.  His cry of surprise cut short as she sliced through his windpipe.

Grasping at his neck, he bled all over the god-damn place,
splattering her hands and breasts in scarlet speckles.  Death is not neat or
pretty, but it can be fun.

She flinched at the sounds of weapons fire close by as she rummaged
through Luis’s pockets and found the key to her handcuffs.  Hands slick with
blood, she struggled to unlock the handcuffs.  Click.  “Yes!”  She exalted in
her freedom as she yanked the loaded pistol from the waistband of Luis’s pants.

“A knife and a gun.  That’ll do.”  She looked down at her
naked breasts spackled with blood and realized it didn’t really matter.  “If
the Greeks can fight naked, so can I.”

Then the door opened and another Colombian stared wide-eyed,
shocked into silence at the sight of her.

* * * *

Michelle stepped up to Aaron’s side in the hallway.  Her
haggard face wore a grimace of pain, but she was ready to rumble.  A woman’s
scream cut through the loaded silence.  “Die you greasy fuck!”

A man’s cry of agony followed.

Ivan looked at Aaron and they both knew it was now or
never.  Shots fired, Katya screamed again, and Ivan barreled through the door,
bullets flying.

Aaron followed, swords drawn, and went straight for the man
on the left whose gunfire tracked Ivan.  A downward flash of steel severed the
man’s hand from his wrist.  Aaron followed with a horizontal throat slash. 
Michelle streaked past, and nailed another guy, sending him flying through the
air in a splat of blood.

Bresnik and another man dived for the floor to evade Ivan’s
fire, while Michelle moved in on her man to finish the job.  Ivan sprayed
bullets all over hell, unloading his clip as everyone scrambled out of the way. 
Several Albanians went down screaming in pain with gunshot wounds..

A door to the right of the room slammed open and out flew
Katya, half-naked, barefoot, her little handful breasts bouncing as she looked
about with a feral gleam in her freakish, amber eyes.  Her teeth gritted in an
insane growl, she no longer looked like the Katya he knew.  This woman was a
killer, a bloody knife in one hand, blood speckled across her naked torso and
jeans, and a pistol in the other hand.  She found the nearest target, spun and
sliced at his chest, and fired into his face point blank.  His brains splashed
across the wall as he flopped backwards.

“Fucking tosser!”

She grinned with way too many teeth.  Long, sharp, wolf
teeth.

Mesmerized by Katya, Aaron stood riveted in place, watching
her spin, slash and fire.  Where the hell did she get the knife and gun?  Some
fool with a hard-on probably lost his life trying to get up on her.

Searing pain hit him, along with Urvashi’s scream of agony
echoing through his mind.  Something horrible had happened to his master.

In mid-stride Katya dropped everything and screeched, a
terrible banshee howl like all the demons of hell scraping across chalkboards.

A heavy psychic percussion hit Aaron’s mind, a black fog
coating Aaron’s tongue and mind.  Katya and Ivan’s auras exploded in bright
yellow-white and they both grabbed their heads, faces scrunched in agony. 
Katya hit the floor convulsing and twitching.  Ivan dropped to one knee
groaning in pain.

What the fuck?

The two Albanians gained their feet and let loose with Uzi’s,
cutting a sweeping arc across the room.  Aaron dived and snagged Ivan, but as they
rolled behind an over turned card table, he felt a thump and watched Ivan’s
chest splatter red with the hit.  Michelle ran straight for the men, screaming in
rage.  She was almost in reach when three bullets tagged her in the chest and
sent her flying back in a gory tumble of blonde hair and blood.

One gunman turned and sprayed several bullets across Katya
down on the ground, ceasing her twitching dance and mewling cries.  She slumped
flat, a bloody wreck.

Bresnik, called out across the room.  “Your friends are
fucked.”

Aaron peered his head around the planter to catch Bresnik with
his Uzi pointed straight for him, a grim smile of satisfaction plastered on his
face.

Urvashi’s warning tore through Aaron’s mind.  {{Stay with
the wolves, they need you!  Two of their pack died in an explosion!  Dmitri
knew we were coming.  The wolves experience the deaths of their comrades, it’s
debilitating.}}

Son of a bitch
.  They should have waited till
tomorrow.

* * * *

Aaron sensed both Michelle and Katya on the verge of death, bleeding
out on the floor.

Ivan groaned and sat up.  “Remember your promise.  I hold
you responsible for Katya.”  His eyes were amber gold, and his jaw began to
move, elongating.  Large animal teeth grew in his mouth as he growled and shook
his head.

“Move fast or die.”  His words came out in growl-speak, a
voice not quite human.

Aaron nodded.  “If I’m gonna die, I’m taking the Albanians
and Jamison with me.”

Aaron watched in horrified fascination as Ivan …
changed
. 
He sloughed off his jacket and tore open his button-down shirt, freeing his
upper body of the restrictions of clothing.  His entire body was …
moving
. 
Snarling, growling, and grunting, Ivan’s white skin turned dark with bushy
hair.  His face sprouted fur and his nose turned black and thick as a dog’s
snout.  Then his face stretched outward, taking on a canine aspect, and his
eyes turned fully golden.  He fell forward onto his hands and knees, second by
second, as his body reformed into a very large predator.

God awful crunchy-tearing noises accompanied Ivan’s
animalistic expressions of agony.

“That’s gotta hurt.”  Though he didn’t want to see such a
gruesome sight, Aaron couldn’t look away.

Bresnik let off a couple rounds into the other side of the
table.  “You and your Russian friend have something I want, and that’s the only
reason you’re both still alive.  I know you took the drugs and cash in Vegas,
and you will give that to me.  But I also know who she is, and I want
everything she owns.”  He pointed his rifle at Michelle’s head, indicating she
was his focus.

Aaron read it clearly in Bresnik’s mind.  He and Jamison had
dug into Michelle’s background, learned of her estate in Paris and her
investment accounts.  Bresnik was willing to sacrifice a dozen men and a pile
of Colombians that didn’t mean shit to him, to steal Michelle’s fortune.

Bresnik reached down to grab Michelle by her hair, grimacing
at the sight of her full-size fangs and blood-splattered face.  “I don’t know
what the hell she is, and I really don’t care.  She’s worth over forty million
and I want every penny of it.”

The sound of numerous men ascending the stairs drew Aaron’s
attention.  Five armed Albanians filed into the room from the hallway, ready to
back up Bresnik.

Time to move
–
fast
.

Aaron stood up, swords ready, and kicked the table aside.  “Check
out this shit.”  Three hundred pounds of unnaturally large, black wolf growled
menacingly, fixing its golden eyes on each of the men in turn.

“Sic ‘em Ivan.”

The beast snapped its massive jaws and leaped into the midst
of the men at the doorway.

Aaron moved lightning fast.  He didn’t stop moving until his
katana was buried up under Bresnik’s ribcage, straight through his heart. 
Urvashi would have been proud of his precise strike.

Bresnik grunted, convulsed, and his eyes rolled back in his
head as Aaron yanked the sword out of his chest.

Gunshots flew everywhere as Ivan tore through the men.  Literally. 
He ripped the men to pieces, shaking their feeble bodies in his jaws, crunching
through bones and sinew, stringing out their guts.  Aaron dived low again and slashed
at Bresnik’s sidekick standing with his mouth open in petrified awe.

Achilles tendon, then hamstring – the man dropped.  Slashing
up into his falling body, Aaron severed his spinal column.  Wasn’t a clean
kill, but it would have to do.

Aaron rolled and crawled to get behind another over-turned
card table.  Shots whizzed past, some close shaves, and one gouged across the
skin of his back.  “Fuck!”

Gritting his teeth through the pain, he focused hard,
listening to the sounds of meaty death coming from the wolf’s snapping jaws. 
Soon, the shooting stopped.

Aaron lay there, exhausted, in pain, knowing he needed to
get up and get the girls out of this blood-soaked den of death before the
police surrounded the place.  “Move Aaron.  Move fast.”

He stood up.  Michael Jamison was crouched near Michelle,
not ten feet away.  Mike caught the movement and stared directly at Aaron,
unflinching.

Vampire to vampire.

Mike put a little black pistol up against Michelle’s skull. 
He glanced at the wolf tearing it up at the entrance to the room, and whispered
to Aaron.  “She will probably recover from these wounds in a couple days.  But
she won’t survive if I blow her brains all over the floor.”

Aaron read it crystal clear in Mike’s thoughts.  The man
really wanted to kill Michelle, badly.  She had ripped out his intestines,
shredded half his body, left him for dead.  The memory of it still traumatized
him.  Michelle was Mike’s own personal demon.

Aaron looked at the gun, and then at Jamison’s eyes.  “If
you kill her, you’re dead.”

“Perhaps.  But you can still save her.  Drop your blades and
walk away from this massacre.  No one else needs to die tonight.”

Aaron wanted it so bad, to just drop his swords and walk out
the door with the women.

But Mike didn’t mean a word of it.

No matter what Aaron did, Mike would kill Michelle, one way
or another.  Mike couldn’t stand the thought of her alive, hunting him down,
haunting him night after night.  He needed to kill her for his sanity.

Aaron sighed.  “Okay.  I am putting my swords down now.  Put
your gun down.”

Jamison stared at him, assessing the risk.  “You first.”

“We’ll do it together, same time.”

Jamison eyes flicked to the swords, then to his own pistol,
measuring the odds.  He nodded.  Aaron nodded back.  They both set their
weapons down.

As soon as Aaron’s swords clinked to the hardwood floor,
Mike snatched up his pistol and fired at him.  Aaron shot Jamison six times in
the chest with Ivan’s pistol through his jacket pocket.

Jamison’s single shot aimed true, straight through Aaron’s
left shoulder.

“Motherfucker!”

He staggered, but kept to his feet.  Blood streaked down his
arm and dripped off his elbow.  “God dammit!”

He walked over to Jamison and kicked him.  “Why did you make
me do this?  Asshole!”  He reached down to Michelle’s hand and wrapped her
fingers around the pistol grip.  “This one’s yours, love.  He pulled Michelle’s
unconscious trigger finger over and over, unloading Ivan’s pistol into Jamison.

Searching the vampire’s mind, he found a spark of life still
flickering.  “Fucking vampires are hard to kill.”

He snatched his swords off the floor and separated Jamison’s
head in one clean stroke.  “Idiot.  Should have taken your own advice and
walked away.”  He wiped his blades on Jamison’s jacket and sheathed his swords.

Looking around, Aaron found himself standing in a
slaughterhouse.  The wolf was gnawing on meaty bones, crushing them in its
powerful jaw.  It looked at him for a moment, licked blood off its chops, and
growled.

“Bad dog!”  Aaron pointed his finger at the animal, and it
ignored him in favor of continuing its meal.

A whimpering sound issued from behind a doorway at the back
of the room.  “What now?”

Swords in hand, Aaron slinked over to the door and yanked it
open.  He dodged to the side to avoid any gunfire.  A woman’s squeal of terror
was all he heard.

“No, no, no.”  He shook his head, dreading what he would
find hiding in the bathroom.  Peeking in the doorway, he saw Janette on the floor
in black lingerie beside another woman in nothing but black thong panties.  The
woman was dead, shot in her left breast.

Janette was alive and well, untouched, shaking in terror,
crying like a baby.

Aaron took a deep steadying breath as the horrible weight of
responsibility pressed him down.  “I told you to leave town.  I told you to
run.  Why didn’t you fucking listen?”

* * * *