God Touched - 01 (30 page)

His giant two handed sword met her smaller pair of blades in a crash of metal and the real fight began in earnest.  Anton grimaced in shock at the blood covered sight of me, torn between the urge to attack  and the need to flee from whatever had befallen his much more powerful Elder.  I sensed Okwari sliding around the corner behind me and his impact into the closest shipping container made enough noise to pause the fighting for a microsecond. If the sound wasn't enough, the car sized dent that magically buckled into the side of the container was more than sufficient to convince Anton that he needed to be elsewhere fast.  The slick vampire darted up the corridor, keeping as far away from Vadim and Tatiana as possible, his finely shod feet dancing over top the blood soaked mess that had been twenty or thirty people a few seconds before.  I wasn't sure how best to help Tatiana without distracting her, but before I could come to a decision; she skipped back a few steps to gain room and paused to look in my direction.  Her rimless black eyes locked onto my gore covered form and I could literally feel the rage that flowed from her.  
She thought the blood was mine!

My enhanced vision had let me see some of the blows that she and Vadim had traded in the first exchange, but her next attack was too fast to process.  Whatever edge that eight centuries of practice and the blood of an Elder had given Vadim in the first round, evaporated in the heat of Tatiana's fury.  As best I could tell, she met him head on, trading him blow for blow, her enraged strength stopping his much heavier sword dead.  To his credit, faced with more than he had envisioned, Vadim fought with everything he had.  It wasn't enough.  The finish came so quickly, if I had blinked I would have missed it.  One moment it was head to head, like steel meeting iron.  Then she suddenly folded away from a blow and was past him.  He started to turn to face her but his right leg, from the thigh down, stayed where it was.  He fell over, part way around.  His left arm shot down, arresting his fall, in a move that would have been incredible, except for the fact that Tatiana was suddenly standing back in her starting position and Vadim's big gleaming bald head was sliding free from his neck.  His body stayed in a grotesque side lean, blood spraying from the stump of neck and leg in opposite arcs.  Then it collapsed into the dirt.  My view of his carcass was suddenly eclipsed by a pair of rimless black eyes framed with raven hair, as Tatiana stood in front of me, searching for the massive wounds that had covered me in blood.  Her nostrils flared, telling her the truth,
at the same moment I spoke. “This isn't mine.  It's Fedor's.”  Small blue specks appeared in the center of her eyes, swiftly replacing the coal black.  She looked confused.

“How...where -- ?” She struggled to ask, but I interrupted.  “Tatiana Demidova, please meet my  friend, Okwari.” I said. 

Slowly his giant form materialized as he willed himself visible.  I hadn't known he could do that.  Tatiana took a deep breath, but held her ground, as a wet black nose the size of my fist slowly gave her a sniff.  He was very close in appearance to the paleontologists' images I had seen, but there were some differences.  I don't believe the short faced bears that had roamed the prehistoric world had short black horns emerging from their skulls and flowing back toward their necks.  His eyes were the hot orange-red of lava and he was even bigger visible than I imagined.  A mental image of Tatiana and I engaged in sex appeared in my mind.  Ignoring the sudden rush of lust I felt from the image, I nodded at him.  “Yes, she is most certainly my mate.” I said.  Her expression was equal parts wary, disbelief, and happiness at my statement.  “He sends me extremely clear images and understands what I say in response.” I explained.  “He pretty much made Fedor paste back there, kinda like you made Weasel paste with Lydia's car door.”

Okwari lifted his head and looked behind Tatiana at the same time she turned to look over her shoulder.  An object about the size of a soccer ball arced through the sky and landed in the dirt by Vadim's body.  It rolled to a stop, leaving Anton's still blinking eyes looking right at us.   Tatiana spoke. “Senka is here, with the others.”  Okwari lifted up to his full fifteen plus feet and stared in the direction the head had come from.  “It's okay.  It's Lydia and other friends, here to help,” I explained to him.  He fell back to all fours, the ground shaking at his heavy impact.  He woofed once, snuffled me hard enough to push me sideways and disappeared in a swirl of cold air.   “That was your Damnedthing?” Tatiana asked.

  “Yeah, but I don't really like that term any more.  I don't think he's damned now that his collar is gone.” I said.

“Lydia said you might have a new pet.” she said, her expression halfway between amusement and awe.

“More like a new friend.” I said.

Fast moving figures appeared at the other end of the corridor, quickly resolving into Senka, Lydia and a host of scary serious vampires that I hadn't met before. 

“Jeeze, Chris!  What did you do?  Take a blood shower or something?” Lydia greeted us.  Senka had paused at Vadim's body, studying it with a thoughtful expression.  Presently, she headed our way, ignoring the dangerous looking vampires who had flowed past to take up security positions around us, a few moving back the way I had come.  I looked them over while Senka looked Tatiana and I over, her expression unreadable.  They were hard and edgy sorts, dressed in black military and tactical gear.  Weapons covered the gamut from state of the art assault weapons to antique swords from a dozen cultures.  Black, white, Asian, male and female, no two were alike in appearance but all had a similar, professional carriage.  The two that had gone behind us came back at a sprint, and being vampires, showed no sign of being winded.  One approached Senka and reported. “We found the remains of Elder Fedor in a torn up container, Lady,” he said. “Tracks and claw marks in the metal indicated an extremely large predator of some type, possibly a bear, but....well...larger.”  He paused and noticed Lydia pointing at the ground by his feet, where a series of dinner platter sized tracks dimpled the dirt.

“Ah, yes, the tracks look just like these.” He looked around warily, like the track maker was going to sneak up on him.  “Also, no scent of any kind to go with the tracks.” He finished.

Senka turned to me, her expression sardonic.  “Your Damnedthing I presume?” she asked.

“My
friend
,” I corrected, with a smile.  “
Who
took exception to Fedor's attitude toward me.” 

“I just met him.” Tanya said with wide eyes. “He's a lot bigger than I expected, but nice.”

“Nice?” Lydia asked, incredulous. “He was scary as hell, when I met him.”

The tiny vampire shuddered.

“Actually, Lydia, I believe he is rather fond of you,” I said, thinking of how many times he replayed the image of me stepping in front of Lydia.  It seemed to define for him the essence of friendship.

Senka's security detail had gone from ignoring me to suddenly studying me carefully, like something unexpected and possibly threatening.  The soldier who had reported was studying my blood covered form and I could almost see the light bulb go on over his head as the link between my condition and Fedor's became apparent to him.  It wouldn't take
CSI:NY
to figure out how the giant paw shaped impressions on the ancient vampire's body came about.  It struck me at that moment that vampire bodies didn't fade to dust or immolate on death as some works of fiction would have it. They just lay around like any other dead body.  It raised a whole series of questions for Dr. Singh when next I saw him, which based on the protective gleam in Tatiana's eyes would be rather soon.  Senka had been studying me while I was thinking my way through some things, frozen into that spooky stillness that all vampires seemed to favor, and she finally turned to Lydia with a nod.  “I find myself agreeing with your theory more and more, young Guardian.”  Then she turned away and began to issue orders for the removal of bodies, body parts, blood and other forensic evidence.  More vampires were arriving, bearing a plethora of serious looking and completely unfamiliar equipment.  I looked at Lydia in question and she simply shrugged and grinned at me.   “Guardian?” I asked.  Before she could answer, Tatiana spoke up.  “Senka's specially trained agents are called Guardians.  She assigned her very best Guardian to keep track of me, and apparently you,” she said in a matter of fact tone.

I struggled with that concept before remembering the rest of Senka's words.  “Theory?” I asked.

Lydia
laughed. “I can't give away all my secrets.  It would ruin my mysterious allure,” she said.

I snorted. “Lydia, I couldn't figure you out with a four hundred page manual and a telephone help line.”

She winked and spun away to intercept a vampire carrying cleaning supplies.  Tatiana had moved very close to me during this exchange, her side almost pressed against mine, while she looked at the wreckage that had been Vadim.  He had been her weapons instructor her entire life and she had been force
d
to kill him. On top of that, her father and one of the three Elders had wanted to use her, living or dead to advance their own agendas.  I didn't have a clue how that must have felt.  Nudging her with my shoulder, I asked, “How are you doing?”

     A line of emotions paraded across her face as she thought about my question.  Sadness, anger and fierce resolve were the biggest, mixed with a glimmer of pride and, oddly enough, joy.   After a moment's reflection she spoke in a quiet voice.  “I have always...valued Vadim's instruction.  He was skilled in a wide variety of disciplines, was patient and always made my training interesting, which helped with the...life, such as it was, that I had while I waited for
you,
”
she looked me in the eye and continued.  “You see, I always knew on some level, that something...someone was coming.  It's what kept me going.”

She leaned forward slowly and gave me a kiss on my blood covered lips. “But --  ”  her voice took on a hard tone, “He chose to attack that which is dearest to me.  Bad move.”

Her voice was cold as arctic ice.  Bad move indeed.

“I'm sorry about your father,” I said.

She snorted. “Anton contributed DNA to me, but he was never, in any sense of the word, my father!  And Fedor was old, snotty and condescending.  I think Oh-Kwah-lee --” she looked at me to check her pronunciation, which I nodded at, “-- made a most excellent mess of him!”

She looked back at Vadim's remains for a moment and then continued.  “I will miss his instruction, though.”

I'm not real good with emotional stuff, my family being just Gramps and myself, so I was at a loss of what to say.  Senka saved me by stepping back over to our location and fixing me in her gaze.

“I trust
Officer
that you will allow us to handle this mess,” she said.

I hadn't thought about the aftermath and my responsibilities as a police officer until she said that.

On the one hand, I was sworn to uphold the laws of the city, the state and the country.  On the other, Roma had made it clear that the leaders of the human society preferred that the supernaturals police themselves to the greatest extent possible.  So the dead vampires were a no-brainer.  The Hancers that Tatiana had chopped her way through had been human though.  That was harder to sort out.  But then I reasoned that Hance was a supernaturally derived drug and the Hance addicts had become part of the supernatural world.  The fact that Anton had controlled them lent this line of reasoning greater support.

At the end of this elegant line of bullshit rationalization was the awareness that human courts and law enforcement were, at present, completely incapable of dealing with the shadowy world of vampires, demons and weres.  To a degree it was like trying to impose human laws on the natural world.  Trying a pack of timber wolves for coyote killing in a human court of law wasn't any more ridiculous than pressing charges on a vampire for killing a werewolf.  In fact, from my limited experience with Special Situations and the D.O.A.A. unit, they were more like monitors than law enforcement.  A vampire or were that came to the attention of human authorities for killing humans would be treated like a dangerous wild animal or rabid dog; hunted down and killed. And there most likely existed a federal black ops unit that wanted specimens for weapons research.  My own work hunting demons had no basis in human law.  So I looked back up at Senka after the several moments it took me to process this train of thought and gave her a nod.  I got the impression that she was curious about my internal resolution of this dilemma, but she just smiled and turned to my girl and said, “You and Lydia need to take Chris to Dr. Singh and make sure whatever was pumped into him is gone.  And clean him up, he's a bloody mess.” she said in her cultured Oxford accent.  Then she was gone, back to organizing a cleanup that I didn't want to know about.

     Lydia wouldn't let me in her car, her
new
car, until I put on one of the cleaning crews’ white tyvex coveralls.  I sat in the back seat, looking like a lean Michelin Tire man and examined the links of the handcuffs that Tanya had removed from my wrists.  She had simply pulled the hardened steel bracelets apart like taffey until they tore.  I was interested in the laser clean cuts that Okwari's claw had made through the steel links.  Bear claws are like meat hooks, with no real inner edge to cut with, yet his claw had sliced the tough metal like a chef's knife would cut a cucumber, better even.  I was going to have Chet analyze the cuts.  Any information I could get would help in figuring out my giant invisible friend.  A thought occurred to me and I voiced the question to the vampire ladies in the front seat.