The Nightlife: London (Urban Fantasy Romance) (The Nightlife Series) (11 page)

Aaron pulled up the collar of his coat against the freezing
wind and sleet.  Ivan stood to one side and Michelle to the other, watching The
Rocking Horse strip club for any sign of activity.  Four a.m. and the club was
closed.  People with any sense were at home in bed with a fire blazing in the
hearth.

But not them.

They had to trudge through the punishing cold and sleet
while Ivan followed his internal compass to track Katya.  When they arrived at The
Rocking Horse, everything started to make sense.  Jamison had created a
clusterfuck.  Colombians, Albanians, and who knows what the hell else would be
found inside.

This was gonna get ugly.

Aaron looked to Michelle and Ivan who were both primed to go. 
Aaron felt the encroaching sunrise, coming soon.  While he could still function
with the sun burning bright in the sky, he dreaded the idea of fighting in the
daytime.  And what of Michelle?  If they were still inside this shithole at
dawn, she’d be nothing but dead weight.

“Urvashi was right.  We should come back tomorrow night. 
The dawn is coming.”  Aaron couldn’t shake this heavy sense of foreboding.

Both Michelle and Ivan’s auras flared with righteous fury. 
Ivan growled, “We go now!”

Michelle grabbed Aaron’s arm.  “It will be done in
minutes.”  Her sharp claws flexed and dug in through his coat.

“That’s what we want to happen, but this is much more
complicated than we thought.”

Ivan pulled his Uzi out of his jacket and pulled a pistol
from his pocket, a gun in each hand.  “Is simple.  Kill.  Them.  All.”

Uh huh, sure.  Nothing was ever that simple.  “So, how do we
go in without getting shot full of holes?”

Ivan looked at him like he was nuts.  “The backdoor, of
course.”

They circled around the block to the door in the alley, the
same place it all began with Reza and Janette.  Aaron dreaded this moment – all
the people in the building they would have to kill.

Ivan stared at him hard, seeing the hesitation.  “We cannot
afford witnesses.  I don’t care who we find in here, they all die.  You don’t
want an Interpol manhunt across Europe, trust me.  No witnesses.”

Aaron prayed they would find no one but those they came to
kill.

Ivan gestured to the door.  “You do the honors.”

For the second time in a week, Aaron snapped the locking
mechanism as he yanked open the back door.  Stepping into the darkness of the
club, he drew his swords and tried to find the will to kill these men.  In the
past, his violence had been mostly self-defense, or in defense of Michelle and
Anastasia.  In those intense moments, he never had time to consider his actions.

But this was different, premeditated assassination.

Michelle slinked past, a wicked, intent look on her face –
all hunter.  That’s where he needed to go, to that dark place in his psyche,
the predator within.  For a time, the predator had been like another
personality, fighting for dominance of his mind.  Urvashi changed everything. 
After drinking her blood he had emerged a new man.

His hunting instincts and senses took over.  He heard a
whisper of noise, several people in the other room, men.  Their cologne masking
their sweaty, blood-filled bodies – they smelled like food.  Another scent
blended in, a hint of Katya’s shampoo, her earthy wet-dog scent.  Though Ivan
claimed she was here, Aaron felt reassured at the evidence she had passed
through this room recently.  Standing in the shadows of the curtained rear,
they surveyed six Colombians drinking near the bar about twenty feet away. 
They were unprepared.

Michelle didn’t even pause.  She shot out straight for the
bar, a blonde streak of death in blue jeans.  She slashed up and across,
cutting a bloody
T
shape into the man’s torso.  His only sound was a
fleshy gurgle from a torn, gaping throat.  Ivan sighted in and blasted two men
with well-placed bursts from his Uzi.  Calm and calculated.

Two Colombians reached for their guns.  Aaron’s inhibitions
fell away as his blades crossed through the bone and gristle of a man’s spine,
sending his head flying across the room.

“Madre del Dios!”  The last man opened fire with an assault
rifle and sprayed bullets across the room.  Aaron and Ivan dived low, but
Michelle kept going at him.

She jerked as one of the bullets nailed her.  Growling low
in pain, she tore the gun from his hands and buried her teeth in his neck.  The
crunch of bones and tendons crushing in her jaw cut off the man’s scream.

Aaron and Ivan stood and looked about.  No one left standing
to kill.  They watched Michelle drain the man.  The sucking, slurpy sounds
normally would have made Aaron hungry, but tonight it only turned his stomach. 
Finished, she discarded his lifeless body, wiped the blood off her face with
the back of her hand, then examined her injured shoulder gingerly.

Aaron stepped up close to her.  “Are you okay?”  Her eyes
flitted about, looking for more prey. 
“Michelle?”

She glanced his way.  “
Oui.  Les hommes se cachent à
cet endroit
.” 
The men are hiding over
there.
  She nodded her head towards the side hallway leading to the girls’
rooms.

Michelle often backslid into French in moments of stress. 
Aaron could see from her aura how she tried to ignore the pain to focus on the
job at hand.  He slid his arm around her.  “We can finish this.  Stay here and
wait.”

She shrugged his arm off and moved forward, her face filled
with grim determination.  Ivan followed.  By now, anyone else would be alerted
by the gunshots.  With the element of surprise gone, they were walking into the
shit now.  They found the hallway empty.

Aaron scanned the rooms with his telepathic probe.  There
were several more Colombians, but no Katya.  “She’s not here.  Don’t kill them
all.  We need to find out where she is.”

Ivan winked and pointed to the ceiling.  “Second floor.”

Michelle growled.  “Kill them all.”

Aaron pointed with his sword to the door where three men
stood on the other side with their guns ready.  Ivan pointed and unloaded his
entire clip through the wall and door.  Two men slammed open another door at
the end of the hall and opened fire.

Aaron dived forward into a crouched roll and came up between
them.  His swords sliced through both their throats simultaneously.  Sprays of
arterial flow showered him and the walls as they gargled in their blood.

Ivan looked down at his belly to the spreading stain of red
from a gut shot. 
“O iop tvoiu mat’!”
  Sounded an awful lot like
oh
shit
in Russian.

“
Merde!
” 
Michelle staggered but stayed on her feet.  The right side of her jeans turned
black-red with blood from a new wound.  At this rate they’d never make it out
alive. 
Nothing simple about killing.

Aaron stepped up to Michelle and put his arm around her,
helping her take some weight off her wounded leg.  “Fuck.”  Upstairs, Aaron
heard thumping noises and men yelling.

Ivan wiped the blood off his hand on his jeans.  He gestured
towards the stairs with his Uzi.  “We’re going up.  No matter what happens, I
hold you responsible to bring Katya home.  This is your mess.”

Aaron nodded.  He held himself responsible for this fucked
up situation.  He assessed Michelle.  She wasn’t looking so hot.  “Wait here. 
We’ll deal with this.”

Her eyes flared with fury.  “I want Jamison’s head!”

“So I’ll bring it to you.”

“
Non
.”

She pulled away from his embrace and took the first step up
the stairs towards the men waiting with loaded guns.  Aaron put a hand on her
shoulder.  “At least let me go first.”  Pain-glazed emerald eyes regarded him
with a hint of relief.  He would probably end up carrying her home tonight, if
by some miracle they survived this shit.

Ivan grabbed his arm and pegged him with a deadly serious
look. “No matter what happens, no hospitals.  No blood samples, no doctors, and
no hospitals.  Are we clear?”

Looking at the spreading bloodstain on Ivan’s belly, he
whispered, “Whatever you say.”

Aaron went first, Ivan and Michelle right behind him. 
Shuffling feet and thumps became louder as he headed up the stairs to the first
landing, a ninety degree corner.  He peeked around and up the rest of the
stairwell, and saw no one.

Aaron placed the ball of his foot on the stair step and
slowly rolled his weight onto it.  Creak.  
Shit
.  With painstaking caution
he stepped tip-toe onto the other stair.  Creak.  “Fuck!” No matter how careful
he moved, the old wooden steps betrayed his advance.

What the fuck was I thinking?

Breathing in through his nose, seeking out the warning
scents, Aaron caught them.  Sweaty men perspiring in anxiety.  The smells of
fear.  These people smelled like food.  The predator buried deep in Aaron’s
mind wanted to feed on their blood, and Michelle needed it too.  No point
wasting good blood.

At the top of the steps, Ivan right behind him, Aaron peered
his head around the corner into the hallway.

Guns barked and bullets ricocheted off the walls as the
Colombians opened fire on him.  The element of surprise was officially lost.

Ivan jerked Aaron back as a bullet seared a burning line
across his forehead.  “Son of a Bitch!”  Aaron wiped at the blood on his
forehead, checking to see how bad he’d been shot.  Just a graze.

“You have good luck.”  Ivan grinned at him and snapped a new
clip into his Uzi.  He tipped the barrel of his gun, pushing at Aaron’s sword. 
Ivan nodded towards the exposed hallway and whispered in his ear, “Put it out
there for them.”

Aaron stared at Ivan.   “Are you fucking nuts?”  He probably
was.  The blood loss and vodka had taken its toll.

Ivan pushed his shoulder and whispered again.  “A
distraction.”

Oh.  Duh.

Aaron stuck the end of his sword out into the hallway and gunfire
spat rapid-fire, plaster exploding mere inches from his face as the bullets
thunked into the wall.  Several rounds bounced right off the steel.

Ivan moved amazingly fast for his size.  In an instant he
slid across the hallway floor on his side unloading an entire clip into both
men.  A few bullets zinged past, but they were too high, exactly as Ivan
intended.

Aaron peeked around the corner again to watch two Albanians
slump to the floor, twitching in their death throes.  Guess they had ran out of
Colombians, the Albanian reserves had kicked in.

Someone yelled from an open doorway.  “Peter!  Armand!”

Ivan tossed the empty clip from his gun and slipped in
another one while Michelle made her way up the stairs.

The voice yelled again.  “Peter!  Armand!”

Ivan stood and nosed towards the door, his gun ready.  Aaron
reached out with his mind, seeking whoever he could find.  There were six armed
men … Albanians.  They waited in a large open loft, a gambling room with lots
of card tables.  One man, Bresnik, was arguing with another.

“Get your ass out there and shoot the cocksuckers!”

“They got through ten men!”

“They caught us by the bollocks, but we know exactly where
they are.  Now, walk into the hallway and fucking shoot them before I shoot you!”

Listening to Bresnik’s thoughts as he berated his gunmen,
Aaron realized the man knew his and Michelle’s names.  Working with Jamison, the
Albanian had set this whole mess up.  This was Reza’s boss and cousin.

But Jamison and Katya were nowhere in the room.

Bresnik’s cell phone went off and he answered it, cursing. 
“What?  Of course you’re hearing shots.  It’s a bloody battle royal!”  He
listened to someone going off on the other end of the line.  “No!  I don’t want
the fucking pigs in my house!  Don’t call the cops.  Send me everyone you’ve
got.  Now!  Anyone with a gun.  It’s fucking World War Three in here.”

Aaron held up six fingers to Ivan and whispered, “They’re
all armed, and Katya and Jamison are not in there.  They just called for more
backup.”

Ivan pointed his weapon.  “Katya is there, somewhere, I feel
her.  We need to move, now.”

* * * *

Katya had tried so hard to hold off, to wait for Ivan.  If
they just left her alone she could have waited for hours, days even.  But those
damned Latinos kept eye-fucking her.

The one they called Luis stepped into the room and spoke
over his shoulder in a whisper.  “
Deme treinta minutos sin interrupción
.” 
The other man nodded, and locked the door behind him.  His plans for thirty
uninterrupted minutes were written all over his leering face.  She could smell
his reeking hard-on.  Greaseball probably showered once a week.  If he’d come
to her clean, she might have let him get his dick wet, simply to buy time.  But
the thought of this slimy, filthy man inside of her turned her stomach inside
out.

She hoped Ivan arrived soon, because it was about to get
ugly.

“
Que bonita puta
.  I bet we can get a good price for you. 
I should take you back to Colombia with me.  But first, I need a little taste.”
 His eyes penetrated through her clothing, assessing her carefully.  “I hope
you’re clean, I forgot to bring a condom.”

“Keep it in your pants or lose it!”

One second he was feeling her up with his eyes, the next a
vicious right hook slammed across the left side of her jaw.

Her head snapped sideways and her teeth chattered with the
impact.  Stars bloomed in her vision and she tasted the coppery tang of blood
on her lip.  “Bloody hell!”  She spat red on the bedspread.

Oh yeah, this one was gonna die right now.

He leaped on her, squishing her down into the mattress, and
held her cuffed hands high above her head with his left hand.  “Ain’t no
stopping this train puta.  You best go along for the ride.”