Dancing in the Dark - 10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10.

I ended up taking us to the storage container where I kept the bulk of my weapons and toys. It was possible that we could be found here, but at least we would be well armed. Viktor is still in his sun induced sleep, and will be for at least another hour and a half. I’m trying to decide if I should call Miri and enact our emergency plan. I know they won’t be able to trace this cell phone, and I’d left my regular one at home, but I’m worried that they have Miri’s phone tapped.

I frown at the cell as if it can tell me whether or not I’ll be endangering Miri if I call her, but it has nothing to say on the matter. Even if they didn’t know who I was before I accepted the Sofia job, the three days it took them to shove Viktor from near impossible to control hunger to actual impossible to control hunger gave them plenty of time to follow me. And the night Viktor was given to me on a silver platter was the night that Miri told me to find him. I don’t know if that was just coincidence on their part, or if they may have been listening in on us and knew that I would take him.

No, because Emma said they weren’t sure I would take him. She said the good doctor was going to force me to take him if I didn’t volunteer, and if they’d heard the conversation with Miri they would have known I would take him. Wouldn’t they?

But then again, who knew how much they actually told Emma about that in the first place? Viktor hadn’t said anything more about Emma since we left the farm, either because he didn’t want to think about his experiences with what appeared to be his handler, or because now that she was dead and gone he just didn’t care.

I give a frustrated sigh and punch in Miri’s number. I hesitate one more second before I hit call, but I hit it. I need to tell Miri to protect herself, right?

“Hello?” she answers. She sounds a little unsure, probably because her caller ID wouldn’t have recognized the number.

“Hey Mir,” I say with false cheer, “there’s a joke here on me.”

“I know,” she answers, “but the laugh’s on me.”

I hang up immediately. Fuck. They have her.

***

The second Viktor starts to stir I’m shaking him fully awake. He looks up at me groggily from his makeshift bed of training mats.

“Get up,” I say.

“What’s wrong?” he asks in return, and grabs my arm. I push my arm into him a little harder when he bites into it.

“They have my friend Miri.” I grab a rag from my box of cleaning supplies and wipe the excess blood off my arm, then toss it to Viktor and he cleans his face.

“Miri? You didn’t mention anyone called Miri last night.” There’s a twinge of disapproval to his tone.

“I know,” I reply. “She’s a werehorse I rescued about ten years ago from some vampires I was contracted to kill. She doesn’t like vampires and wouldn’t have liked me to tell you about her, so I didn’t.

“It doesn’t matter now anyway,” I add impatiently, “they have her, she’s not safe, we’re going to rescue her.”

Viktor stares at me for a moment. “Ok. What do you need me to do?” he asked.

***

So it turns out that Viktor has no combat skills whatsoever, other than the natural predatory instincts of a vampire. He is however, a very quick learner and after about half an hour of showing him some of the basic moves and ideas behind capoeira he joins in and we start playing. At first he’s unsure of his movements, but he has the grace and speed that all vampires have, and if he’s lacking in actual knowledge and training he makes up for it in raw talent. Eventually we come to a stop and stand there panting and laughing.

“It’s like dancing,” he says and reaches for me. I duck away from him and let loose a kick to his chest that sends him sprawling backwards. He rolls easily to his feet and comes at me again, fast. In a second he has me on the ground underneath him, in a move that has nothing to do with what I was teaching him and everything to with him being a vampire.

From my vantage point on the ground I can see that the moon is full, and as distracting as Viktor’s fangs in my neck are, it reminds me that Miri is waiting for me to save her. She’ll be in her horse form tonight, so wherever they have her it’s likely that it won’t be the downtown office.

I cling to Viktor for a moment longer, and then we both relax and get up. All of my gear is tailored to fit me, but I manage to fit Viktor into a shoulder holster and show him how to work and reload the Walther PPK I give him.

“That’s my favourite gun,” I say seriously. “Don’t lose it!”

“Yes Sterling,” he replies with a grin and I laugh.

“I bought that gun ‘cause of that show you know,” I snicker. I decide to go ninja tonight, and forego my arsenal of guns. I instead strap throwing knives around my waist, and then retrieve my katana and settle it across my back. I adjust the straps holding it until it sits just right, then take it off and look at Viktor.

“I’m ready,” I say, “let’s go.”

***

The building Dr. Pierson sent us to is a nondescript high rise. It’s quiet, a given since it’s the middle of the night. There are a few lights on in some of the upper floors, but the first seven floors are dark. We watch the building for a while, long enough to know that the security checks the front doors every twenty minutes.

Viktor sits by my side patiently, waiting for me to tell him what to do. He hasn’t asked me what the plan is, which is good, because I don’t really have one. I want to get into the building and avoid having to kill people until we can disable their security cameras, but that’s about as far ahead as I’ve thought.

We watch as the security comes around past the front door again, and I count off eight minutes. We get out of the car and my sword goes across my back, then we walk right up to the front door. It’s locked, but Viktor yanks it hard and I hear a kind of screech-thunk as the metal locks bend and then break under the pressure.

We slip inside and I look around for cameras. They’re very well placed and I can’t immediately pick out a path that will leave us off them, so I just walk straight across the darkened room to the reception desk. There’s no information there to give me an idea of the layout of the building, but Viktor spots an emergency plan map and rips it off the wall to show me.

It gives me a basic idea of the how the building is structured, which is pretty typical of these kinds of buildings. So, the security office is probably either on this floor, or in the basement. I looked around and sure enough there’s a well camouflaged door on the wall behind the reception desk, a few metres to the left of it. I walk over to it and try the handle, but it’s one of those automatically locking doors that were becoming quite the pest for me in this day and age. Maybe I need to study up on small explosives.

Viktor nudges me aside and shoves the door, opening it despite its protests. He darts to the side as a gun goes off, deafeningly loud in the tiny space, and subdues the lone security guard in the room. Pain rips through my left shoulder and I stagger back a step with the force of the bullets impact.

Ugh. I hate getting shot. I shift my shoulder experimentally and then reach over to check for an exit wound. There isn’t one. I hate digging bullets out. Viktor has a death grip on the guard, who is scrabbling at the arm around his neck and trying unsuccessfully to breathe.

I shove my fingers in my wound to stop it from closing and trapping the bullet in there. For some reason digging bullets out always seems to hurt worse when you have to go back in for them later.

“Alright, Mark?” Viktor asks me. I nod and wiggle my fingers around to try and find the bullet.

“Kill him, and then get this fucking bullet out for me,” I pant. Viktor snaps the guard’s neck with ruthless efficiency and drops him. I look at the little screens that are cycling through camera images every ten seconds or so as Viktor tries to find the bullet. There are people moving around now, and I see a flash of the other security guard running, presumably towards us. Viktor pulls the bullet from me and drops it on the ground then licks his fingers absently as he turns to look at the screens also.

He points to one in the group labelled ‘floors 15-20’ and I see an office with ‘Special Agent in Charge Dane Rogers’ on the door.

“They’re all moving around now,” I say. “I think we triggered an alarm when you opened the front door. See, they’re all moving towards the stairs,” as I said that some of the screens flickered to the stairwells and we could see people moving quickly down them. Not running, but definitely moving with purpose.

The other security guard chooses that moment to burst in on us.