“Oh my God...thank you...”
“Go...” Nick wheezed. His powers beginning to fade. The images in his brain were flashing again as if struggling to focus. “Get in the car...get yourself and Holden out.”
She didn’t hesitate to heed the advice. Hurrying to get her daughter in the car and race off. Nick watched the car go, before falling on his haunches, holding his head. Once again, images of no clarity were racing through his mind.
“What?” he yelled to no one but the wolf inside him. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”
A hail fire of bullets made Nick drop to the dirt, covering his head with both hands and pivoting his head to see behind him. The vampires were being riddled with lead, falling where they stood. The seconds dragged on, and then suddenly there was silence. Nick took a few breaths and glanced up to see where the firing had come from.
He saw two men in riot gear, holding assault rifles, advancing forward, looking over the bodies. A third, wearing a bulletproof vest but no other protection, got out of a black car.
“Check them,” the man in the vest said.
“Sir, this one is alive...” one said, referring back to the third man.
“Remember our orders. Clean this place up and get out. It was just a plane crash. No survivors.”
“Yes, sir.”
More bullets rang out through the air as they crept along. It was then something made sense to Nick. No survivors meant exactly that. None. No vampires or humans. They were here to wipe out everyone. More cars arrived, that same gleaming black, and out from them came men dressed in ambulance gear and police uniforms. Nick looked back towards the crash to see ambulance and police cars abandoned, their drivers either killed by vampires or shot.
Replacements for the media.
Nick tried to get up, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. The images in his head were screaming at him. He scrunched his face and gritted his teeth. Before he knew it, the end of a rifle was pointing over his head.
“Sir...”
“Ready arms!” the reply came. In desperation, Nick rolled away and lashed out with a foot, knocking the gun from his hand. Nick got to his feet and grabbed him, turning him around as a human shield.
“Enough! Kill anyone else and he’s dead. Get it?”
The third man by the car unfolded his arms and walked forward briskly. “As I live and breathe. Nicholas Slade, I hope? You’ll be glad that we found you.”
“What of it?”
“There’s a price on your head for starters. On both of you actually. Now this can go smoothly or very very roughly, but a choice must be made now. Come quietly or there will be consequences for both of you.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Both of us? Who?”
Nick turned around with the officer, soldier, whatever he was, still in his clutches. He saw now what was going on. A vampire stood behind him, the tallest vampire he had ever seen, on the roof of a car, flames bristling behind him as his long red coat wafted in the breeze. Fresh blood was dripping down his chin and onto his bare chest as he gazed fixedly on the scene in front of him with a look of cold indifference in his bright red eyes.
“Nicholas Leslie Slade, you are charged with the murder of Jason Trodd, the manufacturing of Dream State, the destruction of Sydney Airport and with the deaths of over one hundred people that resulted from your actions. Leeson Amadeus Nightingale, you are charged with-”
The man stopped to look at his feet. Nightingale had thrown the severed head of one of his riot officers.
“Who fuckin’ cares? You cunts in ya black vans have been chasin’ me for days and ‘ere tonight I see a whole bunch of ‘em racing past me, out towards good ol’ Mascot so I decided to tag behind. Ya wanted the Big Dog, ya got the Big Dog,” Nightingale sneered, lowering his stance, readying himself. Clearly this was going to go very, very roughly. “All I wanna know is what’s the price?”
“It just went up by five grand to forty five...”
The men, dressed as fake emergency officers, pulled out weapons and clicked them, ready to fire. “One hundred grand for both of you, split between us all, is very tempting.”
Nightingale let himself down from his perch and marched forward. “Hold the fuckin’ phone. You mean to tell me this sperm stain is worth more than me-” Nightingale moved next to Nick and gave him a double take before gripping the man Nick held and pulled him away, annoyed. “Oh would you fuck this piece of shit off already? I’m talkin’ to ya.”
Nightingale threw the man into the path of the others by their black cars. They scattered as he flew into several, knocking them over.
“Get outta here, pretty boy. Men gotta talk.”
Nightingale held Nick by the scruff of the shirt and prepared to lift him, but Nick snatched his hand away, gripping it by the forearm. “I don’t take kindly to being touched by vamps.”
Nightingale lowered his eyelids
