Amelia put a burst into the man toting the carbine, spinning him around like a top. Frank's first shots caused his target to slump against a dumpster; the second burst dropped him to the trash strewn ground. Shotgun-Guy managed to make Frank duck with an errant volley of birdshot, and then Frank and Amelia both riddled him with bullets.
Frank gestured with one hand as he held the Uzi with another.
“There! He's thirty yards ahead! We can still push up an' get th' fucker!”
Sure enough, Andrei was staggering among some more junked cars and barrels, looking terrified.
Dropping a fourth Cămătaru thug, Amelia joined Frank, and together they started to move forward.
Thirty yards distant, the Zamfir man tripped over a cinderblock, then gasped as another man not native to the district crouched near him.
“It didn't work!” he shouted at the man. “The magic didn't work! And they were bloody shielded! You said the spells your masters gave us would penetrate any ward!”
The newcomer, dressed in sturdy black fatigues, his features below his nose concealed by a woolen scarf, stared back at the financier with dead eyes, causing the smaller man to flinch.
“Don't shit yourself, you miserable wretch. My masters have bound me to protect you from your adversaries, and protect you I will.”
As the two agents of ARTEMIS gave chase, the man in the woolen scarf stood up, and unlimbered his own weapon.
Frank and Amelia only had a heartbeat to take cover as heavy caliber rounds started punching through the dumpster, barrel and junker alike. Frank had a brief glimpse of a man in a scarf wielding a German made battle-rifle. By now Kastner's magics had faded, and the rifleman standing over Andrei could do them serious harm.
Leaning awkwardly around a dumpster, Frank let loose with a long burst, the Uzi chattering angrily. He was then forced to duck back, clouds of rust and shards of metal flaking loose as the G3 thundered back. Amelia began to snarl into the collar of her jacket.
“We're pinned! Where are you guys?”
Behind the man in the scarf, another batch of Cămătaru troops pelted their way out of an apartment stack, weapons raised. Waving them forward, the man in the scarf growled at Andrei to get up, and as the financier ran behind him, he started to slowly back away, still squeezing off shots from the G3.
Frank winced as more bullets started hitting the dumpster, pinging and sparking.
“We can't get t' th' guy, Davidovich! Now would be a really good time!”
As if in answer, there was the roar of an engine behind them.
A matte black Frontera off road vehicle swung into the lot. Dodging obstacles, it screeched to a halt to their left. As it stopped, the passenger side door opened, and Viktor Davidovich jumped out, the team leader banging away at their enemies with a newer Kalashnikov variant. The window on the right side lowered, and Jenny Burdette joined the fray as well, the spiky haired Aussie holding the steering wheel with her right hand, balancing another Uzi with her left on her right arm. In the back of the vehicle, Kastner continued to use his magic, employing the crow as his eyes once more.
The second wave of gun thugs began to pitch over, struck with bullets or their hearts literally stopped by magic. Their line faltered, and began to break up as they scurried to cover. The man in the scarf bodily dragged Andrei into a building with one hand, keeping the rifle tucked into his shoulder with the other.
“Move up!” rasped Davidovich, the blue eyed Russian killing another man with a burst from the Kalash. “Don't let them escape!” Supported by their team mates, Frank and Amelia scrambled out of cover, making for the building their quarry had run in to. The pair bellied out to the right, flanking the hapless Cămătaru goons as they bounded from spot of cover to cover.
Briefly stopping behind a set of sturdily built concrete steps leading into an apartment stack, the two took a moment to observe the refuse littered battlefield, extending the wire stocks on their weapons as they did so. The local muscle were better at slapping around prostitutes and shaking down impoverished locals than they were at fighting. Fire and maneuver was a foreign concept. A man in a tracksuit emblazoned with the logo and colors of FC Sportul rose out of cover to aim at them, thus exposing himself to their teammates.
Davidovich then provided an object lesson to the other goons by sending a round right through the football fan's ear. Two newcomers to the fight crossed by Frank and Amelia, and were quickly toppled by automatic fire. The way clear once more, the ARTEMIS agents pressed on, covered by the trio back at the Frontera, bounding from new position to new position. Fire and manuever. Soon they were clear of the main fight, and were hastily moving up the stairs of the stack Andrei and his protector had fled into.
Frank dumped the almost empty mag for his Uzi, sending the metal stick magazine clattering down the stairs behind him as he reloaded. Amelia did likewise once he was in front again, and the two started to slowly, carefully move up the stairs, submachine guns braced against their shoulders. Frank edged his way around the first turn, iron sights trained ahead of him, then moved up another flight, Amelia right behind.
As they climbed the stairs, Davidovich's voice sounded in their ear pieces again.
“They're on third floor and continuing to move up. Kastner's bird is circling the building and caught a glimpse through a window. There are some planks linking this building to another on the roof. Opposition is falling back and we're disengaging. Moving to block exit from the second building.”
“Copy,” was Frank's terse, one word reply.
The pair hit the third landing and were greeted with sparks and ricochets as another Cămătaru man leaned over the railing on the top floor and started firing at them with his handgun, the weapons retort reverberating loudly. Frank grunted sharply as he hit the cold, gray floor, firing up the stairwell, spent brass tinkling near his ear. The man ducked back, avoiding Frank's shots. The long legged Brazilian moved past Frank as he suppressed, taking the steps two at a time.
When the gunman popped into view again, Amelia was in a much better position, and her next shots hit him in the face and blew out the back of his skull, scattering blood and bone chips. The mans body came rolling awkwardly down the stairs as they came up. Both stepped briskly over his corpse without a second look.
There was a ladder leading up to an open trap door in a ceiling whose tiles had been removed, exposing pipes and wiring.
Frank attacked the ladder, moving forcefully up the rungs until he was almost at the top. There he paused, took a deep breath, and sharply poked his head above the lip of the trap door.
Andrei and his guardian were already across to the adjacent rooftop, and the man in the scarf looked like he was getting ready to move the planks. Left hand holding himself steady, Frank extended the Uzi towards his opponent with his right, and squeezed off a quartet of shots. His aim was off, though, and the rounds sailed past. It served to dissuade the man from messing further with the planks, and he and his charge moved down a short set of stairs built into the roof, descending into the second building.
“Just ahead of us!” Frank's words were to Amelia and Davidovich both as he hauled himself up, offering his partner a quick hand to help her onto the roof. A few acrophobic moments were spent on the planks, the wood creaking in the cold breeze, and then both were across.
“Are you on the other side of the building?” queried Amelia breathlessly as they started down the stairs to an access door.
“Almost there. This place is like fucking Stalingrad,” growled Davidovich over the net while Frank opened the door, ushering the two inside.
Both agents were forced to hurl themselves to the ground as the man in the scarf sent a flurry of shots their way from his G3, ducking around a corner to fire down their hallway. This building apparently still had some occupants, with Frank able to hear men, women and children crying out in terror from their rooms as gunfire began anew. Then the rifle toting stranger was gone, continuing to flee, and Amelia and Frank pushed themselves up again.
Heartbeats ahead of them, Andrei and his minder hurtled down flight of stairs after flight of stairs. If they could get to ground level once more, this particular stack emptied out into a rabbit warren of smaller hovels and apartments. They could get lost in there and avoid further pursuit. At least until the Zamfir syndicate could send help. They were on the second floor landing when the man in the scarf looked out a grimy window, and saw Frontera muscle its way in front of the buildings exit.
“Damn,” he muttered as Andrei began to wail, and fired his rifle through the window, sending broken glass everywhere, which caused the Zamfir financier to shriek even louder. Biting back a curse, the man in the scarf spun away from the window, acting on instinct, and only missed drilling one of the pursuing agents coming down the stairwell behind them by a hairs breadth, banging away with the battle rifle.
“You...you can't let them get me!” squealed Andrei, eyes wide and staring.
The man in the scarf ignored him for a moment, forcing the man and woman chasing him to move back up the stairs with shots that punched holes in the concrete walls, sending dust and debris flying, the G3 bellowing at them. He then snapped his head around, seeing that the occupants of the Frontera had gotten out as well.
“They can't get to me! They can't get what I know!”
Andrei was practically cowering on the ground now.
Looking down, the man in the scarf nodded.
“You are correct. This should have been easy...these are society agents. Not a rival syndicate as you feared. They cannot get you. They cannot learn more about the strigoi's connection to your organization...and my masters connection to them.”
“You...have an idea?” Andrei's unhealthily pale face was hopeful.
“Yes.” answered the man in the scarf, and then he shot Andrei neatly through the forehead.
When he brought his rifle up again, the tall woman had already drawn a bead on him. Despite knowing he'd fail, the man in the scarf tried to shoot her.
She put eight rounds into his body.
Frank jumped down the last few stairs, kicking the rifle away from the prone form of the gunman.
Amelia was snarling in Portuguese as she checked out Andrei.
“Dead,” she reported into her collar microphone.
“Hasn't stopped Kastner before,” replied Davidovich as the rest of the team started to move up the stairs.
“Jesus,” grumbled Frank. “One of these days it'd be nice to catch 'em alive so Kastner doesn't have to fuck around with their ghost.”
Amelia gave Frank a wan smile in answer as she stood up from Andrei's body. Then both heard a voice from the floor.
The man in the scarf. They'd been sure he too was dead.
“The Morninglight...burns,” he gasped out in English.
He pulled hard on something attached to his fatigues.
“Get down!”
Frank's scream came too late. The world went white.
And then he saw nothing at all.
When Frank came to, he could just barely hear the buzzing of the bees.
He always heard them after they repaired his body.
This time they sounded...mournful.
“Amelia,” Frank groaned softly. The anima well was in one of the few spots in Ferentari that still had trees, thin and sickly as they were. It wasn't far from where...from where they'd cornered Andrei.
Forcing himself up to his feet, Frank first staggered, then walked, then ran. He could hear Davidovich in his earpiece, demanding to know what had happened, telling them the Bucharesti police were finally on their way. They had to go.
Frank couldn't go just yet.
He passed by small knots of locals who had ventured out as the firing had stopped. Accusatory fingers pointed at him as he ran.
The battlefield was reached, with its collection of corpses that were once mob hitmen.
Frank passed this by as well.
He angled around to where the Frontera was parked. Burdette was already in the drivers seat again, revving the engine. Davidovich howled at Frank as he simply passed his team leader by, moving back inside the building.
Up the stairs.
The second floor landing was blackened and scored, but mostly intact. A trio of mauled and savaged bodies remained. His vision starting to blur with tears of grief and frustration, Frank gently turned the taller of the bodies to the side.
He couldn't even close Amelia Paiva's eyes for her.
Amelia Paiva no longer had a face.
United Kingdom
Warlingham
NOW
Frank laid the flowers on the flat slab that was supposedly the resting place of “Melanie MacBeth.” At the time, Frank had thought that was the lowest point he could reach, the lowest since Lauren's death so many years ago. They'd fled for the moment, then had worked their way back in to the district in a different vehicle, breaking into the morgue and stealing away Paiva's body. They weren't going to leave it for the Romanians. Ensuing investigations into the gunfight were stymied, and eventually it turned into another tale of violence from Ferentari.
There had been successes. Gains. When the Romanian working group, supported by Rohit Patel's Phoenician mercenaries had made the penultimate raid to end the Zamfir syndicate, it felt like justice. It felt like they'd avenged Amelia Paiva, and all those the human trafficking ring had harmed.
But Frank continued to sink.
It had been Amelia Paiva who had poked him squarely in the chest as they stood in a wooded space outside of Budapest, and told him of the need for conviction. That they couldn't let ARTEMIS corrupt them. That they would hold each other accountable, and stay true to each other. That they would stay to a higher standard for themselves, for the Order, and for the ones who were preyed upon by those who should have known better.
It had been Amelia Paiva who had been his anchor within ARTEMIS to concepts like right and wrong. With her death, Frank had slowly, but surely, started to see things the same way the organization did. Bit by bit.
That path had led directly to his imprisonment. And so much else.
Frank let out a sigh years in the making, and rose from his crouch.
His guard escorted him back to the car, and soon they were heading back to London.
Fifteen minutes down the road, the guard surprised him by speaking.
“One of the ARTEMIS folks, then.”
Frank turned his head slightly. The guard was glancing over at him, eyebrow arched.
The Appalachian outdoorsman considered the question for several moments.
“A Templar,” he finally answered quietly. “A good agent, a good woman. And a good friend.”
The two lapsed into silence again. When the guard spoke again, it was with respect.
“The best of us die young,” he said quietly. “And the rest of us merely linger.”
