Written in the Blood (41 page)

C
HAPTER
44

Interlaken, Switzerland

I
t was Flóra.

Naked, the woman stood on the other side of the ruined glass, hands pressed against its surface. Her skin was milk-white, lips blue. Convulsing with cold, she stared at Leah with eyes that were dark and terrified and pleading. ‘Let me in,’ she mouthed, glancing over her shoulder at the waiting darkness. ‘Please, Leah. Let me in.’

Heart kicking in her chest, Leah took a step closer to the glass. Her throat constricted, as if unseen hands strangled her.

You left her. You left Flóra at the villa.

And they took her.

When the woman saw Leah make no attempt to let her in, she banged her fists on the glass, screaming, and although the window was thick enough to dampen sound, Leah still heard her words.

‘Let me
in
!’ Again, Flóra glanced over her shoulder. She seemed to see something move out there, beyond the range of the lights. Her assault on the window intensified, and where she pounded on the splinters of outer glass, they sliced into her skin. The pads of her balled fists stamped vivid red blotches.

‘I’m sorry,’ Leah whispered. She wanted to close her eyes, wanted to excise the woman’s image from her mind, but she couldn’t. Neither could she do anything to help.

Behind her, Luca returned from the hall. He hissed when he saw Flóra. ‘Do you know her?’

Outside, Flóra’s hammering grew more frenzied. She smeared half-moons of blood across the glass. ‘
LET ME IN! PLEASE, LEAH! LET ME IN! LET ME IN!’

‘Her name’s Flóra,’ Leah whispered, hand covering her mouth, tears sliding down her cheeks. ‘She’s Elias’s mother. I left her.’

‘You saved her son.’

‘What about her?’

Luca grimaced. ‘There’s nothing we can do. It’s a test, Leah. That’s all this is. They’re probing you for a weakness.’

Sensing, perhaps, that her efforts were in vain, Flóra closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the fractured glass. When she looked up a few moments later, all traces of humanity had bled from her expression.

Her mouth, still ringed with blue, hung slack. Her body stopped shivering. Her chest ceased its heaving.

Flóra raised a hand, spread her fingers wide, and when she opened her mouth to speak, Leah read on her lips the words she spoke, and thought she heard them in her head.

We want five. That’s all. Five . . .

‘Come on,’ Luca said. He slipped his hand around her arm. ‘You don’t need to see this.’

But she was unable to look away. She
had
to see this – a price she must pay for abandoning the woman at Villa del Osservatore.

Five. You choose. Choose, choose . . .

Leah shrugged off Luca’s arm, her grief igniting into fury. The mere suggestion that she would barter the lives of the children she’d pledged to protect outraged her in ways she hadn’t imagined. ‘I’ll die before giving you a single one of them!’ she screamed. ‘And I’ll take you with me!
All
of you!’

Flóra stared. And then she tilted back her head and slammed it against the glass. Blood ran down her face, dripped from her chin. She turned, and walked out into the night.

Head suddenly light, Leah slumped over, supporting herself with her hands on her knees. Luca approached her, but she waved him away. ‘No. Give me a second. I’ll be all right.’ She took a breath, clenched her teeth. Stood. ‘Let’s go.’

After locking the games room door behind them, they rejoined Ágoston and Jérôme back on the first floor. The pair was standing by the windows. Empty brass shell casings littered the floor.

‘How is it?’ asked Ágoston.

‘Secure,’ Luca replied. ‘We locked up the rooms, just in case. They’re going to—’

When he hesitated, Leah heard it too: outside, the revving of a diesel engine.

Just enough light leaked around the side of the house to illuminate the heated patch of driveway in front of the garage.

A black Range Rover, engine roaring, erupted from the darkness, wheels squealing as they bounced off snow and chewed into tarmac. Lunging forward, two tonnes of steel powered by a thundering five-litre heart, the vehicle accelerated towards the chalet’s front entrance.

‘Door!’ Jérôme yelled, snatching up his shotgun. Ágoston reacted instantly, sliding back the glass pane.

Chambering a round into his Remington, Jérôme swung the barrel to track the 4x4. He fired.

A plate-sized section of glass exploded in the Range Rover’s windscreen. But the vehicle kept coming. Kept coming.

Jérôme reloaded, fired. Reloaded, fired. The air burst around them. Hard, angry sounds.

So many things happened at once, after that, that Leah struggled to comprehend any of them, or slot them into a meaningful order.

A tyre exploded on the Range Rover’s nearside, its wheel rim striking up a trail of sparks while, much closer, a human form dropped onto the balcony from the floor above, landing on all fours directly in front of Jérôme.

Leah opened her mouth to shout out a warning, wheeling her hands as if she back-pedalled through water. She saw Ágoston’s eyes widen as he registered the ambush and pushed his weight against the door, saw it begin to roll forward along its runners, incredibly slow, inch by inch by inch, saw whatever had landed on the balcony rise to its feet in a single fluid movement and lunge towards Jérôme, saw Jérôme stagger backwards but late, far too late, face contorted in panic as the dark shape touched his cheek before the sliding wall of glass intervened, knocking the creature away and sealing it outside. She saw Jérôme turn as the door rolled shut, saw his eyes change as if a pair of shutters had slammed down, saw him lift the barrel of the Remington towards Ágoston and pull the trigger, saw the shotgun’s muzzle flash and A Kutya Herceg’s face dissolve in blood, saw the
kirekesztett
leader fall back as Jérôme – what had
been
Jérôme – twisted towards Luca, mouth stretched wide as he racked another round into the gun, saw a spent cartridge tumbling end over end through the air, balletic almost, a smoking tube of plastic and brass, saw Luca’s handgun loom into view, saw the Remington’s barrel jump as it unleashed another red tongue of fire, saw a fusillade of buckshot burst open Luca’s chest even as he squeezed the trigger of his own weapon, saw the shotgun swing towards her now, another empty shell jumping into the air, heard Jérôme reload, saw Luca’s pistol pump round after round into the man’s skull, saw the shotgun kick a third time, saw her jeans shred in a spray of blood, felt the impact punch her off her feet, felt herself falling back, falling, falling, felt pain exploding in her like a thousand stabbing knives, felt the floor slam against her back, felt the breath whoosh from her lungs, felt her head smacking against wood, saw her world darken, consumed by pain and shock and disbelief.

Blink.

Ágoston crashed to the floor, arms outstretched. Jérôme, faceless, fell like a tree, the Remington flying from his hands. Luca sailed backwards, legs lifting up to reveal the soles of his shoes. He landed on his back and slid, leaving a trail of bright blood.

It wasn’t over, not yet.

Outside, engine screaming, the 4x4 slammed into the chalet’s front entrance in an explosion of buckling steel, wood splinters and glass.

A final empty shotgun cartridge bounced to the floor and spun, around and around and around.

Then, finally, shocking silence.

Leah lay still, listening to the sound of her breathing, trying to make sense of what she’d seen and heard.

Ágoston was dead. She knew that.
Hosszú élet
or not, no one could sustain a head injury like that and live. And while whatever lurked inside Jérôme’s corpse might still cling to life, the same could not be said for its host. The man’s skull had revealed its secrets like a gristly Pandora’s box.

The pain in her leg was monstrous. She squeezed her eyes shut against it.

Don’t move. Not yet.

Think.

She was losing blood. Fast. Opening her eyes, she propped herself up on her elbow. From just above the knee, her right leg was a mulch of pulverised flesh. Blood spurted from the wound in rhythmic pulses.

Femoral artery. You have minutes left. Unless you concentrate.

She was beginning to hyperventilate. She needed to slow her breathing, her heart.

Leah lay back down on the floor. Emptied her lungs.

Outside, the Range Rover stuttered back into life. Its engine revved. In a cacophony of shearing metal and popping wood, it extricated itself, reversing back onto the drive.

Forget about the car. Put it out of your head. You’re dying here.

She tried to concentrate on the flow of blood through her leg, the sensations from her nerves. But the agony intensified and a convulsion seized her. As if a cord had been pulled taut, every muscle in her body contracted as one. Her head slammed against the floor and her eyes shot open.

A warmth soaked into the back of her jeans. Her blood, she realised. Pouring out of her.

You’re the only one left. If you die here, then they win, and the children are lost.

Leah screamed. Angry now, furious. And there,
there
. With sudden clarity, she sensed the edges of the artery’s tear. She’d never had to do this before, but she remembered Gabriel’s words, saw his face floating above her:
Pinch and sew, Leah. Pinch and sew.

She tried to do as he urged, grimacing at the effort, thought she had it –
pinch and sew –
felt the repair she’d worked split apart like an overripe pea pod.

Again.

This time, incredibly, the seam held. She glanced down, sickened by what she saw. A lake of blood had spread underneath her. The flesh she glimpsed through her tattered jeans was puckered and raw. But blood no longer fountained.

She glanced over at Luca, lying on his back. Shook her head. He had taken the full brunt of the Remington’s round in his chest. Feeling the tendons of her neck straining, she forced herself back onto an elbow, closing her eyes as the room swayed away from her.

The dizziness passed and she opened her eyes again, staring around the room at the three bodies that littered the floor, staggered by the enormity of what had just happened.

One
tolvaj
did this. Just one. And now all three of her companions lay dead or dying.

Her head pulsed, ears deafened from the gunfire that had ripped the air apart. She sat up, saw her pistol lying close. Wormed over to it, dragging her injured leg. Shoving the weapon into a pocket, she pulled herself to Luca’s side.

His eyes were open but unfocused, breath coming in shallow gasps. Alive, barely. She wanted to help him, but she had no blood to give. No time, either.

From somewhere above them she heard a hollow-sounding boom. A moment later, another one followed.

Tolvajok
.

Up on the second floor, trying to break the windows. They were everywhere now, swarming all over the house, confident that only Leah remained to thwart them.

A third echoing boom, followed by a fourth.

Outside, she heard the Range Rover’s gearbox rasp, its three remaining tyres squeal. A few seconds later the car punched into the front entrance again, unleashing a hailstorm of metal and wood.

Had the building been breached? She had to find out. Dragging herself to the dining table, she used a chair to lever herself to her feet.

Don’t touch Jérôme. Don’t go near him.

Tentatively, she put weight on her injured leg. A flash of agony ripped through her, a forge-heated needle melting the marrow of her bones. She concentrated, emptied her mind. Tried to build a wall around the pain.

Again, she put her weight on the leg. Took a tentative step.

Better.

She hobbled to the door and out into the hall. Leaving a bloody trail behind her, she edged towards the stairs. From here, the angle was too steep to see the main entrance.

The booming above her intensified.

Down the first few stairs. Pause for breath. Down a few more.

Stop. Breathe. A few more stairs, and now she was close enough to the bottom of the flight to see the entrance hall before her.

Dust hung thick in the air. Chunks of rubble and plaster lay strewn across the floor. The door was still inside its frame, but the brickwork surrounding it had been punched inwards. Two large cracks, wide enough to accept a hand, had appeared on either side. Frozen air leached through.

Leah made it to the bottom of the flight. The Range Rover revved its engine, ear-shatteringly loud, as if its exhaust had torn loose. Now a squeal from its tyres, and through the narrow panes of glass in the door’s transom she saw an onrushing shape.

The vehicle crunched into the entrance and this time it punched through. Bricks shattered. Mortar burst into wicked grey shards. The entire bottom half of the door snapped off and skittered across the floor.

As the dust settled, she saw the mangled front end of the 4x4 wedged tight inside the breach. Steam and smoke boiled from its grille.

Leah’s leg gave way beneath her. She sat down hard, staring at the wreckage. If the Range Rover managed to reverse out of the destruction it had wreaked, it would leave a gaping hole open to the night.

She heard the engine, stalled after the impact, turn over. It rattled, and then a darker cloud of smoke, greasy and toxic, erupted into the hallway.

Leah gagged when it touched her throat. Her vision blurred from its sting. And then she saw the first yellow licks of flame. They spread quickly, curling from beneath the broken door, crackling as they consumed the first sharp splinters. Outside, a car door slammed.