Page 102 of The Darkness is Calling

Panic, something I have never known in my entire life, wraps itself around me with cold fingers and freezes my blood.

I have to get to Ekaterina.

Ekaterina is waiting for me.

I count silently in ascending order, trying to stay lucid, even though a brutal exhaustion melts my bones and tries to close my eyelids.

If I fall asleep, will I dream of her?

Or will I wake beside her?

No.

Miracles like that don’t exist, and I have to fight to be with her.

I let my body go slack, and they take cover from the gunfire behind another car. Every second helps me regain some of the strength I need to break free, but I am still too weak to confront them both. I am losing blood, and that does not help at all, but I fight every shadow trying to convince me I need to close my eyes.

One voice alone tells me that if I do, I will never see Katya again.

Luckily for me, I am shoved into one of the smaller cars, with one idiot beside me and the other behind the wheel. Their voices are still distorted around me, but I hear clearly when one says, “The target is captured.”

I don’t know who the fuck sent them after me, but I know for certain I will not meet my end before they meet theirs.

My former great love, Death, will have to wait.

Sorry, darling, but I have another lover now, and I do not want to leave her for you.

I use my dazed state to give the two bastards the impression that I am nearly unconscious from the explosion and my wounds. I don’t give them more than a few minutes, and when my body feels little stronger, I attack. I strike the idiot beside me straight in the throat. He chokes and raises his gun toward me, but this time, I allow no mistakes.

The confined space works against him, because his body is too big to move quickly.

I clench my teeth when I move my arm, struck fully by the pain caused by the wound in my shoulder, which, fortunately, I am used to ignoring to some degree.

Especially now.

I catch his hands, and the gun discharges into the roof, making the driver destabilize the car, even though he has already thrown us into London traffic. Among horns and pedestrians, the idiot tries to get out toward the outskirts as quickly as possible, but I don’t allow him to get far.

Even though the man I am now fighting for the gun is stronger than I am, my agility gives me a major advantage. I need only one second to free one hand and punch him in the throat again. This time, I am almost sure I damaged something there. My blow weakens his grip, and I use that to aim the gun at the idiot behind the wheel.

I shoot him straight in the back of his head.

His brains splatter across the windshield, and the car slams hard into a curb. All I feel is the moment we lift into the air and overturn, and from that instant, the thread snaps completely.

Everything becomes calm.

This time, I dream of a melody, and in a colorful, brightly lit room, Ekaterina waits for me beside a piano. She smiles at me, and I go straight toward her to kiss her, but she stops me. Her face turns somber as the dress on her body transforms into one soaked in blood.

“You arrived too late, Pakhan. This is what happens when you don’t keep your promise.”

Blood begins to pour from wounds opening all over her body, and the roar that tears from my chest merges with a painful reality, not only in my mind, but in my body too.

I open my eyes abruptly, strangled by a pain that would make other men cry like little boys.

I am trapped inside the body of the overturned car, its wheels in the air, and panic seizes me.

I am not afraid of death, but I do not want to lose Ekaterina.

I have to get to her, because I promised her.