The rain was still falling, but now it felt almost comforting after everything that had happened.
They ran through the wet garden toward the fence. Behind them came the shouts of the guards and the pounding of footsteps.
"Stop! I'll shoot!" someone bellowed from behind.
A shot rang out. The bullet whistled over their heads. The second slammed into a tree trunk right beside them.
They reached the fence. Flash was the first to start climbing, grabbing at the wet stone and ivy.
"Go!" he shouted to Ethan.
"Climb!" Flash panted, swinging himself over the top.
Ethan grabbed the handholds with one hand, the stake clenched between his teeth. His left arm barely obeyed him. He pulled himself up, but at that moment a guard burst out from the bushes, the same one returning from patrol.
The guard raised his pistol.
"That's it!" he yelled.
Flash, already straddling the top of the fence, fired first. The bullet hit the guard in the chest. He was a vampire, the wound only slowed him slightly.
He snarled and fired back.
Bang!
Flash jerked and cursed under his breath. The bullet had caught him in the left shoulder. Blood instantly soaked through his jacket.
"Flash!" Ethan shouted.
In that instant the guard lunged straight at him. Ethan acted on pure instinct. For the first time he consciously used the stake as a weapon.
"Fuck you!"
With a furious cry he spun and slammed the black wood into the guard's chest.
The stake sank in easily. The guard froze with his mouth open, eyes wide with horror.
In the next second the vampire's body began to disintegrate. Black smoke erupted from the wound, from his mouth and eyes.
The guard screamed and instantly turned into a thick cloud of black smoke that was greedily sucked into the stake.
Ethan felt a new surge of power… and a fresh wave of nausea. There was no time to think.
"Climb!" Flash roared, reaching down with his good hand. Blood ran down his fingers.
Ethan grabbed his friend's hand. With difficulty they tumbled over the fence and crashed down on the other side into mud and wet grass.
Flash hissed in pain, pressing a hand to his wounded shoulder.
"Run…" he gasped.
"To the tracks… before they get organized…"
Ethan got to his feet, swaying. The black stake in his hand was still smoking. The voices inside it were screaming even louder now, including the fresh, angry voice of Laurent.
They ran down the hillside, not caring about the path. Laurent's guards had recovered and were chasing after them. Flash kept his palm pressed to his wounded shoulder; blood streamed between his fingers and mixed with the rain.
Ethan ran behind him, stumbling from side to side.
They burst onto the railway tracks and, without a word, turned left toward the old depot.
Flash was the first to tumble through the broken window. Ethan climbed in after him and immediately dropped to his knees on the wet concrete floor.
He leaned his back against a rusty beam and looked at his left arm.
The black lines now covered his entire shoulder. They were climbing higher, already reaching toward his collarbone and slowly, relentlessly crawling up his neck.
The skin around them was gray and cold to the touch, as if the blood in his veins had turned to black tar. The fingers of his left hand sometimes stopped obeying him, clenching in spasms one moment, then suddenly going limp the next, as if they belonged to someone else.
Ethan stared at them, unable to look away.
"They're… already on my neck…" he whispered hoarsely.
Flash, wincing in pain, crouched beside him. He tore off his wet jacket, ripped the sleeve of his shirt with his teeth, and began bandaging his wounded shoulder.
Blood immediately soaked through the fabric.
"Talk," he demanded without looking at Ethan. His voice was hard, laced with exhaustion.
"What are you feeling right now?"
"I noticed you're acting really strange! Tell me everything, no holding back!"
Ethan closed his eyes.
The voices inside the stake were no longer whispering, they were speaking clearly, loudly, almost at full volume.
"I can hear them…" Ethan began quietly.
"I told you, I hear the souls much more clearly now. Before it was just noise."
"Now… I can make out words. Even Laurent's soul is laughing. Saying I'm their home now."
"They're not going anywhere," he swallowed.
"And she… she's here too. I don't know who she is, but she keeps calling me her home."
"These souls, they're threatening me, all because I forgot you're not supposed to kill a vampire with an ordinary object."
"And the way you're acting, Flash… you're calm, you're not even angry at me! Like you know what to do. Why aren't you yelling at me?"
Ethan opened his eyes and looked at Flash. His gaze was a mixture of horror and exhausted despair.
"I feel them… crawling into me. It's not just screaming anymore."
"It's like I'm no longer me. Like I'm… a room they now live in."
Flash tightened the knot on his shoulder with his teeth and gave Ethan a long look.
"We'll find a way," he said at last.
"I promised you. Right now we just need to get back to my apartment."
"And I'm calm because you're an idiot…"
Ethan nodded, though believing it was getting harder by the second.
They left the depot as the sky began to lighten. The rain had almost stopped, leaving behind a cold, wet mist.
They walked along the tracks, supporting each other.
Flash limped. Ethan kept stumbling. Naturally, his left arm barely obeyed him anymore.
***
They entered Flash's apartment just before dawn. The door creaked open softly.
Inside it was dark, but the moment they crossed the threshold, two figures rushed toward them from the living room.
Bruno, still pale, who had been sitting on the couch, suddenly stood up.