Chapter Six

Raymond wandered through the throng of people that had come to attend the dinner. The rituals were over and now loud Hungarian pop music filled the halls while everyone either went to the dancefloor or gathered in cliques engaged in conversation laced with alcohol, as that and snacks were never more than a few steps away. Raymond had a glass and a bottle of champagne in hand,  as he climbed up the first flight of stairs that led towards the balcony where he hoped to get some air.

He didn't feel good. The merriment of the scene was lost on him, as his soul was seized by a gloom the like of which he had not felt in decades. He was at the first-floor balcony now, overlooking an artistically rendered courtyard with a magnificent fountain and delicately tendered lawns and walkways, without remembering how he made it up there. But he brought a drink and proceeded to get himself plastered while he had the freedom.

Halfway into the bottle, Raymond thought of the kids back at the Institute. They may -- including the rebel Kyle -- be the end of his running. He would begin to teach them the sacred arts with the vision that they would make it past age nineteen. If that happened, whether or not Sonia's curse started to destroy this body, one of them would have to be sacrificed. He would have a nineteen-year-old body, along with all their enhanced strengths and instincts, the perfect tools for him to craft the life of his dreams... after eight hundred years of trying.

A piercing chill gripped him and he shivered. It was followed by a wave of dizziness so severe he had to turn from the balustrade lest he accidentally tipped over and fallen twenty-five feet to the courtyard below. The fall may not kill him, since his current body was in peak physical condition, tougher than even the most seasoned Olympic athlete's. But it would surely hurt like hell.

And when he turned, he found that the drink was innocent of the nausea that had just caught hold of him. Because he was standing face to face with the only thing in the world he ever loved, and the only thing in the world that wouldn't rest until he was dead.

*

She saw him going up the stairs, and followed twenty feet behind. Sonia was so focused on her mark that she nearly collided into a stranger... which didn't happen because the stranger, a lean young man under thirty in a striking red coat fit to form, had been quick enough to avoid her. She threw a quick apology at him -- or wanted to -- but he was gone.

Sonia blinked twice and frowned. She had seen nothing of the man except for his clothes and dark skin. It wasn't Raymond. And it wasn't a ghost either. Was he in league with Raymond? It was possible, because he wasn't an ordinary man. His flair still lingered in the air where he stood only a moment ago; it was cold and dark, and reminded her of the monster that had nearly ripped her apart less than twenty-four hours ago. She glanced back up at the stairs Raymond had just ascended and knew that it was no coincidence that they were both here tonight. Was she about to crash a business meeting? Or was the other man his backup?

The only strange thing was that from the stranger's flair Sonia could tell without a doubt that he and Raymond had never met before. But then those same senses had convinced her that a fourteen-year-old boy was Raymond.

Sonia shut her eyes and forced the conflicting questions out of her head. Raymond was not far, and when she found him she wasn't going to ask him any questions. The last four hundred years had damned him irrevocably. She would take off his head and burn it to ash. Let him find a way to return from that.

She pushed the stranger out of her mind and started for the stairs. She couldn't see Raymond, but she could feel him again. He had stopped walking, out at the balcony a floor above. She walked calmly, her breathing eased by the reassuring feel of the razor-sharp dagger strapped to her thigh. It was unfortunate that Raymond won't suffer before he died. Perhaps two hundred years ago, during the earliest onset of the Industrial Revolution, when nations were more concerned with amassing wealth through cheap labor than maintaining political peace within their borders, she could have taken him to some rural community and tortured him for as long as her soul deemed necessary. But things were different in the twenty-first century, and fortunes were spent in preventing or punishing any form of violence within their borders. If she could lead him to another location and restrain him there, perhaps she could find means to make his death slow and painful; but the moment she made herself visible to him, Raymond would do all in his power to put as much distance as possible, and a man running for his life could run fast.

So she would have to kill him on the spot, take off his head and escape the inevitable law enforcement manhunt that would follow the event. That was why she had no allies. On her own, she was more than a match for thousands of men in uniforms and machine guns, because she had no uniform. She was an individual weapon of mass destruction, and she was about to unleash all of her wrath on the bane of her existence. Sonia finished her ascent and went through the corridor that led out to the open balcony where, along with young couples desiring a bit more privacy, Raymond stood peering over the balustrade at the courtyard below.

Time stopped for Sonia. Her eyes went hot, from the intensity at which the last four hundred years flashed before her eyes. Her shoulders sagged, from the burden of carrying enormous guilt for hundreds of years.

She took a deep breath and dispelled the nerves trying to overwhelm her. Then she opened her eyes and glared at Raymond with conviction... but now he was also looking at her.

*

Raymond's heartbeat cymbals in his chest from a myriad of emotions. He wanted to hold her and feel her touch like he had never wanted anything before, but then he looked in her eyes and felt the full force of all her hate, and something died inside of him. His whole body quivered as he fought back a submerging feeling of despair, but then it went away and he simply felt... nothing.

Raymond gulped and leaped over the balustrade.

Sonia reacted one split-second faster when she saw the look in his eyes. By the time the synapses in his brain passed the information to the appropriate neurons, she had unsheathed her dagger and hurled it at him with all her strength, without aiming.

Raymond screamed as the knife pierced his shoulder, nearly taking his arm off. That broke his coordination and he plunged messily toward the ground. Fortunately -- for him -- an elderly gentleman chose that exact moment to walk right under his landing point. Raymond clattered into him while shocked bystanders shrieked in confusion.

Raymond pulled himself off the man who had cushioned his fall and was now a crushed heap on the ground, limbs and spine bent at unnatural angles. Raymond started to drag himself away even before the world stopped spinning. Because Sonia was already coming after him.

He pulled the knife from his shoulder and dropped it as he moved. It would be laughable for him to attempt to overpower her in a fistfight, even if he was whole and well. He crossed the palace perimeter and dived straight into the frenzied night traffic out in the open street. He didn't even steal a glance back to find out if she was gaining on him; if he was still running it meant she hadn't caught him yet. That was all that mattered.

He slipped past speeding cars whose drivers yelled obscenities at him for his recklessness. He dove into an alley and pulled out his phone, dialing Sheila's number as he went. She picked instantly. "Yes, father."

"Sheila, She's after me!" he screamed. He ripped out a door at the end of the alley and entered what appeared to be the kitchen of a restaurant. He ran past the bewildered cooks, heading deeper into the establishment as if he knew exactly where he was going. As if... .

He said, "I'm trying to lose her. The tracker on me: is it still active?"

"Yes," Sheila replied. "I can see you right now."

"Good," Raymond said. He made his way into the main dining area and went out the front. "Send out everything we have left. I'll draw her to the forest. Your men should intercept us before we get there."

He hung up and replaced the phone in his pocket as he crossed another street running as a man possessed. Nothing Sheila would send could stop Sonia, but it could certainly hold her off long enough for him to get out of sight -- and definitely out of the continent.

He only needed to make sure she didn't get him first.

Sonia, meanwhile, had stopped chasing after him like an amateur when she followed him out the front of the restaurant. She glanced around and spotted a seven-story office building that would afford an adequate bird's eye view. It took all of twenty seconds for her to cross the street and clamber up to the roof of the building from the side. It wasn't Raymond she needed to see as she crouched right on the edge of the parapet and peered ahead into the distance. Her homing signal on his flair had come back on; but it was his destination she was planning to discern.

Moments later, she rose and dropped to the street fifty feet below, her observation having been proven fruitful. He was heading for the woods not too far away. Everything else between here and there, from the streets to the buildings were identical and there was no sense in thinking that he was planning to hide further in the distance. Half of the establishments operating in those buildings were active as the evening was still young. And Raymond was nothing if not discrete. He would try to lose her inside the woods, if there wasn't already some form of an ambush waiting for her along the way.

Sonia chuckled and took a shortcut she mapped before dropping from the rooftop. Raymond wasn't going to make it to those woods; he wouldn't even know what hit him.

*

Raymond thought his heart was going to burst before he made it to the woods, even though it had come into view about a hundred meters away. He put everything he got into cutting down that distance and almost didn't hear his phone ringing. It was when he leaped to hurdle over a car that had screeched to a stop at his approach that he heard it and pulled it from his pocket without stopping for a breath.

He took the call and said, "Yes?" He had to slow down a bit so he could hear.

"Strike units in position," Sheila said. "We can see you. That bitch shows up she's --"

Raymond hung up and replaced the phone without hearing the rest. The woods were thirty yards away now. With one last burst of energy, he dashed for this finish line... and grunted as he ran into a brick wall, once again turning his vision black... .

*

He was conscious first of his breathing and his heartbeat, both resonating in his head so intensely he wished he hadn't woken up. Raymond shut his eyes and stopped fighting the pain and the ringing and simply lay there in defeat.

thump... thump... thump --

"Wake up."

First, he heard it as a whisper, until it was not.

"Wake up, you fucking animal!"

Raymond took several deep breaths. The ringing had stopped but his heart was still fighting to burst out of his chest cavity. He peeled his eyes open slowly.

Sonia was staring at him with more venom than a Nazi officer could muster for a man of color. Her cheeks were streaked with tears but she wasn't crying. It was all in her eyes... he saw it and his heart sank into his stomach as she drew her dagger: she was going to murder him without another word.