Goddamned rain, won't you ever stop ruining my raids?
Granted this one was lighter, almost like a gentle shower, but it was rain nonetheless, and Johnathan was seriously tired of it. The water dripped from the top of the beanie hat he wore, all the way down his soft-shell and the combat pants he wore. The tiger-stripe pattern helped him blend into the jungle, despite him being completely soaked. Just like him, the rest of the team moved at a slug pace, preventing any unnecessary noise, while keeping their head down. It was automatic for him, almost a robotic action. His mind was elsewhere, and with someone else. Now that he could remember, it was more painful, to think about her. About how stupid he had been, not once, but two times. But he didn't have time to do that, not now. Just like he hadn't had time to say good-bye before coming here, scarcely two or three months ago. It was torture, being away from someone whom he wanted to be close to every day since he had been able to remember the past, yet he could almost feel the thrill of the end, letting it carry him forward to finish this. One way or another, Van Helsing wasn't going to live to see another day, of that he would make sure. Yet, he couldn't do but wonder what she was doing right now. It couldn't be any worse than dragging his ass across the Philippine muck.
And he was right.
Mavis sat silently in a cushioned chair, a small bundle in her arms. She could feel the baby's steady breathing against her chest, and the warmness that came from the small body was comforting to her heart. While little Nate slept so peacefully, his mother looked sadly at him, remembering the man that had helped bring the baby to this world. While Nathan was still too young, he was beginning to exhibit some of the physical traits of his father. The kid would grow up to be the living image of the deceased Irishman, and that would be a daily torture to the Princess of the Night. But for now, she just settled for a willful numbness of the mind, trying to think of nothing, alone in the room she had occupied when she was younger. Her attempts were broken when she felt the baby stir, waking up and looking at her with his big eyes. He was too young, way too young, to be aware of what had happened to his father, so he just childishly beamed at her, clumsily reaching to her. Mavis could only smile sadly at the little vampire, eyes only slightly wet, before she held the baby even closer, into an awkward hug that the baby snuggled on. While she could feel the wetness of Nate's drool, she didn't mind it at all. She just wanted to feel the company, and never be alone.
Her mind drifted towards Johnny. Her Zing. It felt like betrayal, even after these months, to think about it. She still had to visit her late husband's gravestone, and Johnathan was away at the moment, and whether he would come back or not was something not set on stone. It felt just right, when you dumbed down the situation to its bare minimum, for them to retake everything where it had ended. But things weren't just that simple. The way their stories have gone, the things they had individually lived through… it made it all stupidly complicated.
But this? Her son? This was simple. He loved the baby, and the little vampire loved her, even if he didn't have the necessary brain capacity to say and process such feelings. And for now that unconditional love was what her aching heart needed. The problems could wait until Johnathan returned, if he did at all.
She secretly hoped he did, if only to say a proper 'goodbye' this time.
"Two guards, eleven o' clock, 100 meters" a raspy voice whispered through the intercom. Johnathan crawled 90 meters closer to one of them, while Daniel did the same a few centimeters to Johnny's left. Both men clicked once on their radios, relaying a 'Ready' signal, and it all happened in a flash: two muffled thumps, loud enough to be perceptible among the rain's cacophony, and the two guards tumbled down, being caught just before they hit the ground by the Marlow brothers, who dragged the bodies away as quietly as possible. The squad advanced, moving as one, in a perfect synchrony. The target was everything but surprising: a poor village, probably one where people had been living their lives, minding their business, until brainless thugs with guns and weird ideas came in and claimed ownership over them. And now that people was in the way, used as human shields. Clever, and very, very cowardly. But not something that would make them back down at all. The time of the night was also in their favor: few, if any, civilians roamed down the streets, which made it less likely for them to catch an unintended bullet. They moved into the town, swiftly, blending seamlessly into the shadows, and masking their noise with the falling rain and other ambient noise. The only concrete structure in the village (probably provided by the government) was the community center, and the guards in the perimeter were a giveaway that screamed 'amateurs'. Maybe even 'desperate'.
The perimeter guards were dealt with efficiently, their bodies left on their dying spots as the team readied for breaching. Just seconds before the explosives went off, Johnathan couldn't avoid feeling the rush.
It will be over, really soon.
As he sighed excitedly, the front door blew inward, launching dangerous shrapnel towards the people inside. The squad was quick, mopping up the survivors, moving up towards the second floor. The enemies upwards had organized a defense pretty quickly, pinning down Daniels team up the stairs, but Johnathan thought fast and tossed a flashbang grenade up, blinding and deafening the people closer to the stairway entrance. The intensity of the enemy fire lowered, while Daniel team's picked up, with the group assaulting forward, between short, controlled bursts fire and the clatter of shells and spent magazines falling to the ground during reloads. While mildly brave, the fanatic followers of Van Hellsing were far from trained or experienced fighters, and they found themselves outgunned and outmaneuvered by the assaulters, who finished the attack by lobbying fragmentation grenades at their precarious cover. The sound of metal shrapnel ripping through the air and flesh was nasty, making even Johnny wince as he heard the metal fragments lodge on the wooden inner-wall he was taking cover behind of. There was just one last door, and, judging from the voices inside, their target was there. Using a linear flex-charge, which looked deceivingly a lot like a roll of duct tape, they set up a breaching frame that was barely enough to demolish the sturdy iron door, which fell in one piece towards the inside of the room. One of Daniel's operatives pulled the pin on a frag grenade and lobbed it inside, it clattering and bouncing inside, then projecting dust, some, and metal shards out the door. Five operatives, Daniel and Johnny included, barged inside, shooting at everything in black or camouflage that moved. They found their target on the ground, clutching at his leg where a piece of rebar had lodged itself, probably from the frag grenade tossed inside. The desk had protected his life, but not his leg, and his cult followers had taken the brunt of the explosion.
"I thought you were all about the 'living in peace and away', Mr. Marlow. You are going to kill an old, disarmed man just for revenge?"
Johnny was being manipulated. He hated that.
"You are confusing me with her. And we both know better than that, don't we?" he coldly said, pulling the trigger three times. No one objected.
Justice was served.
Or so he thought, as rippling explosions and the sounds of new firefights raged outside.
"Now what?" he shouted to Daniel, who was trying to communicate with the people outside.
"Say again? Is that the Philippine army?"
"Not quite. There's a lot of them, granted, but there's some other guys too, and they know how to fight. These are not Van Helsing goons, but they look like them, alright!" came through.
"We'll be there, hang…"
"NO! Tell them to fall back, this place is a hard point, we can repel them from cover if they can link back with us" Johnathan suggested, keeping an eye outside for incoming enemies. Daniel ordered the outside teams to fall back, and the assaulters used everything they could get a hang on to barricade the doors and lower windows, only leaving an entrance for their friends outside, who wasted no time scrambling inside, towing two injured operatives inside.
"We need a medic!" Robert shouted, pressing his hand against the wound of an operative's arm. The bullet had barely missed an artery, but the thing was still bloody and painful. Johnathan moved to help, using a bandage to try and plug the wound, then keeping it in place with another dressing. The wound looked worse than it really was, but the guy and his friend were benched for good in this assignment.
"What happened, Robert? Who was there?" Johnathan asked his other brother just as he was finishing dressing the wounded limb.
"They were waiting for those, no doubt on that, but why? We got Helsing… didn't we?"
"Yeah, we did, big time"
"Good. These guys engaged as soon as they discovered our positions. Myers and Anderson caught their bullets on our way out, fortunately nothing major. We downed twenty, maybe thirty tangos, but they are coming here, and they really, really want to kill us all."
"INCOMING!" someone shouted, and the wall behind them explode into what seemed like thousands of pieces, and stunning everyone inside the room.
There was only the ringing in his ears.
Dracula had picked a peculiar moment to enter the room. He had knocked on the door, but received no answer, so he had entered anyway, thinking that maybe his daughter was asleep, or just ignoring his knocking. When he opened the door, he found his daughter where he had left her… two hours ago. Had she spent all this time just sitting there?
"Mavy?" he softly called, but the girl just sat there, looking at the baby in her arms, "Mavy!", this time a bit louder.
The vampiress was startled by this, but calmed down when she saw it was her father.
"Sorry... I was just… I… Just spaced out, I'm sorry, dad" she softly said, her face still full of sadness. The few months that had passed did not do much to help her shed the guilt and depression she felt. She still blamed herself for the death of her husband, and nothing could take the sting and hurt that his death had brought. But she had stopped crying, so that had to count for something. She now suffered silently, occasionally retracting into her own and spacing out every now and then, something that wasn't exactly healthy, but was a small improvement, nonetheless
"I understand, darling. Where you thinking about… Johnny?" The Count really didn't want to talk about the subject, but he figured that constantly avoiding it wasn't the way to go with these issues. It needed to come out, however painful it was.
"No! I mean… maybe… I don't know… yes, but not only about that. I can't. It's wrong." It was to her, at least.
"I don't think it is, honey bat" the Count simply answered, sitting in the bed' edge while under the confused glare of the girl, then sighed and continued, "I don't think Paddy would have wanted you to be in this state. Yes, the fact that he is… gone is extremely sad, but... life has to go on, Mavis. Little Nate needs you to be mentally healthy, and, quite frankly, so do we."
"That's rich, coming from someone that was never able to get over Mom's death! You have no right to tell me how to feel!" the vampiress had suddenly leaped out of her seat, clutching her baby son closer in a protective gesture. Count Dracula couldn't avoid feeling slightly hurt, looking down at his feet, then standing on his feet and trying to get close to his daughter. The girl's anger was replaced with fear, and she tried to back away from her father, but the Count had quickly placed his hands on her arms. She averted her gaze, lightly ashamed of what she just said.
"That's precisely why I'm telling you this. Do you think it's pleasant to live as a prisoner of yourself? Living with a self-assigned guilt about something you could have never foreseen or do anything about? It's torture, hell on earth, Mavy. To know that you could have not done anything to change what happened, yet feeling like you should have done something… It was so bad at times that the only reason I am here today is because of you, my darling, and Claire. Both of you were there for me to rely on, and right now, we are all here for you. We know what's it like to lose people we love, all of us do. We are a family, Mavis, never forget that, my dead ums".
Mavis really didn't know what to say. Had she known any of that those years ago, when she first ran out, maybe the story would have ended differently, none of this would have happened, but, like her father said, it was history, and there was nothing she could do. But the pain and guilt would still take time to go away of that she was certain.
"And… it's not wrong, you know? To think of your Zing. Paddy wouldn't want you to be miserable if anything were to happen to him, and I'm sure he wouldn't think any less of you for moving on. It's only fair." He gently hugged her, putting the girl at ease and ending the uncomfortable moment. The Count was trying to keep his cool about tit all, but even he had to admit that, no matter how much he loved his daughter, it was getting real hard to keep his cool about it. Yet, because of having experienced the whole thing by himself, he couldn't just very well wash his hands out and leave his beloved daughter alone, definitely not like this. He had to be strong, too.
Johnathan was conscious again, and was aware that he was trapped below something heavy, and someone was trying to get him out. He could hear the faint detonations of gunfire and the muffled clatter of spent brass hitting the concrete floor. There was also some shouting, but he couldn't make out the exact words. He did his best to move his bruised body, to help whoever was getting him out of the rubble. A big chunk of what had been wall just moments ago was moved aside, and he was mostly free to move again. He felt someone pull him up by the collar and herd him away from the line of fire.
"…ere me? Johnny! Can you hear me?" it was Robert, who gave him a couple of soft smacks in the face to help him focus.
"Yeah, I'm mostly here"
"Good, because we have a lot of angry guys coming for us, and I don't want to die in here!"
"Assault Team Alpha, this is Bravo. Where are you? We've been waiting for you for while" came through their radios.
"Bravo, is there anything out of the ordinary over there? Over"
"Affirmative, one of the cargo ships docked in here suddenly grew some big guns. Rocket artillery, by the looks of it, and—wait, there goes another barrage. Tell me you are not on the receiving end of that, Alpha"
"We are, Bravo. Break stealth, use your RHIBS to get close and board that ship, we need those rockets to cover our escape. Can you do that?"
"On it, Alpha, try to hang in there. Bravo out"
"Everybody down!" Robert shouted, as everyone dropped to the floor, a rippling sound filling the air, just before rockets rained down around their position, shaking the ground and making loose material and dust come lose. Johnathan just realized it then and there: he didn't want to die. He wanted to go back to Mavis. He didn't know if she hated him or not, but what he DID know was that, even if she didn't want to see him again, he did wanted to at least say good bye and settle the matter in his mind.
He wasn't ready for the implications of never seeing her again, and he wasn't ready to do this for the rest of his life, however long or short that would be, so he decided it then and there: he was out of this. He would just see this thing through, only to make sure that none of the people and monsters he knew where in danger.
It wasn't over just yet, but he was already wishing it did.
It's been too long, but god, do I hate University at times. It constantly gets in the way of my writing Anyways, I'l leave you with this, gotta go to sleep and then to work on my assignments, so please, leave your input un the Reviews section, and I'll see you in the next update.