Hurricane Heart

Arjan

Hurricane was late. Of course she was late! Had I really expected her to be on time? She was unreliable, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, after trying to settle her conscience with me, she had taken flight once again. It was twenty minutes—at least—after she’d left me, and she’d promised ten. I was a fool to let her leave, and now I was on my own again.

I was so wrapped up in thoughts of Hurricane, that by the time I noticed that anything was wrong, it was too late. If the masked man had been trying to catch me by surprise, he had well and truly succeeded. I was facing the other way, alert and on the lookout, and only turned round to see whose footsteps I could hear as he was crossing the road, his gun already pointed in my direction.

This one was one that I recognised.

‘Ah, Arjan, we meet again,’ he said in a voice that turned my insides to ice.

‘Bruno?’ I said, remembering the time that was so recent, but actually felt like an entire lifetime ago, when we were being chased through the forest by Bruno and another; one whose name I never found out.

He began to move round me as we stood face to face on the pavement, always with his gun held before him like a shield of protection.

‘Now,’ he said, enjoying the fear that pulsed through me and the intensity of the moment, ‘Kovar said that you needed to be kept alive.’ He paused for added effect, also allowing me to mentally wonder who Kovar could be. A leader, perhaps? ‘But personally, I like to take a different angle on these things.’ He took a step closer, a little shorter than me, but bulky and menacing enough to make up for the slight lack of height. ‘I’m not so...theatrical, I guess you could call it. Seems a bit hypocritical after all, doesn’t it?’

I could see what he meant. Something I had never understood was that the Soulless were meant to be fighting Dreamers, but with their sometimes made-up names and elaborate, often fantastical or historical looking masks, they were using their imaginations more than anyone. Bruno was fairly toned-down compared to some of them. He wore a shabby black suit that was faded with age and a plain grey shirt.

His words scared me. At least, from my past experience with Scarrus, I knew that some Soulless could be kept talking for an almost infinite amount of time. With Bruno, however, it seemed that the hour glass had run out of sand before it had barely even been turned.

‘What are you going to do with me?’ I asked in a low voice.

Despite declaring how against the theatrical Soulless he was, Bruno still hadn’t finished talking. He was making up his mind, and I could bet a lot of money on the fact that I wouldn’t like his final decision.

‘So I’ve decided to go half way, Secret,’ he announced. ‘I’m not going to kill you, mostly for Kovar’s satisfaction more than my own, but I’m not going to wait for your Hurricane to get a chance to come along and rescue you. That’s always been Scarrus’s downfall.’

He raised his gun. A stun gun; I could only pray.

He fired.

Intense pain shot through me, crippling me, causing me to fall to the floor.

He was towering over me before I could get back to my feet.

I received two excruciating shots to my temple.

I blacked out within seconds.

Hurricane

Hopefully my near miss with the gun had at least made Scarrus hesitate. I hadn’t heard any more shots just yet. At least he now knew that I wasn’t lying when I said I’d kill him. I could kill. Of course I could kill.

After running for about ten minutes and having absolutely no clue where I was in Berlin, I charged round a corner and up the ramp into a virtually deserted multi-storey car park. I was too frantic and too exhausted to care where I was going right now, but going up the ramps meant lots of twists and turns, and therefore he was less likely to be able to shoot at me from a distance.

I should have known, however, after the first night we spent in a hotel, that Scarrus, heights and I did not work.

I ran, panting, out of breath, into the main car park area on the fifth floor, looking behind me down the ramp. I couldn’t hear him yet. It only occurred to me now, though, that I had nowhere left to run, so I began to jog towards the far side where I could look out across the road and see if anyone was coming in, as if hoping to make the large, concrete car park my own personal fortress.

Before I even realised what was going on, two men had jumped out from behind a perfectly inconspicuous looking black car and were charging at me. I scarcely had time to whip round and raise my gun before one of them had grabbed me from behind and the other was taking the gun from my hands. They were both huge men, both wearing suits. One was balding, and the other’s hair was dark and he had a small beard. They grabbed me and began to drag me backwards. I fought and I cried out, but it seemed to do no good against these giants.

I screamed as loud as I could; one long piercing shriek, before a sweaty hand clamped over my mouth. I wrestled with it to fight it off, but the man’s grip was tight, and the other one was dragging me backwards. I couldn’t see where we were going; to another car, most likely, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Who was there around to hear me anyway? The man had my gun, and they both must have their own guns too.

I writhed, twisting out of the grip of the arm that held me, using it as an opportunity to lash out blindly. In the confusion and insanity of the situation, I couldn’t see what I was doing—a thick clump of hair swung across my face and obscured my vision as I punched out. I knew I’d made contact—I felt flesh and heard a pained grunt, but there was no way of telling whether it had made any real impact.

I screamed out again, but I felt the hand back on my mouth, and suddenly I was staring into a leering, beady-eyed face—the face of the bald man, unmasked, much to my shock, and his eyes narrowed even further until they were tiny sockets in his head.

‘Shut up, or you’ll pay,’ he hissed as a warning, before letting go of my mouth. I didn’t scream again, but I wailed in pain as the other one grabbed me again and dragged me. I twisted away from it, kicking him hard in the shin, so that it was his turn to cry out. Before I’d even brought my foot back, however, the bald man had grabbed me under the arms, practically lifting me off the ground and carrying me off. I kicked out behind but my foot couldn’t make proper contact, and he slammed me into the side of a van. I thought he was going to throw me into it but instead he slapped me hard round the face and as I launched myself forward to retaliate, the dark haired one had grabbed me—there seemed to be much more than two of them—they were everywhere—and was holding me against the van as I kicked and thrashed about. My hand collided with his face at one point, but it wasn’t enough to properly hurt him, and he was standing too close for me to be able to swing my leg enough to create a proper impact.

‘She’s a violent one,’ the bald one, most likely the leader of the two, said. I lashed out again as if to prove his point, before screaming out one last time. ‘Sort her out.’

I realised too late what that meant. Large, brutish hands spun me round and shoved me face-first into the side of the white van. Before I could even whip back round again with the reactions that I had practiced until they were lightning fast, my hands were being pulled behind my back and fastened too tightly together with rope from God-knew-where. Hands bound so tight they hurt, he pulled me back round to face him and then slammed me backwards into the van again, my wild hair falling across my face, but unable to push it out the way. I still tried to kick out, but he stood too far away for me to reach. I shrieked again, both from fear and pain, and swore.

The bald one pulled a small piece of cloth from his pocket.

‘You shut up, or you’ll get this round your mouth,’ he threatened.

I had no choice. I complied, quietening down for the moment as I bent forward, gasping for breath, glaring at them as though my eyes could create fire.

‘What do you want with me?’ I gasped, my voice rough and harsh.

‘We’ll get to that in a moment,’ said the bald one curtly, allowing me and even watching with interest as I struggled against my bonds. He looked to his accomplice. ‘George, watch her for a moment. I’ve got a call to make.’