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.“Get to the cockpit.You know what to do.”Mitzi bolted for the aisle first.Belum caught her in his coconut arms in midflight, lifted her high to smash her against the overhead.I stepped inside and threw everything I had into a right cross to the goon’s solar plexus.He doubled up like a crushed bag pipe, everything in his lungs belching from his wide-stretched mouth with the worst dried blood halitosis imaginable.Mitzi dropped like a stone into my arms, leap out instantly and shot down the center aisle.Belum just stood there on rubbery legs gaping at me.I don’t think he’d ever known pain before.“Hurts, doesn’t it?” I grinned.I don’t know who was more amazed, Belum and Mansur at the punch, or Clancy at my perfect set of new teeth, which had grown in nicely.I turned my pretty smile on Parvis as he came powering in and kicked him smoothly in the balls.Parvis did the bag pipe thing and bounced off Belum.Mansur threw his arm about my neck and Clancy high-tailed it after the poodle.“Get the girl!” the caliph screamed.But his two henchmen seemed slow to jump to orders for probably the first time in their lives.Mansur screamed an Arabic curse in my ear and I grabbed his arm with both hands and tried to leverage free; but it was like wrestling a python.I was about to wonder what the caliph needed a henchmen for when Parvis, mostly recovered and breathing hellfire, came growling at me with clawed hands.I caught my right foot under Mansur’s left ankle, whipped him about and flung him into the big goon’s waiting arms.The power behind the throw surprised even me, propelling master and slave across the bedroom and smashing into a port side window.It splintered into a heart-stopping spider web but, thankfully, didn’t crack open and blow outward.I made a quick mental not to throw things at window after that.Now Belum was up again and at my back.One enormous hand closed over my windpipe, the other sought my groin and with a grunt of pain I felt myself being lifted over the big Iraqi’s head.Laughing deep in his broad chest, he turned a half circle and prepared to toss me into the bathroom.I let him.And took him with me.As he flung me from his arms I grabbed the back of his neck and dragged me along with the inertia, finally landing neatly on both feet and slinging the shocked goon into Hef’s shower.The shower door exploded inward in a musical crescendo of glass and Belum left the major part of his imprint in a silhouette of broken interior tile.I could swear the entire tail section of the aircraft swayed a moment as in a strong wind.Belum slid down the ruined wall like a deflated toad, one ankle catching and turning the left spigot handle in his descent.Even the shock of cold water spraying his face didn’t bring him around for several seconds.And, truthfully, I was getting nowhere.I needed to bring the struggle out of the bedroom and into the main cabin and I needed to do it quick; The Count’s temporary strength-injection was under full attack from my own immune system, those helper T cell antibodies were digging in for all they worth, knocking out the invaded vampire virus—and the power that went with it.I could feel my newfound strength leaching slowly through my pores.In a few minutes I’d be just another helpless human…It was just about that time the caliph managed to get another of his wonderful death grips around my neck, hold me fast with both his legs spread apart, and Parvis began using me as a punching bag.Again, I let him.It hurt, don’t get me wrong, and there was quickly more blood and bruising.But I needed to get my breath and marshal whatever resources were left to me.In short, I need my companions there with me, Mitzi at the caliph’s legs and Clancy punching Parvis’ big muscled face.But they weren’t available.Which was just fine.Where I really needed them was in the cockpit.I let Parvis keep up the jabbing punches until things began to get dark and little spots lit up the bedroom before my eyes…then I ducked under his next swing and let him smash the caliph’s nose flat.“Fucking imbecile!” Mansur bellowed.I was pretty sure he was talking to Parvis.His arms left my neck and he pitched backward into the big round bed, bounced and flopped to the decking.At the same instant a blood-streaming Belum came roaring from the bathroom, clothing soaked, hair plastered across his forehead, leaping at me like a crazed spider.I threw Parvis in his path and vaulted out of the bedroom into the main cabin.Mansur caught my ankle just past the first row of aft seats and slammed me on the narrow carpet.I felt that elevator sensation in my chest through the deck plates and felt my heart soar with hope.I kicked Mansur in the face, struggled up and began racing up the aisle toward the cockpit……and then I was sliding back down it again as the big plane lifted, nosing upward.I collided with Mansur again, who began raking at my clothes with long talon claws and snapping like an animal with extended incisors.They sunk into my thigh and I wailed pain and scrabbled on hands and knees up the sharply rising aisle, which was beginning to feel like a sliding board.I got myself rolled half over somehow and slammed my foot in the caliph’s face; his fangs broke off like toothpicks in my thigh—stuck there like two tiny tombstones--and he slid helplessly down the aisle into his scrambling goons.I plucked free the broken fangs—but I knew just how quickly they’d grow back again.The floor strained steeper and I grabbed the base of an aisle chair and hung on for life.I craned back over my shoulder and felt my heart stop.Even as his henchmen tumbled backward toward the bedroom again, a smiling, broken-toothed Mansur rose magically off the aisle to float effortlessly in midair above the rows of tilting cabin seats.It was the same levitation trick Ivan and Alicia had used in their rooftop battle against each other, but whether the caliph had learned it from them, or it was simply an eons-old power among vampires I had neither the strength or presence of mind left to ponder.Inch by inch my numbed fingers were losing their purchase on the metal seat housing and I’d soon be flailing backward with the goons if the laughing caliph didn’t reach me first [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]