The other man pressed his hand against the psycho's chest, who didn't seem to like it at all.
“What would your Nicolaj say if he knew how much you're out of his preferred manner?” the bald man snapped back.
The dark-haired man seemed to feel offended, which was why he wrapped his fingers around the other's neck to push him back a little further.
“Nicolaj wouldn't want us causing indiscriminate damage within his territory, don't you understand? There's far more at stake here than your hunger.”
The psycho shoved him away, back toward us.
“It's too late, they've already seen us in our dark form.”
Larissa did something very clever and slowly put on her helmet.
Both men immediately turned toward us. The psychopath was unchanged, but the other one also seemed to have a problem with his eyes, because they had become just as dark. Completely black. He was a little younger, maybe in his late thirties, and more attractive, albeit dangerous and threatening. And he seemed to be eyeing us.
Then I recognized his silhouette.
My eyes widened, and his gaze lingered on me.
No doubt about it. This was the man from the street yesterday. And he seemed to know that I recognized him.
“Can't you smell it, too? And you know what that means... They both have it in them. If Nicolaj knew what a treasure we'd found, he'd be delighted.”
I didn't know what that meant, and I didn't want to know. The dark-haired man seemed to be thinking about the other's words while eyeing us, which didn't make it any better. But above all, he was looking at Larissa in a strange way.
I just wanted to disappear. But Larissa didn't move.
“They've seen us, Tristan. We can't let them go now,” the psychopath laughed loudly and approached again.
That was the last straw for me. I wouldn't stay here another second.
I pulled Larissa onto the bike.
“Drive!” I shouted loudly and Larissa started the engine.
But the bald man suddenly jumped in front of the vehicle in a flash and held it with his sheer physical strength.
What the...
“I'm afraid that's not going to happen, pretty ladies,” he laughed disgustingly and showed us his filthy teeth.
Then everything happened far too quickly. A shadow pulled the man in front of us away from the bike so that Larissa simply shot off, and I struggled to hold on to her without slipping backwards. Larissa accelerated more and more. I looked around, where I could vaguely make out that a third figure seemed to be fighting with the psychopath. He simply flew through the air into a tree, then the brown-haired man disappeared into the forest, leaving the bald man behind with whatever had just appeared in front of us.
Larissa took the first curve, then the second and finally the third. Another long section of road followed.
I looked around again to make sure no one was following us, but the fact that no one was there didn't reassure me one bit.
What in God's name had just happened?
I realized that it hadn't been one of the Copelands.
An icy breeze swept past my shoulder and I jerked my head toward the forest. Larissa was driving far too fast, and I shouldn't have recognized anything, but I spotted something. Him. The man with the knee-length coat. He was running through the thicket at the speed of the motorcycle, dodging every single tree without taking his piercing eyes off us.
“Fuck, Larissa. Drive faster!”
I didn't have to tell her twice, and although the needle on the speedometer was already way too high, Larissa sped up again.
I looked back into the forest, where this guy wouldn't stop running alongside us. He got closer to the edge of the forest, but stayed in the thicket. And the scariest thing was that he looked me straight in the eyes.
Goose bumps ran down my spine.
Then, suddenly, he looked ahead and disappeared deeper into the forest again until he finally disappeared out of my field of view entirely.
We came out onto a more even road, where isolated Victorian houses appeared at the side of the road every hundred meters.
As far as I remembered the borders correctly, this was the start of the Blairs' territory. We drove through it until we were back in the city center and Larissa took me to Mum's house.
She braked loudly and got off the hot machine she'd been given for her birthday by one of her ex-boyfriends. Probably the one with the rich parents in the drugs business who'd always said he'd change. And I was grateful to that bastard, because without that bike, Larissa would still have had that piece of junk from back then. And that wouldn't have saved us.
“Holy shit!”
Larissa took off her helmet. I did the same.
My breathing was going crazy and I suddenly felt so weak. Then I got off the bike, coughing, and propped myself up on my shaky knees, but when I gasped for air, I couldn't breathe.
Was this a panic attack?
“What happened?”
