Roth picks up the pace in response, ducking between people. Then as a group of women congregate across the pavement, deep in flamboyant, boisterous conversation, he flits to the left, inside a shop and round the stand brimming with root vegetables stacked high.
He hops up onto the ledge and springs past the women who turn and watch and increase the volume of their chattering squall in surprise at the hurrying sight of the figure flashing past.
He sweeps past another late night nail bar and does not see all heads turn to catch the fleeting sight of him and he looks back again at Frost who is fast and agile and he notes that the gap is closing slowly and he picks the pace up again and feels each tendon and sinew tauten and stretch as he finds and pushes new limits.
Roth disappears around a corner and when Frost gets there he finds a sprawl of bodies across the pavement, people knocked flat by Roth as he flees and a woman screams at a wound to her face inflicted as she hit the ground or the wall.
Frost has no time or inclination to ask, and he is in full flight now and merely leaps the whole of them and catches the sight of Roth streaking along the road ahead as the shops and people thin out.
The gap narrows a little more and a little more as Frost races after him and for a flicker of a moment Roth wonders at the speed and agility of his pursuer, that there is much more to him than either he or Laing imagined.
The thought has no time for examination as he tries to maintain his pace and he tries to ignore the sound of Frost’s footsteps growing louder behind him.
And then Frost catches a break.
As Roth comes to a junction he pays no attention to traffic or signals and he steps into the road and into the path of a car that slams into him with force and speed. It flips him up across the bonnet, onto the windscreen and then spins him up onto the roof as the driver stamps on the brakes.
He hangs in the air for a moment before he slams down onto the concrete on his back and rolls and slides toward the far pavement.
Frost closes another ten yards as this happens and sees his chance, feels the kill coming, smells victory even as he tries to ignore the creeping sluggishness he feels in his limbs.
Roth rolls onto his side and clutches at his ribs but then is up again and clutching arms into his crushed chest he begins again to run, feeling his pursuer closing on him behind.
He is limping now and slow and Roth tries to keep his pace flat out, but Frost draws ever closer as he goes.
Chapter 52
She is strikingly beautiful. I knew that already of course. In the hospital that first time, then again when she came for me and in particular when she slipped quickly out of her clothes down to her underwear, slim and curvaceous and untroubled by my gaze.
But now she is serene and heartbreakingly perfect as I hold her and stroke her soft dark hair.
I place a hand over her face to touch the skin again and her lips feel tender and almost warm against my hand. I pull my hand away and look at her as the eyelids flutter for the tiniest moment and then lift.
I feel hope spread its wings and rise a little and I am looking frantically about for her leather pouch. The adrenaline shot. Of course.
'Shit. Where did you hide it Carla?' I ask desperately and then I have to let her head drop to the floor again as I scrabble across to the rows of seats where she must have hidden herself from Frost and Stanford when they came crashing in.
I see the empty histamine vial but this gloomy space and the shadows under the seats are too dark even for my sharpened vision and then a thought strikes me.
I move back to her side and say her name. Slap her cheek. The eyes are closed again but there is the faintest movement behind them.
Clutching at Stanford's headless body I drag it forward and on top of her again and then scoop her head up and push her mouth toward the open bleeding neck. If she drinks from Stanford, will it work?
'No,' she says suddenly and so quiet that I have to lean in closer to make sure I did not imagine it.
'Don't… Let me…' comes her voice, thin and cracked and scarcely audible.
'Let you what Carla? Let you drink? Let you do it yourself? Where's the pouch? Where's the epinephrine shot?'
'No… shot.'
'No shot? Just the blood then? Let you drink Stanford's blood?' It is impossible to discern the tone or inflection and any meaning from her voice when I can barely make out the words. I will know later what she meant but for now I must guess and my judgement is coloured by my own desires.
I shift Stanford forward more and the blood slips out of him across her chin and lips. It runs and slides down into her mouth and I part her lips wider to catch more and I set my will against the tide of fate that is pulling her out away from me.
'Come on Carla. Please.'
Her throat moves. It is a swallow. There is another and more and I watch as her throat moves again and again and then she opens her eyes wide and is suddenly upright.
She stares at me a moment and then thrusts Stanford's body away and pushes me hard to the side.
'What have you done?' The words come in a sob, accusatory and enraged.
I shake my head, stare back at her.
'I said NO Laing,' she says as the tears jump down her cheeks. 'I said DON'T. I wanted the shot. What have you done to me?’
My mouth is open and there are words in there somewhere but I cannot answer because I do not know. I want to defend myself and I want her to thank me for my decisive intervention but I know as well that I heard what I wanted to when she spoke to me. I wanted her to want to be saved. I wanted to keep her with me and to make me not just me but for there to be an us.
Even in the midst of this maelstrom I could not accept that tiniest chance of salvation to be extinguished so suddenly and brutally. I did not want to know what Carla wanted.
'Where's Roth?' she says.
'Roth… Fucking Roth ran on us. Frost went after him. I tried to stop him, but…'
'What are we sitting here for then?' she says as she stands and I see that the wound in her neck is closing already.
She pulls her clothes back into position, refastens buttons that have been pulled and popped in the struggle. She fishes the leather pouch from the pocket of her jacket where it hid the whole time, holds it up for a moment and then tosses it to me.
'You might need a boost,' she says. 'You can do it yourself. Quickly.’
There are three syringes clipped in place, all loaded and labelled epinephrine and though I have never so much as pricked myself with a pin I slide the rubber cap off one, and I jab it into the crook of my elbow. How much harm can a bad aim do me now?
I catch her outside in the street and we look up and down for signs of their route. To the right there are a group of women talking noisily and one points to the end of the street as the shopkeeper gathers yams from the floor and stacks them back on the stand.
'Go,' I say and Carla takes off at speed.
The onlookers have had a show already, but now they see a man chase a woman down the street at a speed they cannot fathom and too fast even for camera phones to be pulled from pockets and engaged in time to capture it.
We round the corner and see people gathered around a bleeding woman sitting against the wall and weeping, clutching at her face.
Carla stops to look, to let me catch up. She is far faster than I am, even after the shot I have just had, that is rushing through me, flaring and burning in my veins and muscles.
Beyond her at a junction a car is pulled to the side, hazard lights blinking and the driver sits against the front wing and talks into the phone at his ear, peering at the dent in the bonnet.
We reach the junction together, Carla looking left and right for clues, me just trying to stay with her. To the left the road runs across the junction and away over a small humped bridge. A rail line or a canal perhaps.
To the right there are flats and houses and tucked behind is a car park, rising several floors above the nearby
buildings.
Carla focuses on that and says to me 'You hear that?'
I hear nothing beyond the noise of the night around me, chatter and traffic and TVs and music. 'What is it?'
'That way I think,' she says and as she points at the open sided floors of the multi-storey car park we both see the figure rise up out of the night, at least twenty feet, and land squarely on it and stop there, squatting.
We start sprinting and after maybe twenty yards we see another figure leaping after the first toward that same space. But instead of landing there on both feet as before, grasps clinging to the wall, hanging and scrabbling for a second before hauling himself up and over.
Frost.
He looks about him for long moments before he too is swallowed by the shadows.
Carla takes flight and streaks away from me and I strain to keep from losing sight of her entirely, feeling the adrenaline flame and I taste it bitter in my mouth. What is it that drives her? She was ready to give up and accept her fate, had berated me for denying her, but now she bears down on Frost and Roth with savage determination. Does she want to beat Frost to his prize and claim Roth for herself having missed out on Stanford and the release that she had come so close to being granted?
When I get to the base of the car park Carla has followed the first two and she clasps the edge of the brickwork and swings easily up to the ledge.
I know at once that the feat is beyond me but the construction of the building has rising rows of brickwork on each level and to my left is the tall column of the staircase and lift. There is a window half way up and I take a run at it and leaping, grab the sill. From there I hoist myself into a standing position and spring up to the ledge that Carla has vacated and in another few moments am crouched inside the open space of the parking level.
There are a dozen cars scattered about and I can see nobody move. The low sulphur glow of the strip lights gives a hazy light but it is still dark and cold in here.
Carla appears next to me, from where I do not see.
'Anything?' she says surveying the space around us, trying to spot movement behind a car or pillar.
I shake my head and then spot a flash of quick movement far off in the corner. I point it out. It is through a gap and up a level near the up-ramp.
We dash across the floor, Carla takes the ramp and I make for the gap at the edge and clamber up through it to the next level.
I'm ahead of her but she has a better line of sight from her approach and as she draws level says, 'Up again.'
I join her as we make for the ramp and somewhere above us an engine turns over and roars into life.
Chapter 53
Roth feels that oddly familiar feeling of things shifting and healing within as the cracked and broken ribs pull themselves back into place. It is as painful as it was when they were being broken by the impact of the car and though he laments the fact that the cure is as bad as the ailment, this extraordinary new ability is something that Roth savours.
The pain in itself helps him to feel alive, regardless the truth.
Behind him Frost is increasingly set on claiming the prey he has so long cultivated and coveted and Roth knows that at best he cannot outpace his determined pursuer and that the collision with the car has slowed him up and taken such a big bite out of his lead that running will no longer do.
At this hour, there are no people and the open space of the car park is deserted but for a handful of vehicles. There are fewer on this level it seems than on the one below and where he had sought previously to use them as cover from Frost he saw how quickly such a tactic proved fruitless and now he must take a new approach.
There are two large family-sized cars to his left and a low slung sporty hatchback to his right. These he guesses will have some decent security fitted, modern looking as they are. Ahead, at the far end of the floor is a tall, long white cargo van.
It is dirty and the windscreen is clean only where the wipers operate, this patch framed by accumulated grime. There is a small dent above the right headlight, rust in the wheel arch, and Roth figures that this represents his best bet.
He has stolen cars and other vehicles in his time before but has nothing to hand that he might normally use to pop the lock and so as he draws up to the driver's door slams a fist through the glass, reaches in amidst the shattered shards and pulls the handle.
Jumping into the cab he finds that beneath the steering column there is no plastic fascia covering the wiring and he is spared some seconds in getting to what he needs to get to. He pulls and tugs and finds that he has lost none of his adroitness at this particular task as the ignition suddenly sparks.
He floors the clutch, crunches the gears and revs the engine hard. Directly ahead of him, coming head on down the middle of the wide open floor, Frost is barely twenty yards from him now as Roth eases the clutch off the floor and the van jerks forward.
Chapter 54
As we dash up the slope and into the dark open space of the next level the engine that we heard fire up gets louder and with the sound bouncing off so many walls and ceilings we home in on the source.
At the far end, headlights flare on as a large dirty white van peels away from the wall and begins accelerating in our direction.
Squarely between ourselves and the approaching vehicle however, is the sprinting form of Frost playing chicken with Roth who we see at the wheel.
With three yards between them Frost springs into the air just as Roth yanks hard on the steering wheel and pulls the van into a sharp swerve to his left.
Frost jumps at the onrushing windscreen of the van, but Roth heaves at the steering wheel and the van swerves sharply. He claws fingers at the air and reaches for the passing side of the van as it leans wildly away from him.
A wing mirror explodes off the far concrete pillar and the tyres screech as Roth pushes the accelerator down and wrestles the steering wheel back to keep from grinding the side of the van against the thick flat column of concrete.
As the leaning angle of the van corrects and the tyres bite and drag the vehicle back toward the centre of the driving lane I watch as Frost twists and contorts his airborne body mid-leap, stretching for the passing van and then, at last, a finger catches, two fingers and he has a hand clamped onto the junction of the van's roof and side.
He is whipped around as his direction changes with a brutal abruptness and I expect his tenuous grip to be torn away by the force but Frost is tenacious and utterly focused on claiming the ultimate prize in Roth and will not allow him to escape.
Frost has lost himself in this task so completely that he has failed to even register the presence of Carla and I. Even in the anarchic frenzy of the chase, all the noise and the fact that we are behind him Frost has proved thus far a degree of awareness that suggests he would know all the threats and dangers around him.
But as he grasps his other hand on the roof of the van and hauls himself aboard he knows only one thing; that he must have Roth.
It is impossible to tell if Frost is any different for the histamines. He is fast and focused, though he is oblivious to the presence of Carla and I, and the desperate lunging manner that he made the leap up the wall after Roth's commanding leap is perhaps a clue. But how long did he feed before he went after Roth? Has Roth's rash flight from the scene compromised our hastily conceived plan? I would be angry at his lack of patience and foresight but I cannot be sure that he was eve really on our side.
There is little clearance between the van roof and the ceiling but Frost stays low and then scrabbles quickly forwards and hangs down over the windscreen and begins to pound his clenched fist against it. It cracks on the third blow and buckles under the fourth.
Roth is startled at the sight of Frost on the van and not vanishing behind as he makes good his escape but still he stays calm and focused.
Speeding toward us he does not turn the wheel at the down-ramp signed Exit, nor as he draws up to the adjacent up ramp but heads straight
on for the far wall. Is he planning to send frost flying off the roof into the night with the jolting impact of a crash?
If that is his plan then the gamble does not pay. The speeding mass of metal and man slam into and through the brick and concrete and there is an explosion of noise and debris at the shattering, shuddering impact. We watch as the van, with Frost clinging to the roof, goes barrelling out into the night.
Carla is there so fast that I barely register the movement but the shock of the sight and the deafening crash spur me into covering the distance to the yawning hole in the building's side at such pace that the van is still falling when I draw level with Carla.
We watch as it arcs through the darkness, the headlights shattered and the front end crushed. Frost has pitched forward in the air and is falling headlong in front the windscreen. Dust and brick and chunks of concrete shower out ahead and trail behind the falling white vehicle.
The impact when it comes is as deafening as when it struck the wall and the van slams down into the tarmac of the street below, the back end high up, almost vertical. I see the shell of the vehicle crumple and it buckles in the middle as the shock of impact feeds back through the chassis and the whole thing cartwheels over and smashes down onto its roof, sliding and shearing along, sparking off the metal as it goes.
It comes to a rest a shattered hulk as the debris from the smashed wall rain down around it and into parked cars at the edge of the street. Finally a silence settles. Carla and I are frozen.
A haze of dust falls around us, a faint orange in the dull glow of the neon ceiling lights above and we say nothing as we stare down at the wreckage.
Where the van has flipped over, the front end now faces back toward us and as the dust and smoke begin to clear I spot something in the tangled mess of glass and steel and squint to focus.
'That's Frost,' she says, her eyesight sharper.
'Is he…?'
'Can't tell. Don't think he's moving. Definitely bleeding.'
I nod and then spot movement to the side. Roth is crawling slowly from the side window onto the tarmac and drags himself through the narrow space and clear and then crouches there for a moment, on all fours, head down.