The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

A White Flame

A tactical rush with weapons up and ready to fire on available targets, put the Wolf of Frankfurt beside the fitfully burning tank and the sandbag bunker it was partially shielded by. Behind him Fordicht crouched as tightly to the outside wall of the bunker as possible, the rest of his team close behind.

Glancing over his shoulder to make sure the team members were accounted for, Lash then focused on the building. Radio silence meant he couldn't see where Truk and his team, which included Anna van Tallert, were in terms of finding and securing Magnar. But that didn't mean ...

Without warning Fordicht grunted then toppled over. He was quickly followed by two more of their team, each grunting as if struck by something heavy before falling out of formation to lie unmoving at the ground.

At hearing the third one drop, Lash pulled his eyes off the castle and hazarded a look over his shoulder at his downed teammates. And he immediately grimaced to find the North African Ventru with a hole in his chest the size of a golf ball. Damn it. That's a fifty caliber ...

Lash couldn't help the throaty grunt of air being driven out of his lungs when a battering ram of force punched into his shoulder and spun him around. Hitting the ground, he grimaced as a rush of sound filled his ears, announcing that his body was spiraling into shock. What in the name of the Night Father?? Did he just get shot? As he fought to keep from going into shock as the pain began to explode into him from the impact site, he couldn't help wondering: how did they miss a .50 cal sniper nest during their recon?

Another one of his team twisted before dropping in a heap, leaving him barely moving and one other asset huddled as close to the sandbags as they could furthest away from him. At least they were when the shooting started. Before Lash could do more than attempt to roll over, his only surviving teammate was beside him.

"Hold still," she hissed tautly. "I've got a jumpstart here and ... urk!" She abruptly fell away, missing half her head.

The jumpstart, a vial filled with purified blood along with a mix of amphetamines, endorphins, and healing factors, was an artificial version of the werewolf blood Ingrid saved him with at the safehouse in Frankfurt. In limited military use for the last five years thanks in part to their war with the Brotherhood, it would get him back to his feet if not as effectively as that werewolf blood would have, by kickstarting his internal repair mechanisms. And he watched with bated breath as it was flung out of the female vampire's outstretched hand by her abrupt death to tumble unevenly through the air before dropping to the turf unbroken.

Only then did Lash dare to let his breath whistle free in relief. Then he was desperately reaching for it even as he heard cries of alarm coming from the other two teams that were moving up from the gates announcing that they too were now taking fire.

The motion must've caught the sniper's eye: in a heartbeat he was being stapled to the ground by two more heavy hits in the back, one just above the hip and the other ripping through the bottom of his heart.

Grunting with each hit, Lash had to focus to keep from blacking out as pain washed through his body and his blood oxygen dropped precipitously with his heart getting heavily damaged by the second shot. At the same time he forced his hand to continue to reach for the jumpstart. If he didn't get that into his body in the next few seconds, he would bleed out and this war to clear the Ventru name would be over.

He grimaced as his fingertips touched the vial but couldn't curl around it. Damn it, just a little too far! Reach, Sun take you, reach!

So determined was the big vampire to reach the vial that he didn't even flinch when a third .50 caliber shot struck beside his hand with a hot flare, the sniper obviously trying to deter him from reaching the emergency med.