The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

Chapter 8: Hand in Hand with Death

Even if he was aware of the conversation that had sprang up with his abrupt departure, Lash wouldn't have slowed even a single step. The mere knowledge that his enemy, who had ruthlessly struck at him and those close to him since returning to Europe from North America, was on the same train and within range, was enough to push him forward, a relentless predator on the hunt. Fiadh was right: he would hunt down and kill every Hand agent on the train if he could, leaving their corpses to turn to ash in the daylight behind him.

Passing quickly through the car directly behind the one where his comrades and the lilith had taken position, he stepped into the car where, only thirty minutes before, he had used his powerful machine pistol to cut down over twenty four vampires before they could move. Yet, as he eased past the lavatory where Fiadh had taken refuge while he fought, he could see no sign the bodies had ever been there. Even the blood spilled by each corpse having multiple holes in it, no longer stained the floor.

A hint of ash in his nostrils was all he needed to know how the bodies were taken care of. Each had been marked with a car'dieth, the radiation in each stone blade enough to turn even a cold corpse into ash as it reacted with the hyperactive nerve tissue in a vampire's body. The blood, too, would've gotten a blast of heat and radiation to turn it immediately into dust. If he looked close enough, he could see the scorch marks.

Either way, it told him there were still Hand on the train, willing to expose themselves to eliminate their dead. The question was: where were all the humans? There seemed to be a fair number of them that got on the train in Galway. But, as he passed out of the car where the initial battle had taken place, he had yet to see any trace of human presence, which would make at least four complete passenger cars empty.

Eyes sharp as they looked for the blur of stealth daycloaks, he continued forward in a tactical crouch, the Shanzi up and ready to burn down anything that twitched against his liking. So, where had the humans gone?

There were two possibilities, one more pleasant than the other. First, the Hand had pulled in local familiars to get onto the train with them, to make it seem there was a full load heading to the capital. Then, when they were ready to strike, they had the familiar abandon the train to get them out of the way.

The second, far less pleasant possibility was that the Hand had turned the common humans that were legitimately on the train, into food. Which, if he knew anything about the filth currently called the Hand of the Night Council, seemed the more likely of the two possibilities. He half expected to step into a car and find their bodies piled like firewood against the back wall.

It was as he stepped into the third to last car, that he caught it: a subtle shifting in midair that announced the presence of a stealth daycloak in action. A second motion out of the corner of his eye told him there were more on the ceiling.

Without shifting too much to reveal he knew he was surrounded, he lifted the Shanzi to his mouth.

"Guided, using last sensor parameters."

"Acknowledged," the gun's AI replied. "Targets acquired."

Lash dropped the gun away from his face and pointed it straight at the back of the car.

"Firing."

The little girl, her face bloodied from the long scratch on her cheek, quietly sobbed as she stared at the unmoving bodies of her parents. They, and a handful of other adults, were lying untidily along the aisle where the monsters had attacked, biting their necks and drinking their blood.

Even though they were probably dead, she wanted to stay close in case they weren't and they woke up. So she hid in the seats near their bodies. Unlike the others that cowered against the back of the car, waiting for the monsters to come back and finish them off.