The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

The Cost of Blood

Throwing himself to his feet, Truk ran to the window. But even his vampire vision, able to pierce the darkness with a resolution a hawk would envy, couldn't see where Lash had gone.

"Night Father protect us," he muttered before looking over his shoulder to where Narcist was helping Fiadh back to her feet. "He's gone!"

"What, what happened?" Fiadh asked as she dusted herself off before staring at the shattered window.

"I don't know," Truk said after a slight hesitation. "I think he might have gone feral!"

"Feral?" Bronwyn frowned as she gathered herself. "Werewolves go feral, not vampires."

"Then how do you explain what we just saw, Bronwyn?" Truk asked, his voice filled with unease, and his expression confused. "I know I've seen vampires doing some bizarre things while in thirst fevers. But never was there a complete reversion to an animal state, followed by a break to go immediately on the hunt."

"I would go with feral," Narcist said before Bronwyn could answer, sucking in a full lungful before letting it whoosh back out in a cleansing breath. "Like his thirst kicked in before his brain could fully heal." She too looked out the window. "He's looking for a blood meal to finish putting his battered body back together again. And I pity the human that finds themselves his target."

Faidh looked from Narcist, to Truk, then over to Bronwyn.

"I don't think he's hunting humans," she said, earning herself three sets of question eyes.

"Why wouldn't he?" Bronwyn said, brow raised. "In his current state, he's no match for a single werewolf, little yet a pack."

Truk let his gaze move from the werewolf elder to the intent lilith.

"You smelled something, didn't you, Mistress," he carefully said. Not because the Irish lilith had been prickly since they landed in their wounded plane and eluded capture at the airport.

It was because she seemed unusually fragile. As if Lash's loss tore out not only her heart, but her very soul! She appeared to be on the verge of tears every time he looked at her, wearing an expression of such deep and personal loss, he felt her pain every time he looked at her.

Despite her loss, however, made even more poignant by the fact that Narcist reasoned out she had been pregnant since the train, she had shown a strength the veteran nestari had never experienced or witnessed. A strength he found himself envying. Who could have lost as much as she had in the last twenty four hours and continue on to the point where she was the driving force behind the effort to find Lash? Certainly not him, or Narcist. And certainly not their new werewolf ally, Bronwyn.

Fiadh had even suggested using Meredith as a diversion at the airport so they could elude Lady van Tallert's nestari, sent to presumably escort them back to the castle.Thankfully the already broken lilith was more than willing to go along with Fiadh's plan, distracting the nestari enough for the other four to escape with valuable supplies, like the kickstarts. Without Lash to guide them, and Anna likely back in some position of authority at Lady van Tallert's holdings, there had been a significant chance they never would've made it there alive.

Those bright green eyes turned to regard him for a second or two before she nodded.

"He has healed enough to emit pheromones," she revealed. "There was a spike in the hunting scent when he looked at Bronwyn. It quickly dropped, though, as if there wasn't enough to keep him interested. But, when he turned and dashed through the window, I caught a backdraft of it again with the inrush of air."

She paused there to look back at a frowning Bronwyn.

"He is indeed on the hunt. For werewolves!"