The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

Trials of Men and Monsters

So the big vampire stepped into the dust-filled gap between the unmoving Tiger and the stone wall warding the road. There, his Kali sporting a fresh magazine, he laid down deadly suppressive fire.

"We need to hold until aerial assets take out those A-10's," he tightly indicated as he hammered the White Flames barricades with tight bursts of weapons fire. "And that means the humans cannot be allowed to advance!"

Quick gestures moved his team out from under cover and directed their fire down the street with some urgency. They needed to clear out this note of modified humans before their air cover came back. Or they decided to move another tank up the narrow passageway.

As they peppered the barricades, it didn't take the big vampire to come to a very crucial conclusion: those barricades needed to come down! And the best way to do that would be a kinetic bolus.

Picking a pair of assets, he had them charge their Kali's while the rest of them kept the humans pinned down. The big vampire charged his long gun as well; three blasts from the powerful futuristic weapons would be more than enough to knock down the White Flame's impromptu barricade.

Lash looked up as his weapon announced in its small voice that it had reached full kinetic potential. And frowned as he watched the White Flames collapse the barricade on their own before turning and rapidly retreating back down the road.

Were the modified humans actually giving up on trying to take this entrance?? And the big vampire immediately snorted in derision at his own silent question.

In the weeks leading up to this fight, he had faced the White Flames numerous times and they had never given up on a target or a goal. Only by killing each and every one of them had he and those with him, managed to prevent them from achieving their goals. Which meant they weren't retreating.

They were getting out of the way.

A quick look skyward yielded no A-10's moving in for a strafing run, or missile attack. So what, then, were they ...?

And that's when he heard it: the growing whistle of an incoming artillery round.

"Kadasa!" Lash snarled before looking at his team. "Down! Everybody ...!"

The world erupted into tumult and chaos before he could shout the rest. In less than an eyeblink, a great force was both smashing at his body and tossing him like a ragdoll into the air. A brief, soundless flight then Lash was dropping hard onto rubble-strewn ground with a flare of brain-numbing pain at the impact.

Pain that told him he was no longer in one piece. Then it was gone, swallowed in a silent howl of forced unconsciousness.

****

Dru twitched as the chamber the conclave had chosen for the trial trembled even as the sounds of distant explosions reached her ears. In that same instant the comms device on her wrist that Lash gave her, buzzed insistently against her skin.

Jaw clenched with apprehension and barely contained fear, the Nosferatu lilith lifted the unit into sight. And felt her insides twist at the text message that now scrolled across the small screen:

"Perimeter breached. Enemy has entered the castle. The Lord Protector has fallen."

Dru's heart thudded painfully in her chest as she reread that last part.

'The Lord Protector has fallen.'

Lash, the seemingly immortal vampiric god of war, had somehow fallen in combat against his enemies, the White Flames. Then her legs began to tremble as the realization of what that exactly meant unleashed the full force of her emotions and sent them surging unfettered through her body.