Page 94 of Blood Sacrifice

The strategist in me had envisaged the vampires descending from the ceiling into the opening to annihilate those waiting for us, but I had underestimated them.

Instead, screams echoed from the walls, the type that meant souls were dying. A door that even our high-definition drones hadn’t identified slammed open about two meters ahead of us, and a man was forcibly tossed out, followed by another a few seconds later.

No survivors.

I didn’t think twice about using the blade that ran down my spine to dispatch the first one while Jethro dealt with the second. I used hands signals to send some of my team into that room, and the screaming intensified.

“Check the walls, Tarrack,” I instructed. “There are rooms that we know nothing about.”

A drone flew into the open doorway.

Dominic stepped out of the room, straightening the cuff of his long, black jacket before he wiped blood from his mouth. Irefused to react even though my stomach roiled at the thought of feeding on blood.

“How did you get in?” I asked, nodding to where he had emerged from.

“There were air ducts on the ceiling. You can hide a room, but it still needs ventilation. Everything needs to breathe.” He cracked his neck from side to side before bringing his attention back to me.

“Those air vents were too small for my drones,” Tarrack said.

Dominic’s lips tipped up in a terrifying grin. “Not all the rumours are fake,” he replied. “We might not explode into a thousand bats, but…” He shrugged and walked on.

“Are you fucking telling me that they can turn into bats?” Tarrack almost screamed into my ear. “How cool would that be?”

“Not as cool as a wolf,” I muttered.

“Wolves can’t fly,” Dominic called over his shoulder.

I popped my head around the door to find more operatives dead, their computer stations left unmanned. “Maddox, get Tarrack access to their system,” I commanded. Each of our groups had a tech expert in it. “Tyler, stay with him.”

The two men entered the room, lifting a dead man off a chair so they could work.

“Keep in contact,” I said, stepping to the side to allow Jethro to drag one of the dead men from the hall inside so they could close the door to try and give the impression that it hadn’t been discovered.

“I’m in the ventilation system,” Tarrack said. “Dominic was right, there are rooms that are not connected to anything apart from the air supply.”

“Can you guide us?” I asked. Each of us carried something that looked like a phone but was really a device to allow us to be able to see in the dark.

“Yeah,” Tarrack replied. “I’ll start guiding you in as we go, but the vamps have taken all the rooms in this area out.”

“We need their ability to tell others about us taken offline,” Jethro said. “All we have is the surprise of our attack to keep us alive.”

“Maddox has already inserted one of my flash drives that will allow me full access to their system. I’m logging in as we speak.” I could hear Tarrack typing in the background as he spoke.

“Roger that,” I replied. “Everyone, keep moving forward.”

The first main chamber we arrived in smelt of death and desperation. Corpses were piled up in a corner, some human and others lycans and magic users. I gave them a cursory examination, and they all had catastrophic damage to their skulls that could only be caused by a bullet wound and close impact.

A lycan could live forever if they stayed away from fighting and violence. Some had lived in the rainforests and mountains for centuries, never aging a day.

“Looks like we have a psychopath in our midst,” I said, crouching down to move one of the bodies. “This one has bruising and cuts around the wrist that indicates they were restrained prior to death.”

I walked away, carrying out a cursory search of the living area. This chamber appeared to be abandoned, which explained why someone had decided to store their kills in it.

“Keep moving,” I instructed. “There’s nothing we can do for the dead.”

Another corridor swept around in an arc under the city until we reached another chamber. Voices echoed into thetunnel, and the smell of an open fire made my nose twitch. I studied the images from Tarrack’s drone on my device. It looked like a normal village scene of people preparing and cooking food, while others sat and chatted in the background.

I had hated destroying villages on Balor’s command, but I knew these men would slaughter every single man in my army. It was the reason we put a no survivors plan in place before we left. We couldn’t be compassionate or show remorse.

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