The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

Extraction

A crunch of boots on gravel just then made him look up. Where he found himself watching four vampires carefully and as quickly as they could, drag several of the black uniformed humans in various stages of death from where they had been thrown during the battle for the front gate back to their covered position.

Oddly enough, seeing that made the big vampire nod in unconscious approval. They had just fought a massive fight and took heavy casualties. Even the vampires that were dragging the bodies sported several holes in their armor in testament to how hard they fought. He couldn't begrudge them a blood meal from human sources in an attempt to recoup some of the resources expended during that fight. In fact, if there was opportunity, he wouldn't mind a drink himself! As long as they ...

He smiled when one paused long enough to pull a purity kit from a backpack to check to see if the humans' blood was tainted. At least they had learned from those boobytrapped familiars back at the Galway Airport. As long as they got the green light to confirm no toxins were present, they were welcome to drink their fill. Then resolutely he turned back to Magnar, his thoughts churning once more on the strange humans and their flame symbol.

Who were they? And what in the name of the Night were they doing here??

"We need to get this damn collar off," he rumbled in a low voice. "Hopefully without blowing his head off in the process!" He tapped it. "I'd wager good blood gold there's a tracking device in there."

"Tracked by ... the Hand?" Truk asked and Lash shook his head before reaching out to point at the symbol etched into the metal. "Night take me, the humans?!? I thought they were just some sort of special trained familiars!"

"Not with those reflexes and strength," Ballan grimly noted. "They gave us so much resistance at the front gate, we thought they might be enhanced."

"Like Brotherhood enhanced??" Truk looked from Ballan to Lash, who shook his head.

"But close. Highly trained and conditioned." His thoughtful frown deepened. "And definitely not scared of taking the fight to us." His eyes narrowed. "Up until I found their symbol etched into this damn collar, I thought them mercenaries, hired by the Hand to provide daytime security in addition to the handful of daycloaks they had available. Unaware that they guarded vampires, or fought against them, for that matter. Now, however ..."

"Humans in full awareness of the Children of the Night." Truk shook his head even as Ballan quietly swore under his breath. "Never in a thousand years would I have thought it possible."

"If the humans become aware of us, and gather against us ..." The French-born Ventru stammered to a halt.

Lash found himself remembering a similar conversation between the psy-lord Mordecai and some of his fellow psionics, a conversation that he overheard by chance. It was over something Mordecai had called 'The Shield', the elaborate ruse that protected Humanity's mutant children from discovery and destruction. Mordecai, before he became a psy-lord, was a member of a small group of very powerful psionics called 'the Lone Gunmen'. These Lone Gunmen's singular reason to exist was to protect those mutant children, Humanity's 'Dark Edge', by maintaining and enforcing the Shield. Enforcement that just as often was against their own people, like the Brotherhood, than it was against other races.

It was in the aftermath of that conversation that Lash discovered that the Shield also existed to protect the other two most powerful mutant races belonging to the Dark Edge, the Vampires and the Werewolves. Though he'd wager neither realized it fully. The Children of the Night had always operated in secret, partially due to their nocturnal existence, and the rest because they literally hunted humans. The Shield enhanced that secrecy and, until now, had worked with their own secretive ways to keep them safe.