The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

Extraction

"I remember the protocols," Lash replied with a wry twist of his mouth. "But I'd forgotten just how dangerous and chaotic our homeland is."

Satisfied that the tunnel was both intact and undiscovered, Ingrid turned back towards him, her expression grim.

"And it's just become more dangerous for our enemies, my brother," she tautly declared. "Death awaits those that oppose us."

"As they so justly deserve," Lash added, his own expression tightening with resolution. Then they were both looking at the stairwell door as a rough explosion announced the upper door being breached.

Grimacing, Ingrid palmed the biometric reader on the panel once more.

"Time to leave the trap," she hissed as a door on the garage's back wall slid open.

The pair was nearly a hundred meters down the passage, a broad tunnel big enough to allow two vehicles to drive side by side, when another loud, echoing roar told them the lower door to the stairs had now been penetrated as well. Since safety passages were fairly common for vampiric safe houses, the nestari would immediately begin to search for the entrance now that they were in the garage.

"Can you run, Ing?" Ingrid asked as they turned away from the passage's near end and refocused on getting out.

"I believe my recovery is sufficient to allow that," the big vampire replied. "Even if it wasn't..."

"Right," Ingrid replied before breaking into a ground-eating run. Gritting his teeth against the pain that would cascade through his body the moment he doubled his pace, Lash followed suit. Together they pounded down the tunnel, moving with a speed only possible to Children of the Night.

Thankfully that speed, several times that of a normal human and roughly three times that of the fastest Olympic sprinter, allowed the two Lashes to cover the five-kilometer stretch to the river in a matter of a few minutes. Still, they had to pull up at the tunnel's far end for a breather.

"You don't have another werewolf vial in that pack of yours, do you?" Lash hoarsely gasped as Ingrid, only slightly less winded, searched for an access panel.

"They're for emergencies only," she grimly replied. "Channel your strength, brother. You're not done yet."

Grimacing as he straightened up to try and stretch the pain out of his aching body, Lash threw a look in his sister's direction.

"Only if you can get this door open, Ingrid," he retorted. "If we get pinned down here, those nestari will turn us both into sieves."

Hearing that, his sister grimaced even as she continued looking for the access panel.

"Sometimes your soldier's pragmatism is literally a pain in the ass," she growled, earning her a wry smile from Lash.

"It's a hard habit to break," he retorted. "Burned into me by too many failures to count."

"No failure here!" Ingrid replied with a triumphant grin as she found the sought-for access panel and flipped open its door. Just in time: even as she began to trigger the unlocking code for the door, they could hear distant movement from the tunnel's heart.

"Trigger the tunnel's boobytraps while you're at it, Ingrid," Lash grimly directed as he brought his Shiva up to bear down the tunnel. "A few parting gifts for our friends."

"Now there is the Ingamon that I grew up with!" Ingrid replied, her grin broadening even as she activated the tunnel's trap system. "Bloodthirsty to the end!" Then she was closing the panel and turning towards him.

"Time to go!"

The two Lashes were nearly two hundred meters down the winding road beside the Main River when they felt the first explosion shiver the ground beneath their feet.