Truk proved prophetic: almost as soon as the pilot toggled the fasten seatbelts light off, the three stewardesses were taking turns hovering just over Lash's shoulder, starting out with light, friendly banter at first. Banter that quickly became more and more flirty as the flight progressed, some of the suggestive language forward enough, Lash swore he could hear Fiadh's teeth grinding in fury behind him.
If he could, he would've told her she had nothing to be jealous of, although it was likely more she was being particularly possessive in light of their recent intimacy and the successful procreation of a new life in her womb. No human could even be a shadow of the woman she was. They were mere humans. She, on the other hand, was a Queen of the Night People! There was no more desirable woman ever born on Earth!
As always, the stewardesses and their hovering moved into the background, Lash turning inward to examine their plan for moving through the much larger Heathrow International Airport without incident. If the Hand was going to strike before they were on their way to Brussels, it would be there. Same for the White Flames, though he was less certain about them.
Bronwyn had indicated she had picked up their scent before she went to retrieve their rental, but the trace was scattered and distant. Another quick check of the plane brought, other than a grimace of distaste at smelling packed-in humanity, was another negative result for the particular mix of metal, blood, and gun oil the White Flames seemed to wear like another layer of skin.
Scenting the Hand, however, had proved difficult. Without a base to solidify the scent on, like she had on the soldiers they had taken out in front of the safehouse, she had picked up several different vampiric scents. Some were similar enough to Fiadh, that they implied the O'Broin were moving through the city, intent on some task but not coming close to the safehouse in acknowledgment to Fiadh's stated goal of traveling with the Ventru.
Other groups Bronwyn also picked up, knots of vampires traveling here and there, consumed by their own business without carrying ill will or dark resolve about them like a foul cloud. These, Lash also dismissed, knowing they had nothing to fear from them.
The third cluster of scents Bronwyn picked up, however, while nowhere close to the safehouse, had dark intent swirling around them so strongly, the werewolf had frowned in dismay when she picked them up. Unfortunately, without anything to definitively identify this third set of smells, the big vampire couldn't determine whether they were actually Hand agents. Or just vampires on an active hunt.
Either way, he took every precaution available to them to see his small company safely to the airport. If the Hand was indeed out there, it was just a matter of time before they struck. And he wanted them to be as ready as possible when they did!
So focused was he on their track through Heathrow, Lash didn't notice the plane descending or landing. Only when it finally came to a halt at a gate on the relatively compact Terminal 2, the hub point for Aer Lingus. According to the itinerary, their connecting flight sat at a gate in Terminal 5, hub for British Airways. And easily one of the busiest in the sprawling Heathrow, the biggest of the five international airports serving Greater London.
The big vampire had already plotted the fastest route from Terminal 2 to 5 on the way in, avoiding most of the congestion that was inevitable in an airport this big. Then, brushing aside the stewardesses' attempts to slip him their numbers, as he always did, he was directing his small company off the plane and onto the bridgeway as soon as the door was open.
He directed them to stay close, with Truk, Narcist and Bronwyn forming a protective triangle around Fiadh. That allowed Lash to quickly scout ahead, his hand never far from his weapon.
Unlike the Dublin Airport, the big vampire was very familiar with Heathrow's sprawl. It had served a number of times as a gathering place for teams heading across the Atlantic into the Americas, and a jump off point for those same teams dispersing after their missions were done, heading back home to clan and hearth.
That also meant there was an excellent chance they'd run into other vampires during their transit between the terminals. While they now knew Anna was a part of the conspiracy against Ventru, they still didn't know which council member was behind the twisted web that now leveraged the pogrom against them. So any vampires they encountered would be suspect as possible enemies, watchers and spies in the worst case scenarios. Not to mention, he thought they got out of Dublin entirely too easily.
The Hand and their allies, the White Flames had already demonstrated a dogged persistence in their pursuit. They should've tried to take them at the Dublin airport. That had been the enemy's operational tactic leading up to that point. Yet, here his small company was, making a tactical transit through Heathrow while trying hard to not look like that's what they were doing, against zero resistance. It felt all kinds of wrong.
With that foremost in his mind, Lash let his experience grant him both insight and familiarity with their path and quickly glided ahead of the other four, his eyes finding every shadow and crack like he had a dozen times before walking the same corridors. With every sense tuned and adrenaline singing through his veins, nothing should've caught him by surprise.
So, when he turned a corner to take them into the walkway connecting the Terminal 2 concourse with the one in Terminal 5 and nearly ran over a fireteam of M'tada, it was almost a shock.
The five of them, two females and three males dressed in black leather long coats and sunglasses, immediately looked up when he came around the corner. Then hands were reaching into their coats.
Lash quickly held up a hand in the universal vampire gesture for peace.
"Apologies," he added in vampiric. "I wasn't aware this corridor was being used for a covert transition."
"Qos Viran," one of the males growled, easily identifying Lash as a member of the elite vampire special forces from just his mannerisms and way of speaking. Despite being identified as a fellow member of the vampire military none of the m'tada relaxed or pulled their hands away from their hidden weapons.
"It was cleared through all commands a full month in advance. You lost? Where's the rest of your team?"
Lash felt his expression tighten before he could stop it. He did not care for this vampire's tone, m'tada or not.
"I believe that's none of your business, trooper," he tightly replied. Not to mention, he didn't want to explain why his company included a Lilith without her M'tada, and a werewolf.
The speaker's expression instantly darkened. Before he could step forward to further confront the bigger vampire, one of the female m'tada reached out to put a hand on his arm.
"Our Mistress doesn't want any delays in getting us to our departure gate, Aesok," she tightly reminded him.
Almost as if that lilith was privy to the conversation, all five suddenly lifted their hands to almost hidden earpieces to catch an incoming transmission.
"Apologies, Mistress," the m'tada named Aesok said in a low voice. "We've encountered ...no, mistress." He looked over at a frowning Lash. "A solitary Qos Viran operator." The vampire's expression tightened slightly at what he then heard. Which was followed by:
"Are you engaged in an operation here, Qos Viran?"
Lash thought furiously for a second. Something had obviously happened while they were in Ireland to bend the Blood Guard against the Qos Viran to this level of hostility and resistance. Despite not actually having worked together at any time during their equally long existence, a certain level of respect had always existed between the two military branches of the People of the Night.
Had their enemy taken it a step further and used not only Hand assets to attack liliths, but the Qos Viran as well?? With Magnar as Lord Commander, that never would've happened. But Magnar was dead and it was within the Council's power to appoint his successor. A successor presumably more friendly to the negative forces currently taking the Council by storm.
"Transit and exfil only," he finally replied as the m'tada started shifting nervously at his lack of response.
"Are you Druhk'sur?" the m'tada pressed, tightening Lash's expression even further.
The Qos Viran were the People's elite operators, going where no other vampire dared, to insure the People's best interests were being served in whatever capacity was needed, usually amongst Humanity's other children. They operated in small teams, no larger than a dozen, with dedicated specialists working together to achieve their objective.
From the Qos Viran ranks, which were few to begin with, the druhk'sur were drawn. The Children of the Night were a proud and fierce people, militant and dangerous. Even regular vampires were counted as skilled hunters, warriors, and soldiers.
With warfare between Houses, Clans, and other races under the Dark Edge common, the Council allowed the formation of trained soldiers sworn to the Houses. These were the Nestari, the People's foundation soldiers, regular forces that were further subdivided into specialties by skill and experience. From the Nestari were all the other forces drawn and designated by skill, mission type, and equipment access.
The Council Guard, used over and above any personal guard each council member had to defend and protect the Council itself while seated. This was the Hand of the Council, tier 4 soldiers with slightly better training and equipment than the Nestari, along with their car'dieth assassin blades.
A step above the Hand was the Blood Guard, dedicated to protecting the Liliths. The Blood Guard, or M'tada, weren't a People-wide force. Instead each lilith had her own sworn and dedicated force she alone controlled, the size of which was dependent on how powerful she was. Their skill and training also varied widely according to their lilith's connections, power, and patronage from powerful high lords and their Houses.
Several orders of magnitude higher on the scale of skill, training, and equipment were the Qos Viran, the Special Forces of the Council, coming in at tier 2, the very best of vampiric martial prowess. They operated often in teams of no more than eight or ten operators, sent deep behind enemy lines, trusted to carry out missions of the highest importance. They were equipped with the best military tech the vampire world had to offer, and trained exhaustively at every level, in every discipline, and in every environment. They were truly the cream of the cream.
If the Qos Viran were tier 2, the Druhk'sur were tier 1 or 1 Alpha, depending on their mission. Equipped with the most bleeding edge experimental equipment and training the People of the Night could provide with their considerable lead in technological advancement over their human cousins, the druhk'sur were tasked with toppling Great Houses, undermining entire clans, or assassinating world leaders both in the Human world and along the Dark Edge.
They were also the Qos Viran's most guarded secret, knowledge of their existence never leaving the confines of their upper command rooms. And only the Lord Commander knew who they were, and what they were doing at any one time.
"You are aware that I could kill all of you just for asking that question, yes?" he said in a low, tight voice, knowing they were far past the stage where he could deny the existence of the ultra-secret cadre. A cadre he himself knew about only because he had served as druhk'sur multiple times, the last time being in North America, helping a psylord destroy a Brotherhood initiative.
Five sidearms were suddenly pointed at him.
"Answer the damn question!" Aesok demanded, his voice sounding strained.
Yes, they knew. Which meant their lilith was the one actually asking it if they were willing to die just to get the answer.
"I don't answer to you, lackey," he replied, slowly stretching his neck and loosening his shoulders and arms. It looked like he'd be fighting them after all.
"Will you answer to me, then, Ingamon Lash?" a new voice spoke into the heavy silence following his hard denial. A voice that sent the five m'tada to one knee, their heads bowed.
Over their kneeling bodies he saw her, also in a black leather long coat, striding towards him with a good couple dozen m'tada in her wake, moving with the characteristic grace and power of her sisters.
"Night Mistress," he respectfully said as he didn't take a knee like her m'tada did, but bowed his head instead.
As fair as Fiadh was, this lilith was dark, with chocolate skin, curly midnight hair tumbling to her shoulders and obsidian eyes. But she possessed the otherworldly beauty and grace that marked her a Queen of the Night People. And, as his body almost twitched in reaction to her pheromone cloud washing over him, the ability to control her fellow vampires.
"Most other vampires would be curled up in a compliant fetal ball with my current level of pheromones," she said almost conversationally as she drew up in front of him. "Yet here you stand without as much as a twitch. You are as powerful as they say, Ingamon. They are right to fear you."
"Night Mistress," Lash repeated, his head still bowed.
The lilith then fell silent as she peered at him for a long moment, a thoughtful expression on her flawless face as she evaluated, measured, and considered.
"You pose no threat to me, do you, Lash?" she quietly asked after that long moment.
"I honor the protocols, Mistress," he replied, finally lifting his head to look her in the eyes.
"So I've heard." She tilted her head slightly. "What happened in Ireland, Ingamon?"
"Ireland, Mistress?"
The lilith's expression tightened slightly in exasperation.
"Don't make me compel you, Qos Viran," she said, a hint of warning in her smoky smooth alto. "The Sisterhood knows you were going after Magnar, to find out if he had turned."
"Emma," Lash muttered, barely resisting the impulse to grimace in dismay.
"Don't be angry at her, Qos Viran. She was only honoring her commitment to her fellow liliths," the lilith in front of him said. "If you fear that intelligence will find itself falling into the hands of the wrong vampire on the Council, then put it to rest. We have little love for the Council of the People of the Night at this very moment."
That narrowed Lash's eyes in thought.
"Respectfully, Mistress, has there been another attempt on a lilith?" he asked. And felt his fists clench when she nodded.
"Was it the Qos Viran?" he pressed, hoping to answer his silent question from earlier. He found himself relaxing slightly when she frowned in confusion.
"The Qos Viran?? No. Why would you ...?" A look of chagrin abruptly washed across her flawless features. "Ah. The question about the Druhk'sur. You've my apologies for that, Ingamon. They are a whisper and a rumor even in the world of the Liliths. But those rumors tell of stories where highly trained specialists bring down entire countries in the space of a few days. With our world in such chaos, I had begun to fear Ventru's enemy on the council would leverage such a force against the Liliths."
A smile returned to her beautiful face.
"Not the Qos Viran. It was the Hand," she revealed.
Lash let a breath hiss out between his teeth. While he was relieved his comrades weren't actually involved in such a tragedy, to learn the Hand continued with their liberties against the Night Queens was sending a surge of rage through his powerful frame.
"That makes three, then," he growled.
"Three??" The lilith's eyes flew wide. "Emma, Vesta, and who??"
"Me," Fiadh announced as she stepped around the corner and into the corridor along with them, warded closely by a wary Truk and Narcist. Of Bronwyn there was no sign, leaving Lash to grudgingly increase his admiration for the fast-thinking werewolf. She would've been turned into a sieve in a hallway full of M'tada before anybody could have come to her defense. He now hoped she'd meet them at their gate after this encounter was over.
"Sister!" the dark lilith exclaimed in surprise and joy at seeing her unharmed. She stepped to Fiadh and the two embraced. Then the dark lilith was holding Fiadh out at arms' length.
"Where are your M'tada?" she demanded to know. "Where is Clan O'Broin and Clan Magnar?"
"Lost in two separate battles against Hand agents and their human allies, the White Flames," Fiadh revealed in a heavy voice. "Clan O'Broin could not protect me, and Clan Magnar is in disarray after the Hand killed Lord Commander Magnar on his own estate!"
"By the Dark Father!" the lilith exclaimed with not a little dismay. "You are the extraction then, that Ingamon told my m'tada he was engaged in."
Fiadh's eyes found the big vampire to gaze at him a long moment before nodding.
"Lash is the only reason I'm still alive, Jerisa," she said, looking back at her sister lilith. "He single handedly has slain more Hand and White Flame humans in the last twenty four hours than Martok killed Nosferatu vampires at the Battle of Mon Kraven in the space of a month!" She then gestured to Truk and Narcist.
"And these Ventru nestari have aided him in that struggle, providing me with more protection than a entire company of my M'tada could." She returned her attention to Jerisa after another quick look at Lash.
"They now escort me to our refuge at Salzburg."
Jerisa slowly nodded as she looked from Truk and Narcist to Fiadh and finally Lash.
"I, too, travel to Salzburg," she admitted after a brief pause. "Spain, never a safe place at the best of times with the Brotherhood just to the north, has become even more dangerous with the attempt on Vesta in Madrid. I won't return to Barcelona until I'm confident the current crisis is over."
She paused there, her expression returning to thoughtfulness.
"But if Ingamon and his team were checking up on Magnar, how did he come across you? Galway is on the western coast, Dublin on the east."
Fiadh favored Lash with yet another look before she took Jerisa by the arm and drew her a couple paces away from her m'tada.
"I was visiting family just south of Galway," she said in a voice so low, Lash almost couldn't make it out even though just a couple paces away. "I went into season in the middle of the visit and was trying to return to Dublin to deal with it in the safety of my holding there when I scented Lash as I was passing through the train station."
Both liliths turned and looked at him at that point before returning to their discussion.
"Well done, my sister," Jerisa congratulated Fiadh with a hug and a whisper. "You followed him onto the train he boarded then, to consummate?"
Fiadh nodded.
"And quite successfully, I might add," she reported with a brilliant smile, one quickly echoed by her sister night queen.
"Again, very well done, Fiadh!" Jerisa exclaimed with sincerity soaked into every word. Indeed, was every child precious to the People of the Night!
"You have markedly improved your bloodline with that particular coupling." Her expression abruptly sobered. "I'm guessing the rest of your journey was nowhere near as pleasant."
"The Hand," Fiadh said heavily, her own smile evaporating. "Equipped with stealth daycloaks. They were likely following Lash but, regardless, they killed half of my m'tada escort before I could withdraw. The Ventru nestari bulwarked my rearguard as Lash then went to deal with them."
The Irish lilith looked back at the big vampire.
"He left nothing but ash in his wake," she said, not bothering to hide her admiration for his prowess and the pride she had in knowing her child was his. "None could stand against my wolf."
Jerisa slowly nodded in understanding.
"That fills in some empty spots in the story, for sure." She then reached out to take Fiadh gently by the chin, turning her face back towards her.
"And while I understand your current emotional state in light of your successes, you must prepare yourself to let those feelings go, Fiadh. It is both our gift, and our burden to take powerful males to both improve our bloodlines and to increase our People. As an alpha prime, he will not, cannot be yours alone. Nor will you belong to him. Night Father willing, you will take many more like him and have children by them. It is our way, our fate as liliths."
"I know," Fiadh replied in a whisper, looking down. "I ... I just want to enjoy it for a while longer, if I can. He is just so magnificent!"
"That he is, my sister." Then Jerisa was pulling Fiadh back into another embrace, an older sister comforting a younger one.
A glance at the military-style chrono on his wrist narrowed Lash's eyes.
"Forgive me, Mistresses, but we must hurry if we're to make our flight," he said apologetically, earning himself two pairs of eyes looking at him thoughtfully.
"Nonsense," Jerisa said, pulling back from Fiadh. "My sister will accompany me on my private jet."
Fiadh was about to protest when a shout of pain from the back of Jerisa's M'tada company jerked every eye in that direction. Just in time to watch a handful of them crumble into dust.
"The Hand strikes out of stealth!" he snarled, clearing his Shiva to bring it around to point at the shifting shadows several meters away. He reached out to grab Aesok by the front of his tunic and pulled him towards Jerisa and Fiadh.
"Get your mistress to her plane now!"
The m'tada nodded even as the five of them rushed to encircle a stunned Jerisa.
"And the rest of my company?" he asked as they began to herd Jerisa towards the corner even as Narcist and Truk moved into guard positions around Fiadh, Shiva's ready.
"They buy your mistress time," Lash grimly pointed out. Then he opened fire.
****