Tears pouring down her cheeks, Naryan let her hand slowly drop from her ear piece, the horrible sound of the cromags beating Lash finally ending.
"We still have his transponder," Narcist said after a hard sniff, her face wet as well but her expression hard as diamond. "We can go in and get him and retrieve the liliths at the same time."
"Dark Father as our witness, that's precisely what we're going to do," Truk said heavily, his jaw muscles rippling with tension. He looked over at a shocked into silence Absinthe and a nearly snarling Ballan, the French Ventru's fists clenching and unclenching as rage surged through his body, looking for them to chime in.
"No," Naryan said before they could, her voice froggy with sorrow and pain at hearing how her best and oldest friend had suffered at the hands of the cromags.
"No?" Truk repeated, incredulous. "Are you insane, Naryan?? We're not leaving him down there to die!"
Naryan quickly speared him with a hard look, the tears suddenly forgotten.
"Not insane, Truk," she almost spit. "Realistic. We have handguns against cromags and who knows what else. If the greatest warrior Vampiredom has ever birthed couldn't prevail, then how can we?"
Before Truk could reply, his face going red with barely restrained rage, there was a soft sound in their earpieces. Almost as if somebody coughed to catch their attention. Then:
"Viper One, Vipers," Lash's voice said thickly, his words slurred. "My transponder is active. Are you reading it?"
"Copy, Viper One," Naryan quickly replied, almost sobbing in relief. "Five by five on your transponder. Are you okay? We heard such horrible things."
"No. I'm not." There was a slight pause. "But I will be shortly. Standby. As soon as I give the signal, scramble the Nighthawks for a hard retrieval!"
"Copy, Viper One. Standing by!" Naryan said breathlessly, eyes flying wide. Which allowed her to catch sight of Narcist out of the corner of her eye. She appeared to be nodding in grim satisfaction.
Naryan looked over at her just in time for Narcist to lift her eyes and meet her gaze.
"Now blood will be spilt!" she tautly hissed, the vampiress's face a mask of fury.
"Glory to Ventru!"
Lash carefully let his good eye open as a pair of cromags walked into the storage area, talking in their low, grinding voices to each other. As soon as he was sure they weren't paying attention to him, he shifted his feet to open the hidden compartment he had in the sole of a boot. Springloaded, the compartment slid open and punched a kickstarter into Lash's foot.
Instantly a rush of fire filled first his foot, then rushed headlong up his leg and into his torso. As it did, he could feel his regenerative capability activating, knitting torn flesh together and forcing broken bones to fuse. He had taken a brutal amount of damage at the hands of the gang of cromags and a single kickstarter couldn't erase it all. But it would be enough for him to be able to do a little hunting to make up the difference!
The two cromags paused as they heard a sound coming from the vampire hanging from the meathook.
"That little suckhead isn't dead yet?" one of them rumbled, surprised. His comrade grimaced, an awkward shifting of brutish features.
"He obviously needs a bit more help in getting there!" the heavy-browed mutant declared. "C'mon!" And the two marched with some determination towards the still dangling vampire.
As they drew close, the second cromag spoke up.
"Hey, suckhead! You need some more beating, don't ...Uuhhhh!"
The snapped up feet caught the monstrous mutant right on the chin with everything Lash could throw into it. Which, despite his battered condition, was a considerable amount of force.
Seeing his comrade staggered, the first cromag charged forward, his face twisted in anger. Only to get knocked to the side by a swinging, double-footed kick, the vampire using the hook through his body as a pivot point to utilize momentum and maximize his strike angle.
As the cromag staggered by, he suddenly found the vampire's legs around his neck. When those legs tightened abruptly, he was jerked to a halt. Then the vampire used those same legs on his shoulders to sit himself up enough he could pull his body off the meat hook. A heartbeat later he was spinning around to backflip off, pulling his legs off the stunned cromag's shoulders.
But instead of dropping to the ground, the vampire caught himself with his chained hands behind the giant's neck. And, with a throaty growl, he was lunging in to bury his fangs in the giant's carotid.
Instantly Lash's mouth was filled with blood saturated with eight different types of mutant proteins, all eight needed to maintain the cromag's size and muscle density. Along with that protein, four mutant types of testosterone. While not as potent as werewolf blood and all the healing factors it contained, it was a powerful mixture that pushed the big vampire's healing factor forward with a surge.
Feeling the vampire bite him, the cromag snarled in rage. But, with his hands lifted only half way to take hold of Lash's body, he felt the vampire strike a neural plexus in his neck with uncanny precision and abruptly he couldn't move. If his legs weren't as thick as a medium aged tree, he would've toppled over. As it was, he couldn't do anything to stop the blood getting sucked out of his torn carotid.
Lash felt more than saw the first cromag he had hit, come back in, swinging. Unlatching at the last possible moment, he flipped out of the way and let the one he was feeding on take a massive fist to the side of the head with enough force, it spun the giant around before he dropped boneless to the ground.
"Damn you!" the remaining cromag frothed. "Come here, you bug, so I can crush you!"
He was looking the other way when the vampire came flying out of the dark to plant a fist to the giant's temple. A fist that was a tenth the size of one of theirs but hit with the force of a runaway train, the force of impact rippling through his head and neck and down into his body even as it made his tree trunk legs stagger.
Lash danced past him, eyes measuring the giant's movements in the dim light with keen intelligence and hunting awareness. Then he was ducking under a flailing battering ram of an arm before using it to swing up and onto the giant's back. Before the cromag could then react to having a vampire on his back, Lash was biting deep into his neck. A punch in the neural plexus at the same time locked down his nervous system and the cromag grunted in shock when he found he couldn't move.
"Hey!" A shout from the entrance he had used to get into the storage area pulled Lash's eyes and he watched as no less than four more cromags charged towards him, moving far faster than a creature that size should be able to.
Pulling enough blood to finish the restoration to full strength and capability, Lash unlatched from the cromag's neck. Then, making sure he had the attention of the four cromags charging in, he wrapped an arm around the cromag's head to take hold of his chin. He gathered himself and, pulling himself up using the giant's shoulder, slung across the front of the cromag's body and used his body weight and momentum to put tremendous torque on the giant's neck. With the sound like a rifle going off, the neck snapped, instantly killing the oversized mutant.
Continuing back around the mutant, his momentum and grip pulling the cromag backward, Lash cleared the shoulder he had launched from and lightly dropped to the ground a heartbeat before the cromag dropped behind him with an audible 'thud'.
As the four cromags staggered to a halt, eyes wide in shock, he pulled the chains binding his wrists apart with a surge of strength and with his fangs still red with their comrade's blood snarled:
"Who's next?"
****