Chapter 15 Lazriel
~Lazriel~
My dad was a badass motherfucker.
I’d never seen anything like it from a vampire before.
All I’d witnessed, all the fights I’d participated in, all those who I’d brought to their knees… none of that even held a candle to this.
Fucking shit.
He’d told me to hang back. Not exactly an order, but a firm instruction definitely.
It was hard to pull that off without causing an aggressive reaction in me, the urge to argue against it, to deny what had been asked so that I could remain in the thick of it. Or, let’s face it, so I could do things my way.
But there was something about the way he spoke, the way he delivered these instructions that didn’t trigger that in me at all.
“Remain at a distance. Do not engage. Just observe, listen, and feel. It will serve you well, I assure you.”
Those had been his words.
Standing on the sidelines wasn’t exactly my thing.
Hell, everybody knew that.
All too well.
But I wasn’t feeling that irritating itch under my skin this time as I stood just watching.
Because it didn’t feel like just watching.
It was so fucking immersive.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it, let alone the rest of my senses.
I looked on from an elevated vantage point of a cracked silo belonging to an abandoned farmhouse a hundred feet away.
When he’d left me up here to observe, he’d disappeared into the darkness and the dense forest surrounding his target. He’d then moved so fast when he’d approached that I hadn’t even been able to register him until he stood right in front of the entrance to the ugly-ass building.
A decommissioned industrial base.
It was currently being used by Puritas.
One of their cells.
Not just any cell. Not one that was still only just coming out of its dormant state.
No. It was one that was preparing to act. In catastrophic ways for all hybrids, the supernatural world as a whole, the Guardian Movement.
Remnant had informed me that The Shadowed had been keeping an eye on this cell for the last few weeks, and intel had come in that had confirmed several vampire clans were allying with these fuckers.
Tonight was an epic meeting of over two hundred of these new recruits and the current Puritas members of the cell.
These clans joining wasn’t so much about their fanatical ideology of cleansing the world of hybrids.
It was Puritas offering them magic-wielders at their disposal to increase their power base and standing in the supernatural world.
Those were the insidious moves Puritas had begun making now to increase its ranks.
Instead of bringing in even a small part of the force at his back in The Shadowed, Remnant come alone to handle it.
Blackline Protocol had been activated by the Guardian Movement, the hum much more pronounced now we were above ground again, which was a risk, apparently, to his network.
It didn’t just warn beings to get to safety and be cautious, it triggered every defense imaginable.
And that was not conducive to a clandestine organization that operated in the shadows and very far off the radar.
It risked exposure. Keeping a whole army, or even a unit, safe from detection was a lot more cumbersome than him going it alone.
Especially with his extremely advanced capabilities factored in.
And as I watched, it was clear he’d prepared for everything.
This wasn’t recklessness. It was strategic, tactical.
It was predatory intent. The work of a mastermind with centuries of experience and know-how under his belt.
He ran his hand along the door until he stopped near the center.
Then he called his talons and thrust them inside, somehow breaching the fucking titanium like it was nothing.
I heard a faint whirr of the internal lock as he dug in, the metal shrieking as he crushed the core like foil.
He pulled his fingers free, only to slam his hand forward, sending the entire slab of the door collapsing inward.
I swung my head to toward the open floor about two hundred feet from the entrance, a loud, raucous meeting taking place. Nobody even flinched. They hadn’t heard, too caught up in the hateful and despicable rhetoric they were spouting.
From my high vantage point, I watched as Remnant stepped across the threshold into the concrete corridor below. Through the torn-away roof, intact only in a few places, I could see two guards react the instant he appeared.
Magic-wielders.
They both thrust their palms forward, streaming their magic at him.
He didn’t attempt to dodge the blasts.
But he didn’t stop either.
In fact, I couldn’t fucking believe it, but the streams didn’t seem to impact him at all.
He powered into them, then shot out his hands, grasping the offenders’ throats.
In two synchronized motions, he jerked them to the sides, snapping their necks like twigs.
They fell like ragdolls, hitting the rough concrete in lifeless heaps.
A gasp escaped me and I saw him tense.
But then four vampires turned onto the corridor, coming at him, hissing and snarling, fully vamped out.
When they were just a foot out, about to slam into him, he burst to the side, his foot on the wall, half climbing up it, then using the momentum to propel himself behind them.
He shoved his hands through the backs of two of them and they jerked wildly, blood spewing from their mouths, a moment before he ripped his hands free—two hearts in either palm.
Holy shit.
He let them fall to the ground at his feet as the now dead vampires dropped, joining their missing organs.
Before the other two could even turn back around to see what had happened, or to face him, he whirled around them with a burst of speed that I couldn’t even track, until I saw their heads cleaved from their bodies with two slashes of his talons through their throats.
As the severed heads hit the floor with an odd combination of thuds and unsettling squelching, alongside their bodies, I noted movement from the two catwalks above just at the end of the corridor.
The instinct to warn him was right there, my fingers tapping on the railing in front of me.
But I needn’t have worried, because as I saw forty vampires, descending in staggered bursts, boots and talons scraping metal as they dropped down one by one to block his path, he looked right out at me and winked.
In the next second, as they rushed at him, he snagged the shirts of two, ripped their hearts out, then tossed their bodies up into the catwalks. They shot right through the hefty metal of the one beneath, up into the next one, and landed in heaps at the top.
It had two dozen of the vampires stilling in shock, pausing in their step.
Remnant didn’t miss a beat and in a single burst of speed along the first row of them, he slashed his talons through their throats, decapitating them all in quick succession.
Some of them pulled stakes from their sleeves—as if a simple, regular stake could kill an Ancient Vampire.
He burst forward, tore one from the grip of the closest, then burst behind them with that totally eclipsing speed of his and rapid-fire staked another ten through the back, piercing the hearts of every single one with incredible accuracy.
Battle cries sounded and the remaining eighteen surged forward.
I saw those embroiled in the meeting below finally register the attack.
Remnant flitted in and out of my vision then as they encircled him, trying to box him in, surround him, more stakes drawn, fangs glistening in the muted light of the lone bulbs barely illuminating the corridor.
He spun so fast that he managed to lift off the ground. It wasn’t even a leap, it was… supernatural physiology slamming up against physics, or something.
He smashed into the catwalk above and used his body as a battering ram to tear it apart until pieces came crashing down, heavy metal and rebars.
He snatched up a sheet of metal, then whipped it at four vampires, decapitating them all at once with the metal ripping through flesh and bone alike from the force of his strength.
Two jumped at his back, but he caught them both mid-leap, then tossed them into six others, downing all eight. He staked them with several bursts of motion
The remaining ones lunged at him all at once, but he evaded them, jerking to the side, and they all ran themselves into the wall instead, grunting and hissing.
Remnant snatched up a rebar and ripped through their throats, three at once, then spinning and catching the remaining three, heads rolling all over the place.
“Take him!” somebody called out from down below where more than another one hundred and fifty assholes stood.
Remnant leaped into the fray.
It seemed like a hell of a reckless move.
He was basically jumping down into a kill box.
His leather jacket swept behind him like a cape as he plunged the one-hundred-foot drop to the concrete ground below.
The moment he touched down, I realized it was far from reckless and an absolute strategic move.
Especially as I saw about forty magic-wielders calling their power, all prepared to fire upon him at once.
His boots hit the ground, but not just to land.
No. He put the full force of his strength and power into it, and the entire ground fractured, sending shockwaves through the reinforced foundation.
Holy. Fuck.
A seismic shock!
How the—
The couple of remaining catwalks over on the other side of the space shuddered, one ripping from the wall on one side and creaking painfully as it swung down, back and forth like a broken pendulum.
Concrete walls and even those made of that hefty titanium cracked—in several fucking places, one wall even crumbling entirely under the pressure.
It knocked out the power of the magic-wielders. At least four dozen lost their balance and ended up on their asses.
He’d just broken through the kill box situation, destabilized it, and prevented them from amassing against him, cutting right through an attempt at a coordinated strike.
“It’s fucking Remnant in the flesh,” somebody spoke.