Chapter 16
The chalet was nestled high in the Swiss Alps, dark timber and smoked glass perched on a mountainside overlooking the Grindelwald valley. It was a billionaire’s hideaway, accessible only by a private, winding road, surrounded by a thousand acres of silent, snow-dusted pine forest.
The perfect place to disappear.
Devon and his team moved through the trees like ghosts, the crunch of their boots on the frozen ground the only sound in the vast, alpine silence. The air was thin and bitingly cold, but they didn’t feel it. All their senses were focused on the structure ahead.
“Two sentries, posted at the main gate,” Luc whispered into his comms, his voice a low murmur. He was perched in the high branches of an ancient pine, his eyes scanning the perimeter.
“Fledglings. No more than a decade old. They’re bored, not expecting trouble.”
“I’m not picking up any other heat signatures,” Antoine added. He was on the ground, his own senses stretched out, tasting the air. “The main house is cold. No lights, no power. It feels empty.”
Devon stood behind the crest of a small hill, his gaze fixed on the chalet. It did feel empty. Too empty. Aleksander was many things, but he was not a fool. He wouldn’t leave his fortress guarded by two bored children.
“He knows we’re coming,” Devon said, his voice flat. “This is a reception committee.”
“So we knock?” Luc asked, a hint of eagerness in his voice.
“We don’t give them the satisfaction of a fight at the door,” Devon replied. “We go in quiet. Antoine, you and I will take the sentries. Luc, you and Sophia’s men find another way in. Back entrance, second floor, I don’t care. We meet in the main hall in five minutes.”
The take down was silent and brutal. Devon and Antoine were blurs of motion in the darkness, the two fledglings dispatched before they could even register the threat. They died without a sound, their bodies dragged into the deep shadows of the forest.
Luc and the others had already scaled the chalet’s rear wall, disappearing through a second-story balcony window.
Devon and Antoine followed through the front, the heavy oak doors opening with a soft click of a bypassed electronic lock.
The inside of the chalet was even colder than the mountain air, the silence absolute.
It was a tomb of polished wood and cold stone.
They met in the grand hall, a cavernous, two-story room with a fireplace large enough to roast a whole ox and a wall of glass overlooking the valley below. The moonlight streaming through the windows painted everything in shades of silver and black.
“Something’s off,” Sophia’s man, a grim-faced vampire named Cassian, stated, his hand resting on the hilt of the silver blade at his hip. “I can smell it. The air is stale. No one has lived here for days.”
“He wanted us here,” Devon said, looking around the shadows. “He wanted us all in one place.”
Then, the trap went off.
It wasn’t an explosion but a sound, a high-frequency pulse that struck them like a physical blow.
It was meant to confuse and disable their heightened senses.
The world dissolved into a screeching wall of white noise, the moonlight fracturing into a thousand blinding shards.
Devon staggered, his hand flying to his head, the pain excruciating.
And then they were on them.
They poured out of the shadows, from hidden panels in the walls, from the rafters above. Ten of them. Maybe more. They were clad in black tactical gear, their faces obscured by masks, their movements silent and coordinated.
Aleksander’s loyalists.
The fight was a maelstrom of violence. The screeching pulse was gone, replaced by snarls, the clash of blades, the sickening crunch of breaking bones. Devon’s team was good, but they were outnumbered, caught off guard, their senses still reeling.
Devon fought with a cold, focused fury, his movements a blur of lethal precision. He broke an attacker’s arm, spun, and drove his elbow into the face of another. But for every one he took down, two more seemed to take their place. They were fanatics, fighting with a suicidal fervor.
He saw Luc take a silver blade to the ribs, the younger vampire roaring in pain as he kicked his attacker away.
He saw Cassian go down, overwhelmed by three opponents, his body disappearing under a flurry of blows.
The other of Sophia’s men was holding his own, but he was bleeding from a dozen different wounds.
Devon himself was not unscathed. A lucky blow had caught him across the back, the silver metal of the blade leaving a burning trail of fire.
Another had sliced deep into his thigh, slowing him, making his movements clumsy.
He was bleeding, his strength starting to wane, the sheer number of opponents wearing him down.
He was back-to-back with Antoine, the two of them a small island in a sea of violence. “We need to fall back!” Antoine shouted over the din, parrying a blow that would have taken his head off.
“There is no back!” Devon snarled, driving his hand through the chest of an attacker and pulling out organs.
As suddenly as it began, the fighting stopped.
The remaining loyalists melted back into the shadows, leaving Devon’s team standing wounded and bleeding in the ruined hall.
And then Aleksander appeared.
He was standing on the grand staircase, not a hair out of place, a glass of red wine held delicately in one hand. He hadn’t been fighting; he had been watching.
“Bravo,” he said, his voice dripping with condescending amusement. He took a slow, deliberate sip of his wine. “A valiant effort. Truly. But ultimately, a pointless one.”
Devon’s eyes narrowed, his body coiled like a snake ready to strike despite the fire in his veins. “Aleksander.”
“Devon,” Aleksander replied with a mock bow. “So good to see you. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come. I went to all this trouble, after all.”
He descended the stairs, his movements fluid and arrogant. He stopped at the bottom, staring at the injured like a predator looking over its prey. Devon breathed heavily as the silver poison spread through him, draining his strength. He was exposed, and both of them realized it.
“I’ve been thinking,” Aleksander said, his voice growing colder. “Your territories, your empire, have become stagnant. They’re boring. They need a visionary. A new leader.”
He met Devon’s gaze, and his smile was a slash of pure malice.
“And your Pet. A fascinating creature. So much potential. Wasted on a sentimental old fool like you. But don’t worry. I’ll take good care of her. All of it will be mine.”
He moved faster than Devon could have anticipated, aiming for the killing blow. He saw the opening, the moment of weakness caused by Devon’s injuries.
But he never reached him.
“Now!” Antoine roared. He threw a small, cylindrical device into the center of the room. It erupted not with a bang, but with a blinding, searing flash of pure white light—a stun grenade, designed to overload their photosensitive eyes. It was agony, a thousand times brighter than the sun.
Aleksander shrieked in pain and rage, stumbling back, his hands flying to his face. His loyalists, caught in the blast, were similarly blinded and disoriented.
It was the opening they needed.
“Get him out of here!” Antoine yelled, grabbing Devon’s arm and hauling him toward the shattered remains of the plate-glass window. Luc, his face pale, his side soaked in blood, grabbed Devon’s other side.
Together, the three of them stumbled out into the cold night air, leaving the sound of Aleksander’s furious, thwarted screams behind them.
They had survived. But only just.