Chapter 8 #2
“I could definitely take off some heads with this thing,” she’d said casually when she’d picked it out. “Cuts through tendons like butter.”
“You scare me a little,” he’d said to her.
“Good.”
The hardest part was the waiting but Drake’s forces showed up eventually and when they did, it didn’t take long for all hell to break loose.
Drake’s men came in from behind and from the sides.
They prepared for that but it still gave Mark a feeling of being surrounded that he hadn’t completely anticipated.
He expected them all to attack from the front based on past actions by Drake’s unit.
They came running over a grassy hill as Mark and his men stood in a line, armed to the teeth. He wanted to tell Crystal to run to the Humvee and hide but he knew she wouldn’t. Still, the thought pulsed in his head and he felt the blood bond between them humming.
“FORWARD!” Mark and Loren howled and the men roared and ran at Drake’s forces.
Crystal was at least wearing some armor though it had not been easy to find something she could wear comfortably that would also protect her. He’d had to cinch the plates twice as tight around her torso and he didn’t think her legs were protected well enough.
Now he watched Crystal running forward like everyone else and his fear for her life turned to the possessive kind of rage that won battles as he turned his head and roared, running with his sword outstretched to kill whatever brainless Vampyren man might attempt to cut down his love.
Swords met with the sharp clang that rang in his ears, making his head rattle.
Drake’s men had painted their faces with blood and their long hair was unbraided.
There was something about it that struck Mark as sickening.
It was a sign of their rejection of Vampyren tradition.
They were forming their own culture now and its mascot was death.
Mark’s sword scraped on the blade of a man taller than him but he held his ground and spun, catching the man by surprise before plunging his sword in his side, sending him to the ground.
He felt a drop of sweat slide down his back as a buzz of movement behind him alerted him to a strike and turned on his heel, his sword coming in a clean swipe at a bare throat. Two down.
The heat cut at them as viciously as the blades, the only saving grace the tolerance the Vampyren generally had for it. Bodies fell and the booby-trapped bombs blew as Drake’s men flooded in, limbs and cuts flying and shimmering in the mirage that rose from the hot grounds.
An hour later, Mark was face to face with Drake and half the men on both sides were dead.
Drake was a mad man. He’d stripped to the waist, his chest painted with the blood of whatever women he'd drained on his way into battle, his long black hair a matted mess hanging around his face. His eyes were wide and wild and he leered at Mark.
“You’re a traitor,” Mark growled, gripping his sword. His palms were slick with sweat and blood. He finally managed to convince Crystal to hide in the armored Humvee. She was alive. She was safe. His unborn child was safe. “You’ve betrayed your people—"
“I’m a traitor?” Drake snarled. “Why do you think we came here? To subjugate these stupid, weak creatures! We’re here to conquer. Everyone else has forgotten that and I haven’t. We’re here to take what we want, to evolve—"
“Ugh, shut up,” Mark muttered, and he swung his sword and caught Drake unaware.
He didn’t manage to cut the man, but he rattled him and sent him scrambling back before he spun around and nearly caught Mark’s waist. Mark blocked him and his swords scraped against Drake’s, forcing his arms up before Mark plunged and caught him in the gap of his arm.
The cut wasn’t very deep. But it weakened Drake enough to give Mark time to spin around and take a wild swing, knowing he was going to hit something.
His blade sliced right through Drake’s left arm above the elbow and the limb went flying into the air, blood spraying across the grass. Drake screamed even as he grinned, his eyes yet wilder.
Definitely on drugs then, Mark thought.
Perhaps he should have said something profound at this point, about how Drake should never have gone after innocent women and children and how he should value life.
But Mark was drenched with sweat and Drake’s blood splattered across his already blood-spattered face.
He was uncomfortable and exhausted and sore and his sword was heavy in his hands, his fingers aching from how hard he gripped it.
He began to take the death swing just as a curved blade came slicing cleanly through Drake’s neck from behind, his eyes going wide as his head went one way and his body went another.
Mark jumped back, the momentum of his sword nearly taking him off his feet and Crystal appeared on the grass as the body fell, looking feral but satisfied now.
“You’re supposed to be in the car!” Mark said.
One of Drake’s toadies came running at him and he grimaced and cut him down without even thinking about it. Crystal wiped her sweaty forehead and nodded, turning on her heel. “I’m going. Got what I came for.”
The rest was clean-up.