And then we went out separate ways. It took us about thirty minutes to round up any and every mode of transport we could find-trucks, buses, cars, motorcycles and divided ourselves into all of them. The fastest Neos took it upon themselves to go there on foot. Apparently the human city was bombed so I’m pretty sure they would find themselves vehicles there.
Ratmir, I and other two warriors got in a car and led the rest to the Wintercrown Pack. We were on the expressway in ten minutes and then in the next two and a half hours, we entered the city. We needed to find vehicles for the rest of the army so instead of using the expressway to bypass the city, we had to pass through it. The vampires on foot were behind us and they’d take any parked car they found on the way.
I could smell the fire from the explosion, the blood and the smell of death and destruction. The closer we reached to the main part of the city, the worse it got.
I could see the dust particles in the air, the black smoke had covered the sky and the visibility had reduced. We could hear the cries and the screams of the people from kilometres away. The smell of the blood nauseated me.
I looked at Ratmir who was sitting in the passenger seat, looking outside through the window. It looked like the smell of blood wasn’t affecting him at all, which was good considering the last thing we needed was five thousand uncontrolled vampires running around killing injured humans.
“They bombed the human city too.” I spoke, “the Mystic Lupus Pack.”
“Why?” His voice was rough. Maybe the blood did affect him.
“My best guess is, Nikolai owns an office here and makes a lot of money-something they had a dispute over earlier. It’s a way of establishing dominance. And it could be to make humans vulnerable and most probably increase their number of slaves.” I replied.
He nodded and turned his head to look straight at the road. He was wearing a visor, just like the entire army did, so I couldn’t see his expression but his eyes looked unaffected. Like this was all an everyday thing for him.
They’re trained to be this way all their lives.
We were further into the city and there were more vehicles on the road now, most of them parked in garages, moving around frantically or carrying injured people-most probably to the hospital.
“Tell them to not take vehicles that are being used.” I muttered.
“Yes, Field Marshal Andrei.” He replied.
The smell of the toxins, smoke from the fire and blood got more pungent in the air. More and more humans started filling the roads, all of them driving frantically, moving like headless chickens.
For some reason, I felt bad. This isn’t a war humans should have been involved in. They didn’t deserve to be dragged into our mess. They didn’t deserve to die. This explosion must’ve easily killed half of the city’s population, handicapped the economy and rendered the humans helpless.
I had never seen an explosion first hand. Especially not one up-close. I could feel the devastation the humans around us were feeling, like I would of a pack member, I was feeling sympathy for them like I would for someone I cared about.
And I knew exactly why. Because I had a human half-sister out there in America. And while she didn’t even know I existed, I had made sure she was taken care of, I had hired people who made sure that she was doing good.
And caring for a human like that, so deeply, came with consequences which included feeling connections with humans as well. It was the sole reason I was more affected by this destruction than most supernaturals would ever be.
We passed through the decimated area and I could hear the screams of the people trapped under the debris. There were injured, people being out on stretchers and taken away, dead bodies put in bags. There were paramedics on sight offering first aid to the people.
I saw a little girl crying on the side of the road as she looked at her legs-leg. The other one was gone and she was bleeding profusely. I saw a paramedic rush to her before she was out of my view. She looked as old as Adrian, if not younger. And after her, I saw more injured and handicapped people than I have in my entire life. Which was already a lot considering I was used to after-war situations.
All I wanted right now was to stop the car and help these humans, despite the fact they they weren’t our people. At the end of the day, what did it matter? They were people. Ones who didn’t deserve this. And regardless of the reason, they felt like my people.
Each life I saw taken away, each injured human, each life wasted fuelled fire into my veins. It gave me a new sense of purpose to be more cruel in killing the wolves of Mystic Lupus.
I had orders to fulfil. And the damage here was already done. I could still salvage something in Wintercrown and Red Moon. In the next hour, we were out of he city and the entire army had gotten themselves a vehicle. And then I picked up the speed of the car and drove further down south, towards Wintercrown and Red Moon.
I promised myself that after things were taken care of there, I’d come back here with the entire army to help those humans. It was the least I could do.
And winning the war there wasn’t going to be an issue, I knew it. Since we had the stones that would protect us from black magic, all those zombie witches had over us was their numbers. But the coordination and agility of the Neos should be enough to tackle that. And as for the wolves from Verdura pack, we would crush them like fucking worms beneath our feet.