“I can do what I wish with them?” Marc asked.

“It’s that or death.”

“How long?” Marc repeated.

“Give me three days… say why did you request a visit?”

Marc grinned. After this massacre, Marc nearly forgot why he asked to see Aelred.

“Evelyn has a Georgian in her pocket,” Marc said.

Aelred’s eyes opened wide, but he did not respond. Since he had a satisfactory answer, Marc transitioned to a run while approaching Murphy and Ryan.

“Morin!” Marc exclaimed. “He’s alive…”

One look from Marc told the elder vampire everything he needed to know. This was an escalation with Marc’s supernatural war. They prepared soldiers to hunt ghouls and vampires, and Drusilla responded by ambushing these specialized teams.

Six months ago, Marc considered the concept to be too risky. Tonight, the man of war realized that he could not be everywhere at once.

“I can do what I wish with them?” Marc asked.

The third option was the riskiest to his men. It required them to act as though everything was normal. The joys of command.

“Why didn’t you kill him?” Aelred said in a whisper.

“You remember that proposal you made six months back?”

There was a quick pause while Aelred thought over all their discussions since the war began. There were a lot but one in particular stood out.

“You mean about fighting fire with fire?”

“Precisely,” Marc answered. “How soon can you get them prepped for me?”

“You can’t—(be serious.)”

They moved the top three bodies out of the way. All that remained was Corporal Morin, whose breathing was practically non-existent. His heartbeat was so faint that even a vampire might miss it. Sure, a vampire could get sloppy, but Marc felt otherwise. When he fed, Marc knew full well how strong the heart was pumping. That’s how I avoid killing them.

When Marc drained a man, he sensed the heart falter before stopping entirely. Morin should be dead by now.

The vampires were quiet, and purposefully so. Marc checked the body before distancing himself until the heartbeat could no longer be heard. Aelred followed suit with a good idea on where this was headed.

“The telltale detail was blood around the lips, as though it was smeared on,” Marc whispered.

“Over here,” Aelred called out.

Marc went over while Murphy continued to work with the Sergeant. All of the men were spooked, reminded that the threat of things that went bump on the night was real.

At the periphery of the massacre there was a stack of bodies. Each man was drained entirely, but there was also the faint sound of a heartbeat.

“You hear it too?” Aelred asked.

“What are the chances?”

“…low.”

Had Marc been on the offensive, he would have gone for the fire support team. From there he would be free to pick off the men one by one. The evidence corroborated the chain of events, but he would confirm prior to leaving.

The animalistic quality to the wounds implied this was a vampire driven into a frenzy. The initial stages were the worst, leading to a slew of mangled dead, with barely a drop consumed. Only after the body count mounted did they regain enough senses. That was evidenced further out; several men were dead with their bodies intact, but their skin was blue despite shedding their mortal coils recently. Exsanguinated.

“What about the fire support team?” Murphy asked.

An excellent question, since their standard operating procedures was to fire a salvo of mortars to clear the area. It was a form of area denial. If no man was left to fight, then that team would make sure nothing made it out alive.

“Dead,” Ryan said after wiping a tear from the corner of his left eye.

Murphy moved in closer to console the Sergeant, who had been promoted from out of this group. I hear they were a particularly tight-knit group.

“What about the objective?” Marc asked.

“Sir, we secured the site and found three dead ghouls,” Ryan replied.

This meant they were intercepted like the attack on the redoubt. The difference was that he was not there to deal with the threat.

“What about the fire support team?” Murphy asked.

“Exactly,” Marc replied. “That’s why I never take any chances.”

He had an idea of what happened. The men were attacked by two vampires, and Butter engaged them successfully. The difference was that one of the vampires was playing dead and attacked after the men let their guard down. That’s not what we taught them.

The proof was in the aftermath; there were several cigarettes strewn about. One was still holding a flask with the contents soaked up by the mud. Even surrounded by so much dead the scent of alcohol, a strong spirit, was easy to make out.

“What about the objective?” Marc asked.