The Alpha King Call Boy
Chapter 246

Alexander

The hot desert sun beat down upon our bodies as hours passed and the Strike Team descended, step by step, rock by rock, into the canyon.

We were all drenched with sweat by the time we reached the bottom. I saw the tiny figures of the second group of climbers get into position way up on the cliff's edge. I didn't stand and watch them for long. I did a quick inventory of my vanguard fleet on the ground and then led them forward to the cave mouth.

I'd hardly have been able to recognize the place just by sight. But using our drone footage and detailed topographical maps, we'd pinpointed the exact coordinates for the target position. I swiped the screen on my smartwatch, opening the advanced GPS app that was going to help us find it.

The hike forward through this part of the canyon, it turned out, was almost as slow going as the climb down the cliff. This was not a place made for people to be walking. The earth we trod was all rubble and dust on treacherously uneven stone and boulders. Finally, a blinking red light told me that we were there. Mere feet away from the location we'd pinpointed. I studied the stones around me with my eyes. It only took a few seconds to see it. A cave mouth that had been walled over from the inside, with stones stacked up to seal the entrance to the natural cavern. It looked like a tomb.

I inched close to inspect it. The vampires were supernaturally fast and immensely strong and could probably build a wall like this in minutes, probably. But us? Dismantling such a wall would be like a Strongman competition. A brutal one.

It was what we were going to do. We'd done it before, just in a very different setting. In mountainsides and forest caves. Not ones that required so much labor just to reach.

But using explosives here would have been too dangerous, too destructive. In the absence of better idea, we defaulted back to manual labor and patience as out method of entry.

1 mindlinked the pack to give a few instructions. We backed off a bitand took a one- minute break to sip water from flask-sized canteens we'd stashed in our pockets. And then we started moving rocks.

I could no longer see the sun.

It had slipped past the rim of the canyon, beyond our view from down inside. We still had hours before dusk. But I didn't like being even on the other side of noon already. Not when we were going after vampires.

We'd always attacked in the mornings, in the last war when the undead seemed to be at their deadest.

Everything about this mission was just taxing my nerves.

At last we managed to create an opening in the stone wall that was only just large enough for us to fit our bodies through, if we filed inside one at a time. Looking through this gap into the dark beyond, I was finally completely sure we had gotten this right. Yes, there were vampires here. This barricade was handmade, put in place by creatures trying to conceal themselves inside. And the cool, still air inside... yes, it smelled faintly of death. Of vampires.

I signaled to the guys -Kayden was closest, right at my side, with the rest of the Strike Team behind him-and then pressed forward, wedging my body slowly, carefully through the gap in the stones.The quiet in the cave was deep, unearthly. All I could hear were the small, controlled sounds of my breath, my heartbeat, and my soft footsteps. A chill settled down upon the sweat-slicked and freshly sun-kissed skin of my arms and face, cooling my blood and dropping my temperature fast.

I moved forward with careful, measured steps, keeping my head on a swivel. My eyes adjusted to the dark and I scanned the space around me as I emerged from the cave mouth into a large, circular room. It appeared to be empty.

I heard Kayden make his entrance behind me. And a third man after that. We crept in with tremendous stealth, searching the darkness for huddled forms, for splinter tunnels into deeper caves, for anything

But there was no sign of them yet. No vampires huddled together on the floor. No footprints in the sand. No slain bodies of victims cast aside in heaps. No evidence of camp, of any kind.

I could still smell them, though. They were close.

I clutched a stake in each hand. I didn't remember reaching into my pockets and taking them out; they were just there in my hot, dry palms, ready for action.

I think the whole Strike Team was inside by this point, following me in a neat row as I explored deeper and deeper into the big empty cave, my fingers ghosting the wall as I went, not touching it, but feeling for air, feeling for a gap...

And then, all at once, the stone beneath our feet trembled, a horrid, ghastly groan sounded, and then there was the sound of something very heavy rolling very fast. And then thudding hard to stop.

The entire cave rumbled and quaked with the impact. Red dust shimmied off every wall, every craggy protrusion of stone, every inch of the cave, and swirled in the air like fog.

I wheeled around just as all light vanished from the place. The slant of sunlight that'd been leaking in from the gap in the barricade was gone. Cal had brought up the rear of our vanguard fleet. He mindlinked me.

IT'S A TRAP. THEY RIGGED THE ENTRANCE. THERE'S A F*****G BOULDER BLOCKING EGRESS. THAT'S WHAT WAS MOVING!

I listened to my heartbeat as it picked up speed and my mind went into overdrive, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

And then I heard it for the first time. Small movements a short distance ahead of us, farther into the cave.

Someone was awake.

I commanded my men by mindlink.

FORWARD! ATTACK!

TEAM 2 WILL RESCUE LATER!

ATTACK!

ATTACK!!!

I flew forward into the darkness, letting my wolf's intuition guide my steps, and followed my nose, followed the smell of death.

The opening at the back of the cave was narrow. I had to turn sideways to get inside, but I got in and I got through fast. After about twenty feet, the passage opened up in to another big cave, and this one was full of vampires. Unconscious vampires.

I had a tightly fisted stake plunged right into one of those bloodsucker's chests in one second flat.

And there it was. That profane baptism that I'd been craving.

That familiar rain of cold black sludge that exploded so satisfyingly under my merciless fist and commemorated evil's true and final death.

The blood was the stuff of my nightmares, in times of reason.

But right now it was all I wanted. All I sought. I relished the cold, loathsome splatter of the putrid pitch as it fell upon my face and body. And clenched my teeth to the point of pain to keep from howling with vicious glee. I staked an other prone vampire. Because I had to. I'd tasted the thrill again and now I was dying to kill.

I swear I heard a sound like angels singing when that second body exploded, showering me in yet more black blood.

Depraved satisfaction overwhelmed my mind and body. It felt so fucking good to kill again.

But Kayden and the others were behind me. Others could finish off the rest of the helpless beasts in this room. It was a simple extermination task here.

I had something more important waiting for me up ahead.

I shook as much reason as I could back into my brain, scrubbing a hand down my face to clear blood from my eyes, nose and mouth, and charged forward.