The blood arrows moved with supernatural velocity, slender crimson projectiles that whistled through the air like living ammunition. They grazed Old John's thick carapace armor, each impact producing a sound like nails dragging across metal, high-pitched and grating. The friction sent tiny sparks dancing across the plate surface, brief flashes of light that died as quickly as they were born.
The shotgun in Old John's grip had already slipped from its resting position on his shoulder armor. His hands moved with practiced efficiency, bringing the weapon to bear. He didn't bother with careful aim. At this range, with a target this size, precision was unnecessary.
He squeezed the trigger repeatedly, the shotgun roaring with each discharge. Muzzle flash strobed across his face in harsh intervals, illuminating the crimson-stained beard and the single eye blazing with combat focus. Metal pellets spread in overlapping cones of destruction, filling the air between him and the Mexican woman with lethal projectiles.
The Mexican woman stood approximately twenty meters distant, surrounded by the frozen cage created by the detonating grenades. Ice spikes gleamed on all sides of her, creating barriers that should have trapped any normal opponent. But her expression showed no fear. No hesitation. Only grim determination and something darker beneath.
A tearing sound erupted from her body, wet and organic, like fabric ripping but infinitely more visceral. The skin along her back split open along the ridge of her spine, wheat-colored flesh parting to reveal something beneath that had nothing to do with human anatomy.
Massive blood-red flesh wings exploded outward from the wounds, bursting free with violent force. They were enormous, each wing extending nearly two and a half meters, creating a total wingspan that approached five meters. The membrane stretched between supporting bone structures gleamed wetly in the firelight, translucent enough to show the network of blood vessels running through the tissue.
The wings were nothing like the crude, bat-like appendages of common vampires. These possessed a terrible beauty, a perfection of form that suggested evolution or deliberate design far beyond simple corruption. The muscle density was visible even through the membrane, bundles of fiber that promised explosive power.
She flapped them once, experimentally, and the displacement of air created a gust that made Old John's beard whip backward. The second flap came faster, more controlled. The third established a rhythm.
The falling ice shards from the grenade detonations, still tumbling through the air, simply bounced off the wing surfaces. The membrane was tough enough to deflect the frozen projectiles without puncturing. The shotgun pellets met the same fate, pinging off the wings harmlessly or embedding themselves in the thick muscle without penetrating deeply enough to cause serious damage.
The Mexican woman's face remained locked in that expression of cold fury, but now her wings beat with increasing intensity. Each powerful stroke pushed against the frozen air, creating currents that began dispersing the extreme cold radiating from the shattered grenades. She was trying to escape the temperature's killing embrace before it could freeze her blood solid.
Old John's boots had sunk into the soft earth under the force of his recoil absorption, dirt compressed around the carapace-reinforced soles. But he was already moving, already closing the distance with the aggressive momentum of someone who'd spent lifetimes learning that hesitation meant death.
His feet pounded against the ground, each step driving craters into the soil. The gap between them collapsed from twenty meters to ten, then five.
His hand flashed to his waist, the movement so fast it blurred. The silver-plated saber came free of its sheath with a metallic ring that sang in the night air.
The Mexican woman's mouth opened, perhaps to scream, perhaps to chant another spell. Her lips parted, tongue visible behind teeth that were too long, too sharp.
Old John's arm thrust forward with all the mechanical strength his robotic limb could generate. The silver-plated blade drove into her open mouth, punching through the soft tissue of her tongue, piercing the back of her throat, continuing deeper. The force was tremendous, unstoppable. The blade's tip erupted from the back of her neck just beside her spine, nearly penetrating through completely.
Her eyes went wide, pupils contracting to pinpoints. Blood filled her mouth immediately, overflowing past her lips in thick rivulets.
But Old John had no time to savor the successful strike.
One of those massive blood-red wings swept around with speed that matched his own attack. The wing's leading edge caught him squarely on the side of his carapace armor, right at the ribs. The impact carried the force of a charging vehicle, mechanical muscle reinforced by whatever dark power animated her corrupted form.
Old John's feet left the ground. His entire body launched sideways like he'd been struck by an explosion, flying through the air in an uncontrolled tumble. He had just enough awareness to tuck slightly, protecting his head, before he crashed into the building adjacent to the combat zone.
The concrete wall exploded inward on impact. Old John's armored bulk punched through the barrier like it was made of cardboard, creating a man-shaped hole surrounded by spiderweb cracks. He penetrated half a foot deep into the structure before the remaining wall strength finally arrested his momentum.
Dust billowed outward from the impact crater. Chunks of concrete rained down, bouncing off his carapace with dull clanking sounds.
For a moment, everything was still.
Then Old John laughed.
The sound emerged from the rubble loud and genuinely delighted, carrying none of the pain that should have accompanied being used as a living projectile. "Haha! You're definitely a high-grade vampire! This is fucking exciting!"
He pulled himself free from the damaged wall, carapace armor scraping against broken concrete as he extracted his embedded form. Small chunks of building material fell away, clattering to the ground around his boots.
He shook his head, the motion clearing the disorientation from the impact. When he opened his single eye again, something had changed.
Fine bloodshot lines threaded through the white, spreading like crimson lightning from the pupil outward. The eye itself seemed to glow from within, lit by some internal fire that had nothing to do with external light sources.
His exposed skin, the weathered face and the backs of his hands where armor didn't cover, began to transform. Blue blood vessels bulged beneath the surface, rising into prominence like cables pulled taut. They pulsed visibly, beating in time with his accelerating heart rate.
This was the transformation that preceded full berserker rage, the genetic gift of Asgard's most ferocious warriors. The point where pain became irrelevant, where strategic thinking gave way to pure combat instinct, where a warrior stopped being merely dangerous and became a force of nature.
Across the combat zone, the Mexican woman stood trembling, those massive wings still spread wide. Her hands rose to the silver-plated blade still embedded through her mouth and neck. She gripped it despite the way the silver burned her corrupted flesh, pulled with desperate strength.
The knife came free with a wet, sucking sound. Blood poured from the wound in her mouth, dripping from her chin in thick streams. The plasteel blade's surface showed signs of corrosion where her blood had contacted it, the silver plating damaged but not destroyed.
She flung the weapon away with an expression of pure fury, the knife tumbling through the air to clatter against broken pavement.
Her bloody lips opened. She tried to speak, to form the syllables necessary for spellcasting, to invoke whatever dark powers she commanded.
What emerged was nothing coherent. Just intermittent moaning sounds, broken neighing that carried no linguistic structure. The blade had done its work too well, severing or damaging the vocal cords beyond immediate function.
Old John's grin stretched wider, transforming his face into something almost demonic. The dark red beard, matted with dried blood, trembled as he fought to contain his amusement.
"Do you know," he said, his voice carrying that particular roughness that comes from extensive combat damage, "what kind of enemies we berserkers like most... and fear most?" He took a step forward, his posture lowering into the characteristic crouch that preceded a charge. "It's you damned mages. Spellcasters. The ones who rely on pretty words and mystical gestures."
Another step. The bloodshot eye fixed on her with predatory focus. "And I just turned you into a mute. How unfortunate."
He prepared to launch himself forward, every muscle tensing for the explosive charge that would close the distance before she could fully react.
Then something crackled in his ear. The communication device, barely audible over the ambient noise, transmitted an urgent warning.
Old John's charge stopped mid-initiation. He pivoted immediately, reversing direction, throwing himself backward toward the already-damaged building. His shoulder hit the broken wall, and this time he didn't stop at the surface. He crashed completely through, disappearing into the building's dark interior.
One second passed. Two.
Then the night sky itself seemed to scream.
A roar unlike anything natural tore through the atmosphere, a mechanical howl that suggested something massive pushed far beyond its operational limits. The sound was layered: the shriek of overworked engines, the thunder of displaced air, the grinding protest of metal stressed to breaking point.
The Valkyrie transport craft's displacement engine was dying, tearing itself apart under loads it was never designed to carry. And it was approaching fast, the volume increasing with terrifying rapidity.
Something enormous fell from the Valkyrie's open cargo bay. Something that blocked out the stars as it plummeted, that created its own localized windstorm as it displaced the air around its massive bulk.
A Crusader-pattern Land Raider, over seventy tons of blessed ceramite armor and sanctified weapons systems, dropped from fifteen meters up.
It fell like divine judgment made manifest, like a metal meteor called down by an angry god. The transport vehicle rotated slightly during its descent, tracks oriented toward the ground, positioned to land with maximum impact.
The Mexican woman looked up. Her eyes widened. Her wings beat frantically, trying to generate enough lift to escape, but she'd spent too much energy maintaining position and the wounds were already slowing her regeneration.
The Land Raider hit.
The impact generated a sound that transcended simple noise and became physical force. A boom that rattled teeth and compressed lungs and made the ground leap. Every building for blocks shuddered. Windows that had somehow survived the fighting until now exploded into glittering showers of glass.
The earth beneath the Land Raider's landing point simply compressed, dirt and broken pavement driven downward by the tremendous kinetic energy. Cracks radiated outward from the impact crater in jagged lines, spreading like lightning frozen in stone.
And caught directly beneath the descending vehicle, pinned by the tracks, the Mexican woman had no chance whatsoever.
Over seventy tons came down on her body with the full force of gravity and momentum combined. Bones shattered. Organs ruptured. Her lower half simply ceased to exist as a recognizable form, pulverized between the tracks and the unforgiving ground.
Blood exploded outward from beneath the Land Raider, spreading in a dark pool that grew rapidly. But she wasn't dead. Not yet. Not completely.
Her upper body remained relatively intact, pinned but not destroyed. Her mouth worked soundlessly, forming words that couldn't emerge. Her eyes rolled wildly, showing whites stained red with burst blood vessels.
The Land Raider's side hatch clanged open, hinges groaning from the impact stress. Pressure equalized with a hiss of escaping air.
Nolan emerged from the interior, moving with the ponderous weight of full power armor. The blue ceramite caught the firelight, gleaming despite the dust and smoke filling the air. The C'tan Phase Sword rode in its mag-locked mounting on his back. In his hands, he carried the Warscythe, that ancient Necron weapon humming with barely contained energy.
He stepped down onto the battlefield, boots crunching on shattered pavement, and surveyed the scene with the calm assessment of someone who'd planned this entrance to the second.
"Nolan!" Old John's voice emerged from the damaged building, rough with exertion and residual berserker rage. The veteran walked out through the hole he'd created, brushing concrete dust from his shoulders. "Did you have to make such a terrifying entrance? If I'd been slower retreating, I'd be paste under those tracks right now!"
But his single eye gleamed with amusement despite the complaint. He glanced at the Land Raider, which dominated the intersection like a metal hill, then shifted his gaze past the still-settling dust cloud to focus on Nolan's blue armor.
Nolan's helmet turned toward the older warrior, audio pickups transmitting his voice with mechanical clarity. "Old John, there was no alternative. I miscalculated the Valkyrie's carrying capacity. The displacement engine was pushed to the breaking point. If we hadn't released the Land Raider when we did, the entire transport would have crashed into the slum."
He paused, then added: "Probably would have killed both of us and destroyed significant infrastructure. This seemed like the better option."
His attention shifted downward, focusing on something beneath the Land Raider's forward section. "Hm? Still alive? Who is this? The clothing and bearing suggest someone beyond the typical priest grade."
The Mexican woman remained pinned beneath the track, nearly half her body crushed to ruin but her upper torso somehow maintaining structural integrity through whatever supernatural resilience vampire blood provided. Her mouth still worked, trying to form words, to cast spells, to do anything. But only that broken neighing emerged, sounds without meaning.
Old John approached, his footsteps crunching on debris. He looked down at the trapped woman, studying her with clinical detachment despite having fought her moments before.
"Judging from her clothing and behavior, she's definitely senior leadership in the Blood Coven's hierarchy. Whether she's the bishop or simply cannon fodder sent to negotiate, I can't say for certain." He gestured vaguely with one hand. "She actually tried approaching me for peace talks before the fighting resumed."
Nolan's helmeted head tilted slightly, processing that information. "Peace talks?"
"Mm." Old John nodded. "Wanted us to withdraw, promised to release civilians eventually through their transformation process. Typical enemy negotiation tactics when they realize they're losing." He looked down at the dying woman again, something almost like regret crossing his features. "I deliberately damaged her vocal cords because I was concerned about blood magic casting. Now even if we wanted to interrogate her, she can't answer."
Nolan absorbed this information in silence. Then the Warscythe rose smoothly in his grip, the weapon's length catching firelight along the haft. The blade at its terminus blazed with brilliant green energy, the color of radiation, of decay, of entropy made visible.
He brought it down in a single efficient strike.
The scythe's tip, wreathed in that dazzling emerald glow, embedded itself deep into the center of the Mexican woman's skull. The energy didn't just cut. It unmade, breaking molecular bonds, accelerating the natural process of dissolution into something that occurred in seconds rather than years.
Her eyes went glassy. The struggling movements ceased. And then her body, what remained of it, began to dissolve.
The flesh melted away like wax exposed to flame, running in liquid streams that quickly lost cohesion. The corrupted blood that had sustained her transformation lost all animation, becoming nothing more than stagnant fluid. Within moments, only a spreading pool of foul-smelling blood remained, lifeless and inert.
Nolan extracted the Warscythe, the blade emerging clean despite having pierced deep into biological matter. "If interrogation isn't possible, there's no point in leaving enemies alive to complicate matters."
He turned toward Old John, the massive power armor servos humming softly with the motion. "Get in the Land Raider. David's surveillance network has identified several locations that match the profile for Blood Coven strongholds. I intend to conduct rapid strikes against these positions, disrupting their command structure and eliminating as much senior leadership as possible." His voice carried absolute conviction. "We need to buy more time for the evacuation operations. Decapitation strikes are the most efficient method available."
Old John's grin returned, that fierce expression that transformed his bloodied face into something purely predatory. He slapped his thick breastplate several times, the impacts producing dull metallic thuds. "Haha! Nolan, you really can't just sit in the base playing commander, can you?"
He moved toward the Land Raider's open hatch, his steps carrying renewed energy despite the recent combat. "No matter! There's no rule saying army generals can't take the field personally! We Asgardians always lead from the front!"
His single bloodshot eye gleamed with anticipation. "Let's go! Let us crush these cowards who bully the weak and fear the strong!"
The veteran warrior climbed into the Land Raider's interior, disappearing into the armored vehicle's depths. Nolan followed, his blue power armor filling the hatch, then vanishing inside.
The side hatch clanged shut with mechanical finality.
For a moment, nothing happened. The Land Raider sat motionless, an immobile fortress of ceramite and blessed steel.
Then its engines roared to life, a deep rumbling that made the ground vibrate. The tracks engaged, grinding against pavement, beginning to rotate.
The vehicle lurched forward, pulling free from the impact crater it had created, leaving behind only shattered earth and a pool of corrupted blood that was already beginning to freeze in the cold night air.
The hunt was on.
And the Blood Coven's leadership was about to learn what it meant to face the Emperor's wrath made mobile.
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