Tools of death

　　Irena’s POV

　　It had been a week since the duties and tasks of hunting down the thing killing all of these humans had been distributed amongst the council members, orders had been dished out and every available Vampire was working day and night to fulfill their duties.

　　Even Carlos, despite my telling him he didn’t have to.

　　“My sister may be gone, but the people that are still here, their lives are now at stake, and she would kill me if I sat around and moped rather than doing what I can to help,” he had told me in adamant rebellion.

　　Kids, they grow up so fast.

　　We had a lot of ground to cover and no real point to start from.

　　It was definitely going to be a difficult task finding the person responsible for all of this death and destruction.

　　The effects of whatever was killing so many humans only seemed to grow, more and more people were joining the group of people calling themselves, 'The Armada', their biggest arm was here in the United States but they had multiple smaller chapters in different countries.

　　They went around labeling people as a vampire and brutally murder them.

　　There was no real way of knowing, who is a vampire and who isn’t so the armada just went around killing anyone at all in various and horrible ways, simple innocents were being murdered for reasons that they themselves didn’t fully understand.

　　Someone really needs to look into stopping the Armada.

　　But because the entire vampire race is working with all hands on deck and couldn’t afford to lose any man or woman. We were complaining, focused on, and committed to, finding the main problem and sniffing it out.

　　The root of all of these lesser evils, the riots, the murders, and all the other things that people did to hurt each other and themselves in their state of panic.

　　But finding that main evil proved increasingly difficult, we had all our available men looking in places that we wouldn’t ever look, to begin with.

　　And a few others were charged with rescuing humans from each other.

　　It’s a full-time job babysitting an entire planet without any real plan of attack.

　　We needed a lead, a breakthrough, something to follow, just the tiniest piece of string to tug at until we get to where it originated and hopefully find what we’re looking for and stop it before it’s too late.

　　The main goal is to prevent the futures I saw in my dreams from ever happening.

　　To prevent a world or whatever is left of it, where vampires and humans are caught together, locked in a vicious war, fighting for the scraps left on a dying planet.

　　This can’t be our fate.

　　This is not our destiny.

　　Not so long as I live.

　　But to achieve that goal,

　　to avoid a future where we fight over a barren wasteland, we need to stop whoever is poisoning the world now, we need a lead.

　　“Irena?” Carlos called out to me in a tone of voice I recognize, a tone I hear so often from him in my time of need, Carlos had a lead.

　　“Yes Carlos,” I answered expectantly.

　　“Didn’t you and Magnus once fight a witch of Bloodville who swore revenge on the likes of which the world had never experienced?” He inquired, he was always one for the theatrics, never in a rush to get to the point, always looking to patiently explain every fine detail, sometimes it was cute, sometimes it was annoying.

　　“Yes Carlos, we did, get to your point,” I hastened him to the realization that everything we did from here on in was time-sensitive.

　　“Right, of course, I’m sorry,” he apologized after realizing that he had wasted too much time, and ended up wasting even more time, but that’s just Carlos, brilliant men always seem to be bad with communication.

　　“I found a site online belonging to some sort of cult of witches, they call themselves the daughters of Bloodville,” he said, sending a jolt of realization through my mind.

　　Suddenly it all made sense, the events, and attacks, so well planned and properly thought out, they could only have been engineered by the sinister mind of Maximus the Mad, and the ferocity of the spells could have only been cooked up by that evil witch from Bloodville no one else is that powerful, and the monstrous men that I’ve encountered so far, they were most likely creations of Babatunde the defiler, no one past enemy of mine was strong enough to cause this much damage, and the coordination of their attacks and the way their plans all seemed to link so well together.

　　They’re in cahoots!

　　Why didn’t I see this all along?

　　It’s the only thing that made sense.

　　Their individual efforts and attempts at my destruction would’ve come to nothing so they banded together to stand a chance.

　　Now that I know this, I know what to expect.

　　I gave out orders to adjust the search and make it more specific to find the defiler, the world was a mess but we had to look in areas where children turned up dead with their organs missing, that’s how we’ll find the defiler and as for the Bloodville witch, I guess we would just have to track down these cult followers of hers and find her through them.

　　And so with that, the search was intensified, Carlos closely tracked the activities of the cult for days while the rest of us did our parts in ways that we could.

　　And through Carlos’s close monitoring of the cult’s activities we found out that the cult would be meeting together to induct new members.

　　These sick fucks actually reverence that monstrous witch and gather in her name.

　　I am disgusted, but that’s exactly why we’ll be crashing their little get-together of the crazy bitches club.

　　So we mobilized our forces and waited for the night of the so-called induction, which was set to take place for three nights deep in the woods during the witching hours, how very fitting.

　　The plan is to capture one of them and drain her of all her information and also to hopefully stop whatever madness they have planned for their initiation ritual.

　　A ceremony of this scale would mean absolutely nothing to a bunch of witches without death and sacrifice.

　　On the night of the ceremony, I lead the raid on the woods myself, I’ve never been the type to sit on her hands and do not, plus being at home, seeing Alexey so blissfully ignorant, and knowing that I’m lying to him every single day, it breaks my heart, at least with this I get to punch something.

　　The members of the cult began to arrive as we lay in wait for them to gather before making our move.

　　When the last members came and took their spots it was clear who the higher-ranked witches of the cult were, and those were the ones we had to apprehend.

　　There were over a hundred witches in attendance and I had just under sixty vampires with me, the odds didn’t seem very good, since even the most incompetent of these witches reeked of enough black art power to burn this entire forest to the ground all around us with just a few words.

　　But we’re not here for a fight, just a quick smash and grab and with our vampiric speed, that strategy gave us the advantage we would be in and out before they knew it.

　　But then the lead voice of the ceremony asked the inductees to bring forth their gifts to their mother Agatha and they produced out of large bags, ten children for each of the ten inductees.

　　With a single glance, it was clear to see from the confusion on the faces of the children and the expectant eyes with which they looked at the women that brought them, these weren’t just random kidnap victims, these women were about to sacrifice their children, siblings, nephews, and nieces.

　　This was vile and evil and I couldn’t let it stand.

　　The plan changed at that moment, from a simple smash and grab, to a rescue mission and with luck maybe we could nab the lead voice of the ceremony as well.

　　I readied my vampires for our coordinated attacks.

　　“Ten of you would rescue the children one for each child, the rest would jump into the fray and cause havoc amongst the witches, and please kill a few of those bitches if you would be so kind, and I will go for the lead voice, she seems to be the most important person here and it would only make sense to grab her,” I instructed as my vampires gave silent nods in affirmation.

　　The ten rescuers were chosen and the battle plans were set, the lines were drawn and now all that was left was the execution.

　　I gave the signal and the vampires who would cause havoc sped into the crowd murdering the witches before they even realized what was happening, they started quietly assassinating the witches one at a time, snapping necks and spines and ripping out hearts.

　　I witnessed the whole thing from my perch where I waited to make my move alongside the men who were tasked with rescuing the children.

　　The silent killing carried on for a while until one person got sloppy and killed a witch a little too painfully causing her to scream before her death and alerting all the other witches to the fact that they were being attacked and that they had already fallen.

　　It was sooner than I hoped but enough witches had already died to the point where the numbers game was more evenly matched.

　　I gave the signal and the men who were tasked with saving the kids quickly rushed in and grabbed them before anyone realized they were gone and sped them off to safety.

　　Now it was an open playing field, the witches’ number had dwindled and there were no kids to worry about.

　　I rushed in with a magnificent entrance as I beheaded two witches at once upon landing, if only Magnus could’ve seen that, but too bad he’s leading the effort to quell the damage being caused by the armada.

　　Oh well, I’ll just have to tell him about it the next time I see him.

　　I hacked my way through witch after witch while the lead witch did away with a vampire after vampire, we were on a collision course with each other, the fight was inevitable, with each witch I killed I stepped closer to her and as she did away with my vampires she made her way towards me.

　　It was clear she was powerful and she might’ve even seen herself as a formidable foe as she barreled towards me with confidence dispatching vampire after vampire.

　　She was wrong however, by the time she had finally made her way to me every last witch in those woods had been killed.

　　And yes we lost a few vampires, mostly to her, but now she was surrounded, and hopeless in a fight against over thirty angry vampires, she knew this much.

　　It was written all over her face, the anguish of tasting defeat, a very bitter and humiliating taste indeed.

　　But to her credit she gathered the last of her strength and rushed at me, shouting out some sort of silly spell.

　　She shot balls of fire from her hands and I dodged them as she made her way closer and that’s when she revealed what she had hidden in her cloak.

　　A pitch-black rod made from the same material as Fabian's hands and teeth after he was turned into that monster.

　　“Die vampire, for the mother!” She yelled as lunged at me with the rod overhead hoping to bring it down upon me and stab me in the heart with it.

　　I simply grabbed the object out of her hands as it seared and burnt the skin of my palm, I powered through the pain and pulled her in closer.

　　“You bitch,” I cursed at her before delivering a thunderous headbutt onto her nose which shattered it and left her unconscious.

　　“Fuck that felt good, take her away,” I ordered as I looked down at the object which had fallen to the ground.

　　I picked it up and wrapped it in my jacket as I couldn’t touch it with my bare hands.

　　I held the object in my hand, the one that wasn’t just nearly burnt off and I wondered to myself.

　　What is this dangerous tool?

　　Where did it come from?

　　Who made it?