More and more progress

　　Irena’s POV

　　We had successfully tracked down one of the defiler's creatures and trapped it in a corner with nowhere for it to run off to, all we had to do was capture it and take it back alive.

　　But then it called for reinforcements and was joined by thirty more of its kind, revealing that this was a pack creature, and just like that the tables had turned and we were the ones who were trapped in a corner.

　　We stood face to face with an entire pack of these creatures properly outnumbered, surrounded, we had nowhere to go, if we hoped to make it out of there alive, we had to fight our way out.

　　Fight our way out of the situation where the creatures we feast we’re equipped with body parts literally made out of obsidian, some of the vampires would not survive this fight but we had to try to stand a chance of at least a few of us making it out alive.

　　The fight is the creatures did the same they are surrounded, blocking all of our exits and ways of escape.

　　And then when the creatures had stalked us for long enough they finally launched out of full-scale attack as we struggles frantically to defend ourselves from their claws and teeth

　　It was a bloodbath, so many of my vampires were dead within the first few minutes until there were only eight of us left.

　　We stood with our backs to each other to avoid being jumped from behind, the creatures had also lost a few of their numbers and were cautiously waiting for an opportunity to strike, rather than lunging at us mindlessly.

　　This species, while weaker, was certainly smarter than what Fabian Ruiz was turned into.

　　And so we stood there deadlocked, waiting for one group to make the first, the first mistake so that the other could capitalize on that.

　　The creatures snarled at us and feinted attacks to try and goad a reaction out of us.

　　There were twenty-six of them and only eight of us, we wouldn’t be making any stupid moves.

　　The situation seemed bleak and I couldn’t see a situation where the eight vampires I had left could make it out all in one piece.

　　There wasn’t much I could do, I agonized and strategized in my mind but came up empty in every scenario I could think up.

　　Suddenly one of the creatures was struck dead from a distance by some sort of projectile drawing the attention of everyone there to the direction that the projectile seemed to have come from, where we found the sniper from Shiva’s party perched on a vantage point where he had the perfect lay of the land to rain shots down in the creatures, then suddenly as the creatures realized the severity of their situation is that the tables had completely turned, they attempted to scramble.

　　But before the creatures could get anywhere they were accosted by Munster’s forces who wasted no time dismembering the lot of them.

　　Luckily they kept one alive to be analyzed to trace its origins back to their market, Babatunde the Defiler.

　　But the creature they left alive was injured and since this species didn't seem to have a healing factor, its survival looked bleak.

　　So we packed it up and hurried it back to the warehouse which served as a base of operations for all our activities during the war efforts.

　　We chained the creature up as it clung to life and the first thing I did was try to recover information from its mind. This species appeared to be smarter, maybe it regains its memories as well.

　　I plowed my way deep into its head as its mind went dark and slowly shut around me. This is what a dying mind looks like: all the thoughts and memories are slowly engulfed in darkness.

　　I made my way through the creature's mind, seeing fragmented memories from the life it once had, two kids a beautiful wife, a dog, a nice house, and a good job, this creature once lived the American dream as a man and the defiler stole that from him to further his own ambitions and conduct his mad experiments, he had run awry for too long, it's high time he's found and brought to justice, by my hand.

　　The creature had extensive memories of an excruciatingly painful process that it went through, possibly during its morph into its current form, it had memories of a group of them clustered together in a damp, dark and smelly room, I was in its mind I saw these memories, I felt them.

　　The defiler was putting these people through hell and was loving every second of it.

　　I searched as hard as I could for a location, a clue, anything, anything at all that could lead us to the defiler’s whereabouts.

　　I felt like I was on the verge, I saw a house, some sort of cabin that closely resembles the one he had back in New Orleans, deep in the woods.

　　This was his hiding place, no doubt about it but where the defiler hid and conducted his dealings.

　　But where exactly was it located?

　　I dug a bit deeper hoping to find the exact location of the cabin in the woods but the memories grew darker and gained more distortion as the creature drew closer to death.

　　I found that the cabin was here in LA somewhere but couldn't pinpoint the exact location before its mind grew completely dark and I was sent hurtling back into my own head.

　　I felt disoriented for a while, I could properly hear or see anything, I had just experienced someone else's death.

　　When I was finally able to speak again I told Carlos and the rest of the research department what I had discovered to help narrow down their search as they analyzed the creature’s corpse to find more information, and so began the autopsy of a defiled corpse.

　　They were able to identify the oldest piece of soil concentration in the claws of the defiled, and through that, they were able to pinpoint the exact area where this creature first went on all fours and ran around like a wild beast.

　　The problem with the location that they identified was that it was the largest woodland area in all of California and we only had a handful of vampires available to cover those woods.

　　But I had no intention of sitting around and waiting for backup so I took the people available to me, about twenty vampires, and immediately moved out to scour those woods and find the defiler.

　　We took different vehicles and sped towards the woods at breakneck speeds.

　　I'd had enough of these crazy practitioners of the dark arts doing whatever the fuck they wanted simply because they had sworn revenge against me a lifetime ago.

　　And since Babatunde was the last of them I planned to take my time with him, I was going to relish in the sounds of agony that he would produce for me, I would kill him slowly and painfully over many days and through various sessions and forms of torture.

　　He deserved no less than the death I had planned for him, and it would be my pleasure to give him exactly what he deserves.

　　But that would have to wait, as we made our way towards the woods we came across a blockade on the road, it was the Armada.

　　They were so blatant in their activities that they had military-grade blockades set up on the major roads now and no one was doing anything to stop these power-mad bullies.

　　To avoid conflict we stopped the car, it was going to be hard to explain though as we were in a convoy of at least six cars, we were on a mission and had to look the part.

　　The mission was also time-sensitive and I had no intention of spending too much of my time on these clowns.

　　I sat in the lead car which was being driven by one of the drivers.

　　He rolled his window down to compel the man who approached the vehicle to persuade them to let us roll on through but as he put down his window he was immediately stabbed in the heart with an obsidian stake.

　　How the fuck did the Armada get their hands on obsidian?

　　The scene turned to chaos in an instant.

　　The armada opened fire on our vehicles while we were still in them, everyone got hit except Rita who dodged out of the way.

　　Lucky for us they were using plain bullets and we quickly healed completely and retaliated with our full might.

　　We murdered every last one of that squadron of armada troops with the only casualty being my driver who was caught completely off guard but now the question remained;

　　How did the armada get its hands on obsidian?

　　“What the fuck was that?” Magnus exclaimed as he let go of the body of the last armada soldier he had killed to fall lifeless to the ground.

　　“I don't know, but if I had to guess this is part of the defiler’s plan, this is their endgame, kill the humans in their masses and left their bodies to be found completely drained of blood so it seems like it was done by us vampires, this would then alert the humans of our existence and cause them to wage war with us out of fear and they also armed the humans with weapons that can harm us to give them a fighting chance, they're after this war, they want it to happen, but why?” I explained extensively trying to figure it all out for myself.

　　“And they also managed to ruin my Armani jacket, I knew I shouldn't have worn it, it's got bullet holes all over it,” Magnus whined as the rest of the vampires collected themselves and gathered the guns and obsidian stakes.

　　“Maybe I could rock it, sorta like a crazy bad boy fashion statement, what do you think Irena?” Magnus asked as he struck model-like poses in his perforated jacket.

　　“No honey, it's ruined and also not important right now,” I reprimanded Magnus, drawing him back to the serious reality that we were faced with. We needed to find the defiler’s hideout to stop him before things got any further out of hand.

　　So we abandoned the cars and went the rest of the way on foot, we rushed into the woods and made our way deeper and deeper, frantically searching and scouring the woods looking for the defiler’s cabin.

　　It took a few hours, we trekked through the woods covering large distances and ensuring to search every inch of the damn place.

　　I had the eerie feeling that we were being stalked.

　　Something was watching us, following us, hunting us.

　　But I couldn't see or hear anything apart from the sound of the woods rustling and rumbling all around us.

　　Something was wrong.

　　It felt like we were walking straight into a trap.

　　The entire forest had a sinister aura about it.

　　It felt hostile and unforgiving and those feelings only grew the deeper in we went.

　　At this point, I was certain we were being tracked.

　　“Keep your guards up at all costs, we're not alone in these woods!” I ordered as my vampires tightened their lines and walked with more caution.

　　The tension weighed heavy all around us but we had seen and faced so much worse over the years, what're a few cowards stalking us from behind the bushes.

　　After a few more hours of threading through the woods, we finally came upon it.

　　The cabin in the woods, this was it.

　　This was what I had been looking for all this time and there it stood in front of us.

　　But as we drew closer to the cabin our stalkers finally revealed themselves.

　　Multiple of Babatunde’s experiments, the defiled stood all around us and glared with malicious eyes.

　　This was it, this was the trap.