“Hold,” Helena murmured under her breath, trusting her Coven to hear her. Like many, she passed her Gifts to the vampires she Turned. Oh, sure, they didn’t all get the full range of their Sire’s abilities; she certainly didn’t. But her gift of enhanced senses was remarkably consistent, and she had hand-picked the vampires for this mission. “Wait until I move.”

“Yes, Elder,” Victoire said, all the way on the other side of the building, but able to hear her every word. “On your mark.”

Helena focused on the building before them. It was nondescript, as buildings went. In fact, if she was choosing a place to lie low, it would be a good one. It was large enough to house as many as needed housing, accessible, and out of the way.

It also had a substantial underground parking structure. Ideal, if you wanted to hide a large number of vehicles and knew that your enemies could fly. 

Also very useful to your enemies when they didn’t care for sunlight. Helena had a team of her coven working to tunnel in. 

It wouldn’t take long. They knew what they were doing. Long ago, in the old country, they had occasionally warred with other Covens, and would tunnel into castles. During the World Wars, they did the same, for whichever side they happened to support at the time. 

Now it would break the defenses of a new enemy. One who did not have hundreds of years of experience. 

And they were calling on an old tactic of Teucer’s. 

Helena couldn’t help her own amusement. 

To think that an enemy of Troy would now serve a Helen, and not doom her. 

“Are we ready?”

Owen couldn’t hear any whispers except her own, but he trusted her tactics, and knelt at her side, his shotgun in hand, and his axe hanging from his hip. Helena could smell her grandmother’s knife somewhere on him, but didn’t bother herself to figure out where. It was enough that he had the blade.

“Not yet,” Helena told him, and bent to press her ear to the ground. 

Below the traffic noise, below the grumble of the water mains, below the sounds of the building itself, she could hear a song. 

Her Children liked to whistle while they worked. 

When the song ended, they would be ready. 

“I’m in place, Heléne,” Teucer said, humming along with the workers as he strolled up to the door of the building. “Shall I knock?”

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“Are you ready for this?”

“Oh yes. I do love a good bit of bloodsport.”

Helena laughed at her Sire as he resumed whistling, a villain theme-song medley, if she was hearing correctly.

The song deep underground cut off.

“We’re in place, Elder,” Halvert said, a single strong blow from breaking through into the basement structure. “Give the word.”

Helena smiled, sharp and cold. “Teucer?”

“Is it time, dear one?”

“It is.”

“Take them.”

Teucer laughed as he walked up to the door, and drove his fist into six inches of plate steel.

The door could have taken a rocket and held, but Teucer knew something about the breaking of doors, 

The steel door came off the hinges and embedded itself in the concrete wall behind it.

“Elder, was that the sign?” Victoire asked dubiously. 

“It was. Be careful. Halvert. Now.”

As one, her Children moved in. The building shuddered when Halverts’ team came up through the floor. Helena could hear screams as the humans inside suddenly discovered that their barricaded fortress was not as safe as they thought. 

Helena herself followed in Teucer’s wake with Owen at her heels. 

Inside was a bloodbath, that, by his gasp, Owen was not expecting. That, she supposed, was not unreasonable. He didn’t know Teucer, or Teucer’s history after all. Her Sire tended to come off as a lackadaisical cad, and a flirt as well, but he rarely seemed as deadly as he truly was. 

Helena took in the blood-spattered walls, bemused by her Sire’s attempts at impressionism wrote in blood. 

Owen swallowed once, but neither his steps nor his heartbeat skipped. 

“Who is Teucer again?” he asked hesitantly. Helena only smiled and didn’t answer. Teucer would tell Owen in his own time, or not, but it wasn’t her place to out him. “This… this is… a lot.”

That, Helena supposed, was true. Teucer was an artist with his chosen medium, but not everyone was comfortable with so much death in such a small space. 

None of the guards were in pieces larger than a hand. The floor was a charnel house, and Helena made sure her feet landed cleanly. It would be all too easy to slip here, and a slip at the wrong moment could get her killed. 

“Teucer is Teucer,” she replied, and heard the cheery whistle of a song lost to history. Screams echoed thought the building, but she had yet to smell vampiric blood. None of her Children were in danger. “He’s just ahead.”

Owen didn’t have a chance to answer. A door to their side burst open and humans flooded out, heavily armed and already firing. Helena put on a burst of speed and allowed herself to take two of the shots to protect Owen’s much more perishable form. The humans scattered when she hit them, leaving trails of blood in the air behind her claws. 

The boom of Owen’s shotgun told her that her lover had joined the fight, and she kept an ear on his heartbeat. It would be too easy to mistake him for one of the enemy humans, even with her scent marking him as her own. He was as much an artist as Teucer in his own way, and she moved freely through the human fighters to the music of his shotgun. 

Barely a breath after the door opened, the last of the humans hit the floor, choking out the last of his life. 

Helena looked down at herself, and sighed. 

“I liked this suit,” she said remorsefully, and trailed a finger over the bloody spatters that marked the white silk of her blouse. “I should have dressed better for this.”

“It will wash.”

Teucer was leaning in the doorway ahead of them, watching, and smiling faintly. He, Helena noticed resentfully, did not have a drop of blood on his crisp, white suit. 

He was faster than she was, and more practiced at killing. 

“Come, children,” Teucer said, and proffered his handkerchief to Helena, so that she could wipe away a spot of blood on her cheek. “I can hear fledglings through the next blast door, and it would be better if you and I were the ones to handle them.”