Chapter 63 The Airport Massacre

Chapter 63 The Airport Massacre
We checked the whole American research airport, and it was night, cold, and eerily quiet, and everywhere we went, there was nothing—no staff, no equipment in use, no planes taxiing, just emptiness and the echo of our footsteps, and I could feel the tension building in the air, so I turned to Tobi, who was leading the group in front of me, and asked him to check where Emmanuel was, and he pulled out his phone and scrolled for a moment.
“He’s too far from here,” he said.
“He’s at another location called Avions des Glaciers de Provence,” and I frowned.
“What does that mean?”
Tobi explained, “It’s another research airport, about five miles from here, and it looks like that’s where he went,” and I looked around again at the silent, empty airport, a chill running down my spine.
“Something’s wrong here,” I muttered under my breath, then raised my voice.
“Alright, everyone, back in the plane!”
As my men started filing back toward the aircraft, one of the pilots came down the steps and approached me.
“Sir, what’s going on? Why are we leaving?” he asked, and I turned to him, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“We can’t find anything here, and we need to head to the next airport, to see if we can locate Emmanuel there,” and he sighed deeply, shaking his head.
“I thought we were just going to drop you guys off and head back, and I can’t stay here longer,” and “I understand,” I said calmly, still holding his shoulder.
“All you have to do is take us to the next airport, and after that, you’re free to go home,” and he hesitated for a moment and asked,
“And you? What about you?”
I smiled faintly.
“Don’t worry about me, and once we arrive, we’ll manage, so just take us there,” and he nodded slowly, then turned and climbed back into the plane with the others, and we followed him aboard, and the engines roared to life, and within two minutes, we lifted off, and as we ascended into the night sky, I looked out the window at the empty, cold American research airport shrinking below us, and my mind was racing with questions and unease, but I knew there was no turning back, and two minutes later, the plane began its descent, and the lights of the French airport appeared ahead, signaling the next step of our mission.
The plane’s wheels hit the tarmac, and I could see the stretch of the runway ahead, deserted, quiet, and cold under the dim night lights, and as we all climbed down from the plane, the emptiness of the airport struck me, and there were planes parked in neat rows, their tails gleaming under the faint light, each emblazoned with the Eiffel Tower, a reminder that we were now deep in French territory, and everything looked ordinary at first glance, but the silence was unnerving.
I caught a faint sound coming from the inner building, and my head snapped toward it.
“Who’s there?” I shouted, my voice echoing through the empty air, and there was no response, so we moved cautiously toward the building, my men tensing with every step, and as we got closer, I noticed the door—wide open, swinging slightly with the wind, and something wasn’t right.
Suddenly, a man appeared, and he looked like a load planner, and his uniform was disheveled, and his eyes were glassy and unfocused, like he had no idea where he was, and one of my men stepped forward and shouted,
“Stay back!”
But the man didn’t listen, and before we could react, he pulled a gun and pointed it at my man, and I raised my own gun in response, but instead of stopping, the man charged forward at impossible speed, and my man fired multiple shots into him, and bullets tore through the air—but they had no effect, and the man leapt onto him and sank his teeth into my man’s neck, and my heart sank as I realized the danger.
I didn’t hesitate, and I reached for my silver bullet gun, loaded with rounds specifically for this kind of threat, and I fired straight into the man’s head, and the sound of the shot echoed, and the man’s body went limp, crashing to the ground, and my man staggered up, holding his neck where the vampire had bitten him, and muttered in shock,
“What the hell was that?”
I walked over, still alert, and said,
“He’s a vampire—but not acting on his own, and his free will has been taken, and he’s being controlled by someone else,” and the night air was heavy with tension as my men processed what had just happened, and I knew immediately that whoever we were tracking was close, and extremely dangerous.

I shifted the body of the load planner to face up, and my eyes immediately went to his neck, and there it was—the skin glue tracker I had carefully placed on Emmanuel’s neck, now stuck to this man’s skin, and my blood ran cold, because he knew all along, and he had been one step ahead of us the entire time, and he had played us.
Before I could react further, movement erupted from the building behind us, and at first, a few figures stumbled out—workers, but their eyes were blank, and their skin was pale, and their movements were jerky and unnatural, zombies, or rather vampires under some control, and then more emerged, and dozens of them poured out, surrounding us, snarling, and their mouths were filled with fangs glinting in the dim airport lights, and their sheer number made my heart pound.
I immediately grabbed my weapons, signaling my hunters.
“Positions! Don’t let them overwhelm us!”
My 15 hunters and I fought with everything we had, and silver bullets tore through the air, and stakes were driven into chests, and blades slashed across pale skin, but no matter how many we took down, more kept coming, and their speed and ferocity were unlike anything I had seen, and one by one, my hunters fell—screams, blood, and chaos all around.
I ducked under a swing, plunged a silver dagger into the neck of a snarling creature, and kicked it away, but even as I looked up, I realized the horrifying truth: they were endless, and for every one we killed, two more replaced it.
The fight raged on, my lungs burning, my arms aching, until finally, silence settled briefly over the battlefield, and the smoke of blood and silver lingered, and I looked around, and only three of us remained: me, Blake—who had somehow made it this far—and one other hunter, and everyone else was gone.
I shouted in frustration and rage,
“Fuck! He knew we were onto him!”
I turned and saw Tobi’s body lying crumpled on the tarmac, and I forced myself to approach and closed his eyes gently, my heart aching at the loss of my friend and brother-in-arms, then I shifted my gaze to where our plane had been parked, and panic gripped me, because the pilots had flown away, abandoning us, and the engines were silent, and the ramp was empty, and the sky above was cold and indifferent, and we were stranded, completely exposed, completely alone.

I turned to my two remaining men and asked,
“Does either of you know how to fly a plane?”
Blake, one of my recruits from New York whose parents had been brutally killed by vampires during a vacation, stepped forward, and his jaw was tight, and his eyes were focused.
“I… did an aviation course once,” he said quietly, and “Very good,” I replied, feeling a surge of relief.
“You’ll take us somewhere,” and we made our way to one of the small planes parked outside the abandoned airport, and the night air was biting, and the dim moonlight reflected off the wings, and Blake and I climbed into the cockpit, and I quickly outlined our destination.
“There’s a hidden kingdom in the mountains of Antarctica,” I said, my finger tracing the jagged peaks on the map I had memorized.
“It’s isolated, covered in ice and snow, and no one really knows about it, and it stretches for miles… a fortress and a city all in one,” and Blake raised an eyebrow, skeptical.
“You’re serious? That sounds like a fairy tale, man,” and “I’m serious,” I said, voice firm.
“Just fly it, and trust me, and you’ll see,” and I settled into the second pilot seat, letting the hum of the engines lull me, and exhaustion weighed heavily on me after everything we’d just gone through.
Two hours later, Blake shook me awake.
“I found it,” he whispered, awe and disbelief in his voice, and I looked out the cockpit window and saw it: a vast kingdom painted in shades of icy blue, and its walls stretched for miles, glinting under the pale Antarctic light, and the city was massive, but from above, I could already see the scars of conflict—buildings collapsed, towers broken, and smoke rising from certain areas.
“Land outside the kingdom fence,” I instructed Blake, and he followed without question, bringing the plane down gently onto the snow-packed ground, and as we stepped off the plane, the silence hit us first—the wind whistling past the empty gates, and the eerie quiet of a city abandoned by peace, and we walked through the open gates into the heart of the city, and the kingdom was clearly in ruins, like a brutal war had ravaged its streets, and rubble littered the pathways, and shattered banners fluttered in the icy wind, and the faint smell of blood and smoke lingered in the air.
People occasionally scurried past us—frightened faces, huddled in small groups, not daring to make eye contact or speak, and they ran as if every shadow held death, paying no mind to our presence, so “We should go to the palace,” I said quietly, scanning the horizon where the largest structure loomed atop a hill, still imposing despite the devastation.
Blake hesitated.
“How do you even know about this place?”
I exhaled slowly, memories of long-forgotten rumors flooding back.
“I once heard whispers of a breed of ruthless werewolves whose venom is lethal to vampires, and at first, I thought it was just a myth… but after everything we’ve seen… I thought it was worth checking out,” and Blake shook his head, disbelief mingling with awe.
“And you just happened to find it with a small plane in Antarctica?”
“I got a private pilot, and we flew for hours, through storms, winds, and blinding snow, and we were about to give up… but then we found it,” and the sight shocked both the pilot and me, because the city stretched for miles, and its buildings were massive, all clustered together, yet something felt… off, so we landed cautiously, keeping low, and our eyes scanned for movement, but the moment we set foot inside, it became clear that we weren’t welcome, and men with white hair shifted along the streets, and weird sounds echoed like warnings, and the warriors made it immediately obvious: intruders would not be tolerated.
Before we could even see a single werewolf, the kingdom seemed to come alive in hostility, forcing us to leave, and the people were amazed, but the energy of king and nobles pressed down on us like a physical barrier, but I noticed something, because right above there, standing beside the king, I caught a glimpse of someone I recognized—a member of the pure-blood vampire family, Timileyin, and my pulse quickened, because that’s why I had thought Juliet and Emmanuel might be here.
Yet now as we all walk through ruined streets and abandoned buildings, a sinking feeling is settling in my chest, because this place had seen war, destruction, and loss, and if Juliet and Emmanuel had been here, I doubted they had survived the chaos, but still, the palace loomed ahead, intact in its menace, and I knew that if we were to find answers, that was where we needed to go.

We approached the palace cautiously, each step through the snow crunching in the silence, and the grand gates were ajar, and the metal was bent and twisted, and inside, the palace was a nightmare frozen in time: white-haired guards lay strewn across the grand hall, and their bodies were lifeless, and their arms were frozen in mid-motion, and weapons were scattered across the marble floors, and the sight made Blake grunt under his breath, and I clenched my jaw, moving forward anyway.
At the far end of the hall, a figure sat on the throne, and blue hair glimmered faintly under the dim light, and the posture was regal, detached, untouched by the surrounding carnage, so “That must be their king,” I muttered, my voice barely audible.
We covered our noses with our hands as the stench of decay hit us like a wall, and each step toward the throne was heavier than the last, and when we finally reached it, the sight made my stomach twist—the king was slumped on the throne, and his neck was grotesquely slit open, and his life was extinguished, dead, just like that.
I sank for a moment into the weight of frustration, because another trip, another hidden kingdom, and once again, nothing accomplished, and all this effort, all this risk, and I still hadn’t found what I came for, and Blake’s voice cut through my thoughts, shaky but determined.
“So… what do we do now?”
My gaze drifted upward, catching the image on the planes parked at the French airport—the Eiffel Tower emblem, and it hit me all at once, because there was nothing left for us here in Antarctica, and the last confirmed lead we had was Emmanuel at the French airport, and if he was there… then our only real trail left to follow was Juliet.
I turned to my two remaining hunters, my eyes sharp with renewed resolve.
“Boys,” I said, my voice firm,
“We’re headed to Paris, and if we don’t run out of fuel first.”