1 Prologue

While men live their lives and work to maintain it, sometimes things happen in the shadows without their knowledge. Sometimes war happens without their knowledge.

...

Rain… it was strong and intense, with its black and heavy clouds covering most of the night sky and soaking the streets of Budapest that were quite busy as expected. Right in the middle of the large crowd of people who were just walking around and running their own business, three men hurriedly walked to accompany a young dirty blonde one who had not even realized he was being followed as he headed for the subway.

Gabriel Brick, remained uncomfortable with his "co-workers" while trying not to be bothered by the rain that besides being completely wetting his black leather jacket, was soaking the beanie covering his grey hair. He was never a fan of rain, but here they were following a young man to the very crowded subway entrance.

As soon as the three men entered the station and started to follow the blond boy towards the train car on the platform, the biggest one: a bald, black man wearing a long coat, suddenly stopped and looked around for something different. Brick did not understand at first, until he too was greeted by the sense of presence that the three were well acquainted with. The difference is that he knew where it was coming from, unlike his teammates.

The black man spun, looking between Brick and a pale, young-looking but rather dark guy who wore black clothes and an long coat, in addition to appearing to be following the trio. The black man looked at Brick, who was already aware of the situation and shook his head at his older companion in a 'no' gesture that was ignored.

"Bloods!"

'Did he have to shout so loudly?' Brick thought annoyed, pulling out his desert eagle at the same time that Raze pulled out his pair of Uzi after letting out his battle cry. He fired at the man in conjunction with Raze, but the target escaped the shots while drawing his own weapon.

Brick's other companion, drew his own desert eagle and shot the man's female partner, a woman with pale skin and dark brown shoulder-length hair, wearing an long coat and a uniform similar to the man they shot, as well having an equally dark presence with the double lethality. She dodged the shots and hid behind a pillar to escape the shots.

Although the bullets did not hit the intended target, they certainly hit the girl's partner, the man they had spotted first, who collapsed on the ground and started to burn due to the ultraviolet property of the bullets that hit him. Brick hid behind the pillar, keeping his gun high and looking at his two partners who were still frantically shooting at their opponents.

Brick aimed his gun at the stairs and fired when two more men came for. Although he hit one of them in the chest, he was unable to eliminate the other when the woman left the corner with a pair of modified Berettas and shot in their direction, forcing Brick to hide behind the pillar again and causing his other companion to step back.

"Raze! Could you please..." Brick spoke to the black man who was reloading, gesturing his head to the woman who was still keeping them suppressed by the heavy fire.

Raze violently loaded his Uzi and fired at the woman who stepped back to escape automatic fire. Brick's other partner aimed and fired wildly at the dark and fast woman, but the shot ended up hitting a random woman who winced in pain.

Brick, who returned his focus to the shootout when the man he had failed to eliminate fired his P90 in the direction of Raze, causing him to retreat into the train before shooting through a window at the hiding shooter. The careless fool who had hit the woman in the crossfire, ran to the young man they were originally following, who was treating the woman's bullet wound. Trix tried to grab him, but he was stopped when the dark woman came out from behind the pillar and shot him in the chest.

She was about to kill him, but Brick intervened and fired at her, causing her to retreat again. He then ran to his fallen companion and grabbed the collar of his coat, dragging him into the train while Raze fired at the woman's partner, who was very focused on trying to hit the bigger man to notice them. Brick opened the car door, throwing himself on the tracks and dragging his injured companion along with him just in time to escape several shots from the dark woman.

"Better not stop to admire the scenery, Trix." Brick spoke to the injured colleague, pushing him.

Both of them ran hurriedly, moving further and further away from the stopped train and the station without looking back. Trix because he was afraid of being shot in the face, and Brick because he wanted to prevent his teammate from being shot in the face even though he thought he would be deserved after the crap he did. The two stopped around the corner in a tunnel on the tracks, with Trix sitting against the wall and sticking his fingers into the bullet wound and Brick looking at the tracks around the corner, keeping the desert eagle ready.

"Looks clear, at least for now." Brick said, putting his gun away and diverting his attention from the tracks to Trix, who grunted as he removed the smoking silver bullet from his chest. "You look like bloody shit dude. And that's the kind way of saying that you look really fucked up, I'm almost shedding tears here."

"Very… funny, asshole." Trix replied, still feeling pain and discomfort from the healing wound.

"Don't act like a little princess. Come on." Brick held out his hand to help him to his feet. But as soon as Trix accepted, he fell on his butt to the floor again when he was met with a punch in the face.

"Why the hell did you do that?!" He growled angrily, holding his now sore nose and moaning softly when his chest wound pulsed.

"That's for the girl you hit on the subway, asshole." Brick replied in a serious and stern tone "We had a job, and that didn't include shooting random humans! Now, I don't know if I blame you or your terrible aim."

"Fuck you, she was just collateral damage and that's it!" Trix said in an annoyed way, which only served to elicit a brief growl of rage from Brick.

"Listen to me dumbass, we-" he didn't even finish his sentence when he heard the light but audible footsteps of something moving very fast along the tracks towards this direction. As if that were not enough, they both faced each other when they felt the same thing: the presence of the dark woman.

"I think she liked you." Brick scoffed before offering his hand to Trix, who hesitated for a minute before accepting when he saw that he wasn't going to get another punch in the face.

Both went to a railing on the floor that Brick abruptly opened. As soon as Trix jumped into the hole, he followed right behind and pulled the grid back down, closing the passage. When they found themselves in the more or less familiar environment of the dark tunnels, Brick started to move forward on the path he knew would lead to the den, but stopped when he saw that Trix was not following.

"What are you doing?" Brick asked angry, trying to keep his voice low.

"If we go, she'll follow us. I'll finish the job and make her pay for that lucky shot." Trix replied in an equally low tone, triggering the desert eagle.

"It wasn't a lucky shot you idiot! We have to…." Brick fell silent when he heard the light steps that were now above. He hid around the corner and Trix used the darkness as a cover. As soon as the rail opened, Brick again pulled out his desert eagle and was mentally berating himself for leaving Trix came along. The sound of something landing on the floor was all they needed to be quiet.

Brick looked around the corner and saw that it was really the subway woman, who in an impressive demonstration of speed spun backwards at the same moment that Trix fired at her, lowering himself from the path of the bullets and shooting him four times. Brick closed his eyes sadly when Trix hit the ground and the woman fired four more shots of her P90 into Trix's chest, which finally stopped moving at the same time that her gun clicked empty.

She bent over Trix's body, taking her desert eagle and removing the mag in a kind of analysis when she noticed the ultraviolet bullets. While she studied the lethal ammunition for her type, Brick came out of the corner with his gun pointed at the woman who, unbeknownst to him, had already noticed the second presence with her in the tunnel. She spun around again, pointing her second P90 at him at the same time he was also aiming at her.

They stared at each other for about a second, but it seemed to last for an eternity. That was long enough for both of them to look into each other's eyes that were shining in their respective cloud and electric blue color. Despite the seemingly supernatural change in their eyes, they knew that behind it there was also the coldness of two hardened soldiers.

They pulled the trigger on their guns and the bullets were fired. For luck or bad luck, Brick was hit by two rounds on the shoulder that made him stumble back, while his round brushed the woman's arm, causing an intense pain and burning sensation that made her hide on the corner at the same time he rolled onto cover. Brick slowly stood up, letting out a small roar of pain mixed with anger as he dipped his fingers into the wound and started digging up the bullets.

Although it hadn't hit her directly, brushing her arm was enough to create a burn that made her let out a brief groan of pain from the intense burn on her arm. Due to her accelerated healing, she knew it would heal very soon, but that was not enough to stop her eyes from continuing to shine with anger and murderous determination.

Feeling fed up, tired and in a bad mood, Brick put his gun in his coat holster when the pain in his shoulder started to turn to anger followed by an intense and almost unstoppable rage. It was so intense, it provoked a series of animal snarls and wolf sounds when his teeth started to lengthen into sharp canines and his bones snapped briefly, making his muscles grow and fill, producing a small amount of hair and his features lengthening.

This inhumane change did not go on until its complete, because heavy footsteps came at great speed up the floor and a big imposing werewolf came down the rail and advanced towards the woman, who pulled four shurikens and hurled towards the werewolf who was about to jump on. The objects lodged in the monster's chest, making him stop briefly, which was enough time for her to turn and run at an absurd speed. The werewolf did not let himself be shaken much longer by the wounds and accelerated furiously through the tunnel that the woman had run, starting a frantic chase.

Brick watched as the woman disappeared like a blur, with Raze totally angry and in his changed form chasing her. With that, he allowed himself to relax enough for the partial signals of the change disappear. His face and body returning to a fully normalized state with no signs of its true nature when the change was stopped.

"Now that's what I call running after a girl. Except for the part he's not gonna pay her a drink." Brick said to no one in particular as he watched the tunnel they went through.

Trying not to feel the pulsing pain from his wound in the shoulder that was healing more slowly due to the silver that was there, he went over to Trix's body. Brick looked at the brutally shot and battered state in which he had died, closing his eyes and being in respectful silence for a minute before bending over and throwing him over his good shoulder.

'You should have heard me, stupid.' He thought, preferring not to speak out loud. Although Trix's silly tactics and behavior made him angry most of the time, he didn't want him to end up like that. None of his brethren actually, not if he could avoid.

A long, deep animalistic roar echoed through the tunnel. Although it meant nothing to anyone who heard it, for Brick it was a sign that Raze was still hunting down the fatal beauty, and he wasn't going to stop until he managed to catch her or until she killed him.

Preferring not to meddle, Brick just made his way through the dark tunnel with Trix's body, leaving Raze to have his fun.

...

Once inside the underground and questionable hygiene place where he and his brethren had made their den, Brick walked with Trix's body still in his hands.

Not wanting to waste time with the lycans around the den looking at him, Brick headed for the lab where he dropped the body on a table, alerting the Austrian lycan scientist wearing a bloodstained lab coat.

"I see you came back. From your face and that corpse, I assume you weren't very successful." The scientist said, observing for a moment the battered state of the body.

"We'll leave the street stuff for me and the scientific shit for you. Here's your new crazy scientist project: see if you can do anything to help him recover. He had hell thrown at the head." Brick said, removing his rain-soaked beanie.

A new presence in the laboratory alerted the two when a naked black man with four shurikens embedded in his chest entered.

Raze looked condolently at the corpse, but before he or anyone could say anything, a man with long hair and an expression hardened by centuries of war entered the lab.

"Boss." Brick greeted the lycan leader, who nodded before looking at the body and the two lycans questioningly.

"We were ambushed. Death dealers, four of them." Raze informed Lucian, while Singe removed the clothes from the corpse and Brick took the cigarette wallet from his jacket pocket.

"And the candidate?"

"We lost him." Raze replied, ducking his head briefly in shame at his failure.

"You lost him." Lucian repeated, annoyed by the results of the past events. But specifically with the failure of his men to carry out the assigned task.

'Yes, we lost him after the egghead decided to play Lucky Luke with the death dealers without thinking of a plan.' Brick thought.

"What a mess." Singe commented as he remove the shirt and jacket from Trix's body, looking at the gunshot wounds

"Eight silver rounds as far as I could count. Hot and painful as hell itself, prevented him from making the change." Brick said as he raised a cigarette to his lips, lighting and swallowing deeply.

The lycan scientist drove forceps into the bullet hole, extracting a silver bullet that was smoking due to blood and contact with the tissue.

"There is no point in digging out the others, the silver has penetrated his organs. Regeneration is impossible at this point." Singe gave his diagnosis, making Lucian look away in frustration and regret.

Dropping the bullet, Singe focused his attention on the shurikens trapped in Raze's chest.

"The vampires didn't realize you were following a human, did they?" Lucian asked. The last thing he needed was more future interference, or the entire coven to be suspicious of his activities.

"No." Raze replied, letting out a little grunt of pain when Singe started removing the shurikens to his discomfort. "I mean, I don't think so."

"You don't think or you don't know?"

"He probably doesn't know, considering how all the shit happened." Brick said before Raze could, lighting his cigarette and blowing smoke. "Even if they don't realize it, they surely will later. The death dealers aren't stupid. Besides, Trix and Raze were not very discreet up there."

"We were being followed, what did you expect me to do?" Raze asked angrily, cringing when Singe pulled out another shuriken.

"How about planning before playing the dumbnator?" He replied evenly, although he was trying hard not to shout too.

"Enough!" Lucian shouted, shutting them both up before the discussion reached another level. "It doesn't matter whose fault it is, you lost the candidate and nothing you say is going to change that."

Singe took this as an opportunity to interrupt the process of removing the last shuriken from Raze's chest to go to his testing area and subjects where he could test the blood.

"The result was negative." The lycan scientist reported disappointedly when he returned. "I'm really must have a look at this Michael."

"Do I have to do everything myself?!" Lucian spoke angrily, leaving the laboratory in a very frustrated way.

Brick just sighed before putting out his cigarette and throwing his wet jacket on the floor. He looked briefly at Raze, who was about to remove the last shuriken.

"You should put on a bandage or something." He said to the black lycan, leaving the lab for any quiet space in the den.

'I'm going to take a coffee'