**Ch 374: Let the Battle Begin

Back at the old abandoned mansion, Rex walked into his bedroom right when he saw Victoria faint because his friend Theodore detained the unborn vamp baby.

"What happened?" Rex questioned him while he scanned his eyes all over Victoria's figure.

Theodore, his advisor with the ice gift, presented her arm for him to see her cut wrist. "She had woken one of her unborn vamp babies," he replied.

Shaking his head, Rex went to her bedside as Theodore moved out of his way. "You feisty little doe. I guess I didn't drain you enough," he uttered when he rubbed her cheekbone, which caused her to croon a slight moan.

"Kai could be on his way here," Theodore mentioned.

Gazing upon the beauty that stole his interest, Rex ordered after some silence. "Pick her up for me."

After Theodore embraced her tiny figure in his arms, they rushed to the backyard, and Rex quickly opened the portal to his home planet.

"Take her to my fortress and return quickly," Rex instructed.

Not stalling, Theodore bolted inside the portal with Victoria's body dangling limply in his arms.

On top of the roof, a guardian announced broadly. "Rex, Kai's scent has been detected!"

"The portal will stay open for six minutes. All the vampiresses need to leave with their offspring." Rex summoned right as Theodore had returned.

"She's chained to your bedpost," he informed Rex, which had him grinning.

Coming out of the mansion, with their offspring, a ton of vampiresses came to leave.

"Where's my wife?" Nina's husband questioned one of the vampiresses after he bounced in.

"Hasn't she returned from shopping with Savannah and their group?" a vampiress asked him.

"None of them have," he said.

Rex growled. "Kai better not have touched them!" Then he leaped to the rooftop.

Farther out into the deep forest, Kai's cousins and his cousins' adult offspring gathered together with their clans to fight. From where they collected within the darkness, everyone could pinpoint the portal's luminescent glow that extruded through the dense leafless shrubs and around the thick tree trunks, which cast an umbrage twilight effect within the forest.

With their mighty armies, Kai and his family soared swiftly through the forest. Within minutes, they arrived at the edge of the clearing where the rundown mansion bestowed itself before them.

Luminous red flickering orbs are what Rex and his army saw from on top of the mansion or around ground level, depending on their standpoint. Behind the trees, Rex could estimate thousands of red eyes maliciously narrowing at them.

"He brought reinforcements." Rex chuckled. His clan was outnumbered, yet, he wasn't timid by this observation.

After the portal closed, Kai and everybody else stepped out of the trees. Still, countless little ones and vampiresses remained because they didn't get a chance to leave. Amongst the immortal little ones were also human children and babies.

"Unless anyone wants a female minion everyone is to be detained, and the little humans are to be killed," Kai announced his orders. 

By the Vampire Covenant's decree, they had no more room in their Coven to spare any humans from Rex's clan to transform them. Thus, Rome and Glenn had to swallow their tongues on this bade demand.

High on top of the roof, Kai and Rex made eye contact from where they stood. Everyone else awaited orders to summon the attack.

"Strike them." Rex was the first one to command, while Kai and his cousins didn't move forth their armies forward. With a grin, Lucas, his advisor with an electrical gift, vertically raised his hand. Up through the tips of his fingers, an electrical current waved along his arms. Stretching his arm towards the sky, a bolt of lightning shot through his fingers. Electrical sparks struck above everyone's head before the deadly streaks of lightning aimed to strike Kai and everyone else with him.

"Ace," was the only name Kai needed to utter while his eyes never left Rex.

As the deadly lightning neared them, Ace raised his hand, and he attracted the lightning into his fingers until it had all been absorbed into his body. Once the lightning had been extinguished, Kai breathed in the air whenever the breeze blew in, and he found Victoria's scent.

"Charge!" he boomed.

Rex smirked when the entire army came charging in for the attack while they roared. "Hooah!"

"Let the games begin," Rex declared.

On that notion, Theodore blew a wintery chill from his mouth to freeze them.

"Watch out!" Glenn shouted when he saw the horizontally aimed icy raindrops coming at them.

Along with him, a handful of vampires and Alphas flew out of the way. Anyone who didn't move on time was instantly crystalized into an icicle.

"Move left!" Evan yelled when he tried to grab his son, but the young Alpha was turned into ice before he could do anything to spare him. 

To melt whatever remained of the sweeping ice, Glenn belched out a wall of flames from his mouth. Once it melted the icy raindrops, he quickly smoked out the fire by curling his hand into a fist. Unfortunately, the damage had been done on their side before he could stop the ice. Many young vampires and Alphas had been turned into ice since they had little to no experience in battles because they grew up after the wars. Numbers plummeted on Kai's side because of it.

Around the same duration, the mighty army from Rex's clan was now charging in halfway to battle Kai, and part of his Coven. With iron fangs and steel claws, the vampires from opposing sides strike each other with such might. The whole front yard and along the driveway turned into a bloody battlefield.

Vampires from Chester's clan managed to break into the mansion, which made the vampiresses duck undercover with their offspring. Ready to face them, Rex's clan fought these vampires to protect their females and young ones. Within a matter of seconds, they detained Rex's guardians. Chester bounced in, growling at the vampiresses and their offspring who hid in a living room.

"Where's Victoria!" his voice thundered. Wailing babies and weeping vampchildren was the only response he got from them. With their little ones, the vampiresses folded their knees underneath them, and they bowed their foreheads onto the floor to show they had surrendered, so Chester and his clan couldn't harm them until the battle was over. One particular mother shielded her adopted human infant underneath her chest.

"As soon as this battle is over. You'll all be detained with your offspring. Any human child or baby will be slaughtered unless you speak," Chester hissed more to the mother who was protecting a human infant, which caused her baby to cry louder, but she still didn't speak. 

"Since you refuse to answer my question, then your baby's blood is on your hands," he forewarned her before they walked away from the helpless group of mothers.

"Check everywhere." His voice echoed somewhere else from a different room, but the mothers still heard his scary voice as clear as day.