The Rogues Who Went Rogue
Chapter 92

Greg then joined the others at the partition. He felt the grill with his hand and murmured, "It feels...new."

Tate uttered, "Even where we're standing feels new compared to the ground inside. Wherever this leads to, this tunnel was a recent plan.”

Lucianne went to the far left, and stepped on boulders on the side, supporting herself with the grill as she stepped higher up to look for any strings, ropes or anything that may be triggered if the grill gate was tampered with.

Her husband sprinted over with wide eyes, and held her lower back as he frantically whisper-yelled, "Lucy, you could've asked me to do that!"

"I'm fine, Xandar. I'm just climbing." She then spoke to the others all at once, "You guys don't happen to see any strings or ropes connecting to booby traps, do you?"

Everyone's eyes checked the whole grill. Xandar's left one hand on his mate just to assure himself that she was stable before he looked around as well. Greg pondered on what he would do if he lived here. He'd kill whoever tried to track him down after his escape. It was a given that he preferred torture but the scale of this infiltration into the hideout makes t*****e a little too tedious for his taste.

Kill. That's what he'd do. But HOW would he have done it?

He turned around and observed the space they entered. It would have been nice to have installed some kind of motion and weight detector into the ground, programming it to detach and release those large roots protruding from the ceiling, killing whoever would be unfortunate enough to stand below them.

As for the creatures who weren't below those structures, Greg probably would've had a device installed in the walls to fire something at them, something that killed them slowly, like lethal scents of sorts. Desmond and Ivory came up to Greg in the midst of his thinking process, and the two said nothing until their boss was satisfied with where his train of thoughts paused before he asked, "What?" Desmond went first, "Boss, I dunno if whoever lived here dumb or we dumb."

"I don't take dumb rogues, Desmond."

Ivory went next, "It's as if that there are no security measures around this place at all, Your Grace. No detectors, no traps, no cameras. Nothing out of the ordinary. Picture a ceiling of a house with tiled floors and this is actually like any other house we've broken into in the past. Even those houses had cameras!"

When Lucianne and the others found nothing, Octavia got a fortis to break the grill and linked a few more to start moving the rocks before the royal members turned their attention to Greg's conversation with Desmond and Ivory.

Greg replied to the two followers, "I agree that it's odd but there WILL be something here. We just don't know what it is yet. If this tunnel is new, then the creatures who lived here didn't see the need to escape until very recently. If there was never a need to escape, there wouldn't have been a need to take any security measures. Whatever they've just installed, it'll be as new as the tunnel, and it'll be something that takes the least amount of time to put in place yet still create very significant damage." Tate uttered in Lucianne's way, "Please tell me he doesn't mean a bomb."

Greg threw Tate a berating look as Lucianne said, "I doubt it, Tate. Something that can detonate wouldn't have been hidden this well. The royal mavericks would've found it even if it were. I guess what we're looking for is something that looks ordinary but really isn't. It may contain some kind of...dangerous substance."

"Like Oleander?" Christian asked in worry, making Xandar's grip on Lucianne's waist tighten.

Lucianne put part of their worry to rest when she explained, "No, it'll probably be a substance that's harmful to vampires. No wolf or lycan has ever stepped foot into this forest before today, so I doubt precautions are being taken against us."

'Smart,' Greg thought. He was beginning to worry at the mention of Oleander as well.

Octavia looked at Pellethia and thought aloud, "Substance harmful to vampires. It's just beta-keratin at a very high concentration and...allicin.”

Ivory asked, "Where are those found? Tablets, sprays, laced on weapons?"

Xandar muttered, "Beta-keratin makes up our claws and canines. Allicin is a precautionary chemical injected before battling in the war for the wolves and lycans to hallucinate vampires within its proximity. Some lycans carried allicin around to jab it into the vampires but speed was crucial for such a success because allicin degrades fast when it's exposed to air, making it lose its effectiveness with prolonged exposure. So if allicin is here, then..."

The two-second silence was killing everyone, so Lucianne gently shook his left biceps and prompted, "Then what, darling?"

Xandar got lost in her eyes, and a soft smile graced his features when he reached out to stroke her fingers on his arm before he said, "Then it's possible that some of us had already found it but we didn't recognize it because it's inert."

Christian built up on that, "Inert, meaning that it needs a trigger to be activated. Heat, water, chemicals."

Greg started eliminating possibilities from there, "It won't be chemicals. That'd be way too complicated. The trigger would be something simple, something that any vampire would touch or use by reflex, something..."

POP!

The bulbs on all the lamps exploded and the chemicals within filled the space. Agonizing shrieks of vampires were deafening everyone in the hideout. Lucianne didn't think twice before she carried Pellethia and dashed out, and Xandar did the same for Octavia. As Lucianne placed the quivering empress under a tree about ten feet away from the metal opening, the queen linked everyone, 'Get the vampires out of there! Whatever it is, it might kill them!'

The wolves and lycans who were confused about what was happening sped around looking for every vigil and minister, and got them out. While everyone was worrying about the bloodsuckers, Greg yanked out one of the lamps before leaving, and got his followers to help the other wolves and lycans as soon as he saw what they were doing. After that, the duke leaned against a tree at a considerable distance away from the weakened bloodsuckers being brought out, and took the exploded bulb out of the lamp.

After throwing the exterior of the lamp to the side, his full attention was given to the bulb that lost two-thirds of the glass that was originally there. When he figured out how the ingenious invention worked, a menacing smile spread across his face as he muttered, "Clever, but not clever enough."