The presence of Blade—the living legend, the walking heresy, the Daywalker—was a shockwave in the blood den. While the human guests were oblivious, the vast majority of the resident half-blood vampires, creatures too new or too low in rank to have been fully indoctrinated by the Elders, only knew him vaguely as "the problem."
But the purebloods who ran this operation knew him with a visceral terror born of ancient warnings. Every young vampire was cautioned that Blade's renown wasn't just criminal; it was existential. He was the greatest bounty, a perpetual source of catastrophic loss, wanted dead across a dozen hidden vampire courts.
The golden-haired girl in Zhou Yi's arms, however, was clearly aware of who was glaring at her. She stiffened dramatically, her sinuous body turning rigid, and she shrank back, pressing herself desperately against Zhou Yi's tall, muscular form. She was no longer a playful temptress; she was a terrified animal hiding behind the biggest shield available.
Blade, his fangs subtly extended, fixed her with a ferocious, chilling gaze. The display was purely for intimidation, a signature of his authority, yet it had the expected, paralyzing effect.
Zhou Yi could feel every twitch in the girl's small, tight muscles, a mixture of profound fear and perverse excitement.
A weary amusement played across Zhou Yi's face. He turned slightly, securing his arm around her rigid waist and patting her back with a deliberate, comforting rhythm.
"Hey, Eric," Zhou Yi said, using Blade's familiar name with exaggerated casualness for the purebloods listening. "Is that what passes for flirting in your world? Scaring a partner half to death?"
Blade offered a wry, predatory smile, his eyes never leaving the petrified girl. "She is not a frightened pet, friend. She is a predator—one who would gladly sink her teeth into your throat the moment my back is turned. I was offering her the courtesy of a quick end, should she choose to continue playing."
Zhou Yi rolled his eyes dramatically, playing the role of the arrogant, rich human perfectly.
"Spare me the heroics, Daywalker. If she wanted me dead, she'd have had her chance five minutes ago. Your philosophy is simple: violence is the final, ultimate answer. Can you just stick to the mission and stop ruining the atmosphere for the rest of us?" He gave the girl a squeeze. "I enjoy the dance. If you're not joining, find your own corner to brood in."
With that dismissal, Zhou Yi smoothly navigated them away, pushing past the vampires who were too paralyzed by Blade's presence to challenge them. The girl clung to him, the combined terror of Blade and the intoxicating sense of danger fueling an intense rush.
As they moved toward a dimly lit stairwell leading to the private booths above, a dangerous idea began to ferment in the young vampire's mind. She looked at the powerful, arrogant man whose strength shielded her even from the legendary Blade.
It wasn't just admiration; it was a terrifying, possessive desire. If I turn him, she thought, her heart hammering against his chest, he would be mine forever. His strength, his audacity—all mine.
The thought rapidly escalated into an obsession. She pulled Zhou Yi's hand, no longer writhing but running with focused, desperate speed toward the empty rooms upstairs—a silent, unambiguous invitation to fatal intimacy.
Zhou Yi observed her subtle shift—the move from playful seduction to frantic, possessive intent. He smiled internally. Fascinating. The hunter now becomes the prize. Let's see what the Grand Duke's daughter is hiding up there.
Below, the disarmed and humiliated Light Axe, Villion, was undergoing a mental collapse. The ease with which the armored warrior had disarmed and destroyed him had been a deep psychological trauma, a physical defeat in the one area where he was unquestionably supreme.
His wounds—now externally healed by a generous donation of plasma—were nothing compared to the shattered pride that refused the comfort of his lover, Villion (the female partner).
Driven by an uncontrollable need for brute affirmation, he abandoned the main dance floor and retreated toward the House of Pain's service tunnels, hauling a crudely heavy, industrial sledgehammer he had grabbed from a storage locker. His massive axe was gone, but the desire for violence remained.
He found the makeshift kitchen empty, which was predictable. Blood was the only cuisine here. Villion leaned against a stainless-steel counter, letting his mind wander in a haze of bruised ego.
Suddenly, a metallic clatter jolted him back to attention.
He spun around, the sledgehammer raised defensively. Crouched near a set of old, unlit gas stoves was a figure that instantly replaced his internal rage with raw, instinctual terror.
It was a male R-variant mutant.
It was shirtless, completely hairless, and its skin was a stretched, sickly white that appeared almost translucent. But the defining feature was the ribcage—a grotesque, exposed lattice of fused bone that jutted out beneath its pallid skin, completely unlike the natural, rounded structure of a human or vampire.
Its garments were ragged sheets of fabric that barely covered its lower half. Its eyes, milky and half-closed, fixed on Villion with a predatory, sneering hunger that spoke volumes about its place in the new food chain.
The sight was the complete antithesis of the powerful, clean-living pureblood ideal. It was a projection of the filth and weakness that Villion despised, mixed with the chilling evidence of a species superior to his own.
The sheer, overwhelming surge of primal hatred and fear overrode Villion's tactical mind. He roared—a sound that was pure, unfiltered rage—and charged, his heavy sledgehammer aimed in a desperate, wide arc at the mutant's exposed ribcage. He wasn't thinking of the mission; he was thinking of redemption for his earlier defeat.
Meanwhile, the Captain of the Guard, Reihart, had exhausted his patience for stealth. He had secured a vantage point at the precipice of a reinforced stage that overlooked the main, chaotic dance floor. His position allowed him to monitor the exits and the entire swirling melee.
He even allowed himself a small smirk of satisfaction watching Blade disappear into a distant hallway, clearly distracted by his "acquaintance."
He was so engrossed in his silent vigil that he failed to register the faint shadow that detached itself from the heavy velvet stage curtain directly behind him.
The shadow belonged to another R-variant mutant. This one was hooded, slightly hunched, and its movements were almost painfully slow, meticulously calibrated to generate no sound louder than a shift in air pressure. Its clothing was a dirty, hanging sheet that revealed a similar, horrifying protrusion of fused ribcage, a visual testament to the mutation's internal, violent restructuring.
The hooded creature raised a hand—long, pale fingers tipped with black, obsidian-like claws—and reached stealthily toward the back of Reihart's neck, aiming for the pulsing, agonizing silver-nitrate device still embedded in the pureblood's skull.
The Captain's life was saved not by his own vigilance, but by the instincts of his long-time partner.
Chubba, the chain-mail clad enforcer, was positioned near the stage, monitoring the crowd. From his angle, he saw the mutant—the sheer abnormality of the hunched back and the exposed ribs instantly registered as the enemy.
Without hesitation or even a verbal warning, Chubba raised his heavy, customized assault rifle. It was loaded with .45 caliber rounds, each slug a hollow-point meticulously jacketed in pure silver, containing a microscopic capsule of highly concentrated silver nitrate and powdered garlic extract.
These were the ultimate anti-vampire rounds—designed to deliver a chemical, explosive payload upon impact.
Chubba let loose a controlled burst after Reihart—the bullets tearing through the stage's wooden floorboards, the sound sharp and brutal, momentarily silencing the music and sending hundreds of half-bloods scrambling in terror.
He fired half his magazine at the hooded alien. Saving his Captain was the priority, and the fate of the low-level vampire and human dancers was utterly irrelevant.
The scene erupted in blinding, concentrated light and smoke. Where the rounds hit the wooden stage, blinding flashes reduced the material to ash and splintered ruins.
But the rounds that struck the R-variant yielded a sight that utterly chilled Chubba to the core.
The silver-plated, chemically-laced bullets failed to penetrate clean holes. There was no clean, explosive impact. Instead, the projectiles seemed to flatten and embed themselves in the mutant's skin and muscle, creating shallow, suppurating wounds that immediately began to weep a sickly, yellow-green pus.
There were no sparks of silver contact, no immediate disintegration. The silver nitrate and garlic—substances that caused purebloods to instantly burst into ash—only caused the mutant to jerk violently and emit a low, wet hiss of pain, but they had no lethal effect.
Whistler's weapons are useless! The thought screamed in Chubba's mind. The sophisticated rounds, designed to kill his species with devastating finality, were nothing more than a painful distraction to this new, grotesque enemy.
The noise was deafening, the panic absolute. Reihart, whose back was to the initial attack, felt the sharp whistle of the slugs passing his head and the impact of the stage floor beneath him. He was no fool; he knew Chubba's signature rifle.
As the automatic gunfire subsided, Reihart spun, instantly recognizing the hooded horror hovering over him. He made his move—not a verbal command, but an ingrained, reflexive action born of years fighting side-by-side with Chubba.
He brought his weapon up and cocked it. It was a savage piece of machinery: the Archer, a heavily modified XM1014 combat shotgun that Whistler had refined into a kinetic-energy cannon.
The gun no longer fired lead slugs; instead, it used a refined pneumatic system to launch specialized, blunt-tipped, pure-silver spikes the size of railroad nails at velocities approaching six thousand feet per second.
The lethality wasn't based on piercing or chemical reaction, but on raw, concussive kinetic force—designed to deliver a massive blow to a pureblood's vital organs, liquefying them on impact.
This was the true ultimate weapon the purebloods had stolen from Whistler, a testament to the old hunter's genius for killing their kind. Reihart raised the Archer, kissed the stock affectionately—a dark, possessive ritual—and unleashed his devastating payload.
The Archer thundered. Four massive silver spikes exploded from the barrel. They struck the retreating R-variant with a series of brutal, non-penetrating thuds. Because the spikes were blunt-tipped, they did not pass through, but rather delivered their full kinetic energy.
The mutant was thrown against the back curtain, the four silver spikes embedding themselves deeply into its torso and abdomen, pinning it momentarily against the backdrop.
Reihart felt a fleeting surge of triumph. No vampire, pureblood or otherwise, could survive that blow.
Yet, the victory was instantly revoked.
The R-variant, impaled and gravely wounded, did not die. It merely let out a high-pitched, feral shriek—a sound like metal scraping glass. With a sickening, wriggling movement, the creature tore its body free from the spikes, leaving the four chunks of silver embedded in the curtain, its flesh ripping around the exit wounds.
It dropped onto all fours, a feral, hunched blur, and sprinted away with impossible speed, scrambling toward the deeper service tunnels behind the stage. Even the combined, seasoned senses of Reihart and Chubba could barely track its panicked retreat.
The hunt was over. In the span of thirty seconds, the entire Vampire Guard—Light Axe, Chubba, and Reihart—had encountered the enemy and failed to deliver a killing blow, even with their most lethal weaponry.
Their predictable "hunt" had been met with an immediate, full-scale engagement by a creature whose very biology defied their ultimate weapon, proving that the R-variants were not merely a plague, but a terrifyingly resilient, organized force of war.
The fight was no longer a matter of protocol; it was a desperate battle for survival.