Chapter 199: A Gift from My Beloved

Commander Viks’s sharp eyes caught the young soldier frozen at the storehouse door, his hand hovering over the lock like a man reaching for something he would never touch.

"Hey." Her voice cut through the heavy air. "What are you doing here alone?"

Dale opened his mouth to answer. No sound came out.

His body wouldn’t move. His arms, his legs, his lungs—all of them locked in place by something invisible, something that wrapped around him like silk, like sleep, like the moment before drowning. His pulse hammered against his ribs, but even that felt distant, muffled, as if his own heart was beating in a room he had been locked out of.

Viks’s gaze didn’t waver from the shadows above the door, from the shape that clung to the rafters like a patient spider.

"Release him." Her voice was calm, but there was something underneath it now—a warning, cold and precise. "He has nothing to do with this."

A soft laugh drifted down from the darkness.

"Hehe." Lilith’s voice was light, almost playful. "No."

The threads tightened.

Dale didn’t scream. There was no time for screaming. The silk moved through flesh like water through sand, and his body came apart in sections too clean to be real. His head hit the floor first, his eyes still open, his lips still parted around words that would never be spoken. Then the rest of him followed, piece by piece, until the blood began to pool.

The vampire’s pale eyes tracked the spreading stain. Her voice, when it came, was quiet. Flat.

"What a brutal killing." She looked away, her jaw tightening. "It makes me uncomfortable."

Viks didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. The silver aura around her sword, which had dimmed after her earlier strike, began to pulse again. The light spilled down her arm, across her shoulders, wrapping around her like a second skin. The air in the storehouse grew heavy, thick with something that pressed against the silence that had settled over the room like a shroud.

Her voice, when it came, was no longer calm.

"Perhaps I was wrong to hold back."

She raised her blade, and the silver light surged, flooding the darkness, burning away the shadows where Lilith’s threads had been hiding. Her eyes, fixed on the creature above, burned with something that had been buried for a very long time.

"I should have killed you both."

Lilith’s crimson eyes widened as she watched the silver aura intensify, watched the woman below her transform from soldier to something else entirely.

’Her power... it’s increasing,’ Lilith thought, her threads coiling tighter around her fingers. ’What is she?’

Her lips curved into a slow, dangerous smile.

’Interesting.’

Below, the vampire stepped forward. Her movements were unhurried, deliberate—the calm of someone who had learned, long ago, that haste was a luxury she could not afford.

"You’ve forgotten something, Commander." Her voice was quiet, but it carried. "I saved you. Just now."

Viks’s eyes didn’t leave Lilith. Her sword didn’t waver.

"You." The word was flat, stripped of anything that might have been gratitude. "You let yourself be captured. And now you stand here, pretending to be innocent." Her grip on the blade tightened. "Do not insult me."

Lilith dropped from the rafters, landing without a sound. Her threads retracted, curling around her fingers like sleeping snakes, and her smile was wide and sharp as she looked at the vampire.

"You see?" Her voice was light, almost cheerful. "This is your fault. You should have stayed in your cage."

The vampire’s pale eyes moved from Viks to Lilith, then back again. Her expression did not change.

"You are all," she said slowly, "exhausting."

Viks’s sword came up, silver light blazing along its edge. Her voice was ice.

"Demon or monster—it makes no difference." Her eyes swept from the vampire to Lilith and back again, cold and absolute. "You bring nothing but ruin to humankind."

She moved.

The first strike was not for Lilith. It was for the vampire, who had been standing too still, watching too closely. The silver blade caught her across the left arm—a clean cut, shallow but precise, parting flesh like silk. Blood welled from the wound, dark against pale skin, dripping to the floor in slow, deliberate drops.

The vampire hissed. Her eyes tracked Viks’s movement as the commander pivoted, already turning toward her next target.

"Silver Flash!"

The aura condensed, compressed, then exploded outward in a horizontal arc. Lilith’s threads snapped up to meet it, weaving a barrier of silk and shadow but the silver light burned through them, searing the threads to ash. Lilith’s threads anchored to the ceiling beams, yanking her upward in a blur of motion, the crescent of light passing beneath her close enough to singe the ends of her hair.

She landed in a crouch, her smile sharp, her eyes bright.

"You’re so eager, Commander." Threads spiraled from her fingers, thin as spider silk, dark as poison. "Was that human important to you?"

Viks didn’t answer. Her blade swept up, then down, driving Lilith back toward the vampire, forcing her to retreat or be cut.

The vampire let out a slow breath.

Then the screaming started.

It came from the doorway—the guard who had stumbled in at the worst possible moment. His eyes were fixed on the blood pooling beneath Dale’s remains. His mouth opened to call for help, to beg for mercy, to do something, anything—

The vampire moved.

Her hand closed around the guard’s throat, and her fangs, when they sank into his neck, were not the hesitant things she had shown before.

He tried to scream. The sound died in his throat as she drank, as the blood that had been his life, his fear, his last desperate hope, drained away into her. His eyes went wide, then empty.

She let him fall.

The body hit the floor with a sound like meat hitting stone. The vampire wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her pale eyes fixed on the two women who had been fighting over her like wolves over a bone.

Her voice, when it came, was no longer quiet.

"I am tired of this."

She stepped over the body, and her aura—the one she had been hiding, rose around her like a tide.

The vampire raised her hand, and the blood that had pooled beneath Dale’s remains answered.

It rose in a slow, deliberate spiral, dark and glistening in the dim light of the storehouse. The drops that had scattered across the floor, that had soaked into the cracks between the stones, that had stained Viks’s sleeve where the earlier cut had bled—all of it pulled together, coalescing into shapes that hung in the air like waiting knives.

Lilith’s smile sharpened. "Finally. You’ve decided to join the fun."

The vampire’s pale eyes fixed on her, cold and flat. "You talk too much." A blood-red blade formed in her hand, its edge gleaming with something that was not quite light. "I’ll kill you first."

She moved.

The blade came down in a clean arc, faster than anything Lilith had faced tonight. Lilith’s threads snapped up to meet it, weaving a barrier of silk and shadow that had turned aside steel, that had held against strikes meant to kill.

The blood blade cut through them like they were nothing.

Lilith’s threads snapped to a rafter, yanking her sideways in a blur. Her body contorted—limbs folding, spine curving with the fluid wrongness of a spider retreating into shadow. The blade passed close enough to draw a thin line of red across her cheek. She landed in a crouch, one hand pressed to the wound, her smile still fixed in place.

"Sharp," she murmured. "Very sharp."

The vampire didn’t answer. She was already moving again, the blood around her condensing into a dozen smaller blades that shot toward Lilith from every angle.

Lilith’s threads moved faster than thought, wrapping around her arms, her torso, her legs, forming a second skin of silk that gleamed darkly in the torchlight. The blood blades struck her from all sides—some glancing off, some embedding themselves in the layered threads, but none drawing blood.

She straightened, threads already reforming, and laughed softly.

"Is that all?"

The vampire’s eyes narrowed. She opened her mouth to respond—

Viks’s blade cut between them.

The silver arc was aimed at Lilith, who had been distracted.

The blade struck Lilith’s side and stopped.

A shimmering barrier flared around her, translucent and crystalline, absorbing the impact and scattering the silver light in a cascade of harmless sparks. The Bracelet on her wrist pulsed once, then dimmed, its power spent for the moment.

Viks’s lips pressed into a thin line. "Tch. So you have an artifact."

Lilith touched the bracelet lightly, her fingers tracing the warm metal. Her smile, when it came, was different—softer, somehow. Almost fond.

"A gift from my beloved." Her voice was light, almost dreamy. "It works quite well, doesn’t it?" She glanced at Viks, her smile sharpening. "I’m quite fond of it."

The vampire had recovered. She stood a few paces away, her face pale, her breathing shallow, but her eyes were fixed on Lilith with something that might have been calculation.

"A gift," she repeated, her voice flat. "From your beloved." Her lips twisted. "How touching."