In a matter of seconds, everything had gone awry.

In a way that maybe I should have seen coming, but it was still fucked up. The vampire was out, burning from head to toe. But the sun wasn't doing anything to him, he'd already been burning before he went outside. Plague, on top of him, was burning too, but she didn't seem to give a shit.

If I didn't do something soon, she'd devour my soul. She'd fill her stomach, condemning me to oblivion without hesitation.

I had to do it, before the city fell upon us to exterminate the plague.

So I ran towards it. Maybe it's just that this new world was making me a little stupid and crazy, but I felt a pang of guilt, as I was preparing to literally stab her in the back, even though she had figuratively done it first.

I made the extra guns appear, that is, the ones floating around me in circles again.

Then, with thought, I fired them.

Plague dodged most of them easily, but the axe sunk deep into her back and she reacted. Turning her neck so fast it sounded like a dry branch snapping, gritting her teeth, baring them, just like a wild animal.

As if she was angry. Or had a right to be.

“What? I'm not going to sit around and wait for you to eat me, you fucking bitch.

This had been inevitable from the first moment, from the moment we met. These two and a half days, full of terrors and madness, had passed so quickly, looking back.

Plague had no mixed feelings, assuming she was capable of having feelings in the first place. Without a millisecond's hesitation, she attacked me.

Her tentacles flew at me like a rain of spears.

I managed to dodge that tangle for the most part. Not physically, by moving out of the way, but by becoming intangible before they could get me. Mostly, but in the end, of course, I got caught.

One of the tentacles tore my shoulder.

It would have been better if it had shattered it completely, for, buried in my flesh, it was nothing more than a handhold. From which to pull upward.

Plague lifted me a few feet above the ground, wounded, helpless.

I tried to cut the tentacle with the sword in my hand, but it was as useless as the first time I struggled with it, even though I should have become stronger due to the soul ingestion.

Either I hadn't become as strong as I had hoped, not yet, or Plague was on a completely different level.

One way or the other, I was well and truly screwed.

It sure would be a joke if my undoing was because of an 'ally' I had brought here myself. I'd say I'd regret it; I'd have been better off squashing her like a bug, but if it weren't for her, I wouldn't have survived until now in the first place. I wouldn't have gotten that close. Oh, what bitter irony.

The vampire seized the moment, crawling to the edge and diving into the water, snuffing himself out.

“He's getting away! We can't afford to fight each other, you stupid—”

I couldn't afford that language either when she had me by the balls metaphorically (fuck, I hoped it was still just metaphorical), but I couldn't help it. It just came out like that.

I couldn't help it, sue me.

Plague glanced back, as if she hadn't noticed until now, hesitant. She approached the vampire, who was swimming in the water still, perhaps because he didn't dare surface with this thing rolling around. But wouldn't he be more defenseless in the water?

Maybe he knew something I didn't. Anyway.

The important thing is that Plague didn't have the decency or the kindness to let go of me, of course. She had the competition on a very short leash.

I tried to fire all my weapons, but I couldn't cut a single tentacle. Fuck, what was going on here? With every second in her power, the more my fear increased, which was already at a level that would be paralyzing were it not for the fact that it was my very existence that was at stake here.

Fear that she would be the one to win.

Fear for my sister. I had to protect her; it was my mission.

Plague kept pace with the vampire, but she didn't dive in, for her prey, for my soul, yet.

“Of all the trouble I thought I'd win by stealing this boy's soul, the attention of an abomination like you wasn't one.”

“Shut your mouth and give it back to me!” I screamed, though he hadn't been talking to me.

It was funny that he threw out the word abomination so easily when he was a fucking vampire himself.

A creature that lived off the blood of real human beings, like a fucking parasite.

The only thing different between Plague and the vampire was that she only needed the packaging, while he needed the substance, the blood.

The vampire's face was burned, his hands too, though I could only see them when he pulled them out of the water. But it was also visible that they were healing too fast, just as it had happened with the cut he himself had made on his neck.

I had never expected it to be easy to kill him. But damn.

The world could give me a break once in a while; I wasn't exactly a model citizen, but I thought I deserved it.

“I'm afraid I still need it.” I hadn't expected him to respond. Sarcastic son of a bitch.

I spat at him.

Well, I tried, the spit ended up in the water and not in his face. But it's the thought that counts.

“I'm afraid I don't give a shit what you need.”

The vampire twisted his face as if I had offended him in some way. As if I could have offended him, after he had even violated my soul. But of course, what did a monster know about souls? I didn't know much either, I wasn't very religious to say the least, but more than him, for sure.

While we were exchanging insults like kids in the schoolyard, Plague had been following the vampire, but not in the water like him. He had been walking along the edge, following him closely, keeping him from coming up.

And then she just stopped.

“If you're so hungry, come and get me. Or are you more afraid?”

Was she? She had been following him, hadn't backed down even before, when touching him meant setting herself on fire. But now she was standing back, instead of jumping for him.

In the water he couldn't escape, so why had Plague been just walking so far?

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Could that be it, really? That she was more afraid than hungry, somehow, for some reason? I found that hard to believe, to tell the truth. Whatever it was, Plague stopped dawdling and jumped into the water. I didn't know enough about how she worked up there to guess if the provocation had worked or if she had jumped for another reason.

In any case, we both went down.

Because she certainly didn't let go of me. Only Plague touched the water, though. She kept my ass a few inches away from the water. Although she hadn't done it for my sake, obviously, it benefited me anyway. If Plague had been afraid to touch the water, I didn't want to either.

Plague swam, propelled not only by arms and legs, but also with her tentacles.

Everything started to go awry very quickly. He must have made a wound with his claw-like nails, because the blood began to flow with astonishing speed, just like that time.

Flowing from him to us.

It couldn't be a good thing. The vampire could create a great many things with that blood, not just a scythe, I was sure.

But what could he do, now that Plague was practically upon him? Had he been bluffing, after all?

No.

Not at all.

The blood began to solidify.

And with it the water. That's right. In a matter of seconds, he transformed all the water that the blood touched into an icy lake. In fact, ice was surely more fragile.

That was the catch, the reason Plague had been so hesitant. Now I could see it.

I found myself in the odd position of having to cheer for the vampire. It wasn't good if he won, but if Plague got this obstacle out of the way as easily as all the others so far, then she'd kill that creature and devour my soul before I could blink.

With the remaining blood, the vampire formed another scythe, it seemed to be his favorite weapon, even if it was impractical. It wasn't supposed to be a weapon to begin with, but an agricultural tool.

He brandished it.

“Son of a bitch!”

I shouted that because the blade of the scythe passed dangerously close to my neck, even though the attack had been aimed at Plague. I don't even know how I managed to dodge the blow.

The scythe didn't reach me, but same goes for Plague. It used eight tentacles in total to immobilize it, surrounding the weapon with them, pulling at it. Even trapped in the blood that 'froze' the water, she was far from helpless.

Then, the blood grew spikes. Like the traps that were so common in video games or adventure movies.

Spikes that stabbed Plague all over, but, more importantly, they cut off the tentacle that was holding on to me. And I fell into the water.

Yes. That's an important distinction. I fell into the water, not into the blood.

I started swimming. Away from it, away from the vampire too. Back to dry land. Maybe that's why Plague let me go. She could have easily grabbed me with her tentacles again. I had been ready to defend myself, swords in hand, but that didn't mean I would have been able to.

Lucia staggered out of the warehouse through the hole in the wall, as we had all done before. She was shocked. She didn't want to and couldn't believe what had happened.

But she wasn't feeling angry, betrayed. Not yet.

I could still take advantage of her.

She was the only person who was truly on my side in this world, and my only hope of getting out of this with my soul intact. Maybe I could beat the vampire, but not both of them at once. Not alone.

That was the key. Not alone.

Lucia looked at me, as if searching for something in the depths of my eyes. Guilt? Evil? There was plenty of one and plenty of the other. And part of it was for having deceived her, for having used her and put her in danger in this way.

“You...”

You knew. This was how it would end, but I couldn't let her finish the sentence.

“Help me, please, I don't want to disappear!” I begged.

I had had to perform in the past. Not on stage, well, yes, actually yes, at some school shows, but that shit didn't count. As I was saying, I did have to act before, but to appear stronger than I really was or felt. Not the opposite.

Not the child as I now looked. Desperate, scared.

I wasn't good at it.

If I was able to sell it, it was because I truly felt desperate. That helped with the trembling in my voice. To bring some tears to my eyes, unshed, blurring the view.

Of course I was as scared as a child, and I wasn't ashamed of it.

I had never dreamed of eternity and had made peace with death, all people had to sooner or later. But now that I knew that the seemingly unattainable wasn't so, that there was something more?

How was I supposed to keep my composure?

Lucia said nothing in response.

But she nodded, and that was more than enough.

Lucia got to her feet, with a little help from me, and we ran toward Plague and the vampire. Just in time, as the fight was about to end already. That's right, it had only taken a few seconds for that.

For her to destroy the 'ice' that had held her back.

For it to pounce on the vampire and its tentacles to pierce its body everywhere, leaving large holes in their path. Even so, the resulting explosions of blood seemed too exaggerated in violence and quantity.

If the vampire kept this up, he was soon going to be left without a drop of blood in his body. Was she really just giving him the upper hand by bleeding him? There had to be a limit, a line his body couldn't bear to cross.

Exposure to the sun was clearly not a line. He hadn't suffered spontaneous combustion, but I had at least expected it to bother him in some way. It wasn't like that. And if it was, it wasn't such a bother that it mattered.

That it changed anything.

His defeat was already sealed without needing any help from the sun.

Plague opened his mouth.

To the point that she unhinged the jaw of the body of the princess she had stolen, that she was using as if she were a puppet.... I should never have allowed that violation. But without her, I wouldn't have made it this far. That was a fact.

And if I could go back, I would do the same thing again. I swear.

Plague brought his mouth close to the vampire's neck, so close that it gave the impression she was about to finish him off with his signature maneuver, as if she had some sort of sense of humor in whatever passed for brains in that tangle of tentacles.

The tentacle monster didn't have time to do what she wanted, however, as Lucia did something. Magic, sure, but I couldn't tell you what kind. I just know that she moved her hands and the next thing that happened was that Plague's jaw flew off.

Revealing, of course, more tentacles. In the midst of that mess, of the flesh and teeth that hung.

Of the blood that kept falling.

Thick as a waterfall. It was like an old woman vomiting blood, at the same time a sad and grotesque image.

But that was only damage to the puppet. The real being was inside, protected by layers of skin, flesh and bones. Nothing but a giant tangle of tentacles.

That was the only sad thing about it, that this little girl's body had to be treated this way.

Distantly, I wondered why those drone-like things hadn't interfered yet. If they weren't in the sky to keep watch, to be the eyes of the police, what the hell good were they? And if they were, and it still wasn't enough, what did it take for them to leap into action?

Plague turned to Lucia angrily, but apparently her hunger got the better of her, as she soon forgot about the woman, concentrating on the vampire again. Or rather, on what he was hiding somewhere. In my soul.

Now the biggest threat wasn't the creature that had managed to outwit the reapers of another world to steal my soul, but the one that wanted to steal it from him.

What twists and turns life took. Most of them bad, all of them surprising.

“Stop, abomination,” Lucia said.

That was a bit like telling someone to calm down when they were having a nervous breakdown. To work it would literally have to be magic words. If she was an abomination, and no doubt about it, why would she stop?

But I had also been talking useless bullshit to the vampire, driven by a sense of injustice and rage, so I had no right to speak.

Nor would it make any sense. A waste of time, better to keep my mouth shut.

The abomination didn't stop.

It rose above the water and the ground, leaning with tentacles on the edge and also, presumably, on the sand beneath the water. Either it was shallow or the tentacles could stretch further than I thought.

She dragged the vampire with her, who already seemed all but defeated. Unable to move, flaccid, without strength.

Plague attacked them, keeping a few tentacles touching the ground so she could still be above us, literally and figuratively.

Lucia pushed me aside before I could react in any way.

For a moment I thought she had basically traded her life for mine, that of a dirty liar, a murderer, a criminal who had manipulated her every step of the way. And I felt like the worst scum ever.

But I shouldn't have underestimated her.

The tentacles didn't reach her. They hit something invisible, bouncing off, causing the energy to spread, making the barrier visible for only a few seconds.

For whatever reason, the drones chose precisely that moment to take action for good. They swiftly descended from the skies, like a bird after wounded prey, releasing sparks.

The sparks turned into a hell of a barrage when they were launched on Plague.

Half a dozen drones, all of them releasing a great deal of electricity on her and also the vampire, by extension. Both wet from head to toe.

Needless to say, it was very effective.

Plague writhed, howling like an animal that had fallen into a trap, until she and the tentacles fell, splashing. The tentacles went limp, releasing the vampire, sending him rolling down.

Immobile. But still alive and aware of what was going on around him, still struggling to keep going.

I didn't know if these things could damage my soul in any way, but I wasn't going to wait to find out.

So I stepped into the middle of that mess and got an idiot's reward.

“No, wait!”

The reward for ignoring her, when up until now she had only been thinking about what was best for me. That is, a shock with extremely high voltage and a quick drop between the two of them.

Very lost creatures, all craving the same soul.

Even Plague was more concerned about my soul than the drones that had attacked her. At the same time that I reached out a hand to try to slip a hand into the vampire's pocket, thinking he had to have it in there, in his clothes, somewhere, Plague was doing the same. But with a tentacle, which had quite a bit more reach.

I didn't get to see what it was doing with the tentacle.

Before that, I lost consciousness for the second time since I had come to this world.

——

When I woke up, Plague, the vampire, Lucia, nobody was there.

And in front of me there were only bars.

I assumed that the drones had accomplished their mission. To put an end to the situation and catch the criminals.