Despite what he had just said, he had a confident smile on his face, as if he didn't consider us a threat at all. Maybe he thought we had come this far too fast. That showed that we hadn't been able to kill his henchmen.

Not because they were strong, but because they were innocent.

Maybe he was now convinced we had that kind of weakness of heart, maybe he had some ace up his sleeve. Or he was just plain stupid.

“You're acting very confident, but you sure did break down quickly when Plague got the drop on you. You were like a sack of garbage being tossed around.” I had been on the brink of death there, by the sea, and I had wasted that opportunity by being impatient. Greedy. But I wouldn't make that mistake again. “What's the matter, do you think you can take me so easily? Us, just a boy and a nun?”

“The nun is powerful and you... I know you're not normal at all. But, even if it were otherwise, it would be stupid to underestimate you. Sorry, but I'm not that kind of person. So...” His smile grew even wider. His fangs gleamed under the pale light of the barrier. Was he charging himself with energy? With the lives of all the guests? “I will crush you quickly, without mercy. Right now.”

He rushed straight for us. More than running, he seemed to be sliding along the ground. That's how smooth and fast his movements were. There was no chance of mistaking this damn thing for a human being.

Lucia tried to set him on fire. In the warehouse it had worked, but only because he'd been busy with me in the meantime. This time the vampire saw it coming, and he undid the fire with no trouble. He didn't do anything special, at least that was visible to the naked eye, but he didn't even burn his fingertips, with which he touched the flames.

I had no frame of reference for all this shit. I could only assume that they were both capable of using magic, and the vampire was simply more experienced.

He must have lived long enough. Wasn't he already tired of life?

Why had he had to do this, put me in the middle of all this mess? And even if he had to start it, why me, why me, why me, damn it, why me, why was it always me?

I was ready to react, a sword in each hand.

But still I wasn't able to react in time.

His hand, arm moving like a whip, reached up to my neck and closed like a bear trap. The vampire lifted me up, only to put me down again, slamming me to the ground. I heard something crack and for a moment I thought the floor would collapse, dragging us both down with it.

Nothing of the sort happened. At least for the moment.

“You won't have to wait for the end of the seven days. I will make you disappear right here, right now. I, the great vampire Edmond Dantes!” he proclaimed to the heavens, his face contorting like a madman's, his free hand clenching into a trembling fist. There was rage there.

A rage, a need to exist, despite how much he should have lived.

By now, I would be more than fed up.

But...

The blade of one of my swords pierced his neck, splitting his apple in two, and came out the other side. Blood spurted over me, gushing. It stuck my hair to my forehead, got into my eyes, but I only squinted. I squinted and kept pushing the weapon.

A rage, a need to exist?

I had it too, and it was greater than this abomination could even dream of. Because I wasn't fighting for myself! That's why!

This inhuman creature didn't know the power of sacrificing yourself for another person, of having something to lose beyond your own skin.

“Shut the fuck up, Edmond. I've had more than enough of hearing your voice.”

Edmond put both hands on the edge of the sword, not caring if he cut his hands. Of course not, blood was his strength.

But he didn't crystallize the blood, forming a scythe or some other weapon.

Nor did he make the blood sprout spikes, filling me with holes in the blink of an eye. He grabbed the sword with both hands and pushed.

But not forward. Backwards.

Edmond thrust it toward his own neck. Through the hole. To the other side, where it fell, out of my reach. He passed the sword through the hole in the neck as if it were no big deal. His smile never faltered, if anything, perhaps it had grown wider.

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Maybe. It was hard to tell when I hadn't been able to notice Edmond's expression, only the sword. And the enormous amount of blood.

The insanity he had just done.

I could have made the sword I had lost disappear and return it to my hand at any moment. But I didn't, I was paralyzed. That thing was completely insane.

How on earth had he done that?

Daring, even knowing that nothing would happen to it, that the wound wouldn't last? It wasn't natural.

So what, that wasn't going to make me back down.

The cut on his neck closed quickly. Lucia raised her hands, both wrapped in a fire that didn't burn her, but then Edmond extended a hand toward her.

At first I thought it would be to do something, some kind of magic.

But no, it was just a gesture telling her to stop.

“If you launch another fire magic attack, I'll kill ten of the people in this hotel.”

“You wouldn't dare.”

“No? Why not? I'm a monster. In more ways than one.”

“I don't know why you're doing this,” Lucia replied, slowly and after a while, “but I can tell you don't have enough with that boy's soul. You need them.”

“Yes, but not all of them. I chose this place as the target of my soul-devouring barrier because it allowed me a lot of, shall we say,” Edmond spat more blood than saliva, painting his lips crimson, “redundancy. So I can afford to lose a few. Ten here, ten there, who knows. Would you let them die? Even though you can still save them?”

No. She would never do that, no way. Her identity would collapse if she did something like that. Besides, it was a relatively easy request to fulfill.

She still had wind magic to use, even if she tied her hands like that. Wind magic, in fact, would perhaps be even more effective on this battlefield than fire. After all, all it would take was for him to fall.

Unless he could turn into a bat or some such stupidity, gravity would do the rest then.

As I expected, the flames disappeared. It didn't matter. It absolutely didn't matter.

I leaped at my enemy, again with two swords in hand.

Edmond dodged my first attack.

The second he parried it with his bare hand. Gripping the sword tightly, so tightly that I could barely move it. But it didn't matter. Not only was my other hand free, there were the weapons floating around me.

That I fired on him like bullets.

They should have left him with more holes than swiss cheese, but then he melted. Yes, he literally melted, blending in with his shadow, and disappeared from my sight for a few seconds. Then his body formed again.

He could basically become intangible, like me. The sun didn't kill him, but shadows and blood were his strengths.

How fucking unfair. Not a single disadvantage... No, that was impossible. It only seemed so. I was comparing him to the vampire legends in my world, but this was a completely different world. If I jumped to conclusions based on that I would be lost.

There had to be some disadvantage, some weakness. I just didn't know it yet. That was all. But if I fought hard enough, if I tried hard enough, I would eventually find it.

Either that or he'd kill us both before then.

Fire was an obvious weak point, so much so that Edmond had employed the hotel guests, reduced to zombies, as hostages to seal Lucia's fire magic. But I couldn't depend on her for that, and making fire wasn't that easy.

What else, what else?

I had to think fast. As I attacked, as I defended and dodged. I felt the answer was at my fingertips. That I could almost brush it with my fingertips.

The vampire Edmond tried to form a weapon out of the blood scattered everywhere.

I didn't even get to see half of the end result, as I slammed both my blades into the beginnings of that thing and it exploded into a thousand pieces. That abomination recoiled in response. It was nothing new. It had done nothing but lose ground since the fight began in earnest.

The wind blew across the battlefield. But the wind didn't discriminate, it was an impartial weapon. It lifted both of our feet off the ground and swept us toward the edge of the building, toward death by gravity.

As we landed, I saw that the vampire had sprained an ankle.

I don't know why I even bothered to notice that. It wasn't going to last long enough to matter, when the cut on his neck had healed so quickly. I got up as fast as I could. I went on the attack.

I interrupted the vampire's attempt to form a weapon for the second time.

This time it went farther, but ended up exploding into a thousand pieces anyway. Nothing changed. Yes. I had to make sure nothing changed. As long as I kept him losing ground, unable to get to form a weapon to defend himself with, then sooner or later I would crush him.

It would only be a matter of time. No, of endurance.

I could decide everything here. I had the power. It wasn't impossible. Even without Lucia's help, I could kill him. I felt myself grinning from ear to ear. There was no better feeling than that. If I had been starving for these endless days, then now it was like I had a full belly, when I hadn't even taken a bite yet.

I wasn't the only one who understood that.

I wasn't referring to Lucia, of course. She was far away. I didn't have the time or the mental capacity to notice her in such a situation. My attention was exclusively for the vampire.

It was enough to catch a glimpse of his eyes. He had started this by acting like a presumptuous bastard, worthy of a name like Edmond Dantes, but now he was afraid.

He wasn't terrified. Things hadn't gotten to that point yet.

But the shadow of doubt and fear were clearly there. It represented the first crack in the wall, the first step that would lead to his defeat. By simply being forced to wonder if it was really possible for him to be defeated, he had become weaker.

Like a shark smelling blood in the water, I lunged at him again and again.

He shed blood in abundance, but in no case was he able to form a full weapon. I was destroying all his attempts with a single blow. I was so focused on my enemy that at some point I started to react even before he moved.

It was as if we were connected. A deadly dance, huh? Maybe we were like dance partners, right here, right now.

If so, I was the one dictating the choreography, while the other was merely struggling to keep up.

I would also be the one deciding the end of this sad spectacle.

In the middle of the exchange of attack and defense, Edmond threw himself down, managing to grab my leg. He lifted me up easily, as if I weighed nothing, and I was left face down. Humiliating was an understatement.

But the real bummer is that it gave him time to form his favorite weapon, that blood scythe.

I imagined it cutting my throat like a guillotine.

The blade went for my head.