The scythe came for my neck.

But it didn't reach it. No thanks to me, of course. I had been completely focused on the vampire for a while now, not paying attention to my surroundings or even Lucia fighting beside me, so I had forgotten about her presence.

Thank heavens, I guess, he made his presence known again by casting a blast of his wind magic.

She went a little too far, though.

We didn't go flying off practically to the edge of the roof, hurting ourselves along the way, a twisted ankle here, a graze there, whatever. We went straight down.

But not all the way down.

The vampire Edmond Dantes stopped, tying his shadow to the glass. That way he was able to stand on the glass of the windows, defying gravity. But he didn't stop there. He tied me too.

So we had simply switched battlefields. But why, why give me a hand instead of just letting me fall?

I didn't have time to look for answers to those questions, only to attack. And I did.

But the vampire was faster and stronger. My best chance was to not let him form the weapon in the first place, and I had already wasted it. There was no turning back. No chance to fix it.

As proof, even though I had been completely overpowering him until recently, my blades were the ones that broke this time in the clash.

Then he bared his fangs at my neck.

I tried to turn intangible, but I wasn't able to, and I had a feeling it had nothing to do with fear. Not at all. That I wouldn't be able to, even if I could somehow calm myself down.

He had said he was going to make me disappear. I wasn't a living being, flesh and blood, I was more like.... Energy? And Edmond was going to drink it?

God that...

How despairing. I hadn't come this far to disappear like this. I could only say disappear, since I was already dead, on top of it. Fuck. Fuck!

I reloaded all the “bullets” and fired them.

The momentum ripped Edmond's shadow off the glass and carried us back to the roof. We rolled down, I was the first to recover, to get back on my feet. I lunged at the filthy creature, with a spear this time. Stepping over the ever-expanding pool of blood that surrounded him. Pouncing on his body full of holes, truly as if I had shot him with real bullets.

The blood was filled with spikes again, of course, he had effective tricks, but very little variety. They stuck in my legs, in my feet too, but I kept going....

And nothing.

The spear point took a chunk out of his neck, but I don't consider that much of a breakthrough. What did it take to really kill him? Just do enough damage too fast for him to recover from it? Fire?

Should I try to cut off his head? Or maybe I should have really prepared a stake? Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck. Well, whatever! I didn't have time for any of that.

I could only improvise. And Lucia...

I assumed she hadn't intervened until I found myself with the scythe around my neck because the vampire had sealed her fire magic with the threat of killing the residents, and other than that she only knew wind magic, which was dangerous to use on this battlefield. In other words, she was a help, I couldn't deny it.

But basically, I was all alone here.

I wish that was my biggest problem. In a matter of seconds, things went awry again. Boy did they, and how. A strong impact. At first, I thought I'd been split in half with the scythe, a wound so deep I hadn't even registered the pain yet.

It was worse than that. I lifted my head. Plague was there. She seemed to be floating in the air, but she was just leaning against the invisible barrier that was devouring this hotel.

Tentacles were coming out of her back, out of her sides, out of her chest. From parts I didn't even want to imagine. It was painfully grotesque. It always had been, that she'd use that poor girl's corpse as if it were a disposable object.

But now it was especially grotesque.

There was no point anymore, so she wasn't even going out of her way to maintain her human appearance. What was left of the princess reminded me of flayed skin rippling in the wind. Just a bundle of skin, human existence reduced to that. An atrocity I had only seen in movies.

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“Monster. Don't think it's going to be....”

The vampire was at the apex of his confidence. Just as I was drawing strength from the souls I had devoured along the way; I was sure that the soul-devouring barrier was making him stronger. And he had managed to take Lucia out of the fight with virtually a single threat. He had every reason to feel confident.

It was obvious how he intended to finish the sentence. So easy. And so it was.

So easily, a piece of the barrier, as well as his skyrocketing confidence, exploded into a thousand pieces.

“Oh.”

Plague landed on the roof, the ground filling with cracks at once, fine as a spider's web, but still dangerous. It went for her prey immediately.

Without wasting any time, though I didn't think her capable of talking in that state anyway.

The vampire also ran straight for her. I attacked him as soon as he turned his back to me. However, my attack only cut the air. I tried to move forward and was unable to. I didn't realize what had happened until I looked down.

My feet were bound to the ground. Not by the vampire's shadow, but by my own shadow.

What a life. I couldn't even trust my own shadow, literally.

As I tried to break free, brandishing the spear at the shadow, Plague and the vampire collided.

It was only an instant.

Just as the barrier had collapsed in an instant, betraying the vampire's hopes, now it was the turn of mine. In front of me, the princess's body split in two and a clump of tentacles fell to the ground, spitting black blood as it writhed.

He had split her in half too easily. He had hurt her.

Even I had done it and at one point I came to believe she was dead. Before I knew what I was really facing, how terrifying Plague could be. The thing is, she wasn't that easy to kill. But still...

My ghostly heart skipped a beat, seeing that. It shouldn't have been that easy.

In the encounter in that warehouse, a few short hours ago, Plague had done what he wanted with him, treating him as if he were some kind of toy. Now she hadn't even been able to touch him and had ended up split in half.

Had the barrier made him so strong that even Plague couldn't stop him now?

It didn't matter, it didn't matter, as long as she didn't die we were basically two against one, now. Actually, the situation had changed for the better, if I looked at it right.

It was a terrible misunderstanding, though.

Now that Edmond Dantes had torn her body apart, the mass of tentacles known as Plague quickly crawled across the floor. But not toward the vampire, not toward the otherworldly soul it so craved, to satiate its insatiable hunger, but toward Lucia.

Of course.

Now that it had basically lost its body, it needed a better body, and who else? The vampire wasn't that easy to kill, she had tried and failed, and me, I didn't even have a body.

So there was only Lucia left. No.

I had tricked her without a second thought, I had used her, but.... No. I knew my sister would be ashamed of me if I allowed this to happen. Maybe not of the violence, the drugs, all my bullshit, but this would be a step too far. A line I wasn't willing to cross.

I gave it everything I had and was dubiously lucky to get there in time, so instead of attacking the nun she attacked me, wrapping her tentacles around my arms, my legs, my neck.

Fuck, it hurt like hell. It tried to turn intangible to escape the tentacles and that shit didn't work, though I highly doubted she was doing anything special, like the vampire. It was just that it was impossible to focus on anything with this monster practically on top of me.

Since that wasn't going to work, I jumped, hoping to at least weaken his grip or.... whatever it was. I was desperate, anything would do.

With the leap I got about ten meters above the roof. And then I got a burst of inspiration.

I didn't keep trying to escape from Plague, but rather the opposite. I gave it a double kick, sinking my boots into that tangle of tentacles. We fell like what might be inside a meteor in an HP Lovecraft story. Yes, I read too, surprise.

And anyway, the thing is that the ground couldn't take it anymore. It collapsed and we fell to the floor below, on top of a rather long wooden table, probably it was a meeting room, well, we broke that too anyway.

I heard Lucia groan in surprise, her feet sliding on the floor, probably. I didn't hear her fall. Not into or out of the building. But I couldn't pay any more attention to her, I had bigger problems and I had done all I could.

“Get off me, bitch!”

Of course, I didn't expect her to obey me, I wasn't that stupid. I was just blowing off steam. Which was possibly the stupidest thing I had done in these three nightmarish days. I know that's saying a lot, but you'll agree if you let me finish my sentence, dude.

Plague shut my mouth. Sticking a tentacle in me.

Yeah... It wasn't very nice.

This wasn't even my “real” body, but I'd never felt more violated. At least I could be sure she intended to kill me, not uhhhhhhhhh... those things my sister liked to watch. Best not to talk about it.

I mean, if someone insulted her tastes, I'd knock their teeth out before you can say “dental plan with vat included”. But they sure are a little weird.

Back on topic.

I was grabbed by the arms, the legs, the neck. And the mouth.

I also had a tentacle in my mouth.

I struggled to breathe and did nothing but choke. I supposed, perhaps, that I saw life flash before my eyes. If I didn’t, I should have.

Then several of those zombies came at me, biting deep, dragging me backwards.

Plague was much stronger than any of those things, but they managed to weaken her grip and pull her away from me a bit, so I did the rest. My “bullets” severed the tentacle above my neck, freed my arms as well.

After that it was a piece of cake.

I tried to hurry to help them, if only because I would score points with Lucia if I succeeded. By the time I got to my feet, however, the zombies who had taken her off me already had their pieces scattered everywhere.

It's the thought that counts?

People didn't usually look at intentions, but maybe Lucia would be different. She was in so many ways to everyone I'd ever met, so why not in one more thing?

And yet it still reminded me of my sister? Yes, I'm not going to take it back because it's the truth. Anyway, what can I say.

Life is complicated.

You might be wondering, too, how much more complicated my life could get. Separated from my only ally, with the vampire and Plague on my ass. Well, all in good time, of course.

For the moment I'll just say that as I pounced on that tentacled abomination for what I hoped would be the last time (while in turn, of course, the zombies on the floor were swarming over the only “intruders”), I would never have suspected that Tuesday wouldn't be my only date with Death.

That he would soon find me.