Plague had killed a few zombies already.

There was no way to save them, so I was free to take their souls, right? I needed to get stronger to stop this madness. If I didn't stop it, a lot more people would die.

Hundreds of people, maybe more. Looking at it that way, it was morally justifiable, wasn't it?

One way or another I did it.

I absorbed a few more souls, gaining new weapons, while Plague tried to shake off the zombies that kept coming at her, dragging her down, biting her.

I felt stronger. I felt... different.

Hard to say why.

It didn't matter, not now.

I kept running towards that monster, slashing my way through the zombies. Hitting them with the blade of the sword, but trying as much as possible not to kill. Thanks to the magic, I imagined that they could survive losing an arm or a leg, that they could even recover them, no prosthetics.

I fired about ten bullets, of different shapes and sizes, into Plague's body. The zombies might be nothing more than a small hindrance to such a powerful being, but they made it impossible for her to dodge my attack.

Brandishing a huge axe with both hands, I threw myself at Plague...

And nothing.

She grabbed me by the ankle with a tentacle and smashed me against the glass of one of the walls of this meeting room. To the maker's credit, one blow wasn't enough to break it. But two were, and I flew to the other side along with the broken glass.

I stopped moving only when my body hit the wall, as Plague hadn't let go of me.

I blinked. Yes, there was something... different.

This was supposed to make me stronger, but I had felt a little off balance even before the tentacle got me. There was no time to ask questions, but it was strange.

I set to work, cutting the tentacle as if to free myself. I had once worked in a butcher shop. A real butcher shop, it wasn't some sort of metaphor for my dirty business. So cutting meat had become routine. Something I could have done in my sleep. Up, down, up, up, down.

The black blood from the tentacle splashing in my face with each cut had nothing routine about it, though.

I fell on top the glass. Thank goodness. It sounded strange, but I was worried about unintentionally going intangible for fear of getting spiked by the broken glass and as a result falling one more floor. Or even two.

Making it even harder to get back to the rooftop.

If that had happened, I surely could have written it all off. Plague would have gotten rid of the zombies, ripped them all to pieces like that, climbed up to the rooftop, killed Lucia and used her corpse as a new body to defeat the vampire. She, evidently, would have had no qualms about using fire magic. So she would have turned him into a bonfire in the blink of an eye.

Anyway.

Good thing that didn't happen.

I put my hands on the floor, the glass cutting into my palm, sinking into my fingers. I put them down to support myself and push myself up. I managed to stand up, but lost my balance in an instant.

I regained it. Despite my expectations.

But it was worrying that I had lost it in the first place. It shouldn't have happened.

It shouldn't have, but that was the way things were.

The zombies were surrounding me. Closing the circle. I felt like a pig in a slaughterhouse. I hoped it would end up being just a metaphor, as every one of those empty husks would be happy to slice me open, scoop out my guts and start eating.

Meanwhile, with still a few zombies hanging on to her, Plague was trying to climb up to the roof.

Lucia was alone. If I didn't hurry, she would soon be cornered by both creatures.

If only it were as easy to do as to say so.

I did what I could, but soon I had dozens of those sons of bitches on top of me, practically burying me alive. If my body wasn't full of zombie teeth that was only because they were hindering each other.

There had to be something good about my absolute numerical disadvantage. It certainly couldn't last, though. Not for long.

Before I was completely buried under the mountain of zombies, I saw Plague reach up to the rooftop, disposing of the last of the ones hanging from her body. Fuck.

I had to hurry. I had to protect Lucia, because...

It's my mission?

I loaded each and every bullet. They would appear above me, as always, though I couldn't see them as I was pressed against the ground, struggling to breathe.

What wasn't as usual was that I didn't fire them.

I didn't use them as bullets, but rather spun them around. As a result, blood and limbs sprayed across the meeting room. Many wouldn't survive that. Hell, most of them. And I couldn't say they deserved to die, but....

I didn't have a choice. It was that simple.

It was always that simple, no matter how much people would try to complicate it with moralistic talk. You either eat or you get eaten.

I swore I'd be the one to come out of this mess with a full belly.

I ran to the table, trying to take advantage of the few free seconds I was going to have, that all-important space of time. I could climb up on the table, propel myself and jump up to the roof. After that... I'd figure it out, one step at a time.

I climbed what was left of the table. A hand grabbed my ankle. As I ducked my head, I saw the zombie's split face and brain slowly spilling out. Even in such a pitiful state, somehow it could still move.

Maybe there had never been any point in trying to save them. Maybe they had been dead since before we got here. At the very least I found it hard to imagine that a thing that could move even with its brain more out than inside its skull had retained any spark of humanity.

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I cut off its hand in one fell swoop. I hadn't lost much time, but some were already trying to climb up on the table and get me.

I jumped. I knew it wasn't going to be enough as soon as my feet left the ground... And nothing changed.

I wasn't able to make it to the roof in one bound. I hit my head against the wall. I would have bounced off and fallen into the arms of those hungry corpses if I hadn't thought fast and jabbed a weapon into the wall. That was now my only point of support.

I had the impression that my feet were dangling more than they should be. The zombies were tiptoeing around me, trying to reach me. A little more and they would.

I propped my feet on the wall. As I grunted trying to get on the weapon, even my voice sounded a little different.

I managed to climb onto the weapon. I didn't have much time to think, so what I used was a spear. I was worried that it wouldn't be able to support my weight. I hurried even harder and easily made it to the rooftop.

There...

I saw Lucia on the ground. Her screams chilled my blood. She was screaming because one of the tentacles had torn a hole in her stomach.

I screamed too. I felt like I was being torn apart too.

I loaded all the bullets. I fired them without even aiming, beside myself with rage. At that disgusting abomination and at myself, most of all. I was responsible for this. I couldn't escape the fact, even if I tried.

The explosive power of the bullets sent Plague flying. She fell over the edge, but dug her tentacles into the building to break her fall. Of course she was far from dead, even with all the black blood oozing from her open wounds. That hadn't been my intention.

I had wanted to make her suffer for what she had done, not kill her. Not so easily. I knew now that death wasn't the end, but that thing had no soul. I doubted it had any punishment beyond this life, any more suffering.

So I had to make her suffer while I still could. At least that's how I felt in the midst of that haze of rage.

“Oh. Interesting. “Edmond always sounded arrogant.

I assumed all vampires were the same.

Being a thing incapable of living in society, they would be lured by feeling superior. The alternative, recognizing oneself as an inferior being, little more than a parasite, wasn't at all appealing after all. But now he didn't sound like the usual smug prick.

There was a sincere curiosity in his voice.

“What did you do down there? You seem to be getting stronger somehow and regaining your original form.”

What was that asshole talking about? For the first time since my last meal, I raised my open hands to eye level and took a look at myself.

Oh, now I understood.

It wasn't my body at thirty-four, which I was grateful for. Surely I wouldn't have as much stamina. I was now at what you could call my physical peak, my teenage body. So many things made more sense now.

How low my feet had dangled. My sudden difficulty in keeping my balance. It all clicked now.

“You must be like this barrier, mustn't you? A void that greedily absorbs everything around it. You're a monster that feeds on souls just like that thing over there.”

“It's not funny that an abomination like you dares to call me a monster.

Even my voice had changed.

I had kept my real voice, let's say, even when I looked like a child. But now that I looked like a teenager, my voice also sounded like when I was a teenager. I didn't know why then and I still don't. Not that it matters, but well, I don't like mysteries.

“Why am I an abomination? You...”

“I don't have time for excuses.” The pool of blood continued to expand. If I didn't get Lucia help soon, she'd die. “Just get the hell out of this world.”

I loaded the bullets once more. The only difference was that there were increasingly more of them and my chamber had no limits.

Silently, I fired them.

Fire erupted from the vampire's hands. I see, it was his fatal weakness, but that didn't mean he couldn't use that kind of magic. He struck the ground, raising a wall of fire. What I expected didn't happen.

Every single bullet went through the wall of fire without any problems. That wasn't a good thing for me, though. The fire was enough to deflect them. They cracked as they hit the soul-devouring barrier with great force, making it visible for an instant.

I now knew the distance between the rooftop and the edges of the barrier, but that didn't help me any.

I didn't stand and watch as the vampire parried my attack. Those were just things I observed out of the corner of my eye as I ran towards Plague. As soon as she climbed onto the roof, the first thing she did was go after Lucia again, of course. The nun raised a hand.

Surely it wasn't a trivial gesture, but the beginning of some form of magic. But I was faster. I stepped between them and plunged my swords into the center of the tangle of tentacles.

The tentacles stabbed me all over my body. I endured the pain with gritted teeth and pushed the creature back. I fired the bullets several times as well.

She refused to let go of me anyway. Of course she did. She was literally clinging to the insides of my body. My body would give way before her grip did.

“Persistent bitch! Fighting each other is insane. If we keep this up, none of us will get the soul.”

A whistle. My shadow turned on me again, tying my ankles together. But I had grown too strong for that to hold me back. As soon as I tried to move the shadow's grip snapped.

The vampire collapsed to one knee as if I had punched him with all my strength and more. I didn't know how that trick worked, but it had cost him something. Well, it was a great example.

“Can't you see you need my help to defeat him?”

And I needed hers, but it went without saying, and I didn't want to say it out loud. I needed to see this thing burn too. It and its kind shouldn't exist in this world, no, in any world. But as long as she could be useful to me, there was no reason to make her my enemy.

Even a beast like her should be able to understand that.

Plague pulled the tentacles from my body and dropped them. Apparently, she was able to understand it indeed.

“Okay, let's beat him together.”

I bent down to help Lucia stand. She rejected my help harshly, however. Instead of grabbing my hand, she slapped it away. Oh, right.

She'd heard the vampire say that I absorbed souls, and I hadn't even denied it. Hard to do, when I'd transformed like that. She'd found a way to forgive me for a lot of things or look the other way, but this seemed to be the limit.

It was a pity, but that was the way things were. I had to accept it. I could only hope that Lucia would survive to hate me rather than breathe her last breath in a place like this. Where was the divine protection she was supposed to enjoy?

Something seemed to change in Lucia's eyes. But I just smiled.

“I understood.

I stood up. I turned to face what had always been the last obstacle in my path, working alongside Plague for the last time.

Monsters against monsters, as it was meant to be. Let's put an end to this farce, this hellish circus.

The vampire was still slumped over, one knee driven into the ground.

“You think it's going to be that easy just because you've gotten a little stronger?”

His bravado wasn't very convincing with his face red with sweat and his teeth clenched. But at least he managed to stand up. I decided that I would go for his legs first, that I would force him to crawl on the ground like a worm.

Plague attacked from the right and I attacked from the left. Basic teamwork, but it should be enough to overwhelm the vampire. He could barely take one of us separately. Together, he didn't stand a chance.

The vampire swung his scythe to push us away.

It didn't work. I slid along the ground, avoiding the blade by the skin of my teeth. Plague, as usual, was more direct. She wrapped her body around the weapon... and swung around it.

Her weight managed to knock the scythe from the vampire's hands in the process. But, as he had proved a short while ago, that didn't mean he was helpless. He snapped his fingers, setting Plague on fire.

I saw that as my chance. I kicked him in the shin from behind, knocking him off balance. My hands and the weight of my body did the rest. What was the point?

Throwing them into the flames, of course. In his hands, the fire didn't burn him. But once he let them free, it was just normal fire. They didn't turn on their master.

Fire had no master. It just consumed everything in its path. Skin and flesh, even the oxygen we breathed in this death-soaked tower. His screams were music to my ears.

He struck back at me, extracting the fire that engulfed Plague to fire it. The flames passed over me with the force of the tide. My back hit the ground. I felt no pain at all.

It wasn't shock. At the last second, I had managed to become intangible. It was more instinct than skill so far, but it had saved me a lot of times already. I had to be grateful.

Plague, presumably, would be feeling it, but she didn't give a shit. She stabbed the vampire in the leg, knocking him back down. I took advantage of that moment, that instant of weakness, to strike. Cutting off his head with a single blow.

A spurt of blood. The head rolling on the ground, spreading a trail of blood. It was all so fast that I didn't have time to breathe or process what was happening.

Was it possible that it was all over?

Even if it was true, it just meant I'd have to fight Plague now. I felt a shudder. No, the reality was much worse.

It was here. The strongest enemy. The end of all paths.

Death, the one I had fought in the rain that day, had finally found me.

To make matters worse, the vampire wasn't even dead. Not yet, anyway. I heard him laugh.