As the gun fired next to Nathan's ear, the sound of Rhodes' voice was interrupted by a deafening ringing noise, which gradually faded into silence. If Rhodes' Blood Drive relied on Nathan hearing her voice, than all he had to do was deafen himself.

Nathan saw Rhodes' lips move - maybe still trying to hypnotize him, or perhaps just asking if he was crazy. He wasn't too sure of the answer to that. He'd managed to give himself an immunity to her Blood Drive, but he'd given up his hearing in the process. All things considered, he was worse off than he was before - well, he wasn't dead, so he wasn't that worse off. Anything was better than being dead, after all.

Nathan knew that Athena would be able to treat his hearing - he'd seen her take care of worse while training with her. He himself hadn't quite managed to grasp magical healing, but she'd been studying magic most of her life - it was second nature to her. But before anyone was getting healed, he had to take care of Calamity Rhodes.

She was only a short distance from him - if she leaped, she'd be right in his face within a second. Despite the surprise of Nathan's last move, there was still an unmistakable glint of excitement in Rhodes' eyes. It only made sense - she'd only recently become a vampire, recruited by her manager, and the thrill of the hunt hadn't yet lost its novelty for her. If she got her hands on him, Nathan knew he wouldn't die easy.

Her regeneration was superb - trying to down her with wounds was a futile effort. They'd heal before Nathan could take advantage of them. A vampire's body excelled at rebuilding itself - it would heal every spot of damage on her body at the same time, so there was no point in trying to inflict more than one wound. Even the effects of aging were repaired. Athena had told Nathan that vampire's bodies were specifically designed to live forever - immortality had been one of the goals of the asshole that had first become one.

The only thing that could kill a vampire was destroying their soul. A human soul couldn't be destroyed, of course, because it didn't exist in the human world. There was no way to get to it. But the process of creating a vampire involves turning their soul into a physical object within their bodies - resting within the heart. With the soul existing in the human world, it can influence it's owner's physical form - giving them the advantages that made them such a pain in the ass. The soul remembers what it's owner should look like, after all, and constantly restores them to that state. Sucks for the people that turn into a vampire while injured or sick, of course - they stay injured or sick, as that becomes their default.

So - he had to get her to stop moving and attacking him. He had to plunge a stake into her heart, damaging the soul to such an extent that it can't sustain itself. And he had to do all that when even a slap from her would probably send his head flying off.

She leaped forward, the impact of her jump causing the wood to crack where she set off.

Burst T20Q! Nathan rolled to the side, avoiding Rhodes by centimetres. Her head snapped around to look at him, and she went for him again. It seemed like she was sick of this fight - she wanted a kill now.

Burst T20Q - there was no alternative, he had to use it again. Using the same spell twice in so short a time, without training beforehand, sent jolts of pain rippling through his body. A third use was out of the question - he could do some serious damage to himself. With the burst of speed granted by the spell, Nathan thrust his palm out towards Rhodes' face. Flare S993, he thought, picturing a star beating like a human heart. A tiny speck of light appeared just in front of his palm - and Nathan squeezed his eyes shut the moment before it spilled out into a blinding explosion. He ducked just in time to feel her flailing arm brush over his head, then opened his eyes once more.

Rhodes' eyes had been severely damaged by the Flare, their surfaces now white and scarred. If Nathan had to go without his hearing, then she'd have to fight without her sight - for a few seconds, at least. She screamed some threat, still flailing wildly, all strategy overridden by sheer fury.

Nathan whipped out his combat knife from his side - he hadn't expected to use it all against a vampire, to be honest - and jammed it into the back of Rhodes' knee, plunging it in deep. Rhodes' kicked out with her other foot, striking Nathan in the arm and sending him flying into the wall. Nathan felt his arm snap the second he went into the air, and he certainly felt it when it cushioned his impact against the wall. For a moment, he joined Rhodes' in her screaming, but stifled himself when her head snapped towards him again. Her eyes had regenerated, and were mad with rage.

She said something - another threat, probably, taking a step towards him. She stumbled, and her brow furrowed with confusion. Her eyes flicked down towards her legs.

Nathan's knife was still jammed into her knee - her leg couldn't regenerate as long as the blade was occupying the space it needed. She reached down to pull it out, and crumpled to the floor as Nathan shot her in the head with his pistol once again.

He began moving as fast as he could towards her, gun still pointed at her head. He had three bullets. A vampire's regeneration made them seem invincible, but there were ways to get around it. His trick with his knife was just one of them. All the wounds on a vampire's body healed at once, so doing a lot of damage to them at the same time was pointless. However, if you inflicted a wound to them just as they finished healing a previous one, you could keep them down for much longer.

He had three bullets. The hole in Rhodes' head closed up. Nathan, pulling the trigger, opened it back up again. Two bullets - he had almost made his way over to her. She healed, and her eyes snapped open. Nathan shot her again. One bullet - he was standing over her now. He put his pistol back in its holster - he only had one good arm, after all - and pulled the stake out of his jacket. Dropping to the floor, Nathan straddled his prey and plunged the stake down into her chest - and at the instant it pierced her body, her eyes snapped open.

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Nathan felt the impact against his stomach - and felt something inside his body break. He couldn't tell exactly what it was as he went flying into the air, but it was important. Something a human needed to survive. He landed a little ways from Rhodes, unable to move. With a great effort, he lifted his head up to look at her.

The stake had gone partway in - not enough to destroy her soul, but enough to do irreparable damage to it. She was standing, stumbling in place as she tried to pull the stake out of her chest. Her hair lengthened and contracted. Her blood, spilling from every orifice, changed colours as it spread in a puddle around her. Her skin dripped from her face like candle-wax.

She was screaming something, turning in circles as she pulled on the stake - but the energy leaking from her soul was too much. It was warping her physical form, affecting the world around her. The windows in the hall shattered, and Nathan could feel the wooden floor shivering beneath his cheek.

She was still saying something, repeating it to nobody in particular, now facing away from Nathan. 'Get it out, get it out!'

If Nathan didn't finish her off quickly, the energy leaking from her soul would contaminate the entire building - maybe the entire neighbourhood. Everyone around would end up dead or worse.

Burst...T20Q. Nathan had been right - his body couldn't handle the same spell three times in such close proximity. He felt blood fill his mouth, and one of his eyes stopped working. He felt like he probably couldn't have stood before the spell, but he knew he couldn't now. With the burst of energy the spell gave him, he took the pistol from his holster and fired his last bullet at Rhodes.

With one eye no longer working, it was more luck than anything else that Nathan hit his target. Rhodes went limp as the bullet went through her head, and she fell to the floor - landing directly on the stake protruding from her chest. There was a burst of something - it couldn't really be called light, as it wasn't so much something you saw as something you felt. Like taking a bath in boiling water, but without the burns. When it cleared, whatever it was, the only thing remaining of Calamity Rhodes were her clothes, and a few scatterings of ashes.

He'd won. Despite everything, Nathan felt a smile spread across his bloody lips. He'd won. He'd shown the bastards, taught them a lesson. You didn't fuck with Nathan Westwood. This was what happened. This was what fucking happened. He laughed silently, as best he could in his state.

A hand grabbed him by the back.

Panic. Did Rhodes' have another comrade here? Had the manager survived his fight with Athena?

The hand rolled him over to face upwards, and he looked up into the face of Athena. The black woman sighed and said something - maybe asking him a question. Probably asking him what the hell he'd been thinking. Nathan wasn't really in a state to reply. Instead, he simply looked up into the older woman's eye - her other was behind an eyepatch. Right now, Nathan realized, they were both blind in one eye. That seemed kind of funny - maybe he was delirious.

-

'Can you hear me?' said Athena after a few minutes of healing. Magical healing was a strange thing to experience - it felt like invisible hands were assembling you, putting you back together - and that was where stuff was just broken. Where things were missing, it felt like you were a plant, growing back into your intended shape. He hadn't thought he'd lost any body parts, but Athena corrected that pretty quickly.

'Your eyeball burst,' she said, glowing hands held above his chest as she continued to heal him.

'Oh,' slurred Nathan, still somewhat out of it. Magical healing tended to do that to you - pain nullification was part of most spells designed for healing, so it worked a little like anaesthetic in that regard. 'I thought it had just gone blind.'

'That's a pretty common side effect of an eyeball bursting, yeah. And a bursting eyeball is apparently a common side effect of overusing magic your body can't handle.'

'I guess. I would have died if I hadn't done it, though.'

'You almost died doing it.'

'But I killed Rhodes. Dying and killing a vampire in the process is a pretty good result, the way I see it.'

Athena hesitated at that. This often happened when they were speaking - Nathan would say something that seemed perfectly reasonable to him, and Athena wouldn't care for it.

'We're vampire hunters,' he continued. 'We should be prepared to give our lives for that. Right?'

'That's not what you said. Taking the enemy with you should be a last resort, not the goal.'

'I guess.'

Athena frowned - clearly, she saw that she hadn't really convinced him of anything.

Best to change the subject.

'How'd your fight go?'

Athena smirked. 'If I'm here in one piece, you know how it went.'

'That easy?'

'Easy peasie.'

It wasn't much of a surprise, but it still stung. Athena was a Sorceress from America's most elite Circle, even if she had been kicked out. Nathan, on the other hand, was just some kid she'd plucked out of a massacre. Rhodes' had been the first target he'd gone after on his own, and he'd barely managed to kill her. For Athena, a vampire like Rhodes would have been nothing. Even in their most basic attributes, there was an unbelievable gap - the maximum number of times Nathan could use a spell repeatedly without damaging himself was two. He'd never seen Athena's limit - if she had one, it was high enough that she probably didn't reach it often.

Athena looked down, clearly noticing the crestfallen look on Nathan's face. 'Penny for your thoughts?'

'When will I get better at this?'

'You just killed one of them solo. I'd say you're pretty good.'

'I killed a teenage girl that was turned maybe two months ago, and it nearly killed me. You can do it like it's nothing. When will I be able to?'

Athena raised an eyebrow at him, bemused. 'You want an exact date? You're healed, by the way.'

Nathan picked himself up into a sitting position. 'If it's actually possible, then yeah.'

'It isn't actually possible.'

'Oh. No, then.'

'The thing about magic - it comes from the soul, not the body. You need to move it from the soul to the body to use it, and if you try to do that too much before you're ready, you damage the connection between the two. It's like any muscle - you need to build it up.'

'I don't get all this soul stuff,' Nathan sighed. 'If I use magic a lot, I get better at using it. That's it, right?'

Athena smiled. 'That's it. The tutors in my Circle would have killed you for saying that, though.'

Nathan looked around. The room was a mess, and the rest of the building had probably suffered some ill-effects from the energy Rhodes' soul had released. The disappearance of Calamity Rhodes wouldn't go unnoticed either - she hadn't hit the big-time yet, but she'd been close.

'So,' he said. 'What do we do now?'

Athena slung her backpack off her shoulders, rummaged around in it, and pulled out a laptop - one she hadn't had when Nathan had last seen her.

'We work our way up the ladder,' she said.