He kicked me in the chest with both feet.

I should have ended up on the ground with crushed abdominal muscles and broken ribs. But I was wearing a special vest designed to resist attacks with edged and stabbing weapons. It had an additional shock-absorbing pad that spread the impact over a larger surface area. The kinetic energy of the double kick slid me backward, and with the heels, I dug into the soft clay. He was torn out of the time stream in the air in front of me, his legs returning under his torso to land on them instead of his back. My right hand was thrusting forward. His leg in an imperceptibly quick block, the shin pushed the arm with the blade aside. I anticipated something like this; I still had one hand. Hip, shoulder, elbow, wrist; a chain of muscles, tendons, joints, and bones stiffened into a single line capable of transferring all my strength. The sharp blade penetrated his body all the way to the joints of my fingers, and the old vampire momentarily froze in motion. He, too, felt pain. He landed on his feet, twisted, and with an open palm, he struck at my elbow. I stabbed him with the other hand, let go of the knives, and backed away. Unfortunately, not in time, my left hand was partially numb.

Two henchmen rushed to his aid. Agnieszka bounced off the car and, like a moment ago the old vampire attacked, and hit one of the vampires with a high kick from the side. Like a billiard ball, he knocked down his partner.

My opponent staggered backward, the blades in his body must have been causing terrifying pain. A human, or even I, would have been dead long ago. He grabbed the handle of one of the knives to pull the steel out of his body. I saw how much strength and concentration he had to use for this. The blade was slowly emerging from his body. I moved closer and kicked his left leg. He let me, wanting to get rid of the blades at any cost, thinking he could do it. I stabbed his hand wrapped around the knife, pushing the blade even deeper than before.

He angrily groaned, and his hand shot out like a projectile, even though I was moving again. He hit me, but it was deflected by my vest. Another point for the vest. Now we were body to body. He tried to seize and immobilize me, but I was too heavy for him. We ended up falling and rotating, his fingers scratching the kevlar fabric of the vest. In a moment, it would tear into bones and muscles, literally tearing me to pieces. I pounded his temple with my fist, but I might as well have been hitting an oak splinter. The fabric of the vest suddenly gave way, giving me a few centimeters of space. I slid more behind him. Without momentum, he hit me in the ribs with his elbow; the vest no longer protected me as much as before, and the pain made everything go dark before my eyes. Still, I managed to throw my arm over his head. I didn't try to strangle him; it was unnecessary. My only chance was the garrote string that I managed to wrap around his neck.

I pulled, instead of hitting me again and sending me to limbo, he tried to grab the string and break it. With steel, he might have succeeded, but not with a carbon polyfilament. I moved even more behind him. By bracing my knee against the spine, I used all the strength I had in me. The string sank into his throat. Too little, no more than a few millimeters. A gunshot thundered, I didn't care about it. Just increase the pull, balance it. Effort made my eyes go dark. The vampire gurgled, then began to wheeze. His trachea couldn't take it. I still held on, blinded by effort, seeing only darkness. Finally, his warm blood splattered my hands. I finally cut through the windpipe. Only then did I let go, collapsing into the muddy mire.

The ability to think returned to me before my strength. I remembered that there were more shots fired. Three?

I opened my eyes.

Agnieszka held a pistol in her hand, aiming at the last standing vampire. His partner was kneeling, both hands trying to close the bloody crater in his stomach. She probably shot him, and not just once. Still, he wasn't dying.

"You're not good enough for us," the wounded guy groaned in English-Italian, and slowly stood up.

He didn't notice me; he probably didn't assume that his boss could lose.

Agnieszka turned the pistol towards him; the other immediately reacted and started rushing towards her. She began shooting while still in motion. She couldn't hit him with the first or second shot, but she did with the third and fourth – into the torso. It didn't stop him. The pistol flew aside; I saw how he caught it directly in motion and held it, fingers clenched around the assault barrel. He was about to break her chest. I tried to get up, but it didn't work.

A gunshot thundered, louder than the previous pistol barks. The vampire froze; the arm he held Agnieszka with ended abruptly at the elbow. After a pause exactly as long as a good marksman needs to operate the bolt of a rifle, a second shot rang out. The vampire twitched; the shot hit him in the side of the torso, and he collapsed to the ground. The wounded one with the battered belly, who was also preparing to join the fight, received the third shot. The bullet passed through his neck and sent him to the ground. A great shot.

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I breathed deeply and tried to gather my strength.

Agnieszka approached her opponent. I was afraid he would get up again and attack her, but it didn't happen.

The off-road delivery van began to reverse. I completely forgot about it! Finally, I managed to get to my feet, lunged for the pistol on the ground, and started shooting at the vehicle's windshield. Bullets adorned it with milky craters, but they didn't penetrate. Even Evelyn with the rifle had no luck. Not only was the Volkswagen modified for off-road use, it was also reasonably armored. We wasted all our remaining ammunition on it, and yet it drove away.

Everything happened so quickly that the police officers remained lying and sitting in the same positions where they had ended up after the previous struggle. Good boys, though it certainly benefited their health.

The vampire's perforated body twitched. I approached him and flipped him over with the tip of my boot to see the entry wound. The bullet hit him from the side into the chest, passing somewhere into the lungs but missing the heart. It didn't exit, which was strange considering the ammunition I had prepared for Evelyn. The shot-off arm was bleeding minimally, the torn wound was already covered with a rapidly thickening coating. It seemed that the bastard didn't intend to die!

"The most reliable way is to destroy the brain," Agnieszka revealed.

Suddenly, she looked tired to death.

I took one of the service weapons from the police car, checked that it was loaded, and returned to the regenerating vampire. His pupil moved for the first time. I shoved the pistol barrel into the eye socket and squeezed the trigger. And once more. The head jerked, but the skull held. However, I hoped that everything else had turned into an unorganized protein cocktail. Long live proteins.

The blond started vomiting. I couldn't blame him.

I watched the vampire's body for a while to see if life would return to it. It didn't seem so.

“Why are you still alive?" Agnieszka asked.

Her voice sounded tired, shaken. I realized she was asking for the second time.

"Modern technology," I revealed, shrugged off my tattered clothes, and showed the vest underneath.

Also torn. It costs more than most people earn in half a year. But it saved my life.

I had to lean on the car because maintaining balance now was a borderline feat for me.

"For whom do you work?" I turned to the short-haired cop.

"For no one, we are police officers, just following orders from our superiors," he blurted out in horror.

That was a bit of a different tune than they originally sang.

"I can start asking more insistently, and you'll tell me everything," I threatened.

"We don't know anything!" exclaimed the one who wasn't involved in anything. "And even if we did, do you think we'd tell you anything after this," he gestured around, "just like that?"

In a way, he was right; their bosses were terrifying. But they lay here dead, and we stayed alive.

In this round, we won, and I could be very convincing. But I didn't feel like it. Torturing, intentionally causing pain to someone else, leaves scars on a person. Invisible and deep. And as they accumulate, a person changes, and suddenly it's no longer him. I've seen how it happened. Plus, I trusted the police officers that they really only follow orders from their superiors and don't understand the whole puzzle, if they even suspect that one exists. What they saw shocked them.

Agnieszka moved to the former leader of the vampire trio. She stomped one leg and tried not to move her pelvis too much during the motion.

"This is a pretty old vampire," she said and poked the body with the tip of her boot.

Originally a composite-hard vampire body unexpectedly quickly changed its consistency, almost starting to melt.

"What's happening?" I didn't understand.

"We have something in us that makes us fast and strong vampires," she said thoughtfully. "It slowly grows in us, transforms us. But when we die, when something kills us, it starts to decompose rapidly. And the more the original body has been transformed, the faster it decomposes," she explained. "Maybe that's where the legends come from that a vampire disintegrates into dust in the light," she concluded.

The vampire, whom Agnieszka shot in the stomach and Evelyn in the neck, moved as if trying to get up. He was alive!

"Don't move," I aimed at him.

"Would you survive this?" I looked at Agnieszka.

She just shook her head.

"I would die," she added. "He must be terribly thirsty. After injury and exertion, we all get thirsty."

I wondered how thirsty she was. She got a decent beating.

"Maybe he'll tell us everything himself, because of thirst," I thought aloud.

The vampire looked at me, his gaze slid to his two dead comrades, then back to me.

I meant it seriously; I liked this idea much more than violently interrogating frightened men. Actually, only three of them were frightened; the one whose jaw I broke wasn't. He was waiting for his chance.

"Let's try it with him," I decided. "We'll take him with us."

The vampire nodded as if he had definitely decided on something, put his hand on the lapel of his jacket, and I saw how he pressed invisible buttons.

"To the ground!" I yelled.