'Still say we've got it worse than you, teach.' Eric grinned, all fangs, leaning back on the bench and running a hand through his mop of brown hair. He'd never stopped calling me "teach", even after graduation.

Bogdan nodded sagely in agreement, short raven curls swaying. 'Yeah. Can you imagine being eternally thirsty?'

'Moron.' Eric ripped off an index finger to flick at his friend's forehead, sharp green eyes narrowed. 'Why would he have to imagine something he lives with?'

Bogdan turned to me, a doubtfu; look in his blue eyes as he put a hand on my shoulder. He tilted his head this and that way, humming, before coming to the wrong conclusion. 'Are you always thirsty, David?'

Eric groaned. 'Come here before you infect him with something.'

Shrugging, Bogdan rose from the bench we'd been sharing and flitted to sit down next to his friend and partner. 'I meant his girlfriend, you little savant you.'

'Oh, yeah!' Bogdan grinned toothily, eyes brightening. 'Mia's pretty thirsty. I just thought you meant literal thirst.'

'Well, maybe I did,' Eric smirked at me, rubbing his chin with one hand, the index finger healed. 'She still thirsty, boss?'

'Oh, definitely. Just glad she's not a vamp, otherwise she'd be sucking me dry twice over,' I replied.

'Ah, well, we can't all be looking for blood,' Bogdan replied, before leaning closer to Eric. 'Probably has saltier tastes,' he mouthed.

'I bet,' Eric said, his smirk slightly annoyed. 'Before you derailed me, though, I wanted to clarify what I meant. I didn't say vamps have it worse than strigoi-'

'I don't know, man...' I said in my best philosopher voice. 'Vampires suck.'

For my troubles, I was caught in a shower of sharp words and sharper gestures.

'I meant,' Eric said finally. 'That us two have it worse than you when it comes to our jobs.'

'Oh?' I said curiously, taking in our surroundings as he gathered his words. We were in the Haunts, Bucharest's undead quarter. Specifically, the Belfry, the area with the highest vamp concentration, where the inhabitants had thick blinds over every window and pooled their weather manipulation to keep everything under permanent dark clouds.

There were lots of blood banks, too. Artificial blood was in far higher demand from vampires than normal people, even though, at thirty-two million, vamps represented barely more than a thousandth of the world's population. But then, normal people didn't chug blood like water.

I kind of agreed with him. I loved what I did. Liked my job, too.

'Well,' Eric leaned forward, fingers steepled. The one he'd severed had been crushed in his grip and the remains placed in a bag that would be obliterated. Such things were never left lying around. 'I meant the uniforms, mostly...' He gestured at his dark blue pants, yellow shirt and red tie. The tricolor. 'ARC dresses you up like a chessboard, yes, but black goes with everything, especially white. We look like someone sneezed, had a nosebleed, then dipped the tissue into ink.'

'The fuck, dude?' Bogdan punched him in the shoulder, shooting Eric an incredulous look. 'Keep that nasty shit to yourself. I don't wanna hear comparisons like that before drinking.'

'Well, the Supernatural Service is fairly new,' I said placatingly. 'I'm sure your superiors just want to show they have the country's best interests at heart, hence why the colour scheme is a little...on the nose.'

'On the nose,' Eric repeated, a deadpan expression on his face. 'This is not on the nose, David. It's a brick between the eyes. Not even Breakout from the States dresses as her flag, patriot that she is.'

'Actually,' Bogdan said in a snooty voice. 'She wears a balaclava with the stars and stripes, and used to wear a sash like that, too.'

'Oh?' Eric glanced at him curiously. 'And why are you so well-informed about FREAKSHOW's favourite wrecking ball? Studying the opposition, are you?'

'Wake up, man. Freedomland ain't been "the opposition" for decades.'

'Talk like this could have you taken away, comrade! Don't make me send you to the Canal!'

'The one I dug through your mom, or...?'

I smiled as they bantered, happy they had finally found something to fill their unlives with, something they had chosen. Romania was a little better for every supernatural who pledged their powers for the people, or the country, or even money.

Hell. Just not being a supernatural criminal was nice.

None of us were off-duty-in fact, all of us were patrolling, looking for suspicious supernatural activity in case anyone was using the holidays as cover or to draw attention away from themselves. I didn't remain with them for much longer, though, as I was soon recalled to Omu base.

***

Since the Cold Madness and the Headhunt, ARC and its national counterparts had grown sick of being caught unawares. As such, a regime of training against every type of conceivable opponent, as well as some inconceivable ones, had been established.

In ARC's case, this meant agents from different divisions were pitted against each other, as well as whatever construct the people from Salem could cook up. The Air Force even lent us some-doubtlessly outdated-drones to train against, to hunt or be hunted down by. The spherical machines were barely bigger than a football, but tough enough I broke my hands hitting them, fast enough to fly circles around lightning bolts, and able to raze Romania in seconds with their lasers, plasma bolts, railguns or missiles.

The drones, like many forms of power armour, were powered by a network micro-wormholes leading to the sun and other stars, the energy being funneled through so that the drones would never run out of power, or sunlight to strip vampires of their esoteric abilities with.

I had just beaten a werelynx named Radu, who had come from the Luna division base over in Brașov, while Rivka Peretz had gone in his place, to cross claws with our were colleagues. Incensed at her perceived uselessness during the Headhunt (like she could have done anything to Thor!), and at how easily I'd incapacitated her during the spar before I'd gotten my new cross, the ghoul had taken to eating thousands of times her weight in lab grown meat, her power growing to the point where her movements became a blur to my eyes when we fought, and she could tear through me as easily as the Unscarred had done on Mars, years ago.

She was not as strong as the albino currently was, but, between her power and the ferocity that only grew even as her hunger was sated, I doubted it would be much consolation to the weres.

While Aya Reem and Romania's Director Gelu Malea discussed who would take over as Romania's senior agent after Marc's...after Flavius Marcus had gone missing in action(they still spoke as if Marc was somewhere out there, merely lost), an experienced Crypt agent had been brought from Spain as a temporary replacement.

We just...couldn't tell what he was experienced with.

As I dispersed the air sphere around Radu, the werelynx fell the thirty metres to the ring with his legs coiled, landing on his paws easily.

'Nice move, Silva,' he growled as he turned human, fanged smile becoming merely toothy. Unlike most weres, who preferred to fight in their hybrid forms, gaining power and sharper senses while retaining their voices, Radu fought as a lynx, claiming anything you wanted to say during a spar, you could express through actions. He still went hybrid on missions, as far as I knew, but, in training, he chose to mangle people on all fours.

'But I'm not a hamster,' he continued, his ruddy face screwing up in distaste. 'If you put me into a ball again, I'll tear out your balls and swap them with your eyes.'

Pussy! My strigoi side snickered in my mind. It had developed a sort of pseudo-sapience since the Headhunt. Less of a separate personality and more of a really loud, really coarse subconscious, it had been awakened by the tiny quantities of lifeforce I had consumed from dying animals and plants. A strigoi eventually began talking to their instincts like this, if they consumed enough lifeforce, but...after the bullshit Chernobog had pulled in my body, I wasn't keen on having someone else on my head, even if it was still "me".

We should tear out that rough little tongue of his, human, it whispered, a smile in its false voice. And shove it down his throat. Do it again and again and again as he heals, until he bloats and falls apart! Then, after he stops being a pile of gore, we will do it again, with a different body part~.

Its suggestions didn't help. Especially since I knew, deep down, that it only reflected my darkest desires.

It got real interesting when I was with Mia.

'Alright, me lads!' Marc's replacement clapped twice as he jumped down between us from the bleachers. My ghost colleagues, as well as a few necromancers and the ogre corpses they animated, looked down at us with curiosity from one side. On the other were Radu's colleagues from Luna, as well as a balaur from Drake. Thundertail, as he insisted we call him, had haggled with all of us over "old things" for his hoard, because he "knew from experience" that dead people gathered knickknacks around them.

I had felt attacked. I was dead, not retired.

Now, the balaur glanced at us with mild amusement, his electric-yellow body, larger than most passenger planes, sprawled across several tiers of bleachers, muzzle propped in one claw. Thundertail was just as strong, fast and tough as me, healed as fast without any holy weakness, and his lightning breath could and had vapourised me.

When balaurs, and dragons in general, were killed, it was because their killers were favoured by gods or fate, or just had absolutely monstrous weapons.

'Radu, go clean yourself up. You can even use the showers, if you want,' Diego Cortez said, his grin just as sharp as the werelynx's, who packed more insults in that smile than I could in most sentences. Nevertheless, Radu nodded in agreement, as his body was covered in blood and guts, his still steaming, mine as cold as ever, from when we'd torn each other apart.

The Spanish vampire hummed to himself, spinning on one foot to look at me with blood-red eyes.

Diego (I was sure his last name was just as fake as his claims of having sailed to America with the Conquistadors; the Shattering might have been an acausal headache, but this guy didn't act like he was centuries old, even if he dressed like he was) had skin as white as his poofy-sleeved shirt, which was tight across the torso, opening to show a chest covered in wiry black hair. Over it, he wore a black and white, unbuttoned ARC vest. He also wore black leather pants, waist encircled by a brown leather belt with a gold buckle. High-heeled, shiny black shoes-he only came up to my chest, even with the added centimetres- and a wide-brimmed black hat with peacock feathers in every colour of the rainbow completed the flamboyant ensemble.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

'Now!' He pointed at me, dramatically turning his face to look away, his other hand on his hip. 'There is bad blood staining the Crypt's floors. My kind are often called leeches, and, ah, Dios! What a poetic comparison! For the noble leech drains away all is foul and corrupt, leaving the body healthy. Loric!'

I almost gawked at him, but opted to instead turn and look as the wall of the training room shifted to allow in the strigoi I had never wanted to see again.

Szabo looked just as fat and jolly as the last time I had seen him, though there was a faint annoyance in his gleaming eyes, in the lines of his face. He had loathed being restricted to patrols through Hungary alone, I imagined...

But the old bastard had somehow managed to get a new set of 'leathers'.

'Szabo?' I began by way of greeting, crossing my arms. 'Please tell me you got those from corpses, at least.'

The older strigoi giggled. 'Why, David...I only handle dead meat when touching myself~'

My strigoi side laughed approvingly in my mind. Great, now I'd have two groady bastards living rent-free in my brain.

'Why is he here?' I asked Diego, not taking my eyes off Szabo, or his broad smile. He was faster than I could see, but it was the thought than counted.

The vamp clicked his tongue. 'David, David, do you listen not?! To clear the air between you! I know you and Loric have your differences, but that is no excuse for dissent among the ranks. Why, I remember once, when my men mutinied against me...it was the summer of sixty-three, that is, seventeen sixty-three, and the grog had run as low as their patience...'

Szabo listened and nodded at the appropriate moments, still smiling, to my bafflement, but I didn't miss the tension in his stance whenever Diego moved. Was he...was he scared of this guy?

'As such!' the vamp exclaimed after finishing his anecdote. 'Loric will explain why he attacked you, David, and you will explain your disapproval of him. You can do it before, as, or after you spar.'

'That's it?' I asked. 'We shake hands then part as friends?'

'You can kiss too,' Diego wiggled slim, black eyebrows. 'But remember: do not become  too friendly. We are, after all, professionals. Besides, I'm sure David's spitfire of a darling would get mighty jealous, and we wouldn't want that, would we?'

Before I could ask when or why he had learned about my relationship with Mia, Diego was gone, and Szabo was ripping me apart. Both events had happened faster than I could see.

***

ARC's training rooms can simulate virtually any environment. Whether through magic, technology, or both, they could create spaces as large as a city, planet or universe, which were still contained in the room.

For today's exercise, Omu base's training room used wards crafted by mages specialised in bending space, creating a copy of the universe equal in size to the original, but simultaneously small enough to fit in the room, which was only the size of a few football stadiums. The objects in the replica were made of hardlight, each just as durable as the real thing.

Something I could attest to as Szabo smashed my face against the ground, breaking both it and Germany into tiny chunks. The strigoi threw me away, disinterested, and I split the Atlantic with my passing, landing to rip through the States, breaking them in half. My body healed just as fast as it was damaged, unlike the fake Earth, but I was still losing. Badly.

Szabo was on me before I could move, stomping through my neck to turn the southern USA into dust. With a pitying look, he kicked me away, and I vapourised several mountains with my passing, each impact bruising my back, managing to stop myself in midair somewhere at the border with Canada.

Szabo was floating in front of me instantly, shaking his head, and I flew away, until he was just a dot on the horizon, whipping the weather into a frenzy with my will. To distract him, I created a sphere of ink-black storm clouds around him, bombarding the strigoi with hailstones that would have crushed cars and rain that would have flayed humans alive. A snap of his fingers dispersed the clouds, and I summoned lightning, looking to cover him in layers and layers of bolts, hoping to blind him.

When the bolts, well over twelve hundred times faster than sound, were milimetres from his skin, he disappeared, only to reappear kilometres away, behind me.

So damn fa-

'I am sorry, David,' he said, one fist smashing through my chest to grip my spine. 'Not for neglecting to explain myself to you. You should have seen through Chernobog's ploy, no matter what he looked like-'

'Then why are you sorry?' I snarled. Every microsecond, I punched the strigoi several times, each strike packing enough power to vapourise the mountain golem I had merely pulverised in Siberia. My fists broke on his nose and eyes-the softest parts of his face, fucking dammit-leaving him unharmed, if filthy. Szabo flicked my chest, to get my attention, turning me into red steam.

'Why are you sorry?' I repeated when I healed, trying to fruitlessly harm him once more. 'For hurting Mia?!'

'Who?' his brow furrowed in confusion, and I roared, summoning a storm fiercer than any that had ever ravaged America, making thousands of lightning bolts tear through the sky every microsecond, and drawing them all into my hands, until I was sure that...that...

Baring my fangs, shaping the lightning into a crude blade, I raised it overhead, and Szabo shook his head at my approach, but made no move to dodge.

I split him in half from exposed brain to crotch, and he healed almost as fast as I cut through him, before flicking me into steam once more.

Szabo sighed as I healed once more, rubbing his forehead. 'I am sorry you make yourself so weak, David.'

'The fuck are you saying?'

'Let me tell you...three things.' Szabo held up three scarred, calloused fingers, then was gone from my sight, as was everything else.

By the time my eyes healed, I was in high orbit, looking down at a world with no continents.

'One: in the time it would take a human's heart to beat once, I dragged you around the planet seven times, shattering the continents with your body,' Szabo whispered, suddenly behind me. Before I could turn, his hand ripped through my skull, squeezing my brain, and throwing me at and through the moon.

My constantly-regenerating body carved a tunnel that would have swallowed Germany from one side of the moon to the other as it smashed through countless tons of rock. Szabo was there when I flew out of the ruin, kicking me from the moon through Mars, ripping up an area the size of Europe, and into Jupiter's Great Red Spot. I tried to gather my bearings until he reached me, but he harnessed a fraction of the great storm that was Jupiter to keep me in place, trapped in a hurricane of orange clouds and yellow lightning, moved so fast by his will I was turned to charred pieces several times.

'Two: you are slow. You do not move quickly, either,' Szabo said after he flew to me, gripping my throat and forcing me to look at him.

'And three...you fight like the weakling strigoi you were, not whatever impossible freak you became during the Headhunt. What will it take to motivate you, David?'

'I don't know how to use Mimir's power,' I protested, angry at myself for feeling the need to justify myself to Szabo, for losing to him, for-

'No,' he said firmly. 'It is my fault, I am sure. Perhaps you need someone else to motivate you~?'

Szabo giggled as his skin turned ebony, features fading while antlers began to grow from his...his...

'Go to hell,' I growled hoarsely, striking him with all my strength, turning my limbs to paste, but sending the grotesque son of a bitch out of sight.

'Oh, David...' a rich, deep voice rumbled as black arms wrapped around me from behind. 'Did you think you could ever escape me?'

I roared, thrashing in Szabo's grip as he laughed, unable to dislodge him. Why...w-why...

Why the fuck was his touch burning me!?

Finally, his grip loosened, and I kicked the Chernobog-lookalike deep into Jupiter's clouds and out of my sight.

I w-was hallucinating, clearly. C-Could strigoi do that? I had...h-ha...I had imagined that he was burning me, like a god would.

H-How fucking scared could I get?

'That was better!' Szabo's normal voice rang out, and I broke my spine with how fast I turned to glare at him. The fucking bastard was smiling, like he hadn't just...just...how fucking  dare he?

'But not good enough...' Szabo trailed off, looking at me, nonplussed, as I broke my body trying to leave one, one fucking mark on him. 'David? What did you do while I was finding my way back?'

'W-What?' I gasped, voice breaking, eyes darting wildly from his face to his head. He was...he was Szabo. Not...

'Your chest...how did you burn yourself like that? And why aren't you healing?'

…fuck him. Damn him and his fucking, twisted joke. I didn't know how he was doing this to me, but I lost it.

A sound like a blade slashing through air, on an unimaginably greater scale, brought me back to my senses, and I blinked newly-healed eyes to see Diego floating between us, his sharp features set in a thunderous grimace. In one hand, he held a one-edged sword dripping with ruby blood that didn't dry or run out, its gilded scabbard hanging on one hip. His intervention had reduced both Szabo and I to scattered particles, separating us.

And turning Jupiter into a shapeless cloud, spanning the distance between Saturn and Mars.

'End simulation,' the vampire said tersely, his goateed chin trembling, one hand clenched tight on the sword. A small corner of my mind distantly wondered how much blood he had drank to become so powerful. He was certainly the strongest vamp I knew of, even stronger than that blue whale that had destroyed Australia, barring a few unsettling rumours from South America.

'No!' I screamed, and Diego turned his piercing stare on me. 'I will kill him! The bastard fucking burned me! I don't know how, but-'

'THAT'S THE BLOODY PROBLEM, SILVA!' Diego barked, silencing me. 'What just happened-and we're not sure what it was-should not have been possible. We must look for glitches in the simulator, or intruders, or-'

The simulation ended, but not with the created space fading into nothing. Instead, it twitched and writhed like a dying man, before disappearing in a blinding flash of colourless light.

Diego, Szabo and the other agents were on their feet, back to back, when my sight recovered, Thundertail encircling us, wings raised and lightning crackling in his yawning maw.

Every light in the room and beyond was shattered, every device in pieces, or rusting.

And, through the darkness, fey laughter rang out to fill our ears, carried by wind that had not been there before.