I was a bit worried I wouldn’t make it to the performance on time, but logic suggested it was just nerves. Club time hadn’t come yet, and hanging around the house would only lead to trouble. Knuckles and I had a decent dinner of cheese soup, followed by slices of apple pie with cinnamon, washed down with excellent tea with milk. My driver devoured his portion quickly, swallowing it like a starving dog. The hungry habits of slums were hard to shake out of his system. I ordered another slice of pie and asked him to slow down.

“Let’s kill some time. Take your time, enjoy the taste,” I suggested.

“I can just sit here.”

“Tapping your foot and glancing out the window at the car? You’re showing impatience. That’s what they’ll remember you for.”

“Clan training tricks?”

“More like my grandfather’s,” I smiled. “The old man taught me table manners.”

“Like telling a fish fork from a salad one?”

“That’s not the main thing.”

“What is, then?”

“The ability to mimic your companion’s manners. It’s inappropriate to wipe your hands on the tablecloth when dining with a duke, but equally inappropriate to comment on the lack of a salad fork at a peasant’s table. Beyond that, Grandfather also taught me how to cook with limited ingredients in camp conditions and how to eat quickly. I could wolf down a pie before you even blink.”

“Wanna bet I’ll beat you to it?”

“Not now.”

Once Knuckles found the right street, we roughly calculated the block where the house should be and drove onto a parallel one to come back from much farther north. Knuckles parked on the sidewalk, facing south. We spent about an hour at the café, but even so, we had to spend much more time in the car. I used it for reloading, filling my pistol’s magazine with the most expensive and effective bullets I had. The corner where the truck with Flower was supposed to stop was fully visible, but the temporary Valentine base was nearly out of sight. A worm of doubt gnawed at my nerves, whispering that Lucas had deceived me and the target house was on another street. In time, it became clear that Lucas hadn’t used any tricks here. The truck we knew stopped exactly where it was supposed to.

I slid the lid off my ring and scooped up more ointment: a little for myself, a little for Knuckles. It wouldn’t do much for him, but better safe than sorry.

A red flash shot out from under the tarp, and a faint glow lingered for about ten seconds before fading. James Flower jumped out of the truck bed and strode purposefully toward the house in the middle of the block.

“Start the engine,” I ordered Knuckles.

The truck left the parking spot and drove off in an unknown direction. Flower approached the closed doors.

“Drive slowly,” I ordered.

James’s hands ignited, and he spread them wide before sweeping them like butterfly wings, turning the fire into flames. Then, he slowly brought his hands together so that the left hovered above the right, and a fiery vortex began to dance between them. The elementalist sharply twisted his wrists, switching their positions so that the right hand was now on top, and the vortex coiled into a tight ball of fire. James brought his palms together, and the door in front of him exploded.

It exploded with such force that the windows of the house were blown out. The flames consumed the wood, spitting out hundreds of glowing embers onto the street, which burned out completely before they even hit the ground. James leaped into the house in a single bound. From the roof, a pair of shadows dove onto the third-floor balcony. They fired three short bursts in unison, but the crackling of gunfire didn’t stop there. The women stormed inside, and the house erupted in a cacophony of gunfire – a chaos of sound that seemed to ripple from one end to the other, shaking the very walls. In a total chaos the weapons though had their own distinct ‘barks’: amidst the rattle of Thompson submachine guns, there were bassy single shots, the clanging of steel and glass, the heavy thuds of throws and punches, and even strange whistling noises of indeterminate origin.

With a muffled ‘boom,’ a figure dressed in black flew out of a third-story window. A submachine dropped nearby, marking the figure as “one of ours.” A man in a black suit followed right after her, immediately landing a blow to her ribs that sent her crashing into the door of the nearest car. He grabbed the gun.

“Step on it!” I barked at Knuckles. Clint slammed the pedal to the floor. The vampire aimed his gun at the woman, heard the roar of the engine behind him, spun around sharply, and fired at nearly point-blank range. Half a dozen bullets slammed into the windshield, bouncing off Harry’s protective sigil. The car, at full speed, plowed into the vampire, throwing him onto the asphalt. The vehicle bounced twice as it rolled over the body. Knuckles hit the brakes.

I was the first to jump out. Gun in my right hand, dagger in my left. The cursed bloodsucker, with a broken leg, an unnaturally twisted arm, and a tire tread imprinted on his face, was trying to get up. But Lindemann’s daughter, already on her feet, sprang onto him. With a sharp twist, she snapped the bastard’s neck, turned it twice around its axis, and sliced it off with her knife. Tough bastard, judging by the dozen bullet holes in his jacket.

The woman grabbed her Tommy, but its drum magazine simply fell off, and the barrel had bent from the car’s impact. Tossing the broken weapon aside, the vampiress drew a pistol and turned back toward the house. A golden shimmer of protective magic flickered in front of her face, but the shot she took wasn’t ordinary – the protective amulet on her chest, hidden under her black clothing, shattered completely, knocking her to the ground.

I immediately spotted the shooter in the window, even though his figure was cloaked in a dark magical haze. Two thunder bullets to the face of the audacious bastard, and I retreated to cover behind Cooper. The bullets exploded in a storm of discharges, shattering against an unnaturally strong shield, but they illuminated the shooter’s figure for Knuckles, who joined my fire. A burst of cobbled-together bullets went too high, then too low, and finally, surprisingly, punched through the shield, tearing through the shooter’s head. But someone behind him caught his collar, using the corpse as a shield, and continued firing back.

The first success gave Knuckles confidence, and he lost his caution. To make aiming easier, he stepped out from behind the car – and immediately caught a bullet. The gun flew one way, Knuckles the other. I dashed to him, grabbed him by the collar, and dragged him back under the car’s cover with such force the fabric nearly tore.

“Idiot!” I growled, though relief washed over me. The bullet had passed above his collarbone, pierced his left trapezius muscle, and lodged in his shoulder blade. Knuckles blinked wide-eyed, stunned and confused by what had just happened. I poured a bit of healing potion onto the wound and shoved the rest into his mouth.

“Drink!”

“My gun!” he said.

"Screw the gun, drink!" I barked.

Knuckles swallowed the bitter liquid. The vampiress dashed for his gun, took two bullets to the side, and collapsed with a hiss, retreating behind Cooper for cover.

I got up and fired two rounds at the first suspicious figure I saw. There were three of them in front of the house. I recognized the one in the middle. He was the reason I had come here.

“Duncan!” Simon roared. Another couple of bullets ricocheted off Cooper. He recognized me too. “Kill him!”

“Where are you going, you idiot?” growled the vampire. “Gray, get him out of here.”

“We’ll kill the bastard and leave together,” Simon objected.

I flashed three fingers to the vampiress. She nodded, quickly counting down with flicks of her wrist. We leaned out from opposite sides of the car at the same time – I pulled the trigger twice, and she unleashed a long burst at the enemies. Neither my bullets nor hers managed to harm the bastards. Simon clearly had some equivalent of my ‘brick’ – he held something in his hands that deflected bullets with flashes of steel and magma.

The second vampire pointed a rod at me, and a sharp icicle shot past my head, uncomfortably close. Instincts threw me to the ground, and the vampiress didn’t want to remain the only target.

“Get him out of here!” barked the vampire, whom I recognized as one of Noah’s goons.

“Into the car!” came another voice.

“We’ll meet again, Duncan! I’ll rip out your liver, you bastard!” Simon screamed.

I emerged from behind the car and fired my last bullet at the remaining vampire, as the other one – the one with the staff – was shoving Simon into the vehicle. I hoped the protective amulet was already depleted, but it seemed he wasn’t even using one. Dissolving into black smoke, the bloodsucker let the enchanted bullet pass through him. A master, damn him!

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I dropped the empty magazine and inserted a spare, loaded with far humbler bullets.

The smoke surged forward, leaving a black trail behind it, but slammed into Cooper, causing the car’s etheric shield to flare up. Was he really trying to phase straight through it?

The vampiress leaned over the hood and unleashed a long burst at the intangible figure. The consecrated bullets struck the black smoke with bright flashes, tearing it to shreds and scattering it like a whirlwind, forcing the figure to writhe silently in pain. The submachine’s bolt clicked dry.

The vampire instantly regained his physical form, not a single hole marring his expensive suit, but his red eyes blazed with pain and furious rage. All his aggression was focused on the vampiress, as if I didn’t even exist. Calmly, I pulled the trigger.

The bullet punched a neat hole in his forehead, just near the left temple. The bloodsucker wavered and crumpled to the ground like a sack.

Nearby, an engine roared to life, tires screeched, and Simon leaned out of the window of the fleeing car. He pulled the trigger, and the brains of my accidental ally splattered across Cooper’s windshield.

Knuckles grabbed the Tommy that had fallen from her hands and tossed it onto the front seat before climbing in himself.

“Get in!” he shouted at me. The shock of his first serious wound and the adrenaline of battle still held him, so he didn’t even wince much.

I jumped into the back seat. While Knuckles revved the engine, I frantically cranked the window handle on the right side.

“We’re not going to catch them!” I vented, letting my frustration spill out. The vampire had only a slight head start, but his engine was far more powerful.

“We’ll catch them!” Knuckles roared with excitement. “Harry worked his magic on this baby!”

I have no idea where a simple guy like Sparrow got such driving skills. Maybe it was talent, maybe just dumb luck, but he drove like a madman – darting into the oncoming lane, missing cars by a hair, and shamelessly cutting people off. In the blink of an eye, we flew through a dozen blocks, made six turns, but the bloodsucker, with all his reflexes, still couldn’t shake us! And soon enough, we got close enough to start a shootout.

Simon leaned out of his window and began firing at Cooper. The bullets bounced off the radiator and windshield like rubber balls. Then he switched to targeting the tires. Meanwhile, I focused on their tires from the start, but I couldn’t hit them. The wild maneuvers both drivers were pulling off made it a miracle to even keep my aim somewhat steady. My bullets hit the asphalt, the rear window, but not the tires – well, except for the spare mounted on the trunk. I managed to puncture that twice.

I burned through my ammo quickly. With no spare magazines left, I had to reload. In the chaos of the car swaying, half the bullets fell to the floor, and to make things worse, the cops were now tailing us, sirens blaring. They had joined the chase and started shooting at our tires.

Buildings turned into blocks, and blocks into districts, as we sped through the city, collecting a growing trail of police cars. The first squad had long fallen behind, but more patrol units took their place. I emptied three magazines before I began scrounging bullets off the floor, since my satchel was empty.

I don’t know if it was bad luck or the vampires’ protective enchantments, but I still couldn’t manage to blow out their tires. Luck finally turned in our favor when, on one particularly sharp turn, the vampire’s car met an unfortunate reckless driver coming the opposite way. The bloodsucker couldn’t avoid the collision. His front wheel narrowly missed the crash, but the rear wheel wasn’t so lucky – it took the full brunt of the impact. The force of the hit bent the wheel into a curve.

The car started bouncing, skidding wildly, and careening from one curb to the other before crashing into a wall with a thunderous noise, miraculously missing an electrical pole.

Knuckles reacted better – maybe because he had a ten-meter lead to assess the situation. He skillfully swerved around the crash site and brought Cooper to a halt ten meters from the vampires’ wrecked car. Behind us, the police cars began screeching to a stop as well.

The vampire was the first to recover. The driver’s door swung open with a powerful kick, barely staying on its hinges. His battle staff spat out an icicle, which shot through Cooper’s open window, missing my head by sheer luck.

"Drop the rod!" shouted the patrol constable who was the first to jump out of his car. His command ended in a choking scream as an icicle tore through his chest, freezing it solid. The second constable didn’t bother shouting – he immediately opened fire with his pistol. A shotgun roared next, and then something automatic joined in, much heavier than a Tommy gun by the sound of it.

The silhouette of the vampire vanished into a cloud of icy mist that swirled around his figure. Every bullet that entered the mist instantly became coated in frost and struck his body as chunks of ice that clung to his suit.

Within ten seconds, the vampire was encased in a frosty armor, and from his rod flew icy projectiles that hurtled toward the officers.

I risked peeking out again and noticed the rear door of the wrecked car swing open. A shadow crawled out. One shot later, the shadow turned into Simon, and another icicle came flying at me.

With a roar like a missile, a fireball struck the icy monster, turning his frosty shell into steam. Lightning struck next, forcing the bloodsucker to his knees.

“PSS! On your knees!” they shouted.

The PSS – Police Special Squad – weren’t the kind of guys you’d want to mess with. Yet the vampire still found the strength and will to fight back, once again rebuilding his icy mist.

I leaned out again, firing almost without aiming, and hit the staff. It seemed that the streak of bad luck that had haunted me since the tire incident had finally passed. The enchanted staff shattered into icy splinters.

Another fireball hit, followed by the rattle of machine guns, the thunder of shotguns, and the sharp cracks of pistols. Another bolt of lightning struck, this time hitting the bloodsucker squarely in the head. Right after that, a large bullet slammed into his forehead, leaving a neat hole and blowing out a chunk of his skull from the back.

“Help! He kidnapped me!” Simon screamed, his voice desperate and trembling.

“Get on the ground! Don’t move!” the constables shouted in response.

“He’s a hired killer!” I yelled back.

“Step out of the car, hands up! Now!” the officers barked.

“Uh, Duncan,” Knuckles said suddenly, his voice low and shaky. “I’m not sure I can raise my left arm.”

“Step out of the vehicle, or I’ll order them to fire!”

“Stay put,” I advised Knuckles, tossing my pistol onto the seat.

“I’m stepping out, constables,” I said, keeping my movements slow and non-threatening. I swung one leg out of the car, then pulled the rest of my body out carefully.

“Apologies, my driver’s injured. He won’t be able to exit the car without assistance,” I explained to the two dozen gun barrels now trained on me.

“This man tried to kill me!” Simon screamed, pointing a finger at me. Then, twisting his hands into a gesture I recognized all too well, he began casting a pain spell.

“His hand!” I shouted. “He’s casting a spell!” But I didn’t flinch – It wouldn’t work on me anyway.

“Lower it, now!” ordered the closest constable. A few steps closer, and the barrel of his shotgun pressed firmly against Simon’s head. “I said, lower it!”

“He’s a warlock,” I warned. “Takes out targets for hire. He just tried to finish me off near the Pubset precinct.”

“I’m a law-abiding citizen!” Simon bellowed in protest.

“He might have enchanted poison!” I warned again.

“Both of you, shut up! Don’t move!” barked another constable. "Hey, you special guys – wanna check him out?"

Meanwhile, two constables dragged Knuckles out of the car, picked up his submachine gun, and slapped cuffs on him. The pair of civilian dressed men relieved me of my satchel and gifted me a similar accessory. The one they called Halsey began his inspection using a strange binocular-like device. I lost all my protective amulets and then underwent a thorough search for non-magical weapons, which cost me my dagger. Simon went through the same procedure before we were separated and placed in different patrol cars.

“Good men,” I addressed the police politely, “please take care of my driver. It’s important to remove that bullet as soon as possible. We used a potion, and it sealed the wound, but if it’s not cleaned, there’s a risk of infection.”

“Get in!” one of them barked as I was roughly shoved into the back seat. Still, the man passed my words along to his colleagues.

The chase had pulled in squads from multiple districts, and now they were all trying to find a phone to contact their superiors. The higher-ups, in turn, were trying to figure out who would claim the prize: three live suspects and one vampire corpse.

The first detective to arrive, from the nearest station, took Simon for questioning. Shortly after, an inspector from another precinct arrived and turned his attention to Knuckles, apparently considering him the least hardened of the lot. When a detective finally showed up for me, he turned out to be from a precinct currently embroiled in a jurisdictional argument with the station whose car I was sitting in. This sparked a heated debate about rights and responsibilities.

“Gentlemen,” I interrupted the bickering officers, “why don’t we just proceed? The detective can ask his questions, and the constables can record my answers. We’re not going anywhere until orders come from above anyway.”

The policemen exchanged glances, nodded, and agreed.

The detective barely had time to get through the personal details when another figure arrived at the scene – someone I hadn’t expected to see at all. I didn’t even notice him approaching until he dropped a sarcastic remark.

“Well, who would’ve guessed!” said Detective Inspector Sunset. “A pile of vampire corpses, and of course, Lord Loxlin has to be involved. Hello, Fogan. Boys,” he greeted the others.

“John,” the first detective nodded back. “We can’t even decide who gets him. You’d better try your luck elsewhere.”

“Oh, my friend, I’d happily dump this one on you, but I can’t. Orders from the Chief Constable.”

Detective Fogan let out a whistle. “I take it this isn’t just about the chase?”

“Think bigger. Valentine’s Nest has practically been wiped out.”

“But the Nest is in Sungarden – that’s not your jurisdiction.”

“The Nest is in Sungarden, but on my turf, there’s a house full of corpses: four master vampires, a handful of lesser undead, and a basement packed with drained victims. The only survivors are Blind Fire and his sister. And not a lot of burn marks either. Most of the vampires were just gunned down. A Special Squad has been dispatched to deal with Noah and his remaining brats, so you’d better hurry up and report to your governor," Sunset said to the civilian-dressed officers. "You can leave the lad to me – I’ve been assigned to clean up this mess."

Fogan whistled again, snapped his notebook shut, and offered a sympathetic grimace. “I don’t envy you.”