Blood and Questions
Marcus's crossbow didn't waver. "You know what it is, and you're still defending him?"
"I'm defending myself." I kept my voice level, my body between Nikolai and the blessed silver bolts. "You taught me to think for myself, Marcus. To question. So I'm questioning why the Order wants him dead so badly they'd send seven hunters to a subway tunnel at three in the morning."
"Because he's dangerous." Another hunter stepped forward—Elena, her face half-hidden by her tactical mask. "Because he's not like other vampires. Because Cassia Vex made him into something that can control humans through blood bonds, and if the Consilium gets their hands on that technology—"
"They already have it." Nikolai's voice cut through the tunnel, soft and precise. "The Consilium funded Cassia's research. They know exactly what I am. The question you should be asking is why they want me eliminated now, after years of observation."
Marcus's finger tightened on the trigger. "Shut up, bloodsucker."
"Because I refused to make more." Nikolai took a step forward, and I felt the shift in the air—the predator calculating angles, exits, the precise moment to strike. "They wanted me to create an army of bonded humans. Willing slaves who would think they were in love while they bled themselves dry. I said no. So now I'm a liability."
"Convenient story." But Marcus's crossbow dipped, just a fraction.
"It's the truth." I pulled Mara's journal from my jacket, held it up. "Mara figured it out. That's why they killed her. Not because she was investigating blood farms—because she discovered what Nikolai was, and she was going to expose the Consilium's involvement."
Elena's mask turned toward Marcus. A silent conversation passed between them.
"Even if that's true," Marcus said slowly, "it doesn't change what he is. An artificial vampire. A weapon. You can't trust him, Sera. The bond—"
"The bond is manufactured. I know." The words tasted like copper. "But my choices are still mine. And I choose to find out who killed my sister before I let you put a bolt through his heart."
"We have orders—"
"From who? Konstantin?" I watched Marcus flinch. "Yeah. Mara's file had his signature on the termination order. So forgive me if I don't trust the chain of command right now."
The hunters shifted, crossbows lowering by degrees. Not much. Enough.
"We can't just let you walk away," Elena said.
"Then come with us." Nikolai's voice was reasonable, almost gentle. "To Brno. There's a facility there—a blood farm run by the Consilium. If you want proof of what they're doing, it's all there. Records. Prisoners. Evidence that will burn their operation to the ground."
"And if you're lying?"
"Then you can kill me in Brno just as easily as you can kill me here." He spread his hands, palms up. "But if I'm telling the truth, you'll have the ammunition to take down the people who murdered one of your own."
Marcus looked at me. "Sera. You're sure about this?"
No. "Yes."
"Fuck." He lowered his crossbow completely. "Elena, stand down. We're going to Brno."
The drive took four hours in two stolen cars—Marcus, Elena, and two other hunters in the lead vehicle, me and Nikolai and the remaining three hunters in the second. No one spoke. The hunters kept their crossbows loaded, fingers resting near triggers, eyes never leaving Nikolai's face.
I watched the countryside blur past the window, trying not to think about the fact that I'd just committed treason against the only family I'd ever known. Trying not to think about the weight of Nikolai's presence beside me, the manufactured bond humming under my skin like a second heartbeat.
"You didn't have to do that," he said quietly.
"Shut up."
"Sera—"
"I said shut up." I didn't look at him. "You don't get to thank me. You don't get to act like this changes anything between us."
"I wasn't going to."
"Good."
But his hand found mine in the darkness between the seats, and I didn't pull away.
The Brno facility looked like a hospital. Clean white walls, red cross painted on the side, ambulances parked in the loading bay. If I hadn't known what it was, I would have driven past without a second glance.
That was the point.
We parked two blocks away, regrouped in the shadow of an abandoned factory. Marcus spread a blueprint across the hood of the car—Irina's intelligence, detailed and precise.
"Three levels," he said, tracing the layout with one finger. "Administrative on top, medical in the middle, prisoners at the bottom. Cold War bunker, reinforced concrete, limited entry points. Security changes shifts at oh-four-hundred. We have twenty minutes."
"We split up," Nikolai said. "Sera and I will take the archive room on level one. You take level three, document the prisoners, get them out if you can."
"You're not giving orders here, vampire."
"No. But I'm the one with Irina's security key, and you're the ones with the tactical training to extract civilians from a hostile facility." Nikolai's voice was patient, like he was explaining something to a child. "Unless you'd prefer to argue about chain of command while people die in cages three floors below us."
Marcus's jaw worked. "Fine. But if you try anything—"
"You'll kill me. Yes. I'm aware." Nikolai pulled a small silver key from his pocket, held it up to the light. "Shall we?"
The service tunnel smelled like rust and old water. Our footsteps echoed off concrete walls, too loud, too exposed. I kept my hand on the knife at my belt, watching the shadows for movement.
Nikolai moved like smoke ahead of me, silent and fluid. Predator in his element.
"How long were you planning to keep it secret?" The question came out before I could stop it.
He paused. Didn't turn around. "Forever, if I could have."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have." He started walking again. "I didn't know what I was until Mara started investigating. I thought—I thought I was just a vampire. Old, powerful, but fundamentally the same as the others. Then she showed me Cassia's research notes, and I realized I'd never had a maker. Never been turned. I was built in a laboratory like a fucking science project."
The bitterness in his voice was new. Raw.
"And the bond?"
"I didn't know I could create them at will until Cassia told me. She was so proud." His laugh was hollow. "Her greatest achievement. A vampire who could forge blood bonds with a single feeding, who could make humans love him, trust him, die for him. The perfect weapon."
"Did you know? When you fed from me that first time?"
He stopped walking. Turned to face me in the dim tunnel light. "No. I swear to you, Sera, I didn't know. I thought—I thought it was natural. Rare, but natural. By the time I realized what I'd done, you were already—"
"Already what?"
"Already mine." The words were soft, almost inaudible. "And I was already yours. Bond or no bond, manufactured or real, I would have chosen you anyway."
I wanted to believe him. That was the worst part. Even knowing what I knew, even understanding that every feeling between us might be artificial, I wanted to believe that some part of it was real.
"We need to keep moving," I said instead.
The archive room was locked behind a steel door with a biometric scanner. Nikolai pressed Irina's key against the reader, and something clicked. The door swung open on silent hinges.
Inside, filing cabinets lined the walls, floor to ceiling. Decades of records. Decades of people reduced to intake forms and acquisition reports.
"You photograph," I said. "I'll look for Mara's file."
We worked in silence, the only sound the click of Nikolai's phone camera and the whisper of paper as I rifled through drawers. The files were organized by date, not name. I started with eleven months ago, when Mara died.
Found her file in the third drawer.
The folder was thin. Eleven pages. Eleven days of interrogation, torture disguised as questioning, clinical notes about her resistance to compulsion and blessed silver and sleep deprivation.
Subject refuses to reveal source contacts.
Subject claims evidence has been distributed to multiple parties.
Subject maintains that artificial vampire program violates Consilium charter.
Recommend termination.
The signature at the bottom was Konstantin's, but there was a second signature above it. Authorization from someone higher up the chain.
I recognized the handwriting.
"No." The word came out strangled.
Nikolai was beside me in an instant. "What is it?"
I held up the page, hand shaking. "The authorization. The order to kill Mara. It's not just Konstantin."
"Who?"
"Gregor Kovač." My voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else. "My father."
The filing cabinet blurred. The room tilted. Nikolai's hands caught my shoulders, steadied me, but I couldn't feel them. Couldn't feel anything except the roaring in my ears and the taste of bile in my throat.
My father had signed my sister's death warrant.
"Sera—"
"He knew." The words came out mechanical, precise. "He knew what they were doing here. He knew about the blood farms, the artificial vampires, the plan to create bonded slaves. And when Mara tried to stop it, he had her killed."
"We don't know that he—"
"His signature is right there." I shoved the page at Nikolai. "Authorization for termination. Dated three days before she died. He didn't just know, he approved it. He murdered his own daughter to protect the Consilium's fucking science project."
Nikolai's face was unreadable in the dim light. "What do you want to do?"
"I want to burn this place to the ground." My nails bit into my palms, drawing blood. "I want to drag my father down here and make him look at what he's done. I want—"
The lights went out.
Emergency lighting kicked in a second later, bathing everything in red. An alarm started wailing, high and piercing.
"They know we're here," Nikolai said.
"Marcus—"
"Is three floors down with no way to warn him." He grabbed my hand, pulled me toward the door. "We need to go. Now."
We ran.
The corridor was chaos—guards pouring from doorways, radios crackling, boots pounding on concrete. Nikolai moved faster than I could track, a blur of violence that left bodies crumpled in our wake. I followed in his shadow, knife in hand, trying not to think about the fact that we'd just lost any chance of a quiet extraction.
The stairwell door burst open ahead of us. More guards, these ones armed with automatic weapons instead of crossbows.
"Down!" Nikolai shoved me behind a filing cabinet as bullets tore through the air where I'd been standing. The cabinet shuddered with impacts, paper exploding into confetti.
"We're pinned," I shouted over the gunfire.
"I noticed." Nikolai's eyes had gone completely black, pupils blown wide with predator instinct. "When I move, you run for the stairwell. Don't stop. Don't look back."
"What are you—"
He was already moving.
I'd seen Nikolai fight before. Seen him fast, efficient, controlled. This was different. This was a monster unleashed, all pretense of humanity stripped away. He tore through the guards like they were paper, too fast for bullets, too strong for body armor. Blood painted the walls in arterial sprays.
I ran.
Made it to the stairwell, started down toward level three. Had to find Marcus, had to warn him, had to—
The door below me opened.
Cassia Vex stood on the landing, perfectly composed in a white suit that somehow had no blood on it despite the carnage above. She smiled when she saw me.
"Hello, darling," she said. "I've been waiting for you."
Behind her, I could see Marcus and Elena and the other hunters, all of them on their knees with guns pressed to their heads. Their eyes were glazed, unfocused.
Compelled.
"Let them go," I said.
"Oh, I don't think so." Cassia climbed the stairs toward me, each step precise and unhurried. "You've caused quite a bit of trouble tonight, sweet thing. Breaking into my facility, stealing my research, turning my own creation against me. That's very rude."
"Your creation is upstairs killing your guards."
"I know. Isn't it wonderful?" Her smile widened. "I always knew Nikolai had it in him. All that restraint, all that careful control—it was only a matter of time before something made him snap. And you, darling, you're exactly the catalyst I needed."
"What are you talking about?"
"The bond." She reached the landing where I stood, close enough that I could smell her perfume—something floral and cloying. "It's not just about control. It's about amplification. Every emotion you feel, he feels ten times stronger. Every threat to you becomes a threat to his entire existence. I made him to protect his bonded human at any cost, and right now, that human is you."
Ice crawled down my spine. "You wanted this. You wanted us to come here."
"Of course I did. How else was I going to demonstrate to the Consilium that my research works?" She gestured to the hunters below. "These are their representatives, by the way. Come to observe the final field test. And you and Nikolai are performing beautifully."
"This is insane—"
"This is science." Her hand shot out, faster than I could dodge, and grabbed my throat. Her fingers were cold, impossibly strong. "Now, let's see what happens when I threaten to kill you. Will he come running? Will he tear through an entire facility to save you? Will he prove that artificial bonds are just as powerful as natural ones?"
She squeezed.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. The world started to gray at the edges.
And then Nikolai was there, materializing out of the shadows like something from a nightmare. His hand closed around Cassia's wrist, and I heard bones crack.
She dropped me.
I fell to my knees, gasping, throat burning. Looked up to see Nikolai and Cassia facing each other on the narrow landing, two predators sizing each other up.
"Let her go," Nikolai said. His voice was barely human.
"There he is." Cassia cradled her broken wrist, but she was still smiling. "There's my perfect weapon. Do you feel it, Nikolai? The rage? The need to protect her at any cost? That's what I built you for."
"You built me to be a slave."
"I built you to be a god." She took a step toward him. "Think about it. With your ability to create bonds, you could have an army. Thousands of humans who would die for you, kill for you, worship you. You could reshape the world."
"I don't want to reshape the world." Nikolai's fangs were fully extended, his hands curled into claws. "I want you dead."
"Then kill me." Cassia spread her arms wide. "But if you do, you'll never know how to break the bond. You'll never know if what you feel for Sera is real or just my programming. You'll spend eternity wondering if you're capable of genuine emotion or if you're just a very sophisticated puppet."
Nikolai froze.
"That's what I thought." Cassia's smile turned triumphant. "You can't kill me, because I'm the only one who knows how you work. The only one who can tell you if there's a way to undo what I've done. So here's what's going to happen—"
The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed stairwell.
Cassia staggered, a red bloom spreading across her white suit. She looked down at the wound, then up at me, her expression almost comically surprised.
I lowered Marcus's gun, the one I'd lifted from his holster when Cassia had me by the throat.
"You were saying?" I asked.
Cassia's legs gave out. She sat down hard on the stairs, one hand pressed to the hole in her chest. "You shot me."
"You noticed."
"I'm a vampire, darling. This won't—" She coughed, and blood spilled over her lips. "This won't kill me."
"No." I chambered another round. "But it'll slow you down long enough for us to get out of here. And then I'm going to find every piece of research you've ever done, every note, every file, every backup, and I'm going to burn it all. Your life's work. Gone."
"You can't—"
"Watch me."
I grabbed Nikolai's hand, pulled him past Cassia's bleeding form, down the stairs toward the hunters. They were starting to come out of the compulsion, blinking and confused.
"Marcus," I snapped. "We're leaving. Now."
He looked at me, at Nikolai, at Cassia crumpled on the landing above us. "What the fuck just happened?"
"I'll explain in the car. Move."
We ran.
Made it to the ground floor, through the loading bay, out into the pre-dawn darkness. The stolen cars were where we'd left them, engines still running.
"Everyone in," Marcus ordered. "We'll regroup at the safe house—"
"No." I turned to face them, all seven hunters staring at me with varying degrees of shock and suspicion. "You go to the safe house. Nikolai and I have something else to do."
"Sera—"
"My father signed Mara's death warrant." I held up the file, the page with Gregor Kovač's signature visible in the streetlight. "He's part of this. Part of the blood farms, the artificial vampire program, all of it. And I'm going to make him answer for it."
Elena stepped forward. "You can't go after a Consilium member alone. That's suicide."
"Then it's suicide." I looked at Nikolai. "You coming?"
He didn't hesitate. "Always."
We got in the second car. I started the engine, put it in gear.
"Sera," Marcus called. "If you do this, there's no coming back. The Order will hunt you. The Consilium will hunt you. You'll be enemies of everyone."
"Good." I met his eyes through the window. "I'm tired of being on the wrong side."
I drove.
We were twenty kilometers outside Brno when Nikolai finally spoke.
"You didn't have to shoot her."
"Yes, I did."
"She was the only one who knew—"
"I don't care." My hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. "I don't care if the bond is real or fake. I don't care if what I feel for you is manufactured or genuine. I care that my father murdered my sister. I care that the Consilium is running blood farms and creating vampire weapons and treating humans like livestock. That's real. That's something I can fight."
"And us?"
"I don't know." The words hurt to say. "Maybe we figure that out after we burn down the people who made us into this. Maybe we never figure it out. But right now, I need you to help me kill my father, and I need you to not ask me how I feel about you, because I honestly don't know anymore."
Silence.
Then: "Okay."
"Okay?"
"I'll help you kill your father." Nikolai's voice was soft, almost gentle. "And I won't ask how you feel. But Sera—when this is over, when we've destroyed the Consilium and exposed the blood farms and made them pay for what they've done—I'm going to ask. And I need you to promise me you'll answer honestly."
"I promise."
"Good."
We drove through the dawn, heading toward Prague and the confrontation I'd been avoiding my entire life. The sun was rising behind us, painting the sky in shades of blood and gold.
My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.
I opened it.
The message was a single photograph: my father, standing in front of the Prague Consilium building, talking to someone I couldn't quite see. The timestamp was from three hours ago.
Below the photo, a single line of text:
He knows you're coming. —I
Irina.
I showed Nikolai the phone.
"It's a trap," he said.
"I know."
"We should wait. Plan. Gather more evidence—"
"No." I pressed down on the accelerator, watching the speedometer climb. "We go now, while he's expecting us. While he thinks he has the advantage."
"That's insane."
"Probably." I smiled, and it felt like baring teeth. "But I didn't shoot Cassia Vex in the chest just to play it safe."
Nikolai laughed, surprised and genuine. "You're going to get us both killed."
"Maybe. But we'll take him with us."
The Prague skyline appeared on the horizon, spires and bridges silhouetted against the morning light. Somewhere in that city, my father was waiting. Somewhere in that city, the Consilium was planning their next move.
And somewhere in that city, the truth about Mara's death was waiting to be dragged into the light.
I drove faster.
The phone buzzed again. Another text from Irina:
Basement level. He's alone. You have ten minutes before the guards change shifts.
And then, a second later:
Make it count.
I pulled into an alley three blocks from the Consilium building, killed the engine. Checked my weapons—knife, gun, three blessed silver rounds I'd taken from Marcus's spare magazine.
Nikolai's hand covered mine. "Sera. If we do this—if we go in there and kill a Consilium member—there's no going back. We'll be hunted for the rest of our lives."
"I know."
"And you're sure? You're sure this is what you want?"
I thought about M