My Blood Legacy: Bloodlines

Ghideon used the failure immediately.

He appeared in front of Nera and struck the shaft of the scythe with his human hand. The weapon slipped from her fingers and spun through the corridor. The claw came next, aimed directly at her chest. Nera tried to retreat, but the lunar energy pressed against her senses and disturbed her balance.

Victor crossed the distance with Black Lightning and moved between them.

The claws pierced his back and emerged through his abdomen.

Nera’s eyes widened.

Victor seized the lupine arm with both hands before Ghideon could pull it free.

"Now."

Nera did not hesitate. She jumped, caught the scythe while it was still spinning through the air, and used all the momentum to strike Ghideon’s elbow. The blade found the region where the bone plates had already been damaged and cut through the joint.

The lupine arm was severed.

Victor fell with it, still pierced by the claws. Nera landed, spun the scythe, and continued attacking Ghideon before the Specialist could reconstruct the limb. The first strike opened his right thigh. The second hit his human shoulder. The third would have removed his head, but Ghideon turned his neck into shadow and retreated.

Victor pulled the arm out of his own body and threw it away. Rowena felt the energy contained within begin searching for its owner.

"Burn it. Now."

White Fire covered the severed limb.

The arm writhed across the floor like a living creature. Its fingers dug into the stones, trying to drag the flesh out of the flames, but Victor increased the temperature until the plates burst and the muscles began to disappear.

Ghideon screamed.

The reaction was stronger than when he had lost the previous arm. He placed his remaining hand over the severed shoulder, but the lunar energy did not return. For the first time, a stolen part had been destroyed without any possibility of reuse.

Nera looked at Victor while he sealed the holes in his abdomen with Black Ice.

"You stepped in front of it."

"You were without your weapon."

"I was going to dodge."

"It did not look like it."

She frowned but did not continue. The ceiling above them began to give way, and a block of stone fell between the two. Victor raised Lilith and cut the fragment in half before impact. The entire structure was collapsing faster. Blood released from the pipes formed shallow rivers across the floor, feeding symbols that lit up along the walls.

Mirella’s voice came through the communication ring between bursts of static.

"Victor, report. We lost access to the central corridor, and the installation is collapsing."

He avoided a shadow spear thrown by Ghideon before answering.

"We found the target. He is using parts of the experiments to modify his body."

"Can you maintain combat?"

Nera kicked a creature into the wall and cut off its head.

"We can."

Mirella heard the response through the ring.

"We are descending through the eastern sector. Three minutes."

Ghideon smiled while shadows began accumulating around his destroyed shoulder again.

"Three minutes are more than I need."

Victor examined the direction of the blood flowing across the floor and noticed that every channel converged toward the chamber beneath them. Ghideon had not activated only the destruction of the laboratory. He was draining energy from the bodies, creatures, and symbols toward a specific point.

"Rowena, what is down there?"

She remained silent for several seconds, concentrating on something Victor could not sense.

"The werewolf scent became stronger. Much stronger."

Ghideon retreated toward the hole opened between the floors. The remaining creatures positioned themselves in front of him, forming a wall of bodies while the shadows slowly reconstructed the lost arm.

Victor realized that the Specialist was not trying to escape.

He was trying to reach something.

"He was saving the best experiment for last," Victor said as Lilith grew in his hand.

Nera rested the scythe on her shoulder and stood beside him.

"Then we kill him before he gets it."

The two advanced against the last line of creatures. Victor opened the center with a concentrated wave of White Fire, burning blood, shadow, and flesh without striking the side walls. Nera passed through the opening before the flames disappeared, cutting down the monsters still standing. Ghideon jumped through the hole and disappeared into the lower floor.

Victor and Nera followed immediately.

They fell into a chamber far larger than the others. The space occupied the entire base of the laboratory, surrounded by thick columns and chains attached to the walls. At the center stood a vertical tank of black glass almost twenty meters tall. Blood from the channels entered through the base of the structure, causing the liquid inside to rotate around something enormous.

Victor could not distinguish the entire body.

He saw dark fur, broad bones, claws larger than swords, and part of a muzzle restrained by metal tubes. The creature inside the tank did not appear alive, but it did not smell completely dead either.

Rowena stopped speaking.

Victor felt the quality of her silence change. It was not concentration, contempt, or irritation.

It was recognition.

"You know what that is?" he asked mentally.

She took time to answer.

"I know the blood."

Ghideon landed on the platform before the tank and opened his arms. The blood gathered in the channels began climbing his legs, reconstructing muscle, skin, and bone. The scars on his chest opened completely, forming a dark cavity that pulsed toward the sealed creature.

"You wanted to find the original," he said as the black glass began to crack behind him. "But you never understood that Ghideon DuskBlood stopped being a single vampire a very long time ago."

Victor and Nera landed on the opposite side of the platform.

Ghideon placed his human hand against the tank.

The gigantic body opened its eyes.

The pressure crossing the chamber caused every column to crack at the same time, while Rowena spoke a name inside Victor’s mind with a seriousness he had not heard from her since meeting her.

"Get away from that tank."