Chapter 52. Apocalypse-hardened kid
Ayaka watched as the man with a machine gun strolled through the ruins. Blood glistened in his mouth like syrup, his teeth stained red. He prowled through the ruins with lazy menace, scanning the wreckage for something to kill. Something to feed on.
She had no weapon. Nothing that could match him head-on. But she didn’t need one. She could use his own vampiric instincts against him.
He was barely fifty meters away, moving like a predator with too much confidence. With her Sight Domain, she could see everything. His every twitch, every breath, and every sniff.
She moved slow, careful, slipping out of her hiding spot and stepping into the open. Her eyes through her skill never left the man as he paused, head tilted, sniffing the air like a dog even though he was buildings away from her.
Ayaka moved through the ruins until she reached a cluster of corpses—some fresh, others long dead, bloated with gas and reeking of sweet decay. She knelt beside a particularly rotten one, picked up a cracked concrete slab, and brought it crashing down on its belly.
The stomach burst open. Flies swarmed in thick clouds, and a wave of sour rot slammed into her like a brick wall.
Perfect.
She reached into the corpse’s ruined gut and smeared black, gelatinous organs across her clothes. Her hands came away slick and reeking. Flies clung to her face. She gagged, but didn’t stop.
She had to smell like death—because vampires hated rot. They only craved fresh, warm blood.
Now, he wouldn’t smell her. That should be enough for her to find a way to kill him before he finds her.
Now disguised in death’s stink, she slipped through the ruins and headed for the broken gas station she’d spotted in her Domain. The pumps were dead, but the underground pipes might still hold something.