I hop into the shadow portal with my entire being—
Emerging in the southern kitchen closest to my quiet acolytes outside. The room had been empty before, but it isn’t anymore.
A crouched vampire in a gray cloak stalks from the entry toward the exit door past a large covered work table.
I emerge from his shadow, deciding on stealth rather than brute force. The last thing I need is a blazing, hissing, screeching vampire in my own damned house, burning the place down.
So I draw a dagger from my belt and keep my silver saber poised behind me like a fencer.
Perhaps it is the tiniest rasp of steel he hears from my dagger being drawn, or the shadow on the wall near him, abruptly darkening the room. Whatever it is that makes him notice me, the vampire wheels around quite fast—
Only to earn my dagger in his chest.
As the knife plunges and cracks through breastbone, I twist, feel his heart give out, slide the dagger out, and he collapses dead on the ground.
I flare my nostrils at the intruder and spit on his corpse. Then I grab a cleaver from the kitchen table and behead the bastard for good measure.
I wipe my dagger off, sheathe it, and disappear into my shadow.
The next hunter is located in the conference room, getting suspiciously close to the only other inhabitant of this fortress, yet without knowing it.
I take him next, appearing out of his shadow with cleaver and dagger swinging, slicing off both his hands at the wrists before he can even raise his blade.
He cries out—a deafening sound meant to alert, and alert it does. I curse my foolishness and hear boots heading toward me immediately.
Just as a third vampire bursts into the wide conference room, I disappear into my shadow again.
Through the black gate and tunnel I go, gliding past walls and stone as my head begins to throb from using my ability so frequently.
The circumstance calls for it, however, and I come out at the fourth blood marker, a vampire in the northeastern section of the manor, upstairs. He’s systematically going through bedrooms with a sword drawn, the blade blackened by pitch.
I fly out of his shadow like a bat, and he swings wildly at me as I backpedal. His blade thuds into the door frame of Sephania’s bedchamber, and I wonder what brilliant tactician gave the vampire with alongswordjurisdiction over the tight quarters upstairs.
I smile as he works to wrench his blade free from where it’s stuck in the wood. Just as he does, my dagger punctures the rubbery flesh of his throat. He gurgles, choking, grabbing at his neck and trying to squeal but failing because I’ve severed his vocal cords.
As he reaches for his weapon again, I finally draw my silver sword and stab it into his chest, knowing it can’t be helped.
The inferno is immediate, the wheezing hiss and sulfuric scent clouding the hallway in a great gray billow.
Twisting my wrists left and right, I cover the heaping, fiery carcass with a blanket of shadows that snuffs out the flames and leaves a white, ashen residue behind.
Boots sound behind me and I spin—
Just as the fifth vampire charges at me with a roar.
Suppose there’s no use being quiet anymore, what with all the ruckus I’ve caused.
The assassin is shocked when I’m no longer in front of him, dipping into my shadow, submerging into blackness.
He stares down at his feet when his blade strikes nothing but air, confused.
And he stays confused when I pop up beside him from the wall, out of his sconce-lit shadow, to plunge my blade between his ribs.
The instant I make silver contact with his flesh: firestorm. I douse the flames in shadows as he topples to his death, and scowl at the way my rugs and floorboards are getting blackened and ruined. Worst part is, it’s all my doing, since I’m the one swinging a silver sword around.
With a sigh, I note the placement of the sixth and final vampire in the manor, who is methodically moving through the rooms downstairs, close to the study. The sixth vampire is clearly searching for something specific, and I have a mind to give it to them.
First, I return to the conference room where I vanished from the second and third hunters—
