She's fighting.
I abandon caution and run.
The parking structure is three levels of crumbling concrete and rusted support beams. Graffiti covers the lower walls, and broken glass crunches under my feet as I enter. The sounds are coming from the second level, echoing off the walls, bouncing through the empty space. I take the ramp at full speed, my footsteps silent despite my haste.
What I see when I reach the second level stops me cold.
Celeste, covered in blood, locked in combat with Valentina.
They're moving almost too fast to track, a blur of strikes and counters, two predators fighting with everything they have. Valentina is older, stronger, her movements carrying the fluid grace of centuries of practice. But Celeste is fury incarnate. She fights like she's got nothing left to lose, like she's already decided how this ends.
My ring glints at her chest, catching the dim light that filters through the broken windows. Still there. Still hers.
Pride swells in my chest even as terror grips my throat. She's magnificent. She never intended to go quietly. Never intended tobe a passive prisoner waiting for rescue. The moment she saw an opportunity…
She took it.
That's who she is. That's who I fell for. A fighter. A survivor. Someone who doesn't wait to be saved.
Valentina snarls something I can't hear, driving Celeste back with a series of vicious strikes. Celeste blocks most of them, but one gets through, a slash across her shoulder that sprays blood across the concrete. She doesn't cry out. Doesn't falter. Just adjusts her stance and keeps fighting.
I move to help her.
"Not so fast, old friend."
Konstantin steps out of the shadows, blocking my path. He's immaculate despite the chaos around him, not a hair out of place, not a speck of blood on his tailored suit. His smile is the same one he's worn for centuries: amused, superior, utterly certain of his own invincibility.
I hate that smile. I've hated it for four hundred years.
"Let her fight her own battle," he says, gesturing toward Celeste and Valentina. "It's been a long time coming, don't you think? Maker and creation. Mother and daughter, in a sense. Very poetic."
"Get out of my way."
"Or what?" He spreads his hands, the gesture almost theatrical. "You'll kill me? You've been trying to do that for centuries, Maximus. It hasn't worked out well for you."
He's right. We've fought before, twice, in fact. The first time, in Prague in 1723, we destroyed an entire city block before his allies pulled him out. The second time, in Shanghai in 1891, I had him cornered in a burning warehouse before the roof collapsed and separated us.
Both times, I was the one left standing. Both times, he was the one who ran.
Not tonight.
I don't waste words on a response. I attack.
The first blow catches him off guard, a strike to his jaw that snaps his head back and sends him stumbling. Centuries of training and combat experience compressed into a single motion. He recovers quickly, but not quickly enough. My second strike opens a gash across his cheek. My third drives him back another step.
"Impressive," he says, touching his face where blood wells from the wound. "You've gotten faster."
I press the advantage, driving him away from Celeste, away from the fight I desperately want to be part of. Every strike is meant to kill. Every movement is designed to cause maximum damage. I'm not fighting to win, I'm fighting to end him, permanently, finally, after centuries of this cold war.
But Konstantin is faster than me. Stronger than me. A thousand years of existence has honed him into something beyond what most vampires can achieve. He weathers my assault with the patience of someone who's seen empires rise and fall, blocking and dodging and waiting for an opening.
"She's something special, isn't she?" He parries a strike, counters with one of his own. Pain blooms across my ribs where his fist connects. "I knew she would be. From the moment I saw her in that underground ring, I knew. A fighter. A survivor. Exactly the kind of weapon I needed."
"She's not a weapon."
"Everyone's a weapon, Maximus. The only question is who's holding the trigger." He ducks under my swing, lands a blow to my kidney that would have dropped a younger vampire. "I held it first. Made her. Shaped her. You just got the finished product."
I catch his wrist as he strikes again, twist until I hear bone crack. He hisses but doesn't scream. Doesn't retreat. Just smilesthat infuriating smile and wrenches free, his wrist already healing.
