Locking her away would keep her safe, but it would also prove Konstantin right, that she's a weakness I'm trying to protect.
I delete the message and type instead:
No. But assign her a combat partner for all field missions. And accelerate her training schedule. She needs to be ready.
The response is immediate:
Marcellus
Understood. I'll handle it.
I set the phone down and move to the windows. The blackout curtains are already drawn, but I can feel dawn approaching.
I should rest. Tomorrow night will be full of meetings, strategy sessions, and preparations. But my mind won't settle.
Thirty-seven vampires.
The number sits heavy in my chest. Each one a name I knew. Michael Torres had been part of my network for twenty-three years. Before that, he'd been a teacher. High school history. He used to joke that teaching teenagers prepared him for the discipline required of vampire life.
Now he's ash in an urn, waiting to be scattered according to his wishes.
The others come back to me in fragments. Jessica, contaminated six months ago. A former nurse who'd understood the medical risks intellectually but couldn't overcome her addiction to a human boyfriend who used opioids.
They blur together after a while. The contaminated. The feral. The ones I couldn't save.
I used to keep detailed records of each execution. Names, dates, causes of contamination, final words if they were lucid enough to speak. I told myself it was important to document everything, to learn from each failure, to improve the screening process.
But really, I was trying to convince myself that killing them mattered. That ending their suffering was noble rather than practical. That I was still capable of caring about individual lives instead of just managing a population.
I stopped keeping records two years ago when I realized I was lying to myself.
Now I just count.
Thirty-seven.
My phone buzzes a third time. Another message from Konstantin:
Unknown
Two weeks, Maximus. That's how long you have before everything you've built comes crashing down. Choose wisely, join me, or watch your precious network burn.
There it is. The provocation I've been waiting for. He's forcing my hand, trying to make me react emotionally instead of strategically.
The old Maximus, the one who was human, who led soldiers and protected his men with loyalty that bordered on suicidal, would have responded with immediate violence. Would have gathered his forces and struck first, consequences be damned.
The Maximus who was enslaved by Luciano for 150 years learned to wait. To plan. To control every variable before making a move.
But this Maximus, the one who's been alone for 300 years since he killed the woman he loved, keeps getting distracted by variables that shouldn't matter as much as they do.
Like whether she'll look at me differently after tonight.
I pull up the security feed from her room before I can stop myself.
She's still awake, sitting cross-legged on the bed with a notebook I don't remember giving her. Writing something. Her dark hair falls forward, partially obscuring her face. She's changed out of her training clothes into something more comfortable, soft pants and a t-shirt that make her look younger, more vulnerable than the fighter I've been training.
As I watch, she stops writing and stares at nothing. Her expression is troubled. Thinking about Michael's execution, probably. About what she witnessed. About what it means to be part of a system that sometimes requires killing the people it's meant to save.
She's been a vampire for eight months. Still processing the moral complexities of immortality. Still adjusting to a world where right and wrong aren't always clear.
