As the battle with the Forgeborn raged through the foggy forest, Ace let loose a string of curses.

  He was going to kill that asshole.

  The former merc ignored Ace's plan entirely. He charged straight for the Forgeborn leader, his face contorted with predatory hunger. The gap he left in their defensive line became an immediate weakness as three Forgeborn fighters exploited it, closing in on Marcus's exposed flank.

  "Goddammit, Victor!" Ace snarled.

  At the same moment, a Forgeborn hunter with twin daggers lunged at Ace, forcing him to pivot away from helping his team. The daggers gleamed with silver edges, leaving faint trails of shimmering light in the air as they slashed toward his face. Ace blocked with his steel blade, then countered with a kick that sent the man sprawling.

  "Look out!" Olivia warned.

  Ace ducked as chains with silver links whipped through the air above him. Another Forgeborn wielded them like extensions of his arms, the weighted ends seeking him out with uncanny precision.

  “Oh, how exciting!” the System cooed from overhead.

  No one even looked her way as the chaos unfolded in the fog below her.

  Olivia, meanwhile, flowed like water between two attackers who had converged on her. Her staff twirled through the air, leaving crimson trails in its wake. Blood Echo activated as she spun, creating three perfect duplicates of her last movement that confounded her opponents. When the duplicates dissolved, she was already behind one attacker, her claws slashing open his throat.

  Blood splattered across her face, and she smiled. It was wicked. Demented, even, the way she watched the light leave the man’s eyes.

  She was enjoying this.

  Olivia licked her fingers as the man collapsed before her. Without so much as a glance over her shoulder, she spun her staff above her head and slammed it hard into the second attacker’s face. His nose snapped, and he cried out in pain. She dug her nails into his jaw and bit down hard on his neck.

  This girl was crazy—but hey, at least she was helping.

  "Four down," Ace counted, adding Olivia's kills to his tally.

  Fourteen remaining.

  Rachel lay trapped beneath the silver-weighted net, and she grimaced as she glared through the smoke coiling off her skin. "The—their weapons," she gasped. "They’re enchanted with something. Activated by... by contact with vampiric blood."

  Lovely.

  Tara reached her, hands hovering over the net. The silver beads sizzled, and spirals of smoke shot into the air around her fingers. "I can't—"

  Ace was there in an instant, ripping the net away despite the agony that flared through his hands as silver burned into his palms. The metal didn't just sear his skin—it corrupted it. His skin blackened and peeled back like paper in a flame, exposing raw muscle that hissed and bubbled wherever the silver made contact.

  Pain radiated up his arms in waves of molten agony, each pulse following the path of his undead veins. The smell of his own burning body filled his head—sweet and putrid simultaneously. Through gritted teeth, he tasted his own blood. His enhanced senses magnified every aspect of his suffering. Each nerve ending screamed bloody murder as the silver worked its way deeper.

  His body should’ve been healing. Instead, it liquefied as the metal ate away at him.

  "Go!" he ordered.

  Tara obeyed. He scanned the foggy forest as crimson energy engulfed Tara’s hands. Three arrows whistled toward him, and he dodged each with a subtle tilt of his head.

  He was starting to get the hang of this.

  A shout of pain drew Ace's attention. Marcus had one hand pressed to his head, his Mind Drinker abilities pulsing as he locked gazes with two Forgeborn. The hunters' eyes glazed over, their movements becoming jerky and uncoordinated. As Ace watched, one plunged his dagger into his companion's chest. A second later, he ripped it free and drove it into his own throat. Both collapsed in a heap. Blood trickled from their resident psychic’s nose, and though Marcus staggered backward, he smiled in victory.

  "Six," Ace counted, giving Marcus credit for both.

  Twelve left.

  Three Forgeborn surrounded Ace, moving in perfect coordination. One hurled another silver dust bomb, which detonated in a blinding cloud. Ace's enhanced vision became useless as silver particles filled the air, burning his eyes.

  His training took over, and he’d had enough.

  Ace closed his eyes and reached for that cold place inside him, that part of his corrupted soul that had connected with the plane of darkness existing alongside this one. Shadow Realm Immersion hummed to life, and he slipped into the world between worlds.

  The world shifted around him, all color inverting as he phased out of reality. The burning silver dust became inconsequential, passing through his incorporeal form. The forest transformed into skeletal silhouettes, tree trunks rendered in charcoal against a backdrop of ash gray. The mist that had obscured visibility in the material world became inconsequential here, dispersing like smoke against glass.

  Time to end this.

  Here, in this inverted reality, he could see the truth of things. Through the veil between realms, the Forgeborn appeared as dull silhouettes punctuated by points of hard light where their silver weapons disrupted the Shadow Realm. Their life energy was different from vampire essence—steadier, less volatile, but also less potent.

  The seconds ticked by as he raced through the Shadow Realm, and he counted down in his head.

  Ten.

  Duskblade Manifestation activated at his command, and two shadow-forged daggers materialized in his grip. He moved through the silver cloud unseen, Marking his first target with Shadow Mark—an archer reloading his silver-tipped arrows.

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  Nine.

  His team appeared as luminous outlines pulsing with unnatural vitality. Tara knelt beside Rachel, her healer's essence flowing like liquid light between them. Rachel's form flickered dangerously.

  Eight.

  In the swirling chaos of the black and white battleground, he Marked another—a woman with twin silver-lined gauntlets.

  Seven.

  Marcus stood guard over Rachel and Tara, his psychic energy radiating outward in concentric ripples that disturbed the Shadow Realm's stillness.

  Six.

  He Marked another three hunters in rapid succession—the trio attempting to encircle Tara and Rachel.

  Five.

  On the other end of the battleground, Olivia danced between blows, her fluid grace leaving afterimages in the void.

  Four.

  Two more Forgeborn, Marked—the hunters flanking Olivia's position.

  Three.

  Victor cracked his whip at the Forgeborn leader, who ducked out of the way with only a millisecond to spare. Victor burned brightest of all—a supernova of rage and power as he battled the Forgeborn leader. But something was wrong with Victor's aura. Dark tendrils wormed through his core, corrupting the edges of his being. This wasn’t the silver's work—it was something else entirely.

  Something Ace didn’t have time to ponder.

  Two.

  Three reinforcements emerged from the treeline—backup Ace hadn't even realized was approaching in the material world. He managed to mark two of them before he ran out of time.

  Each Mark adhered to its target like a living tattoo, invisible to conventional sight but blazing in Ace's Shadow Realm perception. Eight points of connection. Eight tagged prey. Eight souls who didn’t even know they were about to be executed.

  One.

  He tightened his grip on the shadow-forged daggers, feeling them respond to his resolve.

  Time to hunt the hunters.

  In the Shadow Realm, Ace smiled. His team might be newly turned, inexperienced in their vampire abilities, but they were surviving. Adapting. Learning to kill.

  And in this world, that was the only lesson that mattered.

  With a violent flash of light, he was kicked from the Shadow Realm. He rolled across the ground as three arrows sailed over his head.

  And, in that moment, he struck.

  The Duskblades appeared in his palms, one after another, as he hurled them toward his Marked prey. The first hunter died without seeing his killer, a dagger materializing from shadow to pierce his heart. The second and third fell in rapid succession, their silver weapons useless against an opponent who existed partially in another realm. By the time Ace allowed himself to fully re-materialize, five more bodies lay on the forest floor.

  Including the three backup hunters to up his total tally—twenty one threats in total—fourteen were dead. Only six hunters and their leader remained.

  Seven humans left to slaughter.

  Victor and the Forgeborn leader dueled at the edge of the fog in a savage display of opposing strengths. Victor's supernatural power railed against the leader's practiced skill and silver-enhanced weapons. Blood poured from wounds on Victor's arms and face where silver had connected, but he showed no sign of slowing.

  The merc had gone rogue, and Ace wasn’t about to save the man’s ass. Not when his squad needed him most.

  The System floated above the battlefield, her eyes wide with childlike glee.

  "Isn't this fun?" She giggled, clapping her hands as Olivia slammed her staff against a Forgeborn’s head hard enough to make the man’s skull bounce off of it. He stumbled into a nearby hunter, falling on the other man’s blade before the second Forgeborn could move it out of the way.

  Six left.

  The System clapped louder. "I just love seeing how my little vampires handle silver! Such a learning experience!"

  Ace was done, and this needed to end.

  “Olivia, Marcus—shield Tara,” he ordered under his breath, loud enough for his crew to hear but quiet enough for the humans to only hear murmurs. “Stay put. Defensive positions. I’ll finish this.”

  In unison, Olivia and Marcus nodded.

  Ace tightened his grip on the Crimson Sword in his good hand. It filled his palm with a satisfying weight. The obsidian blade caught what little light filtered through the fog, its blood-channeling grooves running its length like veins of darkness.

  It wasn’t exactly a rifle, of course, but it would do.

  Leaning fully into his Dexterity stat—which he resolved to boost the moment he could allocate AP after this fight—he launched into the mist. Gone was the hesitation of a newly-turned vampire still finding his footing. Now, he moved with the fluid precision of a combat veteran who had killed before—just with different weapons, in a different life. He cut through the fog with supernatural speed, his body effortlessly implementing angles of attack that would have been impossible in his human form.

  Wind tousled his hair as he ran, and his body thrummed with a predator’s ache for the kill.

  The first Forgeborn didn't see him coming. Ace's blade traced a perfect arc through the man's throat, the cut so clean that for a moment, nothing happened. Then arterial spray painted the fog red as the hunter collapsed.

  The second and third hunters pivoted toward the commotion and raised silver-lined shields. Ace feinted left, then cut right, exploiting the gap between their defensive stances. His sword found the second hunter's kidney, then reversed to open the third man's femoral artery. Both dropped, their weapons clattering against the forest floor as they bled out onto the patchy grass.

  Two left, not including the Forgeborn leader facing off with Victor.

  Silver flashed in his peripheral vision. Ace twisted sideways, but not fast enough to completely avoid the chain that lashed across his shoulder. The metal seared through his clothing, scorching the skin beneath. Pain exploded through his body, sharp and electric. He pushed through it, converting agony into fuel.

  Into rage.

  The fourth hunter never got to retract his chain. The flat blade of Ace's sword shattered the man's knee, and the blisteringly sharp tip plunged into the man’s heart a second later.

  One left.

  The lone Forgeborn, cut off from his leader and the last hope of survival, came at him with twin silver daggers. He sliced in rapid succession, faster than the others had moved, and his attacks suggested advanced combat training. Military, perhaps. Maybe special forces, or whatever passed for it in this world. He crossed his daggers above his head, catching Ace’s sword between them as he brought it down over the hunter’s head. Their blades met with a discordant ring, silver and shadow-steel vying for dominance.

  But Ace was far stronger.

  He broke through the blades, shattering one of them with a deafening crack. The hunter was good, though—better than good. He barely dodged Ace’s blow in time, and he swung his lone surviving dagger at Ace’s good hand. Ace twisted out of reach, but not fast enough. The man’s blade opened a shallow cut across Ace's forearm. Ace gritted his teeth and powered through the pain, letting the momentum carry him past the hunter's guard. With brutal efficiency, he separated the man's head from his shoulders.

  Six down in less than fifteen seconds.

  Only the leader remained.

  Across the clearing, Victor and the Forgeborn leader were still locked in savage combat. The human shouldn't have stood a chance against a seasoned killer like Victor, but the hunter’s silver weapons and obvious experience had kept him alive. Blood streamed from Victor's face where the silver had sliced open his skin, but something dark and hungry drove him forward—a brutality that transcended pain.

  As Ace watched, debating whether or not to intervene, Victor's whip found an opening. It snapped through the air, punching through the leader's guard. Its metal-spiked tip sank into the man’s exposed chest. The leader staggered, his eyes widening in shock as his own blood bloomed across his ripped shirt. Victor grabbed the man’s throat and lifted him into the air, satisfaction evident on his face as he watched the life drain from his opponent.

  Without a word, Victor sank his teeth into the man’s neck and ripped out his throat. The Forgeborn leader gagged, blood bubbling from his mouth as Victor drank deep.

  Ace grimaced and tilted his head away, focused more on his team than their resident asshole’s love of murder.

  That, after all, had been close.

  Too close.

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