'All of this has to stop.'

Nyssa suddenly stopped to watch the old, deadly-pale and round-shouldered figure of her father as he hastily walked through the large and high room they just went in: his personal art gallery within the housing wing of the Caliban Complex, which also served as an exclusive lobby for important guests. He was holding the hem of his long robes in order to proceed more quickly towards the door of the glass wall which opened to an exterior platform of the Caliban Industries building, where a few familiars were guarding a black Bell Jet Ranger standing by to fly them. Looming over Prague, the sky still appeared fairly dark, although the very first signs of the rising sun could be noted on the distant horizon. Death was closing in on them, equally bursting through security doors or ominously approaching from the distance. There was less than an hour to dawn, but if they had successfully reached for the helicopter that time would have sufficed to bring them to safety.

Somewhere securely hidden and away from Jared Nomak, the brother she had never known of.

Somewhere where their father could return to his insane dream of racial betterment and supremacy.

Given the stock of embryos in the lab storage room, the Eugenics Chamber, she had just discovered, Nyssa wondered how many Nomak her father would breed, twist and then discard in order to achieve his goal. She consciously passed her left hand over her throat as she remembered the sheer force of his elongated but deformed fingers squeezing her larynx and the cold apathy of his eyes fixed on hers.

"Make no mistake, Nyssa… those blood ties mean nothing to me, when measured against the ascendancy of our race."

Within seconds, several thoughts in her mind coalesced into a decision. A drastic and deadly decision. Taking a deep breath, she strengthened her resolve.

'I have to put a stop to this.'

With the agility and speed of a Bloodpack member, she briskly turned to her right and climbed the three steps which leaded to an adjacent and fairly large room where a pair of metal lift doors stood closed, alongside two imposing blood-themed color field paintings. On the wall right next to her there was a control panel. She pressed a button and started to input some digits.

Her father stopped his rush immediately and watched in shock as the steel blinds quickly came down to seal the window wall, barring them from reaching the helicopter outside and flying away to some safe place.

Now there was no turning back: for both of them.

"I reset the security code. Now we're locked in."

Once the blinds touched the floor, she casually moved away from the panel, whilst her father turned to face her with horror. Even if she was used to occasional but severe bursts of anger and even violence, that was the first time in her life she saw fear, or pure terror more precisely, in his eyes. That night had been discovering more sides of her supposedly loving father than she had in the last hundred years.

"Are you insane!? He'll kill us both!"

Nyssa started caressing absentmindedly her ring, looking at the family crest engraved into it: the Damaskinos' glyph, encased by a set of fangs and claws, on a blood-red background. The family whose head, her very own father, she entrusted with her men, her will, her own life, only to have that trust shattered by his actions. And she was going to make sure that the time of reckoning would come for Eli Damaskinos, now.

"Isn't it sad that you die not by the hand of your enemy, but by that of your own children?"

As she said that, the unhooded figure of Nomak came out of their father quarters, after having slaughtered the ten guards who tried to stop him from going in. Their blood, and that of all the other familiars who unsuccessfully stood to fight him, was on the lower part of his face and all over his clothes.

Eli turned from her to face him, as he went down the three steps to approach their father in the large room where she locked them in.

"Father."

He attempted to straighten himself and began speaking to him in Upírský, the modern Czech vampiric dialect stemmed from older variants, branches and subfamilies of Ghemalish, the ancient and secret vampiric language.

"All that has befallen you: it was a terrible tragedy, an unforgivable mistake. But you have returned to me…"

As Eli tried to, fairly obviously, talk himself out being killed, Jared got nearer and nearer. As he circled their father, their eyes locked onto one another: the old, glassy, eyes of Overlord Damaskinos and the almost all-white, feral, stare of the first Reaper. It was like watching a snake charmer at work, trying with his sole voice and eye-contact to control a recalcitrant and deadly cobra which in turn kept dangerously swaying from side to side, apparently undecided about biting him or not.

Trying to up his game, Eli lifted his hands to cup his son's face, but he abruptly twisted the head away, looking at their father's crooked hands. The hands of the man ultimately responsible for all of this.

Tentatively, Eli tried again to reach his son face, whilst Nomak kept swinging his gaze between his father's eyes and hands, as if he himself were unsure of what to do now that he finally had his maker at his very mercy.

"We will find a cure."

At last, Jared allowed their father to cup his face between his hands, and to soak him with a deluge of promises.

"Take your rightful place by my side."

To Nyssa's chagrin, Eli managed to pull his son into a embrace, as if to complete some obscure sort of incantation to drain all the fury and revenge-seeking out of Nomak, who in turn responded by clinging tightly to their father.

"You are, after all, a prince. Together we will conquer it all."

Still holding on to Eli in firm grip, Jared got his chance to say something directly to their father ears in that same vampiric dialect.

"If what you say is true, why does your voice tremble so?"

As he was saying that his right hand slowly and smoothly climbed up to their Eli's neck, suddenly clutching at it.

"Father."

And then Nomak bit their father's neck, going straight for the jugular, whilst Eli's face twisted into a grimace uttering a painful cry.

Unexpectedly, the son did not split his 'three-way-jaw' to start feasting on his father like Reapers usually do, but he instead had torn a gash into his neck. After that Eli was simply released from his clutch, whilst greenish ichor began pouring out from his wound and mouth.

"I've spared you my fate. You will die."

It was the first time in her life that Nyssa saw a vampire bleeding out to death: how ironic.

As his clothes began to soak with that dark green liquid, Eli turned to Nyssa and made a move towards her, as if she could have saved him from the imminent death.

"Out of this wound your blood, your life, will flow."

Trembling, Eli struggle to walk in her direction and his daughter sensed her eyes beginning to water as she sadly looked at him, thinking for a moment that he wanted to offer an apology, a last-ditch attempt to repent of what he had done: for all the truths he had bent and the lives he had sacrificed, whose trust he had breached.

As if he could ever have done something like that, especially to her, the daughter who just a few minutes ago had prevented him to escape and forced to face her brother's judgement. When their father finally fell and crashed on the steps before her feet, the old Nyssa would have knelt down to take his head onto her lap and caress his face, uttering some last few pathetic words drenched with filial piety. But the new Nyssa, tempered and hardened by the revelation of Eli's deeds, had nothing but shame and contempt for him.

"Nyssa."

Eli called one last time for his daughter and reached for her with his right hand, touching her boot-clad foot, but she took a step away from him. His muscles visibly contracted and his body was turning more and more rigid. With her delicate features momentarily twisted in an expression of disgust, Nyssa took off her ring, the Damaskinos' family ring, and threw it at her feet in a supreme act of spite and disdain. This token of estrangement from his daughter was probably the last thing that their father's eyes saw, whilst his body appeared to grotesquely change into something more 'statuesque' and then cracked, with deep fissures showing on his now sort-of petrified face and head.

Eli Damaskinos, Overlord of the Vampire Nation, lied dead at feet, murdered by her brother: because she willed it so.

'It is done.'

Treason was not something she had ever been prone to. If ever, she had always prided herself on her undying loyalty to her father and the Damaskinos clan.

"Betrayal must not go unpunished."

These words kept resonating in hear head. They were their father's, part of the countless tips and tricks Eli gave and taught her during decades, in order to groom her into his successor, should anything happen to him.

Instead, it was Eli to break that bond when he put his insane dream before her and the extended family he was supposed to be the caring patriarch of. Nonetheless, Nyssa had tarnished herself with that same breach of trust, and the searing stain of betrayal was on her too. Now, she was uncomfortably aware that she did not want to bear the same mark of treason with the very man whose death she had just provoked. Besides, nonchalantly succeeding their father after having him so ruthlessly dispatched would have required an amount of both hypocrisy and deceit she was too afraid to find out she had plenty of.

Nyssa blacked out. In a matter of moments, she had reached such a moral and soul-tearing impasse that she could no longer hope to break. Not by herself.

Then, she moved her still watery gaze from their father's corpse to her brother.

'Nomak.'

Yes, he would suffice.

"Finish it off, my brother."

Jared tilted his head in surprise and stare at his sister as she too began talking to him in Upírský, then started to walk towards the steps on which she stood alongside their father.

"Let's close the circle."

As her brother slowly moved closer, Nyssa climbed down the few steps and undid a little the black leather jacket of her Bloodpack uniform, fully exposing her neck and shoulders.

"You…"

Nomak was taller than her, so Nyssa tilted her head to one side to allow him a better access. If she was lucky, he would have simply killed her like Eli and that was the end of it. If she was not so lucky to deserve such a mercy, then she would have raised the steel blinds to get to the exterior platform before she could start to turn.

At last, she would get the chance to see the sun rise with her own eyes.

Jared extended his right hand towards her left ears and gently took a lock of her hair near between his fingers. His bloodshot eyes, with their irises turned ice-white because of the Reaper strain, were looking at her, examining her, and judging her.

"You were his favourite."

Out of the corner of her left eye, she saw her brother's lower lip starting to split, so that he could open his jaw and bite. So that was the fate he had chosen for her: so be it. In one last fleeting thought, she hoped that someone would be able to stop him before the Reaper's revenge doomed all of her race.

'Blade.'

She closed her eyes and waited for her brother's bite.

A bite that never came.

"NOMAK!"

They both turned to look at the person who just yelled at him. Squatting on the reinforced concrete railing of the mezzanine floor of the lobby, there was Eric Brooks: also known as Blade, the Daywalker.

§§§

"Blade, it could end right here."

Growling at him, the first Reaper let go of his sister and walked towards the centre of the large room.

"What do you think, huh?"

He slightly tilted his head to one side, waiting for an answer. Even from distance, Eric could hear his low angry voice and see him baring his teeth.

'I'll release you.'

No words came out of him, though. His only answer was jumping from the railing and piercing Nomak with his sword. As if the momentum he built with a mid-air flip would have not been enough, Blade twirled and kicked his screaming enemy in the chest, sending him flying against a massive metal sculpture representing the stylised, DNA helix logo of Caliban Industries. Still crying out loud, Jared tentatively closed his left hand on the blade near its hilt and then broke it with a jerk. As some reddish ichor started to pour from the wound, he trembling reached again the blade and proceeded to pull it out, screeching in pain.

One moment later, Nomak got on his feet and started charging at Eric. He adjusted his shades and began running towards the Reaper: the large room resounded with their roars of fury. They clashed against one another, then Blade aimed for his enemy's temple with powerful right hook, followed by a left one to jaw. Unfazed, Jared countered with a series of violent jabs, but Eric was able to quickly dodge them and stopped him landing a left chambered punch right above to his hip. Then, the Daywalker momentarily blocked his opponent's right arm and in turn struck with his right leg a low kick to Nomak's right calf to throw him off balance. Though his right knee banged on the floor, the Reaper broke free of his adversary's block and delivered a power punch to his gut, making him fall to his knees too with a grunt of pain. There, they exchanged a rapid series of blows till Nomak grabbed Blade by the main plate of his armoured vest and roughly got him up, only to deliver a pair of powerful jabs to his face. Eric though managed to dodge a third jab and instead countered with a hook to Jared's jaw, confusing him long enough to allow Blade to take quickly hold of his opponent's right shoulder and leap high to strike with his right elbow the Reaper's left cheekbone: saliva and red ichor flew out of his mouth. The Daywalker blocked Jared's following attempts at punching, pushed him to slightly distance himself and then struck him with a front kick which again threw him at the sculpture: his head hit the metal with clangour. Nomak simply shook it off and struck out at Blade with a series of roundhouse kicks that forced him to fall back till he managed to land a left palm strike on the Daywalker's nose, startling him long enough for Jared to follow up with a violent right uppercut which literally sent his opponent flying against one of the large black marble tiles which covered the right column at the entrance of the other room they came from.

Eric managed to land on the floor, feet wide apart and supporting his weight with the right palm on the floor and the other hand on the left knee. Raising his from the floor, he angrily looked at the Reaper, showing his bared teeth. Surprisingly enough, he still had his sunglasses on.

Blade swiftly crossed the large room in one somersault and leaped at his enemy with a front kick that unfortunately missed its target. Jared quickly exploited his opponent's miss by grappling him in a clinch hold and making him turn to one side to break off his attack. Nonetheless, the Daywalker wriggled enough to make Nomak loose his grip a little and struck him in the face with his right elbow. After that, he rapidly grasped the Reaper's right arm and put it over his shoulder in order to lever him over, although Jared spun around him and managed to switch the grip Blade had on him, using his opponent's own momentum to successfully lever him over and onto the floor. Then Nomak slightly moved back to widen his stance, so that when Blade got up and charged him, he was able to deliver a powerful front kick to his chest, violently throwing him against the lift doors.

A couple of meters away from where Nyssa stood, transfixed with shock. It occurred then to him that the woman had been seemingly frozen for the whole fight: granted, it might have lasted for less than two minutes.

In that regard, the last blow hit Eric really bad, and he had difficulty getting up.

'Fuck.'

He struggled even to simply move his fingers.

He heard the solid sound of Reaper's boots as he approached. Just when he sensed his enemy standing above him, probably ready to end him, a female voice raised to stop him. He recognised it was Nyssa's.

"It's not over yet."

That, or something along those lines. Although out of necessity he had come to have a good grasp of the vampiric language, Blade was not overall familiar with its wide variety of subdivisions.

Suddenly, a series of shouts and blows interrupted his train of thought. With all the energy he could muster at that moment, he turned his head and saw Nomak forcefully throwing his sister to other side of the large room. Then he leapt at the wall, hanging from the of the raised black marble tiles of the nearby column, only to make a higher jump and land backwards next to the very Nyssa, still lying on the floor. With the momentum he had gained, Jared delivered a terrifying and relentless series of three strong elbow strikes on his sister's abdomen, the last bash making her spit blood. Next, he turned to Nyssa and placed his hands on her hips to get up and spring high in the air, with his left foot bending upwards. At the last possible moment, his sister rolled to her right side and evaded the Reaper's stomp, which hit the tile she was before smashing it to pieces. She made a couple more rolls to get away from the attack and tried to get up, while her brother turned to look at her with maddening eyes. Still bent over with her hands holding her chest, Nyssa stumbled through the large room towards Eric, only to get roughly picked up by Jared, who wrapped his arms around her midsection, grappling her into a body-lock so tight that even from his distance Blade heard the gruesome sound of bones breaking. Once again, blood spurted from Nyssa's mouth and her loud shrieks of pain pierced the room.

Nevertheless, her constant squirming under his brother's clinch hold caused him to lose his balance and fall towards the wall, ending against the very same black column he had thrown the Daywalker against just a few minutes ago. Nyssa's hands went over his brother's and her nails dug deep through his gloves and into the skin, struggling to undo his grasp but to no avail. She did not relent though and instead she put her right foot behind Nomak's right calf, unsuccessfully attempting to off-balance him and take him down. Yet, she pushed through and pass to eye-poke his brother with her thumbs, this time effectively prompting him to release her. Nyssa proceeded to fight back with a double elbow strike to both his face and chest, then she spun to land a powerful jab to Jared's abdomen. Next, she grabbed him by the hem of clothes and pulled him towards her, throwing him over her own centre of gravity and slamming him on his back against the hard floor. Giving the Reaper no quarter, she kneeled towards his head, securing a lock of his right arm with her right biceps and then pressed strongly. Amidst Nomak's cries of pain, Eric distinctly heard some bones fracturing and saw the ulna protruding from his forearm.

However, Jared somehow found the energy to do a somersault and flipped over the kneeled Nyssa, ending on her back. From there he grabbed his sister by the hair, then lifted and rotated his fractured limb, while it made some appalling sounds as if its broken bones were aligning back to their positions. Thus, the seemingly repaired elbow landed hard on Nyssa face, making her fall onto the floor. The Reaper took once again hold of his sister by her jacket and went for a hammer punch, but she managed to swiftly slip away from his grasp and slide backwards over the marble tiles, so that his fist hit nothing but the floor. Her brother turned around to face her at the same time she got on her feet, giving her the chance to strike him with a full roundhouse kick. She hit true and Jared spun on himself but otherwise he seemed unfazed, so she pressed on with the attack and tried to land another couple of turning kicks which her brother dodged with agility. The third round kick hit his midsection, though it gave him the opportunity to seize hold of her foot. The next thing Blade saw was Nomak hurling his sister around, smashing a marble tile of one black column with her face and then sending her flying towards the opposite side of the large room.

Fortunately, Nyssa flipped mid-air and thus managed to land more or less safely, with her right elbow and kneel somehow breaking her fall. Although, she had visibly suffered the blow and moved unsteady while attempting to get up. The Reaper quickly jumped past his unaware sister and got behind the Caliban Industries logo sculpture. The huge and heavy metal sculpture which now stood right before Nyssa. With a grunt of fatigue and a shower of electric sparks coming from the lights at its base, Nomak succeeded in tearing down the sculpture and tipped it over her. At the last second, she quickly rolled to her right side towards Eric and the sculpture toppled with a deafening thud.

While the dust settled, his brother hurried to go around the sculpture to find the lying Nyssa, who in turn rolled once again to her right to face the Daywalker. The expression in her eyes seemed to betray her fear: the feeling that all hope had faded. However, on the black marble tile over her head he recognised the blade of his broken sword, still dripping with the Reaper's reddish ichor. Eric pointed his shaded gaze on the sword and saw Nyssa tilting her head to follow it in direction of the weapon. Fire ignited her eyes as she reached the now hilt-less sword and hastily concealed it in the right sleeve of her jacket.

When Jared finally bypassed the fallen sculpture, he snatched his sister from the floor and rudely got her up. Holding her by the left shoulder strap of her black leather bodice, he prepared to bite and split his lower jaw apart at the chin, allowing his toothed proboscis to actually come out of his mouth while, unbeknownst to him, Nyssa let the blade slide through her hand, cutting some of her fingers in the process. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she then caught hold of the angles of his brother's mandibles with her left hand, slowly but strongly forcing him to shut his mouth. Next, she violently head-butted him a couple times of on the top edge of his left eye socket and grabbed the hand he had on her shoulder strap to give him a spin, placing him in front of her and keeping his left side open with a tight hold on his arm.

At last, Nyssa impaled Nomak with all the force she could muster, aiming for his heart. Her brother gasped, beginning to pant and wheeze, and tried to catch the hand she was holding the weapon with, while she closed the distance between them.

"After all… it looks like I've finished the Daywalker's job."

After that, she vigorously stuck the blade deeper in the Reaper's side, finally piercing through his heart. Furthermore, Nyssa tried to twist the blade inside him, but she had no more strength left in her and let go of Jared, staggering over to Eric before collapsing on the steps of the adjacent room, exhausted. Her brother crawled instead towards the base of the sculpture, where a small fire had broken out from the light system he damaged while tearing the installation down. There, he leaned his back against it and slightly moved his sweatshirt and coat to look the lethal wound, audibly panting and yelping as he brushed the blade coming out of his shirt.

Whatever he had been going to do, Nomak suddenly stopped and search for his sister, making eye contact with her once he found her. Eric could see that he had a tired and sorrowful gaze.

"What they did to me. Don—don't let it happen, again… sister."

He gave her a weary smile as his breathing became even more ragged and laboured.

"It's strange. It hurts… it hurts no more."

Then, he grabbed the broken blade still emerging from his rib cage and resolutely pushed it inside, completely stabbing his own heart. Eric heard the Reaper letting out an inhuman shriek of pain as his lower jaw split uncontrollably, revealing a sinister blue light which anticipated the oncoming auto-combustion. With his open eyes transfixed in death, the combustion light turned flaming red until his whole body incinerated.

Holding her right hand over her left side, Nyssa got up with some difficulty and looked one last time at his brother's remains. The, she brusquely adjusted her torn and ripped jacket, then turned towards Blade. He himself had finally managed to get on his feet and thus was more or less able to walk towards her. They met halfway, right where she had stopped: beside her father's corpse. Even behind his shades, he could see that the rapid series of events in the last hour had taken a heavy toll on her spirit. Apart from the cuts, bruises and burns she had recently suffered, what troubled him most was how she was coping with the fact that probably her whole world view had just been shattered.

He wondered if she was coping at all.

'Wait… why am I bothering with the psychological resilience of a vampire?'

His job is done. Well, she finished his job for him. Still, the work is done. Jared Nomak, the first and most dangerous of the Reaper strain carriers was no more, and the world that humans and vampires shared and vied for had been saved. Sure, the vamps took their chance to fuck him, but he had expected it. Now, they could safely get back to try killing each other.

What he was not able to account for was Nyssa. That woman had been trying to tear apart his whole world view from the very first time she spoke to him.

"You have been our most feared enemy. But now there's something else loose on the streets. Something worse than you."

Admittedly, she had been in his head since the night before, when she came into his room to talk and instead caught him injecting the serum, for the second time. Then, she had annoyingly begun to question him and the hunters' ways.

"Why do you hate us so much?"

"It's fate. It's in my blood."

"Well, it's in mine, too. I'm a Pure-Blood. I was born a vampire."

What prompted though new thoughts and seeded niggling doubts about his core values and guiding principles was the outright criticism of how he handled the Thirst.

"You know the Thirst better than any of us, shooting that serum of yours. The only difference between us, is that I made peace with what I am a long time ago."

He recalled the moment when he paused, after hearing those words. He remembered having set down the injector and called Nyssa to come back into his room. He thought back at her frowning gaze, her onyx eyes directly staring at his own emerald ones.

When she had reached for his left shoulder, he had angrily whirled on her, trapping her. As she had tried to pull her right hand free, he had gripped her wrist tightly, pulling her closer.

"You're hurting me."

"Pain cuts the deepest. Isn't that what you said, back at the House of Pain?"

And closer he pulled her, with their faces just inches apart.

Images of her thin ruby lips, half-open in an aching, dazed yet also expectant expression, came back at his mind.

"Reminds you you're alive?"

And then Blade kissed her, hungrily. Nyssa, in turn, responded in kind. Her head dropped low, her mouth finding the cords of his neck, sucking at his flesh and then sinking her teeth in deep. As she pulled that stunt, Blade reacted by clamping a hand around her throat and slamming her head back. A droplet of blood was dribbling from her lips as she let loose a breathless shudder. By that moment, he was lost in the ecstatic throes of the Thirst: all reason gone. Blade reached his other hand to the corset beneath her jacket, tearing them open as he ran his fingers across her breasts, then over her exposed rib cage. He turned her around, forcing her against the fortunately closed door. Nyssa groaned with pleasure as he ripped her golden gorget apart, to sink his own fangs into the back of her neck.

He was engulfed with the vivid memory of her tongue wrestling with his, the tightness of her arms around him as he had picked her up and slammed both of them onto the tatami mats upon which Blade usually slept. For a split second, he reminisced her hands voraciously roaming over his back and chest, trying to remove his coat as her fingers gripped tightly his collarbone to hastily get him out of his armour vest.

And naked they got. Skin beaded with sweat. Breath steaming in the chill air. He was atop her, moving inside her with measured thrusts. Nyssa's limbs were wrapped around him. She clawed at the expanse of his back with her fingernails. Her mouth was locked on Blade's throat, then his was locked on hers. Together they drink, leeching blood from one another. Nyssa was clutching greedily at Blade like she never wanted to let go. Her soul was gone, transported to that place where people drifted to when the euphoria overtook them, and they were somehow able to transcend the horror of their fleeting lives. Finally, Nyssa gasped, climaxing as she retracted her fangs from Blade. Her head rolled to the side as her pupils, focused on nothing short of eternity, dilated unnaturally large.

He recalled both of them lying in each other's arms, awash in the moonlight, blissfully dead to the world until—

'Damn it.'

Eric closed his eyes behind the sunglasses and imperceptibly shook his head, in an attempt to clear it of the sudden, but clear and vivid recollection.

"Blade."

Nyssa was looking at her father's remains. Her delicate features were distorted by a swollen cheek, a bruise around her left eye, and a trickle of blood dribbling from her cracked lower lip. Her hair was all messy and her skin was dirty and damp with perspiration, while her usually perfect red nails were chipped and broken. However, the expression of the vampire princess had suddenly hardened into one of strong confidence and purpose, creating an aura of alluring fierceness around her bruised and battered but still apparent beauty.

"This mess needs to be cleared up."

Blade looked around the wrecked room, his eyes wandering from the toppled sculpture and fire burning near them through all broken tiles to the damaged columns. And that was only one room. He did not rightly care to dwell on the chaos he and Whistler left after breaking out of that damned blood-draining table and the fight with Reinhardt and some familiars in that creepy lab storage room, or the probably bloodier path Nomak took to arrive there. He did not also mind the state of disruption and disarray the Vampire Nation would surely fall into after tonight's events and the subsequent Overlord's death. The more his enemies were in a shambles, the better he would have felt.

"Good luck with that."

With surprising reluctance, he moved away from Nyssa and began walking towards the end of the large room, searching for a way of that building. He did not have the chance to take a second step, when he felt her slender but strong fingers gripping on his right arm.

"Blade, wait!"

He slowly turned to face her. He wanted to say that they had nothing more to say to each other, that now they could resume to be sworn, mortal enemies. However, since Nyssa was still holding her grasp on his arm, he sensed that she would not let him go so easily.

"Listen, I can't let something like this happen again… that's why I stopped my father before he could escape."

He gazed at her through his shades.

"Leaving him at the mercy of Nomak."

She lowered her eyes to Eli's petrified corpse, and then moved them slowly to Jared's still glowing ashes.

"Yes. The right to decide my father's fate wasn't mine nor yours, but it belongs to the one who suffered the most from this insane dream of his: his own son, my brother."

He followed her gaze moving to her close relatives' remains. If he was kept from leaving shortly, he might as well ask for the answer to a question which had been gnawing at him since he sneaked into the room, just in time to save her.

"Then why did you offer him your neck?"

Hearing these words, Nyssa let go of her grip and stiffened her back.

"For blindly following my father's orders, without any doubts nor worries, I share with him the blame for all the lives that have been sacrificed for his ambition."

Then, she looked away and sighed.

"Also, by sealing his fate I committed high treason… since this offence demands ultimate punishment, I saw only fitting that the same man who just passed judgment on my father was going to do same with me."

After saying that, her gaze turned back to him: this time, tears were in her eyes.

"Yet, you appeared to save me from certain death… once again."

She looked around the large room they were in, stretching out her forearms to better show the chaos she now found herself into.

"And now, here I am… alive but left with nothing but a clan in shambles and a whole nation in disarray."

Nyssa forced short, bitter laugh as if she wanted to stress the ultimate irony of her current predicament. Nevertheless, she quickly lowered her arms ending to vent her frustration and looked at him again, with still watery eyes but at the same time self-confident and resolved.

"I must do something about it. And I'm not talking about just power, as simple as it may seem. No… what I want is to prevent some other supremacy-obsessed maniacs from endangering my whole species, be it with arcane sorcery or advanced technology."

In her fervent speech, she raised her hands as if she had to hold something.

"To achieve this, I need to get the power to keep vampires, all vampires, in line… thus averting any potential disaster which their unbridled ambitions or delusions of omnipotence would befall our race, and the whole humankind."

She closed her hands into fists.

"The kind of power only a queen would get."

Eric was not entirely sure that he caught the meaning of her jabber, nor he could fathom the possible outcomes of her far-fetched ideas and especially the repercussions for humanity. And himself. He knew he had not just saved any ordinary damsel in distress, but the last thing he expected her to be was another power-hungry bloodsucker. He folded his arms and frowned at Nyssa.

"What the fuck are you blabbering about!?"

She managed to surprise him by softening her expressions.

"Blade… I'm sure you see my kind as a savage predatory species at best, and a dangerous parasite on humans at worst. In any case, a threat that needs to be contained if not eliminated, tout court."

He snorted, slightly tilting his head to one side. He sensed her breathing had deepened and her eyes briefly closed, trying to relax or calm herself.

"Sometimes, if not all the time, I would agree with you. But now… now I have the opportunity to change it!"

Once again, her sentiments inflamed her speech. She took a further step towards, entering his personal space and placing her hands on his folded forearms.

"Please, Blade, I beg you… help me conquer the hearts and minds of my people, so that I can save them from themselves."

Eric slowly shook his head, scoffing at her plea.

"Listen, princess… what makes you think that you can get that kind of power over all vampires? Alongside a vamp-slayer, on top of that?"

Nyssa's answer was a self-satisfied smirk on her otherwise tired and bashed faced. Blade found himself staring at her with wanting eyes as she deftly spun on her heel and took a few steps towards her father's remains, bending down to pick something up from the floor. The offered view of a pair of tight-fitting leather trousers which captivatingly shaped her legs and buttocks reminded him of pleasant memories from the night before. He closed his craving eyes, safely hidden behind his sunglasses, to shake off the recollection and focus on the much more serious matter at hand.

When she swung back to him, she was holding between the thumb and index finger of her right hand the ring representing clan Damaskinos. Her resolute expression assumed tones of sombreness and grief at the sight of her family crest engraved on the jewel, which she proceeded to wear back.

"The Damaskinos could trace their line back to Erebus himself and had held the title of Overlord of the Vampire Nation, the Upíří Národ, since the success of his Rebellion: the Povstání. My family's name carries a great weight in our society."

He noticed her stiffening her back again, and in her now dried eyes there was something one might have called pride.

"I am the blood daughter of the late Overlord, the Vládce, of the Vampire Nation and the designated heiress, the Dědička, to his domain for the last thirty years. I've been around for quite some time now: I believe I've made a name for myself."

Slowly, very slowly, Blade unfolded his arms and stood with them akimbo, looking at her. After all, she might have something of a plan to ensure that power transitioned more or less smoothly from her father's hands to hers. It remained to be seen though how that imminent power play would have affected humankind. And himself. Once again, he felt the distinctive but uncomfortable sensation of growing more and more intrigued by Nyssa.

Why was that? Was it due to the fact that, until that moment, she had not struck him as the regular bloodsuckers he hunted down, fought and slew? Was it because she instead had come over more as a strong yet tragic, honour bound warrior-princess to whom he could actually relate on some levels? Or the reason was simply that she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever laid his eyes on? Had he really been bewitched by her slim and toned physique, by her black curly hair and her deep black eyes?

Nyssa was a vampire, an old and implacable foe he had saved three times in the last two nights. He had fed his own blood to that despicable leech just a few hours ago. A wicked witch Blade had made passionate love to the very night before.

"Never underestimate the power of the pussy, kid. One cunt hair off that thing can drag a freight train a mile uphill."

Only now he recalled Whistler's words, the same words he used to say to him from time to time, back in the days when he was nothing but a hormonal, bloodthirsty teenaged thug.

'What a fine mess I've got myself into, this time'.

His mind went into overdrive. What if Nyssa indeed turned out to be just another scheming megalomaniac, willing to do everything to achieve her power-crazy ambitions? Was it all an act? Did he allow himself to be tricked and seduced, after all the precautions he took since the discovery of Scud's double-dealings? Was that little, shitty turncoat right about him?

"You may be fast, you may be strong, and all that other bullshit… but in the end, B, you're just too human!"

Suddenly, Eric thought back to his sword. Careful not to draw suspicions from the vampire princess whose real intentions he was still unsure of, Eric's eyes roamed the room in search of the blade and found it amidst Nomak's ashes.

'If things go south…'

He would have to respond promptly. Vampires healed rapidly, and Blade had just been reminded how much of a skilled, proficient and deadly fighter Nyssa was. Whistler was still nowhere to be seen, so his broken sword might be the only available weapon to kill the Damaskinos heir and nip all that nonsense in the bud. His muscles tensed up, as he got ready to clash.

This probably telegraphed his intention, since the woman reached out to clasp his forearms.

"Blade! Please, hear me out!"

Her pleading, worried and impassioned all at once, caused him to stop. From his arms, she gradually moved her hands to let them rest on his shoulders.

"I don't want to be your enemy. I don't want my kind to be your enemy, either."

As usual, she managed to puzzle him. What was she aiming at? He would have given her just one chance to clarify that ambiguous intent of hers.

"Explain yourself."

Her palms shifted over the breast plate of vest.

"You all Stalkers think too much of us. The last two hundred years saw so many technological advances that many of our kind had to painfully realise that gone were the times of us roaming freely and safely throughout the world. Feasting on unsuspecting communities and leaving no trails nor clues about vampires were definitely a bloody luxury we couldn't afford and enjoy anymore. The human population exploded, their means of travel became multiple times faster, their communication almost instant, and their arsenals more potent."

She turned the back of her hands over his armoured vest.

"We struggle to get by, just like humans do. We masquerade and pose as them, trying to blend in whilst hiding and running from witch-hunters or other potential threats."

Eric sighed heavily, moved his hands over the woman's shoulders and closed his eyes.

"Nyssa, I can't let any of you live… your race is a menace to humankind: you said it yourself."

If those words would not break her, he did not know what else could. For certain, it was painful for him to utter them. To her credit, Nyssa did not seem to give up and though their hands fell to their respective sides, when he opened his eyes, she had just kept staring at him as if her gaze could pierce through his shades.

"Yes… that's way I need to assert my authority over the whole Vampire Nation: to enforce my plan."

This sudden news bewildered him.

"Plan? What plan? Getting that kind of power is not the plan?"

She slightly shook her head in refusal.

"Power, authority and world domination are nothing but means to an end."

Then, she placed her hands over his wrists.

"Living in peace with humans, that's my end. I want to live in a world without the pressing need to fight for securing our sustenance, or the constant fear of being hunted down by some merciless slayer. That's what I want for my people."

As she let go of his wrists, it seemed it was her turn to close her eyes and look like she was trying to recall some dream.

"To live without having to feed on humans, that's my plan. It's wrong to drain some innocent's life just to sustain ours. Blade, we can no longer live as them but that doesn't mean we had lost all of our humanity."

Upon hearing those words, he began to weaver in his resolve. What had she just said? Was she going to forbid her whole race to prey on humans?

"And how do you intend to make this happen?"

That previous smirk of her was back on her weary face.

"First, you must promise me your help."

Did she really mean it? What are the chances she could pull this off? And why on earth did she need his support? His train of thoughts was interrupted when Nyssa grabbed him once again by the main plate of his vest.

"Blade, please… help me to end this destructive conflict and bring peace between our races."

After what seemed like an eternity, a barely audible whisper came out of his mouth.

"All right."

Nyssa frowned impatiently. She surely had heard him, but apparently wanted him to say it out loud.

"Come again?"

He let out another deep sigh.

"Fine!"

She pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration.

"Blade, I'm serious… are you on board for this? Loud and clear!"

After another seemingly interminable pause, Eric proceeded to take his sunglasses off: slowly, very slowly.

'This woman's gonna be the end of me.'

He then put his shades into the left pocket of trousers and looked firmly at her.

"OKAY… OKAY… anything you say, firecracker!"

Nyssa put her hands on her hips. Her broken lips were set in a pout of annoyance which he could not decide if it was funny or sexy, or maybe both.

"Daywalker… I'm not asking you to blow up a bank for me. Now quit messing around and answer me!"

Eric's eyebrows raised in surprise at her understanding that reference.

'When did we switch from talking bloodsuckers' politics to more or less playful bantering?'

However, careful not push it too far, he gave in and placed his hands over the vampire's shoulders. Their eyes locked together.

"Nyssa, you've got my support for as long as you need it."

The Damaskinos princess heaved a sigh of relief and laid her head against his vest, so that he practically found himself hugging her.

"Thank you, Eric."

At the mention of his birth name, he quickly stiffened with unease. As she nuzzled up against his chest though, he could not find the force to scold or even correct her.

"I feel I must do it. But I know I can't do it without you."

Letting this little slip of her slide, he unconsciously began stroking her hair and inhaled deeply, calming himself down. Amidst the odours of sweat, dust and dried blood, he smelled a delicate and somehow subtly bittersweet floral scent. Curious to find out, he audibly sniffed in appreciation.

"What's this funny smell?"

Still embraced to him, Nyssa closed her eyes and gave a short giggle.

"Deadly nightshade."

As he in turn got her reference, Blade tried to stifle a chuckle.

"Belladonna… Sounds quite right, doesn't it?"

She raised her eyes to meet his. Lost in those pitch-black eyes, he cupped her chin between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, while his fingertips caressed her mildly flushed cheek. He gradually shortened the distance between their faces and stop a few millimetres from kissing her. It was Nyssa then who brought her lips to meet his, gently but relentlessly. Eric in turn began pushing back against her and then started kissing more intensely as his passion escalated. From the back of her throat emerged a contented purr and she tried to keep up with him and pressed even harder, turning the kiss into an inflamed and unrestrained exploration. He felt Nyssa's lips eagerly parting against his while her tongue slid through the aperture and then darted across his. In reaction he flicked his tongue to greet hers, swiftly dancing around it, over it, under it. Blade felt the edges of her lips turning up against his, as her tongue stayed in his mouth and rapidly rubbed the upper side of his with quick and light strokes.

"Nngh, ugh…"

Nyssa let out a muffled grunt against his mouth as Blade pulled her closer. Even through the armour vest, he felt her bosom pleasantly pressing against his chest as he squeezed her in his arms. To his shame, he did not even pause to think about her probably fractured bones. Instead, Eric upped the pace and started twirling his own strong and agile tongue against hers, encircling it. This elicited a gasp from her mouth and caused her to shake against him. He did not let her go and kept inviting her tongue into his mouth by massaging its underside. Eventually, Nyssa tore her mouth away from his and breathed for air. The tip of her tongue slipped out of the corner of her mouth and slid tentatively along the broken lower lip.

"It still hurts… but I've been waiting all night to do this, again."

Nyssa then stretched up, clasping her hands behind his neck and pull him back towards her. Their lips connected again with soft pressure, but quickly parted when they heard Whistler's gruff and rasping voice resonating through the large, ruined room.

"Okay… what the actual fuck is going on here!?"