The Hammer of War, Chapter 39

The shift was subtle. A breath. A pulse in the marrow. The [Blank] aura flared out from me like a tide. It dragged the light from the sconces and turned the warmth in the air to rot. The edge of its reach licked the ballroom floor like fire crawling through dry grass.

Sebastian was fast, but not fast enough.

His foot hit the border of the aura and came apart.

Ash scattered where bone should have been. Skin blackened, cracked, peeled away in strips. He took another step and there was nothing to step with. His ankle crumbled. His leg dropped into powder. The vampire fell hard on the boards, one leg kicking, the other gone from the knee down.

He roared.

I did not wait. The [Tau Rail Rifle] hummed in my hands. A burst of heat ran up the grip and into my shoulder. I braced. I fired.

The bolt struck his other leg mid-thigh. It did not pierce. It shredded. The limb tore away in wet smoke and splintered bone. Muscle split down the length and unraveled. He hit the ground full, rolled, dragged himself back with his arms, his teeth bared. Blood smeared the floor beneath him.

He screamed again, louder now. But not in pain.

He was calling.

The blood ran toward him. It curled around his body like wire, lifted in coils and strands and arcs. The fluid twisted and thickened and took shape. Bones made of red. Tendons of threadbare scarlet. Muscles slick and glistening. The shape of legs formed beneath him—raw and wrong and breathing.

He stood on blood-forged limbs. Smoke rose off the sockets where the aura still bit into him. His coat had burned away at the edge. Flesh had cracked along his jaw.

But he stood.

The revolver came up again.

I dove right. The slug took the wall beside me, shattered plaster and old wood. I hit the floor and rolled, boots slipping in the red trail he left behind. The rifle clicked in my hands, chambering a new round. Heat washed over the stock.

Sebastian came at me.

Not fast enough to charge through the aura. But he skirted the edge. Close enough to shoot. Far enough not to die.

He fired again.

I vaulted a table. The round chased me. I felt the burn pass my ribs. The air broke with its scream. I landed hard and fired low. The bolt struck the ground in front of him and tore up a crater. The force lifted him, tossed him sideways.

He broke apart midair. Bats again. The swarm scattered. I tracked the movement. Fired blind into the cloud. The bolt caught a few and burned through them like sparks through dry leaves. The rest reformed behind a column.

"You're clever," he said, voice echoed across the dust and ruin. "I'll give you that."

"You're slow," I said. "I'll take that."

He chuckled. It echoed dry through the ballroom.

"You're just a man," he said.

"No."

I stepped forward.

"I'm your end."

The aura pulsed wider. The sconces flickered and died. The floorboards groaned beneath my boots.

Sebastian fired again.

I twisted left. The shot grazed my shoulder. Heat bloomed. My coat tore. Blood spilled. I dropped to a knee and let the rifle rise. Pulled the trigger.

The round smashed into the pillar. The stone cracked and split. Chunks rained down. He darted from behind it, low and fast. The revolver barked again. Another slug tore through the table to my right. Wood exploded.

I threw myself sideways. Hit the floor. Hard.

He was circling. Keeping to the edge. A predator pacing the fire. His blood legs hissed where the aura scraped against them. The skin blackened. He retreated two steps and fired again.

The slug struck the floor inches from my chest.

I rolled, raised the rifle, and fired on instinct.

The bolt tore through the ceiling this time. Missed. Smoke and dust rained down.

He laughed again. Clipped and sharp.

"You're running out of shots."

"You're running out of legs."

His grin widened in the dark. Blood trickled from the edge of his mouth.

"Then let's finish it."

He dropped the revolver.

Raised both arms.

The blood surged.

It came from the walls. From the floors. From every old stain hidden beneath rugs and cracks. It poured toward him in streams and ribbons. It wrapped around his body like armor. Hardened. Took form.

He stepped forward.

Once.

Twice.

Inside the aura.

His flesh began to peel again. The blood armor hissed. Boiled. But he kept walking.

Huh, I didn’t know that was even possible. Was he sealing himself off entirely, perhaps? More importantly, why would he take this risk? He could’ve just stayed back and kept firing.

Odd. 

Well, whatever.

I fired.

The bolt struck center mass. The armor cracked. Shattered. The chest beneath it tore open, bone split wide. But the armor held. Sebastian staggered, but he did not fall.

He screamed.

Blood poured from his mouth.

He lunged.

I ducked.

The claws scraped the air where my head had been. I drove the rifle forward, caught him in the gut, and squeezed the trigger.

The bolt ripped through his spine.

He dropped.

Smoke curled from the ragged hole in his back. His blood armor fell apart in clumps. He dragged himself toward the revolver, fingers leaving streaks on the floor. I deactivated the [Blank] aura. His fingers reached the edge of his gun.

I kicked it away.

He looked up at me. “That power of yours is seriously annoying.” 

“Your mom’s annoying.” 

"You're not done," he whispered, smiling. “This isn’t over.”  

"You're right."

I stepped closer.

"Not done with this shit until you’re deader than dead, bitchboy."

And I raised the rifle again.

The shot never came.

The air turned cold. Not the kind of cold that cuts but the kind that hangs. The kind that doesn’t go away when you breathe. Each exhale left white smoke trailing from my lips. Frost spread across the floorboards like it had always been there, only waiting for a reason to be seen.

Then a hand rose from the air.

It didn’t come from behind or below or through. It came from somewhere. No sound. No warning. A pale hand. Small. Feminine. It wrapped around the barrel of the [Tau Rail Rifle] like it belonged to it. Then, with a twist that cracked the air itself, it pulled the weapon from my grasp.

I moved on instinct. Training buried the panic before it could rise. My mind snapped to combat motion. I threw myself backward and widened the reach and potency of the [Blank] aura to its limit. The world went dead around me. The sconces died. The air thinned. The wood beneath my feet blackened and cracked. Magic peeled from the walls like skin from flame.

She remained.

The girl stood at the center of the ruin. Short. Slim. No older than twenty by the look of her. Hair bound in twin tails, tied with neat ribbons that swayed without wind. She wore a skirt and blazer, tailored sharp and all pink. No armor. No weapons. She held the rifle by its barrel, studying it like a curious cat examining a trap.

The aura didn't touch her. Not at all.

She should’ve burned. She should’ve bled. She should’ve come apart at the seams like every other thing steeped in the supernatural that wandered too close.

She did not.

I gestured. The rifle vanished from her grip, returned to my [Inventory] with a blink of light and matter.

She didn’t chase it. She didn’t even flinch.

The color was gone now. The world around us had drained itself to gray. The boards beneath her feet had warped in protest, the shadows around her deepened to ink, but she stood still. No change in breath. No change in posture.

She sighed.

"So, you're the one who killed Helena, huh?"

Her voice was light. Careless. Bored, even. Like she was making small talk at a train station. She looked past me, to the blood and ruin still cooling behind me. Sebastian's body, unmoving. The bullet wounds. The ash of what was left of his legs.

"It makes sense now, I guess. How a human could beat her to death." She continued. “Anti-magic of this level would be mortally dangerous to just about anyone below Ultimate-Class, especially since it doesn’t come from an inanimate object.” 

She held out a hand, her fingers curling and stretching as though she was caressing the air. “Interesting. Aberrants and abominations are born every few centuries, but you… you’re a walking impossibility, a contradiction. Life, all life, even the most mundane, cannot exist without a spark of magic. And yet, here you are, clearly alive. Fascinating.”

I didn’t respond. My eyes narrowed. The aura stayed wide, burning hot. She still didn’t care. That was the part that mattered.

Nothing I had was touching her.

That was bad.

If the [Blank] couldn’t reach her, I had nothing else. No magic to call on. No curses. No wards. Just gunfire and steel. I could drop units on her. Bring the Squiggoth. The Nobz. All of them. Bury her under green muscle and blades. But I’d seen her move. Or rather, how she hadn’t needed to. That was worse.

"Who are you?"

She looked up. Smiled.

“Serafall Leviathan.”

The name meant nothing to me. But she said it like it should have.

She lifted a hand and snapped her fingers once. The cold deepened. Frost crawled across the ceiling and froze the hanging chandeliers. The glass cracked but didn’t fall. Everything slowed.

She went on.

"Although, I suppose that name means nothing to you."

It didn’t.

"I am one of the Four Great Satans of the Underworld. In charge of foreign affairs."

She smiled again, wide this time, showing off a row of perfect white teeth.

"And this… this whole mess has been one big foreign affair up my cute ass." Her voice didn't match the weight behind her words. But that was the point. The contrast was deliberate. A smile hiding a noose. “I could be in Japan right now, celebrating my cute baby sister’s birthday; instead, I’m stuck here, because a daughter of the House of Stolas got herself killed.” 

I didn’t move.

The aura held, but it didn’t matter. She was unaffected.

Behind her, Sebastian's blood still steamed. The bolthole through his chest smoked faintly in the cold.

She took a step forward. Her very presence, I realized, was weakening my [Blank] aura. No, not weakening it; her magic alone was overwhelming it, filling it with so much of her power that it simply couldn’t absorb anything anymore. 

“She kidnapped my mother,” I said, willing away the [Blank] aura. “Threatened to kill her and threatened to enslave me–entirely unprovoked, I might add. So, I am not about to apologize for killing her.”

I pointed at Sebastian. “And this piece of shit set me up twice.”  

She turned. Sebastian crawled, one ruined arm dragging the rest of him, blood streaking after. Serafall raised a single finger. The air around him snapped. A shell of night-black ice formed in the blink of an eye. It sealed him like a beetle in amber. His last breath froze white against the inside wall.

She faced me again.

“I know,” she said. “Helena left a note. Signed her own guilt. I’m not here to punish you.”

Her words drifted out, soft, but the cold behind them sucked warmth from the room. Frost bloomed across the ceiling ribs. The chandeliers cracked under their own weight.

“My office is foreign affairs,” she went on. “Fewer enemies. More friends. That’s the order of things.”

She smoothed an invisible wrinkle from her pink sleeve, as though the ballroom were a boardroom and the blood at our feet ink on a ledger.

“I’m not your hunter,” she said. “I’m your messenger.”

She tilted her head, listening to something neither of us could hear. Her ribbons swayed.

“Leave this city.”

Silence settled. Snow-fine dust drifted from the rafters.

“House Stolas will seek blood for blood. They will come.” She tapped the ice tomb with her knuckle; the sound rang like iron struck. “I can keep them from your mother. Your father. But their blades will follow you.”

She paced a slow arc, always just outside where the [Blank] once breathed. Her heels clicked once, twice, the only sounds living in the hall.

“Go south, go east, cross an ocean if you can. America is thin-skinned for mortals. Too many shadows, too little law.” She nodded toward the door I had kicked in. “The Blood Courts will rise when twilight falls. With Sebastian’s tongue wagging, every vampire from here to the Gulf knows your weakness for bullets.”

She stopped, hands clasped behind her back, head cocked like a curious bird.

“I’m giving you a road,” she said. “Walk it, and you live.”

“And if I plant my feet?”

She smiled—small, polite, professional.

“Then another road opens,” she said. “One paved in blood.”

I looked at the frozen sarcophagus, at the vampire locked in a posture of terror forever. Frost crept along the seams, spreading quiet across the floor.

Her gaze followed mine.

“He’ll live,” she said. “For now. He’s evidence. Paperwork.”

Her voice softened to almost a whisper.

“I hate paperwork.”

I tightened my grip on nothing—the rifle remained in the dark space of [Inventory]. My shoulder still stung where the bullet had drawn its line. Blood cooled on my sleeve, turned brittle in the air. “Why are you letting me go?” 

She raised a brow. “You’ve done nothing that couldn’t be justified. And, as I said, I’d rather make friends than enemies.” 

Outside, somewhere distant, a siren wailed and died. Night pressed its face against the shattered windows.

At last Serafall bowed, an elegant dip no taller than the frost-crowned chairs. When she rose her smile had returned, bright as a child’s drawing. She stepped backward. The shadows folded around her, a rose closing on itself. She held out a piece of paper to me. I took it. Upon it was a symbol I did not recognize, covered in glowing, smaller glyphs in a language unknown to me. “If you ever find yourself in trouble, here’s a way to call me. I hope we can become friends someday.” 

And then, she was gone.