Author's Preface
Penny parked the Dodge A100 several streets away in a quiet residential cul-de-sac. With its dented sky-blue paint, rusted rocker panels, and faded primer patches, the old van blended effortlessly into the background. It was the kind of beat-up utility vehicle people looked right through. She checked her sidearm, secured the holster under her jacket, locked the doors, and made her way back to the house on foot.
Inside, Richard was moving with single-minded focus, preparing for an assault he knew was coming. He couldn't explain the sensation-he only knew that cold, sickening twist in his gut was telling him the threat was already en route.
The problem was timing.
His vision had shown him the violent end of the house, but it hadn't given him a clock. The breach could happen in ten minutes, or they might wait until the shadows lengthened at nightfall. He had to assume he was working on borrowed time.
He moved through the rooms at a rapid clip, stripping the place of every scrap of precious metal he could lay his hands on. Picture frames, antique trinkets, forgotten heirloom jewelry anything with a high silver content got thrown into the pile on the rug. Resting on the mantelpiece was a heavy, rather suspicious-looking sports trophy fashioned from what looked like solid silver. Richard gave it a brief, dubious glance, shrugged, and tossed it onto the stack.
If the vampires didn't end him today, Ling certainly would when she saw the mantelpiece.
Using a improvised rig, he melted the silver down into a glowing liquid state before carefully blending it with high-potency chemical compounds, creating a dense, metallic paste. Penny arrived just in time to handle the secondary prep, organizing the C4 blocks and setting out the receiver caps.
Six heavy, stainless-steel roasting pans were lined up across the dining table. Richard couldn't begin to fathom why Ling owned six identical roasting dishes, but he wasn't about to complain about the providence.
He divided the slick, silver-nitrate mixture evenly between the six pans, embedded the C4 charges deep into the paste, and linked the entire daisy chain directly to a single remote detonator.
Penny leaned over the counter, arms crossed as she eyed the volatile concoction with healthy skepticism. "Is this safe?"
"Absolutely not," Richard said without looking up, carefully capping the wire lead. "Never play with chemicals, kid. It's dangerous."
---
"When is this supposed to happen?" Penny asked, her voice barely a whisper against the damp autumn air.
They had been crouched under the neighbor's heavy wooden trellis across the street for two hours now, and nothing had moved. The neighborhood was dead quiet. Across the asphalt, Ling's house stood silent, its windows dark and unbothered.
On Richard's wrist, the digital face of his cheap CASIO watch pulsed a glowing 12:00 AM.
"No idea," Richard muttered, shifting his weight slightly to keep the circulation moving in his legs. He kept his eyes locked on the empty road. "I know it's happening. I just don't know when."
---
BOOM.
The explosion tore through the morning silence without a second's warning, blowing the structure completely inside out. Splintered oak framing, pulverized drywall, rain-soaked insulation, and decades of family memories erupted high into the air along with the dark, twisted silhouette of four of the unlucky intruders caught in the center of the breach.
In an instant, the tranquil suburban cul-de-sac was drowned in a blinding, roiling wave of deep orange light. Down the street, front doors slammed open as panicked neighbors scrambled out onto their lawns, screaming over the shrill, overlapping chorus of blaring car alarms. In the sky above the ruins of the Qing family home, a heavy, greasy mushroom cloud of black smoke drifted lazily into the autumn air, with distant sirens already beginning to wail on the horizon.
"That was scary... and exciting," Penny whispered, her voice tight with adrenaline as they hunkered down beneath the thick, shadowed vines of a neighbor's wooden trellis.
Richard didn't take his eyes off the burning perimeter. A fierce, icy focus settled across his features as he gripped his coat.
"Yeah," Richard rasped, slipping smoothly out from under the trellis and drawing his silver blade with a soft, lethal shhhk. "Well... I'm not finished yet."
---
Richard crossed the street, sword drawn.
The black pickup sat amidst the carnage, its tinted glass reflecting the orange roar of the burning house. Acrid smoke drifted low over the tarmac, carrying the stench of scorched timber and something far more synthetic.
One of the intruders stood by the driver's door, its back turned. Richard closed the gap without making a sound.
The vampire sensed the threat a fraction too late.
Richard's silver blade swept in a clean, horizontal arc through its neck.
For a suspended heartbeat, the figure remained upright. Then the body collapsed inward as the black tactical suit crumpled, the flesh beneath disintegrating into a heavy cloud of ash that scattered in the autumn wind.
Richard paused, his jaw set.
Vampire.
There was no mistaking the gray powder coating his boots. But what in God's name were they?
He'd put down plenty of bloodsmokers over the years. Lone wanderers, nest alpha-males, the occasional old-blood bastard with enough instinct to make things tricky. None of them rocked up in a blacked-out Dodge RAM clad in Tier-One tactical body armor with enough military hardware to turn a county sheriff's department into scrap.
These weren't ordinary Krovniki. They were a professional hit team.
And the question pulling at the back of his mind was how the hell they were operating in broad daylight. Heavy weave or UV-resistant helmets might explain part of it, but daylight was still daylight.
Either someone had rewritten the rules, or everything he knew about the species was dead wrong. A flash of silver whistled through the smoke. Richard ducked, the backwash of the blade brushing his cheek as he threw his weight to the left.
A second black-clad operative stepped from the haze, blade raised, its featureless visor locked onto him.
Richard shifted his stance, fingers tightening on the grip.
"Right," he muttered. "Let's see what you've got."
"Umri." The operative spat.
(Die)
The operative closed the distance without a sound.
Richard barely parried the opening strike.
Steel slammed into silver, the force of the blow jarring straight through his wrists and up into his shoulders. The operative pressed the advantage, driving him back across the shattered pavement with a methodical, cold efficiency.
This wasn't a frenzy. This was textbook martial form.
Richard parried a lethal thrust aimed at his sternum, stepping off the line to whip his own blade around in a sharp diagonal counter. The operative slipped the arc with millimeter precision, its edge snaking back beneath his guard to catch Richard across the ribs. White-hot pain flared under his jacket. Richard stumbled, rubber boots dragging against the asphalt. He felt the sickening gush of warm blood soaking into his shirt.
"Fuck."
The vampire didn't hesitate, driving forward to finish it.
A secondary cut clipped Richard's shoulder. He rolled with the impact to avoid losing the arm, but the steel opened a jagged track across the deltoid. His sword arm dipped, heavy and numb.
The operative saw the opening and lunged.
Richard dropped his center of gravity. The sword hissed through the air above his hair, and he drove his shoulder straight into the operative's chest plate, slamming them both into the side of the pickup. The body panel buckled with a heavy metallic crunch.
For a second, they were chest-to-chest in the smoke.
A gloved hand snapped up, crushing Richard's throat in an iron grip. Richard drove his forehead straight into the visor. Pain burst across his skull, but the operative's grip slackened just enough for him to break free. He whipped his blade upward, slicing into the soft joint beneath the armpit.
Silver bit deep into the tactical weave. The operative recoiled, letting out a harsh, pressurized rasp. Richard pressed forward, driving a thrust that forced the hitman back toward the roaring frame of the house.
Then the operative's blade caught him full across the inner forearm.
The cut went straight to the bone.
Richard reeled back, staring down at the crimson mess soaking his cuff.
That was deep. Major artery deep.
He waited for the hand to go useless, for the sudden lightheaded drop of massive blood loss. Instead, the sensation morphed. The agony didn't fade it shifted into a tight, sickening itch beneath the torn flesh. Before his eyes, the heavy bleeding slowed to a trickle. The edges of the open wound pulled together like stitching under invisible thread. The split flesh sealed, leaving only a thin, raised pink scar that faded into pale skin within seconds.
He froze, his breath catching in his throat.
What the hell?
The operative didn't pause to marvel at the miracle.
The sword came down in a overhead execution strike.
Instinct took over. Richard brought his sword up, meeting the blow with a collision that nearly dropped him to his knees. He redirected the energy, broke the bind, and backed away, his eyes locked on the visor while his brain spun out of control.
His arm was completely fine. The blood was real. The slit in his sleeve was real. But the flesh beneath was untouched.
No. Not possible. He wasn't one of them. He'd buried too many silver blades into chest cavities to be one of them.
Another steel-on-silver clash snapped him back to reality.
The operative came on again, but the rhythm of the fight had shifted. Richard stopped panicking and started reading the geometry the weight distribution in the boots, the shoulder drop before the thrust, the precise recovery time.
Military?
He parried a sweeping cross, twisted his wrist to throw the operative's point wide, and stepped into the pocket, slamming the heavy pommel of his sword straight into the side of the helmet.
The visor cracked. The operative stumbled.
Richard planted a boot into the side of its knee, following through with a savage horizontal cut. The blade scored the tactical vest, sending the operative spinning back against the truck's bed.
He had the opening. He could end it.
Then the first distant siren wailed into the cul-de-sac.
The sound rose fast, cutting through the crackle of the flames. Red and blue strobes flickered through the smoke at the end of the avenue.
Front doors were wide open down the block. Neighbors were spilling onto their lawns, panic-stricken, holding up smartphones to film the flaming wreck of the Qing house and the two men cutting each other to pieces in the street.
The operative glanced toward the crowd, its visor assessing the threat matrix in a fraction of a second.
The clock had run out.
The operative stepped back into a defensive guard, keeping the blade dead center. Richard tightened his blood-slick grip on his sword, his head still pounding from the miracle on his arm.
"Who sent you?" he snarled.
"Ty nichego ne poluchish', gryaznyy Lovets." came the reply.
(You get nothing, filthy hunter.)
Richard didnt understand. The black clad operative stepped backward into the cover of the black smoke.
A police cruiser rounded the corner, tires screeching.
"Hey! He's got a sword!" a neighbor yelled from across the street, pointing a trembling finger.
Richard looked down at his ruined coat, the blood dripping from his hand, and the half-dozen phones recording his every move.
"Shit."
By the time he looked up, the black pickup was gone into the hazy gloom, leaving Richard standing alone in the center of the road.
He was alive. His arm had healed itself. He had no idea who was hunting him.
---
Elena pulled the heavy pickup onto the narrow shoulder of the access road, cut the lights, and let the engine idle into a low, metallic purr.
Tossing her pressurised helmet to the side, She rested her forehead against the leather steering wheel for a long moment, breathing through the tight, burning ache in her left shoulder. Beneath the torn Kevlar sleeve, she could feel her flesh knitting itself back together-a slow, crawling sensation that left her skin hot and slick with sweat.
Silence filled the cab. The quiet was heavy, unnatural, and sickening.
Elena lifted her head and looked into the rearview mirror.
The back seat was empty.
No low, guttural murmur of debrief chatter. No sound of magazines being loaded or tactical vests being unbuckled. Just vacant seats where the rest of the unit should have been.
Elbro. Sagan. Hamlock. The Rukovoditel.
All dead.
The house explosion had taken the four of them in a single fraction of a second. The charge must have been custom-packed, laced with concentrated silver and packed with solid silver shrapnel. The heat alone was devastating, but the blast had shredded their tactical suits, driving white-hot silver straight through Kevlar and flesh, liquefying their insides before they could even begin to regenerate qnd then there was Draconas. The unit's finest blade. Killed in cold blood from behind in the middle of the street, cut down by the hunter before Elena had stepped in to fight him herself. Five Tier-One specialists. Reduced to scrap and ash in a quiet Indiana town.
Elena stared at her own reflection in the darkened glass of the windshield. Her hands were shaking against the leather wheel, not from fear, but from the terrifying realization of what they had just encountered. The hunter hadn't just survived. He had taken a lethal strike to the arm, healed in front of her eyes within seconds, and forced her, an elite Vlastari operative, into a full tactical retreat.
She reached down, grabbed the secure satellite radio from the center console, and dialed the direct frequency to their handler.
The tone shrilled as the line rang. Then it clicked.
"Govori." (Speak.)
"My provalilis', gospodin." (We failed, sir.)
"Provalilis'... Provalilis'." (Failed... Failed.)
"Da, gospodin. Chetvero operativnikov i Rukovoditel' pogibli, gospodin." (Y-yes, sir. Four operatives and the Commander are dead, sir.)
"Lovets?" (The hunter?)
"Zhiv." (Alive.)
"Razochorovan. Ochen' razochorovan." (Disappointed. Very disappointed.)
"Prikazaniya, gospodin?" (Orders, sir?)
"Doky Chicago. Chas nochi. Ne opozday." (Chicago docks. One in the morning. Don't be late.)
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