Ilyin, Gusev and Orlova moved through the dark crete tunnels of the abandoned bunker plex. Desigo shelter tens of thousands for as much as a week, it rawling warren, crawling uhe city. The exposed stru site on the surface had long since been built right over, courtesy of some sketchy gover approvals.

  There were rge chambers earmarked as dormitories or ste areas. Some did have lighti into the ceilings, but there was ricity to power them. The trickier ses were power rooms with half-installed geors and access tunnels for plumbing arical infrastructure. The tight spaces, filled with debris and protrusions, were tough to simply navigate, let alone fight ihey ran into vampires.

  Two of the three meraries had lights attached to their tactical helmets and guns. Orlova had a perception power that, like Jason’s, allowed her to see through darkness. Her perception could pee any non-magical shadows, along with magical ones created by anything not too much more powerful than her. If any darkness proved impervious to her senses, she k was time to run.

  Their destination was the entrance hall at the tre of the plex. A rge space desiganise and filter people to other parts of the bunker work, its inplete form was that of a massive crete box. The only features were the doors leading out and a freight-sized elevator shaft with no elevator. It en space where they could see enemies ing and open up with their powers, if it came to a fight. It was also their way in and out of the plex, via the shaft, so the fourth team had beeo hold it.

  As they moved down a clear tunnel, Ilyin took the time to have the others che.

  “Team Four, still holding the access point. Ilyin, you’re starting to spook me here.”

  “Team Two, still on route.”

  Ilyin stopped, turning to look at Gusev and Orlova. Their worried expression mirrored his own.

  “I’m not hearing things, right?” he asked.

  “No,” Orlova said. “Lebedev sounds off, and he’s answering the same way each time. The exact same way each time, like a rec.”

  Gusev nodded his agreement and switched his radio to the Team Four’s private el.

  “Team Four. Alekseeva.”

  “Ilyin, now you’re really starting to spook me.”

  “Be aware, Team Two may be promised. Shape-shifter, voice mimic, I don’t know. No telling owers these vampires get from their bloodlines.”

  “I’d tell you we’ll stay sharp, but we’re on a knife edge already, Ilyin. We’ll be wary if they turn up.”

  “Report anything through this el. I’ll still do periodic ches so they don’t realise we’re onto them.”

  “Aowledged.”

  Team Three started moving again, guns up as they examined every side tunnel and dark er. Orlova sigo stop, snapping her gun at a er o an uping door.

  “Darkness,” she said. “’t see through it.”

  The others focused their lights on the spot, but the er remained shrouded in darkness. A pair of disembodied eyes appeared within the shadows, e and blue, and three guns opened fire. The bullets stopped in the air, as if caught in an invisible getine wall. A dark figure stepped out, the strange eyes ihe hood of a cloak darker than the shadows it emerged from. The figure pushed back his hood to reveal a face they all knew from briefing dots.

  Jason Asano plucked a frozen bullet out of the air and exami briefly. He dropped it to the ground and thehers fell as well, cttering on the crete. The three meraries looked at him, their gun magaziy.

  “Do we try our powers?” Gusev asked.

  “Do you want to try your powers?” Ilyin asked.

  “Against the man who just Matrixed uns? I don’t even want to reload.”

  “What does ‘Matrixed’ mean?” Orlova asked.

  “It’s a movie from about forty years ago,” Ilyin said.

  “Who is watg forty-year-old movies?” Orlova asked.

  Jason could taste the fear in their auras and waited as they whistled in the graveyard. Their wide eyes and frozen bodies reminded him of animals staring at headlights.

  “I take it we’re done fighting?” he asked.

  The meraries had all heard people using transtion magic before. This wasn’t that. Jason didn’t talk in Russian; they could hear him not speaking Russian. But while their ears told them he wasn’t speaking their nguage, their minds told them he was. It was uny; an uling fear beh the straightforward terror instilled by his aura.

  “You’re Jason Asano,” Ilyin said in English.

  “Have been for a while, now. Makes it easy to remember.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because someo you here to make a mess, and it needs ing up. I was expeg vampires, but there’s something else down here. It could be a vampire lord with some unusual powers, but I don’t think so. It’s good at masking its presence, but I’ve caught some glimpses of an aura, and it isn’t right for a vampire. It does reek of blood, though. Perhaps a vampire-like monster. I ontered a spider that could turn people and even other monsters into vampires.”

  “I don’t want to fight that,” Gusev said.

  “Nor should you. Ohing I am certain of is that it’s gold rank. We o collect your people ahem out.”

  “That’s an objective I get behind,” Ilyin said. “We came in with twelve; four teams of three. We think oeam is dead and another promised somehow. Possibly dead and being mimicked.”

  “I sense nine,” Jason said. “The group by the entrance, you and a group I found being fed on by vampires. The st group are likely your promised people. Maybe dead, but whatever has them may be hiding their presence from me.”

  As if to make his point, Ilyin’s radio crackled to life.

  “Team Three? This is Four. Jason God Damn Asano dropped in on us, carrying Team One like sacks of potatoes. They’re down but alive, covered in punctures. Looks like a whole swarm of blood bags had their way with them. Asano sucked the vampire curse out of them and thehem some crazy strong potions. They’re getting some colour back, but they’re still out. I’ve got Volkova healing them as fast as she spend mana.”

  “Their souls were stressed by the vampiric curse,” Jason expined. “Healing magi’t get them on their feet as quickly as normal.”

  Ilyin touched his radio and respoo Team Four.

  “Alekseeva, Asano is here, and he says there’s some kind of gold-rank blood monster down here as well. We’re going to rendezvous with you, get out, and leave whatever’s dowo him.”

  “I like that pn. Be fast.”

  A portal arch rose from the floor, bck stone filled with darkhat roiled like bck fire.

  “This will be fast,” Jason said, and stepped through. The meraries shared a look.

  “Either of you ever used a portal?” Orlova asked.

  “No,” Ilyin said. “I saw a few being used, ba the work days, but never went through one myself. Leadership was very restrictive about portal users.”

  “You don’t think that portal leads to a cell or something, right?” Gusev asked.

  “I’ve been hearing chatter, over the st year,” Ilyin said. “People talking about him ing back. Things that I thought were crazy, until I felt his aura. Until I heard his voice.”

  “What was that?” Orlova asked. “It felt like hearing Moses ing down off the mountain. And how did he stop those bullets with what looked like his mind? That wasn’t in his listed power set. Some protective item from the other world?”

  “If so,” Ilyin said, “he could trade it for isnd if he has a spare. And I don’t think the portal is a trap. We’re not powerful enough that he needs effort to handle us.”

  “The’s get going,” Gusev said. “I don’t want to be here when something he does need effort to haurns up.”

  ***

  Ilyin watched as Asano lifted his people up the empty shaft as if there was an invisible elevator. He sent Team Four up first, to secure the entry point on the surface, and was now lifting Team One, who were shaky but once again scious.

  “That’s really your aura doing all that?” Orlova asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How does that work? I levitate myself, but not stably, or quickly.”

  “It’s plicated.”

  “Is it something I could learn?”

  “Unlikely. You have to gh ges to make it possible. There’s no standard process for that, as far as I’m aware.”

  “How did you gh them?”

  “A ic bird needed me to save the world and e back from the dead less often.”

  “You know how that sounds, right?” Gusev asked.

  “At the risk of sounding immodest, I live an iing life.”

  “You’ve fought things like what’s in this pce before?” Orlova asked.

  “I won’t know until I find it. Or it finds me. But I’ve fought a lot of things.”

  “Did you think about using us as bait?” Gusev asked.

  “Even thugs who work for blood money don’t deserve that. I’ll get your other people out alive, if I . You should not hold your hopes up, however.”

  “What about the on?” Ilyin asked. “That’s what you came fht? You’re spending time with us you could use hunting for it.”

  “I have someone doing that.”

  “And if that someos whatever is out there?”

  “Then whatever is out there will discover that the os is a rge, and sometimes extremely hungry pce.”

  ***

  “We should just leave it.”

  “If we leave the on, Lord Louden will kill us.”

  “Then we don’t go back to Lord Louden.”

  “And do what? This isn’t the old days. The humans know what we are and have the magic to hunt us. We need shelter, and someoo get us out of the try. Unless you, a vampire, want to hide in the middle of a nation famous for being stantly bombarded by the sun.”

  “Maybe we don’t have to go. The blood oak could easily kill them.”

  “It could easily kill us. It’s unstable. Untrolble. Now that we’ve set it loose, we o run from it more than we do from the humans.”

  The tires tinued loading the nuclear devite crate. They looked up as a third vampire hurried into the room.

  “We o go,” he told the other two.

  “We know.”

  “No, I mean we really o go.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “Gone.”

  “Are you tellihat many vampires went down to three humans?”

  “No. We were dev them when Jason Asano arrived.”

  The other two went still.

  “He ’t be as bad as they say, he?”

  “He’s worse. A shadow that feeds on vampires. You think Lord Louden’s aura is domineering? This was like being looked down on by a god. I was the only oo get away, and only because Asano was focused on saving the humans.”

  “You got away?”

  “Yes. Obviously.”

  “And you came back here alone?”

  “Are you dense? Yes, I came back alohis doesn’t matter, we have to—”

  “It matters. Did you really get away, or were you let go?”

  “Why would I be let go?”

  “So someone could follow you. That’s why you would be let go.”

  The sound of footsteps on crete came into the hall, slow and regur, like the tig of a clock. The three vampires looked up as a man walked into the room. He wore robes, rather than normal clothes, the colour of dried blood. His features were sharp, his beard not quite masking the protrusion of his rge . His eyes were blood red orbs, glistening like sunlight refleg off the surface of a red sea.

  “Is this Asano?” one of the vampires asked.

  “No. The aura is wrong. And the eyes.”

  “Hello. My name is , and I am going to eat you now.”

  Mist started spilling from an open-ended pipe jutting from the wall he ceiling. It swiftly coalesced into a person.

  “Lord Louden!”

  The gold-rank vampire only had eyes for .

  “This isn’t Asano,” he said. “It belongs to him, though. Some kind of servant creature. I don’t think you weaklings se, but this thing is filled with delicious, bloody life force.”

  Louden vanished in a blur and was suddenly behind , leaning in to sink his fangs into ’s neck. That side of ’s neck, head and shoulders broke apart like a jigsaw puzzle, into a mass of leeches that crawled over Louden’s head, biting right back. That was when the screaming began.