Crimson sprayed across the rooftop tiles, the metallic scent of iron igniting my senses.

  My vision sharpened.

  Heat flooded my veins.

  “Who are you!?” I demanded, fury twisting my voice as I stared at the vampire who had dared wound what was mine.

  He smiled faintly.

  “Ah… so you must be the special vampire I’ve heard so much about.”

  I hissed.

  It wasn’t intentional. It came from somewhere older, deeper. Something feral stirred beneath my ribs.

  “Oh, how frightening,” he mused lazily, the odachi still resting at Bea’s throat, its edge kissing her skin in warning. Bea’s eyes shimmered slightly, not from fear but from the sting of the bite he had inflicted.

  “My, my… young vampire, relax. I don’t plan to kill her…” His tongue traced along the nape of her neck, slow and deliberate. “Not yet at leas—”

  Steel flashed.

  His kneecap split open in a clean diagonal arc. Bone jutted through torn muscle as he staggered, balance faltering.

  In that single distracted heartbeat, Bea moved.

  She vanished from beneath his blade and reappeared at his side, her sai driving forward with surgical brutality. Metal carved through sinew down to bone. She twisted, ripped free, and leapt backward in one fluid motion, gaining distance as blood sprayed in a violent arc.

  The Duke’s face contorted, only slightly.

  The injury began sealing almost immediately, muscle knitting, bone sliding back into place with sickening precision.

  “I ask again,” Bea growled, eyes sharp and glowing with intent. “Who are you?”

  He straightened fully, rolling his shoulder as if mildly inconvenienced.

  “You may call me Ratsuyo,” he replied with mock politeness. “Duke of the Shogun.”

  “Shogun?” Bea’s tone tightened.

  “I suppose you Inquisitors would best understand him as our great Monarch.” Pride curled at the edge of his smile.

  “I see…”

  Bea drew both sai fully now, twirling them once before settling into a grounded stance. Low. Balanced. Precise.

  “Jō,” she said without looking at me, “he’s a Duke. Watch and stay behind me for now.”

  For now…

  The words scraped against something inside me.

  I hated being ordered.

  Hated being told to stand back while something threatened what was mine.

  Every instinct in me screamed to tear him apart.

  But Bea’s face left no room for argument. And I could tell, deep down, I was completely outmatched.

  “Let us duel then, Inquisitor!”

  Ratsuyo’s voice rang with theatrical delight as he rolled his neck once, loosening it with a soft crack. His odachi shifted into a two-handed grip, blade angled diagonally across his body.

  Bea exhaled slowly.

  Her stance lowered, feet shoulder-width apart, sai reversed in her grip so the prongs ran along her forearms.

  He moved first.

  A sudden forward burst that shattered the tile beneath his foot. The odachi came down in a vertical cleave meant to split her in two.

  Bea stepped off-line.

  Not back.

  To the side.

  Her right sai hooked beneath the descending blade, guiding it just past her shoulder as her left hand stabbed for his exposed ribs.

  The blade bit into muscle.

  Ratsuyo twisted his torso mid-strike, sacrificing depth to avoid penetration. His knee drove toward her stomach.

  Bea caught it with her shin, deflecting the impact outward, and rotated around him. Her elbow smashed toward the back of his skull.

  He ducked and let the momentum carry her past him.

  The odachi swept in a tight horizontal arc aimed at her waist.

  She dropped flat.

  The blade passed inches above her as she rolled forward, slicing both sai upward toward his wrists.

  He pulled back just in time, though one prong caught the underside of his forearm, peeling flesh cleanly to reveal pale bone beneath before it sealed again.

  Ratsuyo chuckled.

  “You are refined,” he admitted, circling her. “But I wonder how long that discipline lasts.”

  Ratsuyo shifted again, not forward this time but sideways.

  A blur of sickly green and polished steel as his odachi swept low in a horizontal arc, the blade humming through the air with enough force to cleave through concrete.

  Bea did not retreat.

  She stepped in.

  Her left sai caught the flat of the blade at an angle, redirecting its momentum just enough for the strike to graze past her hip instead of bisecting her. Sparks spat into the night as silver scraped against steel.

  Her right hand followed instantly.

  A thrust to his throat.

  Ratsuyo leaned back with unnatural flexibility, spine bending beyond human limitation. The sai pierced only cloth as his odachi reversed in his grip and came down vertically toward her shoulder.

  Bea pivoted on the ball of her foot, body turning sideways as the blade split the rooftop tiles where she had stood a fraction of a second earlier.

  Concrete cracked.

  Dust lifted.

  She closed the distance again, refusing to give him room for another full swing. Her sai became extensions of her wrists, short, vicious strikes aimed for joints. One slashed across his forearm, carving deep enough to expose bone before the flesh began sealing itself.

  Ratsuyo’s free hand shot forward.

  Claws raked across Bea’s midsection, slicing fabric and drawing a thin line of red. She hissed but did not falter. Her knee drove upward into his ribs with a sharp crack that echoed across the rooftop.

  He barely moved.

  Instead, his odachi twisted in his grip and the pommel smashed toward her temple.

  Bea ducked, rolled beneath his extended arm, and rose behind him in the same motion. Both sai drove toward his spine.

  He spun.

  Too fast.

  The odachi’s hilt collided with her crossed weapons mid-thrust, stopping them inches from his back. The force of the impact sent a shock through her arms, pushing her back three steps.

  Metal rang.

  Neither yielded.

  Ratsuyo’s smile widened slightly as the rooftop beneath their feet began to fracture from the pressure of their movements.

  While behind her I watched.

  Once again being forced to remember what it meant to witness true combat between monsters.

  Ratsuyo clicked his tongue.

  “This is taking too long.”

  His crimson eyes narrowed as he studied Bea more closely, his face twisting with fury as he realised something.

  “You are not giving me your all,” he observed quietly. “How disappointing.”

  He raised the odachi, then paused.

  A twisted smile spread across his face.

  “Very well.”

  His voice deepened.

  “Duke’s Curse: Samurai’s Spine.”

  Without hesitation, he drove the blade into his own abdomen.

  The sound was wet as steel tore through flesh. Bone cracked as he screamed, neither theatrically or for show.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  True agony ripped from his throat as he dragged the blade upward, splitting himself open from stomach to collarbone. Blood poured out in sheets, steaming in the night air.

  His hands plunged inside his own torso.

  He gripped something.

  Pulled.

  The sound of vertebrae snapping free echoed across the rooftops.

  He ripped his spine from his own body.

  It came free in a long, glistening column of bone and nerve, blood spraying in violent arcs as connective tissue tore loose. His body convulsed violently, ribs spreading grotesquely around the hollow cavity left behind.

  Then the odachi dissolved.

  Not into mist but into structure.

  The blade liquefied into a flowing crimson metal and surged into his open back, threading itself through the exposed channel where his spine had once been. The steel fused with tendon and marrow, anchoring into his pelvis and locking into the base of his skull. Bone cracked and reformed around it. Muscle sealed over the foreign structure.

  The odachi had taken the place of his spine.

  His posture straightened unnaturally.

  The spine he held in his hands hardened. The bone elongated before fusing and sharpened.

  It stretched far longer than before.

  The vertebrae locked into a seamless blade, deep crimson and slick with blood, its edge impossibly thin. At its tip, the structure loosened, flexible, extending outward like a whip with no visible limit.

  It vibrated with power.

  Bea moved but it was too late.

  The transformed blade lashed outward.

  The air split.

  The rooftop behind her detonated into fragments as the spine-whip tore through concrete like paper. It carved through the building opposite them, slicing clean through ceiling beams, metal supports, and the night itself. Birds in flight were severed mid-air. Insects vanished into red mist. A stray rooftop cat was reduced to nothing but a smear against brick.

  The strike did not slow.

  Bea deflected the next lash with crossed sai. The impact sent a shockwave through her arms, cracking the metal prongs and forcing her backward. She barely twisted aside as another strike split the air where her head had been.

  Then she saw it.

  The whip changed direction.

  It curved toward me.

  “Jō!” she shouted.

  I moved but I wasn’t nearly fast enough.

  The spine-blade screamed through the air, aimed to cleave me in half.

  Bea did not hesitate.

  She stepped between us.

  Her body turned sideways, positioning herself as a shield.

  The crimson blade struck.

  Her left arm vanished.

  Not sliced cleanly. Erased.

  Bone shattered. Flesh exploded. Blood sprayed across my face as the force tore her limb from shoulder to elbow, fragments of white and red scattering into the night.

  She gasped.

  Not a scream.

  Just a sharp intake of breath as she collapsed into me.

  Ratsuyo laughed, blood still dripping from the corners of his mouth as his regenerated torso sealed fully, the odachi now embedded within him like a living pillar.

  He leapt backward onto a nearby rooftop, spine-blade retracting and coiling at his side like a living weapon.

  The rooftop beneath us groaned.

  Cracks spidered outward from where his strikes had torn through its foundation.

  Concrete gave way.

  I grabbed Bea with my remaining strength and jumped.

  We cleared the gap just as the entire rooftop collapsed behind us, crashing down into the street below in a thunderous cascade of dust and debris.

  I landed hard on the adjacent building, clutching her to my chest.

  Blood poured from her shoulder.

  And for the first time since becoming this thing, I felt something even colder than rage.

  Fear.

  “Terrified, are you? It’s no good to be a scared vampire in this day and age, you know?” Ratsuyo smirked, his spine-blade coiling and twisting beside him like a living thing as I clutched Bea against my chest.

  My hands were soaked in her blood.

  Hot.

  Slippery.

  Too much of it.

  “Jō…” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  Her voice was weak. Fragile. It didn’t match the girl who had been trading blows seconds ago.

  “I never wanted you to see me like this…” She groaned, breath unsteady.

  Was she dying?

  Her skin felt colder.

  Her body lighter.

  “But… please…”

  I leaned closer, tears falling freely now for a woman I barely knew, yet somehow could not bear to lose.

  “Get my arm.”

  “What…?”

  And then it happened.

  The impossible.

  Bea’s remaining hand pressed hard against the torn edge of her shoulder, slowing the bleeding just enough to stabilize herself. The exposed muscle tightened, not regenerating, but sealing enough to hold. Her skin regained color. Warmth returned faintly beneath my fingers. Her teeth caught the moonlight, sharper than before, glistening subtly.

  Her eyes were different now, focused and clear, none of her usual cheerfulness remaining.

  “Hmmm. What is this…?” Even Ratsuyo staggered half a step back, surprise breaking through his arrogance.

  Bea rose to her feet.

  One arm gone.

  Balance adjusted.

  Perfectly composed.

  She rolled her shoulder once as if recalibrating her weight, then twirled her sai in her remaining hand with smooth precision.

  Then she moved, there was no hesitation.

  She closed the distance in the blink of an eye and drove her heel downward in a brutal axe kick, catching Ratsuyo square across the collar and chest. The impact sent both of them crashing through the rooftop beneath him. Concrete imploded as they tore through the upper floor in a violent collapse of dust and debris.

  Windows exploded outward.

  Metal beams bent like paper.

  They disappeared inside the building.

  I stood there, stunned.

  A second later the spine-whip erupted from within the collapsing structure. It tore outward in a spiraling arc, carving a vertical gash through the entire side of the building. Apartments were sliced open like dollhouses. Furniture, wiring, and steel framing were severed cleanly as the crimson blade extended skyward, searching wildly.

  The sound was unbearable.

  Concrete splitting.

  Glass shattering.

  Metal shrieking.

  My body tensed instinctively, muscles coiling as I braced for another strike. The air around me vibrated with killing intent, pressure pressing against my skin like an incoming storm. Every instinct screamed to move, to dodge, to survive.

  Then the building below detonated outward.

  Ratsuyo shot into the sky as if launched from the depths, body spinning violently through the air. He looked almost weightless for a split second.

  Bea followed.

  She rose beneath him, having driven him upward with a strike from within the collapsing structure. The force of it cracked the air itself. My rooftop trembled from the shockwave even at this distance.

  “What… is she?”

  This was not human.

  She was not human.

  “HAHAAHAHAHAHA!”

  A sharp, almost manic cackle escaped her throat as she ascended after him.

  She rode the air itself.

  The wind bent around her as if obeying instinct rather than physics. Her body twisted midair with impossible control, one arm gone yet balance flawless.

  Ratsuyo’s arrogance shattered.

  “What type of abomination are you!?” he screamed, panic cracking his refined tone. His spine-whip lashed wildly through the sky, carving violent crescents into the night as he tried to force distance between them.

  It was clear he needed ground. Stability. Something solid to anchor himself to.

  But Bea gave him none.

  Every time he angled downward toward a rooftop, she struck.

  Her sai clashed against the crimson blade in midair, sparks erupting against the moonlight. She spun, twisted, and kicked off nothing, the wind howling around her with unnatural intensity. Each impact drove him higher, further from any landing point.

  He flailed the whip again and again, the vertebrae extending grotesquely, snapping toward her from impossible angles.

  She weaved through them.

  Smiling wickedly. Enjoying the thrill of battle.

  Ratsuyo roared and poured everything into one final desperate strike. The spine extended further than before, thickening, sharpening, stretching across the skyline like a crimson serpent intent on devouring her whole.

  It came down with catastrophic force.

  Bea did not dodge.

  She caught it.

  Her remaining arm snapped upward and trapped the spine beneath her armpit, bone grinding against muscle as the weapon bit into her side. She held it there through sheer will, teeth bared as blood streamed down her torso.

  Then she pulled.

  The whip tightened.

  Ratsuyo was yanked forward violently, dragged toward her before he could retract the blade.

  In one fluid motion she wrapped her legs around his head and neck, locking him in place. Her hips twisted. Her core tightened.

  And she dropped, forcing him to plummet.

  The wind screamed past them as gravity reclaimed its due. She held him inverted, driving him downward headfirst with all her remaining strength.

  They hit the rooftop below in seconds.

  The impact was catastrophic.

  Concrete shattered.

  The building cratered beneath them as both bodies slammed into the ground with enough force to send a shockwave rippling across the surrounding structures.

  At that moment my brain finally caught up with reality.

  “Her arm!”

  I scrambled back across the fractured rooftop, scanning through rubble and broken tile until I spotted it. I swallowed hard, forced my legs to move, and grabbed it.

  It was still warm.

  Great. Fantastic. Just another normal Tuesday night carrying around your idol’s detached limb.

  I leapt down toward the demolished building where they had crashed. Sirens were already echoing in the distance. People were gathering near the wreckage, phones out, filming. Of course they were. Humans loved spectacle. Loved disaster. Loved the strange and peculiar.

  We, no, humans were fascinated by it.

  I pulled my hood up and slipped through the fractured side entrance before anyone paid too much attention.

  Inside was worse.

  Concrete dust filled the air. Steel beams twisted like broken ribs. The floor had cratered inward from the impact.

  And at the center of it all was Ratsuyo. Pinned in place, as a single sai had pierced clean through his skull, driving him into the concrete beneath. Blood pooled around his face, one eye twitching weakly. Barely concrete.

  Bea was on top of him, breathing heavily, clearly exhausted from seemingly healing her broken bones.

  Her remaining hand pressed into his chest as if making sure he stayed down.

  “Bea,” I called carefully, stepping closer. “We need to go.”

  No response.

  She slowly turned her head. The movement was not human.

  Her face locked onto mine with something violent in her eyes. Not recognition. Not relief.

  Hunger.

  Her lips peeled back in a hiss, fangs fully extended, sharp and glistening under the broken ceiling’s moonlight.

  “Bea, what’s going on with you? We have to get out of here.”

  She growled low, animalistic.

  Nothing about it sounded like the girl who had winked and pouted at me hours ago.

  I took a step back without meaning to. My heel scraped loose debris and I nearly lost my footing.

  A cold hand caught my back, steadying me before I could fall.

  Red hair streaked past my peripheral vision as a bowstaff spun through the air in a smooth arc.

  Jia stepped forward, placing herself between me and Bea.

  Her posture was different, composed, grounded and certain.

  “That’s not Bea,” she said calmly, leveling the silver-coated bowstaff forward.

  Her eyes did not waver, not for her friend, not for her colleague, not even for her fellow Inquisitor.

  “That’s a vampire.”

  She shifted her stance, weapon ready.

  “And it must be hunted.”