"Holy shit!"
The scene was like something out of a horror movie brought to life.
Evan's legs went rigid.
Not because he was about to run. Because he was terrified.
When Evan had been seven or eight back on Earth, an older kid from next door had dragged him into watching a ghost movie. It had haunted his childhood ever since.
The older kid had been thrilled by the sex scene.
Evan had gone pale at the sight of a flayed female ghost.
Even as an adult, he had feared the dark and ghosts. He had to turn on the light to use the bathroom at night, and he couldn't sleep unless his closet door was shut tight.
And the thing before him was ten thousand times more real than any ghost movie.
It stood five meters away. Moonlight lit its face, and drops of blood slid down its fangs.
Evan felt warmth spread through his crotch.
Instinctively, he reached down and touched it.
Wet.
The brain damage from the drugs seemed to have snapped a wire somewhere in his ability to feel fear.
"Oh. I pissed myself."
His voice was dry, with an absurd calm to it.
"Figures. A monster at this level isn't worth breaking a sweat down there."
A faint chuckle came from somewhere.
It hadn't come from the Vampire.
The direction was wrong. So was the distance.
Before Evan could work out where the laugh had come from, the Vampire moved.
It was so fast that even his Night Demon Potion-enhanced senses couldn't track it.
The reflexes and dynamic vision granted by his 1.9 constitution were no better than an ordinary person's against that kind of speed.
Evan didn't even see how it moved.
One moment, it was five meters away.
The next, a cold hand clamped around his throat.
Crack.
Five fingers tightened like a hydraulic vise. Their tips dug into the muscles beside his neck, pinning his carotid artery with precision.
It wasn't trying to strangle him. It was restraining him.
Evan grabbed the long, pale hand with both of his and pulled with all his might.
He poured all of his strength—1.9 times that of an ordinary person—into his ten fingers. Veins bulged, and his knuckles turned white.
The hand didn't budge.
It was like trying to pry a steel pipe welded to a wall.
Evan's face flushed crimson. The veins at his temples throbbed.
He gave up the pointless struggle and forced a sentence through his crushed throat.
"Professor Pulis still needs me."
"Aren't you afraid he'll punish you?"
The fingers around his neck paused.
In that instant of hesitation, their grip loosened a fraction.
That second of contact was enough.
His senses, sharpened by the Night Demon Potion, came into play.
Evan caught a scent coming from the hand around his throat, cutting through the smells of blood and earth.
Sandalwood. Bergamot.
Professor Pulis's cologne.
Whenever Pulis had sat across from him in the cafeteria, that scent had been impossible to miss.
Evan had smelled it too many times to be mistaken.
This Vampire really was one of Pulis's people.
The hand let go.
With nothing holding him up, Evan dropped onto his backside and coughed violently, clutching his throat.
Air flooding back into his lungs felt like swallowing broken glass—agonizing and wonderful.
Just then, a figure appeared in the moonlight.
A slender silver silhouette darted in from Evan's right, her boots making almost no sound on the grass.
She stopped on the open ground beside Evan and the Vampire, drew a silver-white longsword from her back, and leveled its cold, moonlit blade.
"Let that boy go..."
Her voice rang clear and commanding, with a deliberately heroic edge.
Then she stopped.
"Huh?"
She realized the Vampire had already let go.
Evan sat on the ground holding his throat. He looked up at her and blinked.
Three steps away, the Vampire stared at the woman who had appeared out of nowhere, his crimson eyes full of confusion.
The silver-haired woman held her sword in an impressively heroic stance, its tip pointed at the Vampire's throat.
Three people, facing three ways, wearing three different expressions.
Silence.
The November wind blew over the hills, sweeping the woman's silver hair to one side and rustling the wild grass.
In the distance, the lights of Bolton City flickered beneath the night sky like a scene from another world.
The awkwardness hung frozen in the moonlight.
Evan said nothing and studied her.
She was striking in the moonlight.
She stood about five foot seven, tall and sturdily built, in fitted gray leather armor. There wasn't much wear on it; it looked fairly new.
Two swords crossed on her back, their black-leather-wrapped hilts jutting over her shoulders.
Three bulging leather pouches of different sizes hung from her belt. He couldn't tell what was inside.
Her long silver hair shone softly in the night, falling to her waist in slight curls.
Most striking were her eyes: a pair of Golden Slit Pupils, with pure amber-gold irises and narrow vertical pupils.
They glimmered in the dark like two tiny lanterns.
She had a tapered face, high brow and nose, and finely sculpted features.
She looked to be in her twenties, brimming with youthful energy and a certain green recklessness.
The Vampire broke the silence first.
"Demon Hunter."
The words came low and furious from his deathly pale face, his fangs gleaming in the moonlight.
"This isn't your territory."
His anger wasn't directed at Evan, but at the silver-haired woman before him.
He was furious that someone had controlled him earlier, causing him to lose control and make such a mess.
"Demon Hunter?"
Evan pricked up his ears, his eyes lighting up.
Demon Hunter...
Demon. Hunter!
Put together, those words sounded like the name of a legitimate organization.
Hope. An opening. At last.
At the Vampire's words, the silver-haired woman didn't retreat. She stepped forward, keeping her sword tip trained steadily on his throat.
She raised her chin slightly, her voice carrying the pride and defiance of youth.
"This isn't your turf either, Vampire."
She paused, her mouth curling with disdain.
"It belongs to those Capitalists."
Sitting on the ground, Evan's mind raced faster than ever.
Within seconds, the pieces fell into place: the Demon Hunters were an official or semi-official supernatural organization.
They opposed the Sanguine. They could fight, had a structure, and claimed territory.
And what Evan needed most right now, as a poor student who had only just reached the threshold of the supernatural, was someone powerful to shelter him.
Pulis was one option, but he might devour Evan at any moment.
The woman before him might be another.
A plan took shape in a second.
"Master! You're finally here!"
Evan sprang to his feet as though he'd just recovered from his terror.
He hurried to the silver-haired woman and planted himself squarely between her and the Vampire.
His head blocked the Vampire's view of her astonished face, hiding any sign that something was wrong.
"That Vampire nearly killed me!"
His voice trembled with just the right mix of relief and grievance. With his back to the Vampire, he frantically made faces at the woman.
The silver-haired woman froze for less than half a second.
Her Golden Slit Pupils flashed with understanding.
Her expression quickly returned to composed authority, and she spoke as though this were the most natural thing in the world.
"Don't worry. As long as your master's here, no one can touch you."
She ushered Evan behind her and held her sword across her chest, looking past his shoulder at the Vampire.
"Tell your master that Arkham is my student—Hill Adolf's student."
"You can use him as a Test Subject, but don't go too far."
Now completely free of the control, the Vampire stood in the moonlight, his crimson eyes sweeping between them. His face was as dark as a stormy sea.
He was furious.
But there was nothing he could do.
He knew he couldn't beat this damned woman.
What had happened on Gooding Street had already proved that.
And he had no reason to doubt their relationship.
Even while the Vampire had been out of control, this Arkham kid had known Pulis was his master.
How could an ordinary Test Subject know that?
There was also his extraordinary resistance to the drugs.
Most likely, he had been planted among the Sages by the Demon Hunters as a prospective recruit from the start.
"Low-life scum."
The Vampire snorted. His body vanished into the darkness like smoke scattered by the night wind.
The silver-haired woman stared after him for a second, then hurled curses into the empty night.
"You're the low-life scum! Your whole Vampire Race is low-life scum!"
She kept going for five or six lines, getting louder with each one. Her silver hair whipped about as she gestured.
Only when she was sure he was long gone did she sheathe her sword, let out a long breath, and allow her shoulders to sag.
Behind her, Evan rubbed his chin, his mind racing as he watched her.
That laugh earlier must have been hers.
From that exchange, the Vampire was clearly rational. He was wary of her—and furious with her.
Which means... she was the one who made him lose control and kill people.
Why?
The clues linked together, the puzzle pieces dropping into place.
Evan's expression grew strange.
Don't tell me she did all that just so she could swoop in at the crucial moment... and play the hero rescuing a damsel?
He paused and corrected himself.
No, the beauty rescuing the hero?