First part of the plan
The forest was unnaturally still.
Gamma Jara crouched beneath the dark tangle of thorns and frostbitten pine, her eyes sharp. Her wolf form shimmered just beneath the surface . She's ready to break through her skin the moment the signal came.
Beside her, Henry called Alfonso and said that " King, your aunt is burning down your luxurious playground after some vampires denied her entry. She's uncontrollable. Please come. " When Alfonso agreed, he ended the call and throw his mobile away. Jara looks at him in awe.
“Three patrols,” Jara whispered. “All rotating on the quarter hour.”
Henry didn’t respond at first. He adjusted the scope with practiced fingers.
“You sure you can keep up?” he asked without looking at her.
Jara snorted. “You planning to die tonight?”
“Only if it keeps those leeches away from the palace.”
“Then we’re in agreement.”
Far ahead, the glow of the vampire palace pulsed like a heartbeat — cold, crimson, distant. Black spires clawed at the sky. Dozens of guards patrolled its perimeter. That gate would never open unless someone pulled the whole nest outward.
That was their job.
Lure the guards away.
Create chaos.
Keep them running away until Nick’s team slipped through the cracks.
Jara pulled out a small flask from her belt — crushed silverthorn mixed with wolfsbane oil.
She smeared a streak under her jaw and tossed the rest onto a rotting log.
“That’ll draw their dogs,” she murmured. “We give them something to smell, something to chase.”
Henry nodded and took a small iron sphere from his pocket. With a flick of his wrist, he rolled it down the hill — it clicked twice, then burst into blue smoke, curling upward like a phantom beacon.
Shouts echoed in the dark. Vampire voices.
It had begun.
“Showtime,” Jara whispered.
Together, they rose from the brush and ran.
They tore through the trees like ghosts Jara faster, silent, her boots barely brushing the ground. Henry moved with deadly purpose, leaving small traps behind as they passed: glass vials that shattered into silver shards, darts smeared in mirrored poison, whispers of light to confuse vampire eyes.
Behind them, the forest erupted.
Vampires surged from the palace in waves with their fangs bared, cloaks flying, scent-hounds howling in fury.
“They’re taking the bait!” Henry yelled.
“Of course they are,” Jara growled. “You reek like raw sunfire.”
“That’s a compliment, right?”
“Keep running!”
They led them deeper into the forest, into ravines and gnarled deadlands only the wolves could navigate. The farther the vampires went, the more scattered they became.
Just as planned.
Then Jara paused — suddenly, sharply.
She held up a fist.
Henry froze.
A faint vibration hummed in the earth beneath their feet.
And from the shadows behind them…
Something enormous stirred.
Jara’s eyes narrowed.
“That’s not just a guard patrol anymore.”
From the treeline, a vampire war beast emerged about ten feet tall, stitched from dark alchemy and ancient magic. Its jaws glowed red-hot, and in its eyes burned the fury of Alfonso’s cruelty made flesh.
Henry muttered a curse.
“New plan?”
Jara grinned, pulling her twin blades from her back.
“We buy them more time.”
Back at the ridge, Nick felt the shift.
The palace gates had thinned. The eastern wall was unguarded for the first time in weeks.
He looked to his pack.
“Move in.”
Like wolves in the mist, they vanished into the trees — toward the fortress, toward Erin, toward Marcia, toward revenge.
While Most would have waited for backup. Most would have circled the outer walls for days, studying patrols, sneaking through shadows.
Zara was done waiting
She stood now at the edge of the bloodgrass path leading directly to the north gate — exposed, bathed in pale moonlight, her cloak tossed aside. The two silver boxes, slung securely in her black satchel, pressed cool against her back.
Her fingers itched for her blade.
No more hiding.
No more running.
This ends now.
The vampire sentries on the wall noticed her too late.
By the time the first alarm bell sounded, Zara was already airborne — leaping from the base of the twisted tree line, boots slamming into the gate like a thunderstrike. Her grappling hook caught the ledge with a metallic snap, and her body moved with lethal grace, scaling stone faster than any human had a right to.
Three guards met her at the top.
The first took a bolt to the throat.
The second fell with a silver dagger embedded in his eye.
The third managed to hiss, “You—” before she snapped his neck and flung his corpse over the side.
Just like that, Zara was inside. Erin tried to come out but her door was concealed with magic. She tried her fire to burn the door down but couldn't. She waited for someone to open.
The hallways were colder than Zara remembered. All black stone and gilded veins of red magic, flickering torchlight casting long shadows. She stayed low, hugging the contours of the wall, following the pulse in her blood — the same pulse that always led her to danger.
And maybe… to Marcia.
“This place is a tomb,” she thought. “But I am not the one who will die here.”
She took side corridors. Forgotten servant halls. Secret passageways, she had learnt from her father long ago, when the two of them had fled from Zara’s vampire-infested town.
“If you’re ever trapped in the dark,” Marcia had said, “remember this route. It’ll take you to the center.”
And it did.
Zara now stood in a hall of mirrors — the heart of the palace. A cursed place, where illusions lived and secrets warped into monsters. It was where Alfonso broke his prisoners, where he twisted minds until they forgot who they were.
She adjusted the strap of the satchel, steadying her breath.
Two silver boxes. One in her bag. One… in Erin’s old room. Still a mystery.
None possibly holding the true Elixir of Immortality.
But this wasn’t the time for riddles. She needed to find Erin. And Marcia. If either of them were still breathing.
Her hand brushed the curved hilt at her side.
Then she moved.
Two guards spotted her on the fourth level.
This time, she didn’t hide.
She let them see the silver glint of her blade before she cut them both down in a single, spinning strike — wind from her movement scattering the black ash of their bodies across the floor.
She stood over the remains, blood dripping from her wrist.
Let them come.
Because Zara the Hunter was back in the vampire's den.
And she didn’t come for survival.
She came for vengeance. She opened the door that the pulse led her.
She was shocked to find.