My Blood Legacy: Bloodlines

The first creatures reached Victor before Ghideon finished reconstructing his arm. Three advanced through the main corridor, using their elongated arms to brace themselves against the walls and gain speed without relying on the unstable floor. A fourth came along the ceiling, driving its claws between the stones while opening a jaw split all the way down to its neck. Victor kept Lilith pointed forward, waited until all four entered his range, and swung the sword in a horizontal slash covered in White Fire.

The blood blade passed through the first two bodies, but failed to cut completely through the third. The creature possessed a layer of overlapping bones beneath its skin, forming improvised protection around the ribs. Victor stopped the motion, allowed Black Ice to grow along the blade, and drove the structure directly into the wound. The ice expanded between the plates, separated the bones, and opened the chest from the inside before White Fire consumed the dark core hidden near the spine.

The creature clinging to the ceiling dropped onto him at that moment. Victor shifted left, but one of the claws still tore through his collarbone and part of his shoulder. He seized the monster’s arm before it could retreat, turned his hips, and threw it toward Nera, who had already understood his intention. She lowered the scythe, waited until the body entered the correct path, and pulled the blade upward, splitting the creature from the groin to the center of its chest.

"You are throwing garbage at me," Nera complained as she pushed the two halves aside.

"You have a large scythe. You need to justify its size."

"I will justify it against your throat later."

She had no time to continue. Five more creatures emerged from the cells, followed by two deformed vampires who still retained part of their original appearance. The vampires did not advance directly. They remained behind the creatures and opened their own wrists, using the blood to form lines that attached themselves to the monsters’ backs. The bodies responded immediately, becoming faster and more coordinated.

Ghideon remained behind them, rebuilding the arm with lupine material while watching.

Victor understood the objective. The creatures were not there merely to overwhelm the two of them. Ghideon was buying time to complete the transformation and probably absorb more parts of the laboratory before the structure collapsed. Every body destroyed near him could become material for another adaptation.

"Do not let the corpses get close to him," Rowena warned. "The scars work like entrances. As long as the body remains intact, he can pull out whatever he needs."

Victor struck Lilith against the floor. Black Ice spread from the tip and traveled through the corridor in thin lines, passing beneath the creatures without trying to freeze them immediately. When the first ones reached the middle of the distance, Victor closed his left hand. The lines rose at the same time and formed vertical partitions between the enemies, separating the formation into small groups.

Nera advanced through the first opening. She passed beside a short creature, avoided the claws with a minimal tilt, and struck the back of its knee with the bent shaft of the scythe. The limb broke, but she did not try to finish it. She spun the weapon, hooked the blade around the neck of the vampire controlling the group, and pulled hard enough to drag him over his own monsters.

The vampire tried to transform the blood around his arm into a spear. Nera released the scythe for an instant, caught the blood weapon with her bare hand, and diverted the point to the side. The spear pierced the face of one of the controlled creatures. Before the vampire understood what had happened, Nera recovered the scythe and slammed the curved blade into the back of his neck.

Victor faced the second group using less force and more control. He allowed one creature to attack first, avoided the claw, and struck the elbow with Lilith’s guard. The joint broke. Another came from the side, but Victor used Black Lightning only in his left foot, changing direction without increasing the speed of his entire body. He passed between the two, cut one creature’s tendon, and buried the sword in the throat of the other.

The third monster opened its chest.

A mass of shadow emerged from within and tried to cover Victor like a net. He retreated two steps, spun Lilith, and formed a circle of White Fire before his body. The shadow entered the flames but did not disappear immediately. It continued advancing while burning, sustained by the energy of the controlling vampire.

Victor looked through the fire and found the one responsible.

He threw Lilith.

The sword passed through the flames, pierced the shadow net, and entered through the vampire’s eye. The moment the blade reached the brain, Victor activated the blood that formed the weapon. Spikes grew in every direction inside the skull, destroying the vampire’s concentration before the shadow could reach him.

Lilith dissolved into liquid and returned across the chamber as a red line, reconstructing itself in Victor’s hand.

Ghideon followed the entire movement closely.

"You learned to control the weapon quickly," he commented. "Scarlet Valentine took decades before she could return a blood weapon without losing part of its structure."

Victor cut off the head of a creature that tried to attack him from behind.

"She had a worse teacher."

Ghideon’s expression became more serious. The lupine arm was finally complete. It was larger than the previous one, with dark fur between bone plates, long fingers, and curved claws scraping against the floor. Red lines crossed the muscles like exposed veins, but the energy inside that limb was not vampiric.

Rowena recognized it before Victor asked.

"Lunar energy. Weak and contaminated, but real. He did not steal only the flesh of a werewolf. He preserved part of the energy channels."

"Does that make the arm stronger?"

"It makes it unpredictable. If he activates lunar force together with the shadow, the body will respond neither like a vampire nor like a werewolf."

Victor smiled as he spun Lilith in his hand.

"Then it will break in two different ways."

Ghideon heard only the final response, but seemed to understand that Victor was speaking with someone. He flexed the claw and advanced without using shadow to conceal the movement. The force of his first step destroyed the floor, and his speed surpassed everything he had shown until that moment.

Victor positioned Lilith in front of his chest.

The claw struck the blade.

The impact bent the blood sword and sent Victor through two cells. He crossed the bars of the first, struck a surgical table, and broke through the wall of the second before managing to drive his feet into the ground. Black Ice spread around his ankles and fixed his body in place, preventing him from being dragged any farther.

Ghideon was already in front of him.

Victor released Lilith, ducked beneath the second claw, and struck the Specialist’s abdomen with a short sequence of three blows. The first was physical, used to measure resistance. The second carried Black Ice, freezing part of the muscles. The third used Black Lightning to force the frozen region to contract.

Ghideon’s abdomen ruptured.

Black blood and fragments of ice burst from his back, but he did not retreat. His human hand seized Victor’s hair while the lupine claw pierced his side and lifted him from the floor. Victor felt the claws pass between his ribs, tear through his lung, and reach the muscles near his spine.

Ghideon threw him upward.

Victor broke through the corridor ceiling and entered the upper floor of the laboratory. The impact against a pipe tore away part of his already injured shoulder, but he managed to seize a beam before falling again. Below him, Ghideon bent his legs and jumped through the same hole.

Nera appeared in his path.

She had used the scythe to pull herself along the wall and reached Ghideon while still in the air. The blade descended against the lupine arm, but the bone plates absorbed the first impact. Nera pressed down with both hands, growled through her teeth, and used the weight of her own body to force the cut deeper.

The blade passed through the first plate.

Ghideon caught the shaft of the scythe and spun in the air, throwing Nera toward Victor. He released the beam, caught her body with one arm, and created a platform of Black Ice beneath their feet before both could fall through the hole.

"Heavy," Victor commented.

Nera drove an elbow into his face before jumping from his arms.

"Say it again."

Ghideon landed on the platform with enough force to shatter it. Victor and Nera jumped in opposite directions, but the Specialist pursued neither of them. He drove the claw into the broken ice and released the lunar energy stored in the arm.

A gray wave crossed the floor.

The Black Ice lost consistency the moment it was struck. It did not melt or break. It simply stopped responding to Victor for a fraction of a second, as though the natural energy in the arm had interrupted the connection between creator and structure.