Chapter 26: Are You Insulting My Intelligence?! (1/2)
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But that was only a brief moment, before all of the vampire servants gulped their saliva audibly, their crimson eyes lowering in unison.
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Some even took half-steps backward as Lucien walked forward. He approached the newly-turned vampire—no, a thrall who had just transformed.
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"Hikkks!" The sound escaped Selena's throat, half-gasp and half-whimper, her breath fogging briefly in the chill air between them.
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His approach caused her to flinch and tremble once again, her shoulders hunching inward as if trying to make herself smaller. But this time, for some reason, her feet remained rooted to the ground, as if the mansion itself had seized her ankles in an invisible grip.
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Under her fearful gaze—eyes wide and glassy with tears that refused to fall—this towering vampire suddenly stopped before her.
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His red eyes studied her with an almost scientific curiosity, the slitted pupils dilating slightly as he reached out one long-fingered hand to touch the silver knife she still held, frozen in her white-knuckled grip.
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Ssszzz!
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The moment his flesh made contact with the silver, his skin began to burn—not with flame, but with a quiet, horrifying dissolution.
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It disintegrated piece by piece, turning into fine gray dust that spiraled downward through the shafts of colored light, the smell of scorched metal and something ancient filling the space between them.
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At this revelation, Selena was stunned, her lips parting in silent shock as she looked down at her own fingers, which appeared perfectly fine after holding the knife.
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The torn lace of her sleeve brushed against her wrist as she turned her hand over, examining it with feverish intensity, the red spots on her cheeks growing brighter against her otherwise ashen face.
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Ah? So I'm immune to silver?
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But despite this, there was no joy, nor was there sorrow; she simply felt confused by the whole thing, her brow furrowing as she tried to make sense of her new existence.
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How could this be? Isn't a vampire's weakness to silver the most obvious one? That was her thought, but those flustered musings were interrupted by a sudden movement and a voice that cut through the silence—
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"Stop."
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Ash-blonde hair covered Selena's vision like a pale curtain as Lyra stepped in front of her, the movement sending ripples through her tattered blue gown.
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The fabric whispered against the bloodstained floor as she positioned herself between Selena and Lucien, her shoulders squared despite the visible tremor that ran through her slender frame.
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She glared at Lucien, who had stepped back and looked at her with the same calm gaze, the corners of his unnaturally wide mouth twitching slightly.
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Both pairs of red pupils watched each other across the dusty shaft of light between them—Lyra's flashing with an internal fire that made the blood-red irises seem to glow, while Lucien's remained coolly analytical.
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Lyra's mouth twitched and her hands trembled, though she clenched her fist tight enough that the blue veins beneath her skin stood out in stark relief.
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"Please, spare her," she continued, then with trembling fingers, she revealed her collarbone and neck from the tattered gown, pushing aside the torn blue silk with its dull silver threading.
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Her cheeks flushed red—a startling contrast against her otherwise pale skin—as she looked away, her ash-blonde hair falling across her face.
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"J-just use my neck."
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Before he could answer, a voice filled with irritation cut through the tense silence, echoing slightly against the vaulted ceiling.
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"Sister, don't be ridiculous," Elara, as expected, came all the way in, her athletic frame moving with predatory purpose.
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Her dark chestnut hair bristled with animation around her face as if electrified by her anger, the silver clasp that once held it now forgotten somewhere on the blood-slicked floor.
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She butted in, then sternly glared at her foolish, naive older sister, Lyra, her vertical pupils contracting to thin slits in her crimson eyes.
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GRIP!
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With a swift, fluid motion that sent the tatters of her deep blue gown fluttering, she reached out and pulled Selena away, her nails momentarily extending into curved claws before retracting as she adjusted her grip on the terrified maid's arm.
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"Master, feel free to use her," she spoke to Lucien.
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User her? Spare her? Use your neck?
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To Lucien, this was confusing, a knot of bewilderment forming between his brows as his red eyes narrowed.
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In the first place, he hadn't even had any thoughts about this new thrall!
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Yet now, he was being framed as if he had malicious intentions, as if he were some mindless predator.
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"Do I look like some kind of hungry, mindless animal?" Lucien couldn't help but retort with sarcasm, his unnaturally wide mouth curling at one corner.
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A low snort escaped him, the sound rumbling in his chest as he turned away with a dismissive flick of his wrist—then he spotted something. Something very interesting.
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His pupils dilated suddenly, expanding in the crimson irises like ink drops in water, his head tilting with predatory focus.
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A silver gun, its ornate engravings catching the fractured light, lay partially hidden behind the splintered debris of his coffin.
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So a thrall is immune to silver, but what about a silver gun?
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Just as Lucien, with an eager expression that transformed his marble-pale features, moved to take the gun he'd spotted far away behind the debris of his coffin—his long legs coiling to launch him forward, muscles tensing beneath the tatters of his once-fine clothing—suddenly, his whole world blurred.
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SWOOSH!
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He blinked. For a heartbeat, the chamber spun and smeared around him, colors and shapes stretching like taffy, as if reality itself had stuttered.
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The sensation was neither wind nor movement, but a disorienting slippage between one moment and the next.
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He staggered, his powerful frame momentarily unbalanced as he caught himself with one hand splayed against the cold floor, fingers digging into wood that groaned beneath his supernatural strength.
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He found himself in the heart of a silence that was suddenly absolute, a vacuum of sound that pressed against his eardrums.
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The voices of the vampires clustered behind him, wary and tense, faded to distant whispers, yet Lucien barely registered them—his eyes fixed, disbelieving, on the silver-plated pistol at his feet, its metal surface reflecting broken patterns of stained glass light.
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This… isn't right. How?
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The world felt wrong—disjointed and impossible. The ruined coffin was now over there, across the vast expanse of the foyer floor, the gun where he was.
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He'd crossed the space in an instant. No footsteps, no preparation—a blink, a slip, and the world had redrawn itself around him.
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Confused and breathless—though he no longer needed to breathe—Lucien twisted, craning his neck, the tendons standing out against his pale skin.
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His eyes, now blazing with intensity, darted between the shocked vampires and the impossible distance he'd just traversed.
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Elara's mouth had fallen open slightly, a rare break in her composure. Lyra had taken a protective half-step back, her hand instinctively raised as if to ward off danger.
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Did I—Did I just teleport?
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The conclusion seemed absurd, but reality offered no other answer. His mind raced, calculating the distance—nearly thirty feet—crossed in less time than it took to draw breath.
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What triggered it? He groped for logic—his fingers unconsciously flexing and unfurling at his sides—until his gaze, almost involuntarily, fixated on the silver gun at his feet.
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He scooped it up with a fluid motion, his long fingers wrapping around the grip.
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He was expecting the burning pain that came from touching silver as a vampire—and indeed, it came, a searing sensation that began at his fingertips and radiated upward through his hand.
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The pain resurfaced like acid, slowly eating at his skin and flesh—smoke rising in thin tendrils between his fingers as the metal reacted to his vampiric nature—but now he was almost used to it and ignored it.
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His face betrayed only the slightest tightening around his eyes, his jaw clenching momentarily as he focused his attention on the gun, turning it over in his hands despite the growing disintegration of his flesh where it touched the silver.
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Yet… still, it felt insufficient. Lucien's gaze measured the shattered debris where he'd been moments ago, then the floor beneath him.
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His eyes traced the path he should have walked but didn't, as if he could read the geometry of his impossible leap in the dust motes hanging suspended in the sun light.
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It wasn't just the need. Was it distance? Line of sight? A hypothesis flashed through his mind, electric and insistent.
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He tested it: peering up to the second floor where the twin mahogany staircases curved to meet the gallery, his gaze narrowing with focused intent—and then, he noticed something begin stirring in his body.
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It started as a whisper deep in his marrow, building rapidly to a scream, like the shrieking of bats trapped in the cavity of his chest.
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Yet... it felt like a thousand, thousands of bats inside him, their wings beating against his ribs, his very cells vibrating at an impossible frequency. The sensation spread outward from his core, racing along his veins and
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—SWOOSH!
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"GRR!" A low growl escaped as shadows boiled around him, not merely cloaking him but becoming him.
