Chapter 440: Breaking Point IV
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Sofia’s fangs sank deeper. Blood came out in a heavy rush and ran down over Sofia’s mouth, throat, and chest. The woman’s free hand struck at Sofia’s shoulder once, then again, but the strength in it was already failing. Her sword slipped from her ruined hand first. It hit the stone floor with a hard metal sound, bounced once, and then spun away through the blood.
After that, the hand itself stopped obeying her.
The fingers opened. Then twitched. Then hung uselessly at the end of her torn arm.
Sofia kept drinking.
The armored woman’s body began to weaken fast. Her legs kicked once against the ground, trying to find balance. They failed. One knee bent the wrong way under her own weight. Her back struck the broken pillar beside them, but even that impact did not help her. The blood was leaving too quickly. Her face lost color. Her eyes widened, then started going hollow. She tried to breathe, but what came out was wet and broken.
Sofia pulled harder.
That was when the woman’s body truly gave up.
Her head rolled slightly to one side. Her shoulders dropped. The hand that had still been trying to claw at Sofia’s arm slid down and hit the floor with the dull sound of dead weight. A heartbeat later, the rest of her followed. Sofia let go of her throat at the same time the strength went out of her legs, and the armored woman collapsed in a heavy crooked fall.
Her back struck first. Then her head. Then the rest of her ruined body folded sideways across the blood-slick stone.
One leg was still trembling.
The fingers of her torn arm twitched two more times. Then even that ended. She did not rise again.
Natasha’s kill was colder.
The dark-clothed man had already understood he could not win. That was what made his final movements dangerous instead of desperate. He did not panic. He did not scream. He chose one gap, one narrow line at the left edge where Vera’s last step had carried her a little too far and Vela’s blade had not yet returned to close it. He threw himself toward that opening with everything he had left, and for one beautiful, desperate moment, it almost worked.
Then Natasha’s blood control wrapped around his leg like a red chain.
It was not elegant. It did not need to be. The blood snapped tight around his ankle and lower calf, and the force of it dragged his balance half a breath off. That was all it took. Vera’s blade cut across his face and opened one side from cheek to temple. Vela’s strike came lower and tore through his side, deep enough to make his body twist but not deep enough to kill him first.
Natasha reached him in that half-breath.
Her claws drove through his chest so hard that his body jerked once in the air before the full pain even reached his face. The points punched through cloth, flesh, bone, and the beating center beneath. Blood came out from his mouth first, then from the wound itself in a hot rush that spilled over Natasha’s hand and wrist. His sword dropped from numb fingers and hit the stone with a flat metal crack. The sound was small compared to everything else in the chamber, but it still carried.
He looked down at the claws in his chest.
Then he looked at Natasha.
For the first time, the clean dryness in his face broke. Not into fear. Into understanding. He knew exactly what had happened. He had lost. Not slowly. Not honorably. Completely.
His lips moved once as if he meant to say something, but no words came out. Only blood. His knees weakened after that. His shoulders dropped. The strength went out of his sword arm first. Then his left hand opened and twitched once at his side. Natasha held him there for one more heartbeat, not because she needed to, but because she chose to let him feel the death fully before she finished.
Then she pulled her claws free.
His body stayed upright for the smallest moment, as if the habit of standing had not yet understood that life was already gone. Blood poured down the front of him in thick dark lines. His head dipped forward. Then the whole weight of him collapsed. One knee struck the stone first. Then the other. Then he tipped sideways and hit the floor hard enough to splash blood over the boots of the dead man nearest him.
He did not move again.
Silence did not come immediately after.
The rest of the killing still needed finishing.
Raka and his men tore through what remained of the guards and hired killers while the bats ripped panic apart from above. One Iron House guard tried to back away and slipped in blood before three lesser vampires reached him at once. A hired man dropped his blade and raised both hands only to have a bat tear into his face before the plea could even form. Another tried to crawl under a broken crate and got dragged back out by the leg, screaming until Raka’s claws opened his throat. The floor became too slippery to stand cleanly on. More bodies dropped. More blood spread. More men begged. No one important listened.
Only after the last Iron House scream broke and ended did the chamber finally begin settling.
It was not in peace but into the aftermath. Heavy breathing. Wet stone. Blood smell.
Twins with blades still red.
Sofia licks the last of the woman’s blood from her mouth with no shame at all.
Natasha stepped over the dark-clothed man’s corpse as if he had become furniture the moment he stopped being useful.
Sekhmet looked over the chamber and made his next choice quickly.
He called six of the rare bats forward.
They came out of the larger swarm one by one, bigger than the rest, darker in wing, stranger in eye. Their bodies were leaner than ordinary bats, but their hunger felt heavier. They moved differently too. Less frantic. More focused. The kind Bat Bat watched more closely than the others. The kind with more hunger and more potential in them.
Sofia noticed at once.
Natasha did too.
Sekhmet pointed at the bodies of the man and the woman.
"Eat them."
The six rare bats fell on them immediately. Not politely. Not like scavengers pecking at leftovers. They hit the bodies with full ugly greed, wings beating hard, little jaws opening wide enough to look wrong. Two went for the dark-clothed man’s chest wound first, drinking from the hot blood still spilling there. One landed near the torn side of the armored woman’s neck and buried itself into the wound Sofia had left. The others tore into softer flesh, ripping cloth and skin apart in short savage motions.
Their feeding was frantic, but not mindless. They drank the spilled blood first, then went into the bodies themselves. The little creatures shook while they fed, not from weakness, but from the force of what they were taking in. The man and the woman had been strong. Their blood was strong. Their flesh still held the heat of battle. Even their dying chaos energy had not fully scattered yet. The rare bats felt all of it, and their small bodies trembled with hunger and delight as they swallowed what lesser creatures might have burst trying to contain.
Raka watched and laughed once through blood and exhaustion.
"Good meal."
Sekhmet did not answer.
Sofia did.
She looked at the six bats eating and said, "They have so much potential."
Natasha nodded once. "Yes. A lot."
They were not speaking idly.
They meant it.
Sekhmet heard that clearly enough. That mattered. It meant they were useful in more ways than fighting.
The chamber settled further around them after that. Raka’s people gathered their wounded. Some of the lesser vampires sat where they stood because the strength had gone out of their legs before the danger had properly gone out of the room. Others checked bodies for signs of life and ended what was left where needed. The surviving lesser vampires breathed hard through blood-covered mouths, their claws and fangs still half out because the battle had ended too recently for calm to take them back. The twins remained near Natasha, Vera and Vela both still alert despite the battle being over. Their blades stayed low, but not relaxed. No one had yet noticed Dickoff’s absence. That truth would come later.
For now, the dead man and dead woman were being eaten by rare bats. And a surprise was waiting for everyone. It was still hidden inside the blood, inside the flesh, and inside the violent feast happening on the stone floor. None of them saw it yet. But very soon, something would begin to change.
Author note: If you are enjoying this story, please also check out my other book, "Blood God Reborn as the Mudblood Heir."