Bronx, 8:40 a.m.
"M-Mia, about what happened Saturday morning—"
"Does this really look like the right ti to talk about that?!" Mia cuts him off sharply.
They sit side by side on the couch of the apartnt they’re taking refuge in.
The window beside them looks out over a horrifying scene of destruction stretching as far as the eye can see.
A surreal silence reigns.
The usual traffic and daily noise are gone, just a mory. Only the heavy footsteps of thousands of vampires fill the streets, along with their animalistic sounds.
"I know it’s not the best ti, but... if sothing goes wrong and these end up being our last monts together, I don’t want to die without clearing things up with you."
"T-There’s nothing to clear up! You’re a guy and pretty perverted — I didn’t expect anything different from you, but..."
Mia tilts her head and rests it on Chris’s shoulder, a soft, sweet smile forming on her lips.
"...you’re my brother and I care about you a lot, even if sotis you’re a little depraved. Don’t worry, these won’t be our last monts together. I won’t let those creatures hurt you, I promise."
Chris’s heart pounds at that sudden display of sweetness from Mia, but at the sa ti he feels a strong sense of sha.
"How embarrassing... I’m the one who should protect you, not the other way around... I’m really the most useless brother in the world..."
Mia shoots him a glare.
"Stop saying that. You’ve only been a vampire for a short ti — it’s normal I’m stronger than you. Even so, if it weren’t for you, I’d already be dead. Back at the baseball field, you faced that primordial vampire alone. You showed incredible strength and courage... and I’ll always be grateful for that, Chris."
Mia presses closer to him, and Chris hesitantly places a hand on her shoulders in a timid embrace.
Chris fears she’ll be annoyed, but she isn’t.
His embrace grows firr until he pulls her closer.
They hold each other in silence, sharing a brief mont of quiet and tenderness while outside those walls chaos rages.
But that mont of temporary serenity is only the calm before the storm.
A dull thud snaps them back to reality. The building’s main door has been smashed in, and hundreds of heavy footsteps echo up the stairs, getting closer and closer.
◇◇◇
Frank Pyton’s villa — Westchester County, 8:50 a.m.
Isabelle hums a song by Young Blood — a famous vampire rapper who was extrely popular in Elyndra when she still lived in the kingdom of Mildelar.
Yes, even vampires like hip hop.
But Isabelle is as strong in battle as she is tone-deaf, and she always sings off-beat.
That’s why Frank has strictly forbidden her from humming while cleaning when he’s ho. But now that she’s alone, she can indulge in concerts that make nails on a chalkboard sound relaxing by comparison.
But her one-woman concert is interrupted by the roar of a jet flying overhead. A few monts later, the whir of several helicopter rotors follows.
"What the hell is going on this morning?"
For almost two hours, planes and helicopters have been flying overhead nonstop. At first she didn’t pay much attention, but the frantic traffic in the sky is starting to worry her.
She drops the duster and rushes outside without even taking off her maid uniform.
But from there, she still can’t see anything unusual.
Around Frank’s villa lies an enormous private park, surrounded by high fences. Beyond that, the trees stretch endlessly.
Isabelle dashes through the vast woodland at full speed and runs up a nearby hill. It’s not very high, but enough to see New York from above, overlooking the Bronx.
The mont she reaches the top, the scene of destruction before her makes her blood run cold.
Tall columns of smoke rise everywhere, and a large part of the district has been reduced to rubble.
Isabelle has no way of knowing that the situation in the Bronx doesn’t reflect the rest of New York.
To stage the terrorist attack, HESPARC detonated explosives only in areas deed expendable.
The Bronx is by far the hardest hit, and parts of Queens and Brooklyn have also been completely razed.
It’s as if soone used the situation to wipe out New York’s worst neighborhoods — and the people living in them.
Isabelle doesn’t waste another second.
She rushes down the hill, smashing through trees, rocks, and anything in her path.
"I just hope Levreeshka Dulcar isn’t behind all this, otherwise... no, I don’t even want to think about it! Shit... shit... shit...! Chris, Mia, Zaira... hold on, please — I’m coming!"
She reaches the base of the hill in an instant.
In front of her lies one last stretch of forest before the city. But just as she’s about to plunge into those final kiloters separating her from the Bronx, she suddenly stops.
An endless line of primordial vampires stands before her, motionless among the trees, waiting in silence, their thin scarlet eyes glowing in the dim light.
From above, the dense foliage hid them. But now they’re clearly visible, stretching as far as the eye can see.
No matter how far she looks into the forest, those creatures seem endless.
More than five thousand stand before her, placed strategically by Levreeshka.
Thanks to the information from Alexander Azuralis, she knows exactly where Isabelle works and could have attacked the villa with that army — but chose not to.
Levreeshka knows that such a small number of primordial vampires isn’t enough to defeat Isabelle. Sending the horde against her would only have alerted her.
Instead, she placed them along the route between Frank’s villa and New York, at a safe distance from the city’s borders.
This way, she avoided alerting the Monster Slayers she knew would be stationed at the city limits to seal the city off.
"I see... looks like my fears were right — that damned bitch really is behind all this."
A violent surge of energy erupts from Isabelle, uprooting the front rows of trees and sweeping them away along with the first lines of primordial vampires.
"Well... looks like I have to do a quick warm-up before I go kick her ass."
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