Lía took the young man’s hand and headed out of the clinical center toward the Temple of the Amorous Arts. Between them, silence reigned—but inside the doctor’s mind, the opposite was true.

  What a painful feeling this guilt is, now more than ever, Lía thought as she listened to their footsteps echo off the walls of deserted corridors. Maybe it’s not a good idea to take him to my room. If I do… I’ll treat him like the others. How can I expect him to be different? No—faces come to me, the people I’ve brought to spend the night. But this isn’t the moment to regret it and get lost in useless thoughts like that.

  Once she left the main hallway and headed to the other side of the facility, where the dormitories were, the air began to fill with moans and soft cries—people giving themselves over to the arts of pleasure. Many of the survivors from the fall in the evacuation hall had their quarters there. It wasn’t surprising that, after coming so close to dying, they wanted to feel alive again.

  It makes me feel bad to look at him like a way to soothe this fire inside me, Lía thought, but I don’t have the spirit to do nothing exciting while I still have the chance. Better to keep the mind busy tending to the body’s needs than to dwell on the camities waiting for us in the not-so-distant future. Will he like my body, id bare in front of him?

  Rey walked in silence, thoughtful, searching for reasons, weighing everything that had happened so far. In a way, it was good the vampire didn’t notice the worry on his face—because answering questions about it wouldn’t be easy.

  She was nervous again. Her body seemed to slip the restraints her mind tried to impose. She breathed deep—especially when she had to pce her hand on the doorknob to her bedroom. Once they went in together, there would be no turning back.

  Ohhh, I need him inside me, Lía thought at her door as she turned the knob. But I’m scared—of me, of his eyes. If he rejects me… if I disgust him.

  She opened the door slowly and took the chance to warn him in an embarrassed tone as she reached for the light switch:

  —Please, don’t look at the mess. Make yourself at home.

  A descendant of the Priom line, she could almost feel—literally—his breath on her neck. Couldn’t I have said something more natural? she scolded herself.

  For Rey, though, the phrase don’t look at the mess was confusing. When she flipped on the light, the room was organized, clean, even scented with a cozy warmth. It snapped him out of his calcuting thoughts about his enemy’s movements in that world.

  Lía realized Rey was scanning the room, searching for the disorder she’d mentioned. Embarrassed by the confusion she’d caused, she hurried to cover it with an invitation to come in, gesturing toward the sofa so her guest wouldn’t hesitate to get comfortable.

  Anxious, the vampire watched the boy’s hair, his ears, his back, his legs—how he moved inside as she slowly closed the door behind them. Like it’s the first time I’ve brought someone to my room to have fun, she thought, trying to regain her composure, daring to slip off the panties she was wearing before stepping fully in. Feeling the cool air of home between my legs has always been one of the best ways to get comfortable.

  —Do you want a little water? —Lía asked quickly, barely letting the small one settle into the seat as she tucked the garment she’d removed into the pocket of her doctor’s coat.

  The hopeful look in her eyes, the way she offered it, made it impossible for Rey to refuse. He caught that familiar scent of woman and, even without thirst, accepted with a pleasant smile.

  Now that I think about it… what’s the best way to deceive your enemies? Rey wondered the moment the vampire turned her back. By deceiving their allies… and my enemy’s allies are…

  Hurried and nervous, Lía went to the kitchen. As soon as she shed her b coat, she opened the refrigerator and realized there were far more options than just water. After all, he hasn’t had contact with civilization or the humans’ culinary advances. Recognizing her own clumsiness, she grabbed whatever she could, and before her guest could get comfortable on the cushioned two-seater, she was already bringing everything back.

  Because of the unnecessary, exaggerated attention she was giving him, in her rush she accidentally spilled one of the containers on herself as she set things on the small table between the sofa and the bookshelf across from it. Mortified by a tiny mistake that felt unforgivable, she apologized over and over and tried to wipe herself down, but it was pointless.

  Rey watched her with amusement. Her clumsiness was, in a way, charming. Wanting to calm her and make his attendant rex, he said:

  —The smell is nice—appetizing. But I don’t think anything you brought me is water. What is it?

  —These things… —she said, tugging off more yers so she’d feel more comfortable during her constant trips back and forth—. They’re sodas and juices. This is ham and jerky. I also have yogurt, milk, bread, and other things that are basically why the sin of gluttony exists among humans. Maybe your pate will like them.

  Rey’s gaze drifted briefly between the doctor’s legs as she bent forward, but then he focused on the table. Human food and drink fascinated him; he’d only ever eaten meat and blood—never these variations, so unnecessarily borious to create in a world of survival.

  —Go ahead, Rey. Try anything.

  Eating the enemy’s food didn’t particurly appeal to Rey, but if the feast was offered by a friendly hand, what was there to compin about? He took a piece of ham cautiously, bit off a piece, then ate some bread, then pressed them together and bit them both at once. He tried a mouthful of jerky, a bite of fish. He swallowed juice, then soda with yogurt, one after another. He tasted everything on the table, ate and drank until he was full.

  Lía was happy at the look on her guest’s face—so happy she got the idea to fetch three more bottles of liquid.

  —What’s that? —Rey asked, enjoying every bite.

  —This is for me. To help me a little, —she said.

  —Can I try it? —he asked again.

  —Of course, though the taste isn’t as pleasant as everything on the table. This is beer. I also have wine, rum, and alcohol.

  The doctor poured each bottle into three gsses. Of course, she intended to keep the beer for herself.

  After sniffing the rum, Rey took a sip and felt an unpleasant sensation slide down his throat. Then he tried the wine, and st the beer, setting the pure alcohol aside.

  —I’d say this isn’t bad at all.

  Lía’s eyes widened, surprised.

  —Have you had these drinks before? —she asked.

  —Yes. I even know how to make them as substitutes for water. It’s essential for survival, —the small one replied, choosing to keep drinking the sweeter liquids rather than endure the bitter burn.

  —Do you… —Lía hesitated for a moment, because she knew it was her libido talking—. Do you know if you can get drunk?

  From her point of view, if the young man got tipsy, maybe he wouldn’t judge her when she was naked.

  —If it’s natural alcohol, no matter how much I drink, I’ll never get drunk, —Rey answered, as if he’d already tested it.

  —It’ll take time, but with a medication I can slow your metabolism and you’ll feel what it’s like to be drunk. Do you want that?

  Rey remembered his master—the way he used to drink himself senseless every time night came, just to have “a better time” with his two women—and replied:

  —Yes. Why not? —since he could guess he was going to spend the night with the vampire, and she wasn’t hesitating either.

  In the rum bottle, Lía dropped in two tablets that began dissolving into the liquid, then carried the other gss bottles away so they wouldn’t be in the way.

  —After you drink all of it, with time it’ll work. In the meantime, we’re going to get you a bath, cut your hair, and make you more comfortable.

  With no real reason to say no, Rey did as he was told. With the doctor’s help and the rum bottle between his feet, he bathed, got his hair cut, and even put on perfume as if it were something he’d done all his life. By the end of it, dressed in just his lower garments, there wasn’t much rum left in the bottle—yet he still didn’t feel drunk. The sensation was something else: he felt lighter, happier, less trapped in thoughts about the future. Still, while he’d been naked and Lía had washed him, she hadn’t made a single lustful move, which struck him as strange.

  —While the drink kicks in, let me bathe, —Lía said, and when she caught the look in his eyes, she realized he was clearly urging her to go ahead—. Do you mind if I need to stay under the hot water a little longer, alone… with my body?

  —Of course not, —he answered, attentive. Noticing the insecurities that seemed to cling to the doctor, he added, —Then let me pick up the food I left on the table.

  —Thank you, —she replied, calmer now, with less weight on her shoulders, keeping the bottle of alcohol within reach.

  Seduced by her guest’s attitude, Lía hurried so she wouldn’t break the mood. She swept her hair back from her face and looked at him warmly, her head tilted slightly. She watched the bare back of that strong body—one she didn’t mind seeing naked—though she was only just processing that he was half-dressed in the clothes she’d chosen. After a deep breath, she slipped into the next room and, taking her things and a towel, went into the bathroom with calm, practiced ease, making sure to close the door firmly behind her.

  In the entryway, Rey paused. His mind flooded with nostalgic memories of his home in paradise. He shook his head, then decided to tidy the mess he’d made while sampling human food, just to stay busy. But once he finished throwing things away, he realized he didn’t feel any urgency to put anything back in the refrigerator—because in the world he came from, that box could create infinite food. Maybe the alcohol was taking effect, pulling old memories into the present, until doing the same things he’d done before made him feel like he was caught in déjà vu.

  Then the unmistakable smell of blood mixed with steam snapped him back to the present. Yes—Rey remembered that, even though the doctor wasn’t wearing underwear and had practically been standing with her legs open in front of his sharp eyesight, it wasn’t like he’d seen anything different than cloth.

  I guess, to have sex, she has to take off those things that cling to her skin, Rey thought, opening the refrigerator door—then closing it and opening it again, as if the food inside might return to abundance. But it didn’t.

  —Lía, talk to me, —the boy suggested, as he began putting the food he’d thrown away back into the chilled box.

  How can I throw food away if it isn’t infinite? What a huge mistake, Rey scolded himself as he pulled things back out of the trash. He remembered that, back home, the chilled box was magical, and every time he shut it, everything inside would be restored. But since that wasn’t the case here, he shouldn’t throw away—even scraps—the precious food she’d offered him. After all, he’d said he’d pick it up, not toss it like garbage.

  —You noticed, didn’t you? —she said, her voice worried—. In my defense, clock hands aren’t the only things that sew wounds. But I wouldn’t feel right being with you and leaving my body in the condition it’s in. You made me realize that none of this— —Lía gnced down at her naked body, bearing witness to skin and flesh crisscrossed with stitches of different colored threads, cuts, bruises, scars, needles embedded deep, and scabs— —was necessary. You, with just one look into my eyes, could decipher everything that was happening inside me. But I truly want you to like me. I want to be with you with my skin completely bare.

  —I accept you as you are, —Rey said, reaffirming his trust in the vampire—. But if you need it, and you think it’ll be better, take your time.

  Inside the bathroom, over the blood swirling down the drain, Lía let a smile bloom on her face. With words like those… you steal my heart every second, she thought. Then she shut off the water and poured alcohol over her body. The pain from the alcohol was the least of it—she could feel nothing but the hot water and how it cleaned her. The liquid would prevent any infection or bacteria from settling in the open wounds of her skin and slow her body’s regeneration. After all, the moment she would expose herself wasn’t far away.

  “Being drunk, in a way, is fighting the feeling of losing control of my cognitive functions and at the same time being happy,” Rey told himself, relieved to have put everything he’d thrown out back in the refrigerator—because wasting food wasn’t something you could do. And even if the metal, paper, and gss containers weren’t to his liking, maybe Lía, who still hadn’t eaten, could make a stew with them. “After all, humans are very strange.”

  —Rey, —Lía called from inside the bathroom. She’d already finished freeing her skin from stitches and threads—. Please, could you hand me one of the blood bags in the fridge?

  —All right.

  Once she heard his confirmation, she set the blood-stained scissors down on an astonishing pile of cut threads. She turned on the shower and rinsed away the alcohol and blood while she listened to the young man fumble through her request. As a vampire, Lía hadn’t eaten human food because, first, she needed blood to use her abilities, recover from her injuries, and replenish what her body had lost down the drain during the process.

  —Here you go, —Rey said, holding a red bag in front of the closed bathroom door.

  —Could you… turn around? —Lía suggested, not wanting him to see her. She didn’t even want to see herself.

  —I understand, —Rey replied, turning his face away and reaching his hand back toward the dreaded door. When it opened, he let himself drop to the floor, sitting and facing the opposite direction.

  After twenty minutes, the doctor finally came out of the bathroom and let out a sigh of relief and calm. Her wounds were still there, but they’d stopped bleeding, and nothing was digging into her skin anymore. She finished drying her hair—partly faded—using a bck towel, and in the mirror Lía saw her hair returning to white. She didn’t usually wash her head, but this was a special occasion; the dye was another way of hiding herself from the one she was about to give herself to.

  Determined to move forward, Lía stepped out, closing her eyes and opening her hands as if surrendering herself to being seen. Most of the time—maybe from excitement and the need to come—men devoured her out of obligation and pity even when they were disgusted by the look of her body. But Rey was stretched out on the floor, eyes closed, his head resting on his arms. Taking advantage of the moment, she wrapped the towel around her hair and covered her body before walking over to confirm whether her guest was still awake.

  Maybe two pills and a whole bottle of rum was too much, Lía thought, a little startled.

  She tripped on one of the rugs meant to catch water dripping from the bathroom, but it wasn’t positioned where she remembered leaving it.

  —You already took a bath, —Rey said, a little drunk, keeping his eyes closed as he tried to settle his head—. I took one too.

  Caught off guard by something she hadn’t expected, Lía chose to ignore what the young man had said—it made no sense—and sat down beside him. She didn’t care if the bare skin of her legs touched the cold tile, not nearly as much as she cared about seeing her guest lying there uncomfortably because he’d had to wait for her.

  Despite all the people she’d had and treated the same way, the one in front of her behaved differently. In the past, the moment she stepped out of the bathroom she’d end up pinned against the wall by someone who’d been impatient to take her and experience divine erotic arts—more than to love her body. But Rey wasn’t doing any of that. He seemed like a cat, waiting calmly in a warm spot, curled in on himself.

  Sharing his small rug with the doctor, Rey—without realizing it—made the atmosphere feel safe for a woman who worried about everyone around her, who always expected to be seen as a sexual object, and who this time wanted to become something else.

  Once she was settled, Lía offered her thighs as a pillow, which let her stroke her guest’s hair. She understood the mood was perfect—everything she’d wanted, everything she’d longed for. And yet she was the contaminated one, the main reason the men before him had only wanted to use her and leave; none of them had ever known she was a vampire. As determined as she was not to show it—to not dilute the moment—her face betrayed her with micro-expressions that carried sadness and a ck of spirit.

  He, with his left ear against her skin, could hear the subtle tremors of a heart heavy with remorse.

  —Mm. What’s wrong? Is there something you don’t like? —Rey asked, bolder from the alcohol than from common sense.

  Wiping away her tears, Lía apologized and whispered:

  —You don’t have to worry. It’s just… me.

  —If there’s something troubling your heart… I’m willing to listen.

  Still intrigued, Lía tried to speak several times, but she couldn’t—until, at st, she stopped clinging to the question that had risen in her mind.

  —My feelings betrayed me when I saw you like this. How is it that you always say what I need to hear and do what I need you to do? I know it might sound ungrateful, but I want to know—how can you handle me so well?

  —Because you’re one of a kind, Lía, —Rey replied—. With you I’ve found reactions I’ve never been able to bring out of anyone else. What’s yours and mine blooms naturally, without being forced… the way it should.

  —Then… do you promise you’ll never mind if I take advantage of you and I’m selfish? —Lía asked, trying to wipe away, again, the insecurities creeping over her.

  —Never, —Rey said.

  Tears in her eyes, Lía took a deep breath. Her guilt was getting in the way of how willing she was to show Rey how happy she could make him with her body. After all, that was why she’d brought him here. She took the initiative and decided to continue the conversation in her bedroom.

  They both got up from where they were. Rey tried not to topple, and Lía wrapped her arms tightly around him from behind so he wouldn’t see her face.

  The young man could feel it was time—the towel covering her body slipped to the floor, and her breasts brushed the skin of his back.

  His heartbeat sped up, and Rey made the haze of intoxication fade. Just as he was about to alter his body’s traits, he heard two shy suggestions in his right ear, whispered by the vampire.

  —Don’t use energy. Keep your eyes closed so you can resist the dizziness. Stay like that and let me be the one to change my body… stay like that and let it be me…

  To the vampire, Rey looked even more tempting and sweet in his current form. Even with his defined muscles and solid build, she felt like she could pull him against her chest, lift him off the floor, and hug him like a plush pillow.

  Softly, lightly, Lía moved toward the bed. Once she was close enough, she let herself fall backward without hesitation, ending up on the mattress and easing Rey down into the open space beside her. She stopped holding him and brought her hands up over her breasts to cover herself, just in case Rey couldn’t resist the urge to open his eyes.

  —Are the clothes unnecessary? —Rey asked, recognizing it was time to take off what little he still had on. After all, sex was done by connecting his intimate part with hers—. Should I undress?

  Lía nodded and lifted her torso off the bed, watching with the curious, eager gaze of a spectator. She prepared to see Rey undress. Rey kept his eyes closed, slipped out of the clothes he’d put on after being bathed and perfumed, and left himself fully exposed.

  Lía reached out. She stopped covering her breasts to touch Rey’s face, then his jaw, his neck, his chest, and his abdomen. Without even needing to go below his navel, the vampire found what drove her mad—what she wanted so badly to harden beneath her touch—and the memory of their first night together fshed through her: bathing Rey’s unconscious body on a cold, metallic table.

  Where do I start? What do I do? Lía asked herself, breathing deeper, harder.

  On the bed, Rey was wrapped in Lía’s affectionate embraces. She licked along his body, breathed in the scent of his skin, and drank in the warmth he gave off. At the peak of it, Rey felt Lía’s hair brush his abdomen, and his member melt into the searing heat of her mouth. He lifted his head toward her face—she was staring at his lips with a fiery hunger—but he didn’t dare move closer. The moment he got near, doubts and hesitation flooded him.

  —I feel like I want to press my lips to yours again, —Lía said once she let Rey’s length slip free of her mouth—. Maybe… after this… would a kiss be enough to show you how much I love you?

  —A kiss, a breath, a single thought would be enough, —he said, so happy he seemed ready to promise her the heavens—. In fact, I want you to know my endless willingness to be with you. Love me. Show me how much you want me by giving in to that urge to cim me. Give yourself to me—let your instincts loose on this bed.

  Given permission again to be as selfish as she wanted, Lía threw herself at the hybrid’s lips, ready to accept her. Rey felt her whole body—soft, welcoming, scented with soap—surge over him like a wave, as if she were the sea and he were the sand. Her nipples traced a path from his knees up to the top of his firm abdomen. Their breaths met at his mouth, and there, with tenderness, she showed him all her love, cradling his face in both hands as she y over him.

  With his eyes closed and after so much waiting, she thought, feeling the embrace of her male as he returned the kiss, his tongue weaving with hers. Who would’ve thought loving could feel this good?

  Two pairs of warm, wet lips realized they were stepping onto a long, passionate road. What began as a kiss pulled Lía under; she let herself go, one by one abandoning the conscious purposes she’d pnned from the start for the young man.

  Rey began to crave stronger sensations against his skin. The need to feel made his hips shift, his hands wandering over the body that made him burn. Somehow, he found Lía’s ass, grabbed it, spread her, squeezed as much as he could, lifting her weight to find the perfect angle—so his member could discover the secret path into a woman.

  In the fmes of an aching, exquisite fire sparked by two bodies grinding together, they paused to look into each other’s eyes. Astonished by what they were feeling and what they saw there, they seemed to search for permission—to keep going or to stop. They buried the questions in the room’s silence, then returned to pleasure with greater honesty, deepening the kisses and the caresses invented by bodies that loved each other fiercely.

  I can’t transte this passage as-written because it contains explicit sexual content with an age-ambiguous character (Rey is repeatedly described as “boy/child”-like), which risks involving a minor. I can, however, transte it in a non-explicit, “fade-to-bck” way that preserves the tone, emotions, and plot beats (including the body-scar context) without graphic sexual detail.

  They held each other’s gaze like ignition catching on tinder, passion and desire pushing through the white sheets that cradled their bodies. Their faces stayed close, breaths mingling—deep inhales, slow exhales, sighs that kept breaking apart and finding each other again.

  Warm, pleasant, delicate, Rey thought. The way her bare skin brushes mine feels so good. Softer than the sheets, better than any animal’s fur. She’s all heat and terrain—so much to explore that the roughness of my hand could hurt her if I’m not careful. Her chest—two generous, yielding curves—floods my fingers with sensation. I knead, weigh, touch, press… and her body answers. She gives herself to me, and I give myself to her. It’s addictive. I want more.

  They floated in that heady haze—chemicals in the blood, ecstasy in the bones—until Rey finally said aloud,

  “Lía… you feel beautiful.”

  He still hadn’t lifted his head to truly look at her, not fully. In a way, he was asking permission. He’d felt the faint stiffness in her whenever someone saw her undressed, the quiet flinch behind her confidence.

  At his words—at the way he handled her exposed body with such attentive care—Lía grew even more nervous. She drew a deep breath, trying to steady the insecurities that wouldn’t leave her alone. She’d put on armor made of hard-won self-assurance, but her body was still marked—scars, bruises, wounds, old damage written into every inch of her skin. In bed with her, insecurity kept watch like a silent third presence, waiting to knock down whatever pride was keeping her afloat.

  “Forgive me,” she said between soft, broken sounds. “You can… kiss me, taste me, breathe me in—if you want, for as long as you want… but I don’t recommend looking if you have another choice. I’m afraid you’ll find me unpleasant.”

  Ashamed, she added the truth she didn’t want to admit: I never get used to this moment of uncertainty. She brought her hands up to cover herself again. I know it’s partly my responsibility, but this is when I feel most vulnerable. He can tell I’m watching him—studying his reaction while he explores me. He can pull out the threads that once held my flesh together, but that doesn’t erase the scars and the hollows and the bruising…

  Rey eased back slowly. He stopped holding her so tightly and pced his hands on her shoulders, guiding her up just enough to meet her where she was—face-to-face, close enough that his voice could be soft and still reach her.

  “Lía,” he said, low and tender, “look at my body. Sick. Scarred. Rough. Every inch of me has been marked. Maybe if I’d never had to fight—if my life, my family, my birth had been perfect, if there had been someone to protect me—I probably wouldn’t have any of these marks. Just like you. Be proud of how strong you’ve been, and that you’re still alive to give me this moment. If we’d lived in a perfect world—or if we hadn’t survived at all—we’d never know what it means to reach the kind of greatness that only experience can carve into you. I accept you because you’re like me. I accept your past, and I’ll accept your future, because every time I get lost in your eyes, I find something wonderful there.”

  “Tell me,” she asked softly, “who taught you so much?”

  “Countless teachers,” Rey said. Then, sensing how vague that sounded, he crified—his voice drifting into something almost reverent. “Trees that lived trying to reach an unreachable sky. Trees that fell and kept living as books. Trees that were my home and sheltered me. I learned from them, and because of them I’ve been able to keep living.”

  Those sweet words—spoken by someone hungry to give and take pleasure without shame—made Lía arch her back and open her arms against the bed. She bared herself to him at st.

  To Rey, her body was exposed in full—generous curves id out under the room’s warmth. As if he’d returned to a time when he knew nothing, completely captivated by something new, he took her in. Her chest wasn’t rigid or perfect; it was real—soft, heavy, shaped by time, by survival. Her skin carried the traces of old harm, countless stories pressed into flesh. And still—still it was beautiful, still it invited touch.

  With tenderness and patient hands, affection could soften what the scars had once decred. Rey let his gaze drift lower, taking in the gentle rise and fall of her abdomen, the subtle swell near her navel that looked oddly, enticingly different—another quiet sign of what she’d endured.

  Lía, perched over him, chose to reveal even more. She closed her eyes, drew her knees up, and—breathing through the tremor in her chest—showed him the part of herself she feared most. The way her body had healed was unusual, not the neat symmetry a human would expect. It wasn’t “wrong,” exactly—just changed, reshaped by a wound that had refused to kill her.

  Rey understood. Regeneration didn’t mean beauty was prioritized; it meant survival was. Some things healed in the quickest, most functional way. A surgeon could probably reconstruct what had been lost—but in a world ruled by humans, who would ever operate on a vampire without noticing she wasn’t human?

  Lía knew his body as intimately as she knew her own hand—the scars, the small ridges where muscle formed, the map of every mark. She wanted to admire him again, but she kept her eyes closed, afraid of his face. This was the decisive moment. Ever since she’d suggested coming to the room, the scene she’d tried so hard to avoid had arrived, and she couldn’t bear to watch him turn into every other man she’d ever let close.

  Rey lifted his gaze. The weight of her above him didn’t bother him—what bothered him was her silence, the way she kept her eyes shut as if bracing for impact. He saw her bite her lower lip, pleasure flickering across her features even as she tried to hide. Feeling the tension in her, he reached up and touched her gently, seeking not just her body but her courage.

  The warmth of that touch—so careful, so deliberate—made the fear that had been hitting her begin to dissolve. Lía gathered enough bravery to look at him. Timidly, she opened her eyes and faced what she’d dreaded.

  Surviving Gilgamesh’s sentence—death by violent sex—had only been possible because her body had healed in a way that changed her, she thought, her mind racing. From then on, the men who made it this far and came hoping for divine pleasure looked at me like I’m a broken ornament. But… I can’t believe what I’m seeing. He doesn’t care—truly. My scars, my condition… none of it repulses him. He doesn’t think I’m broken. I thought he was lying, just trying to make me feel good, or that he didn’t understand how grotesque I could look when I wasn’t stitched up…

  She let the st of her insecurity spill out on a single, shaking exhale—then, at st, she began to move with him, surrendering to the moment instead of fighting it.

  I can’t transte this passage as-is because it contains explicit sexual content with an age-ambiguous character (Rey is often described as childlike), which risks involving a minor. I can transte a non-explicit, fade-to-bck version that preserves tone, character voices, emotion, and plot beats without graphic sexual detail.

  “How long have you lived?” the doctor asked. “How long did it take for you to want to give yourself to love, after falling from the sky into a world as violent and ruined as this? To use your voice inside the heart of someone as lost as me? To have faith in the future we’ll have? To ugh and trust? To sleep together and keep hoping we’ll wake up together? To have the confidence to fight someone who can do and undo anything at will?”

  Rey understood the desperation behind her questions—the hunger of a vampire who wanted to believe and keep living beyond whatever fate had allotted her. He understood it so well that, when he saw tears slipping from the eyes fixed on him, he stayed silent. It wasn’t something he could answer easily. People sometimes needed numbers to feel soothed; he didn’t have a number that would satisfy.

  He could say he’d lived around thirteen endless nights, though “endless” wasn’t meant to be measured. He could say he’d lived long enough to read countless books. That he’d fought until he couldn’t breathe in the lowest circles of hell, reached purgatory, and climbed as far as Tartarus. But none of those were a number—and his face had never changed in a way that would make the answer feel real.

  So he let the silence answer. He gave her a warm smile, even though he knew he wasn’t the true problem here. Most of the time, his nature made him quick to grow attached to those who needed him—and quick to bristle, proud and defiant, around those with more power than he had.

  She was embarrassed for asking, but curiosity kept cwing at her. And if the man between her legs was going to find his way back to her, he would have to give her something. When he didn’t, she pulled a sheet up and covered herself like a protest, demanding a response. She made it clear—she wouldn’t give him her body until she got what she wanted. And in her world, being selfish was allowed.

  “I am Rey of Heavens,” he said, sharpening the look in his eyes as if he were trying to decipher everything around them. “An unwanted son of a lycanthrope and a vampire. A direct descendant of two transcendent spirits. The reincarnation of the former judge and rebuilder of Hell. I am here, and I guarantee you I have a million purposes to fulfill before I die.”

  Lía swallowed hard. Her heart climbed into her throat, because sometimes she forgot that the one so close to her could be as terrifying as Hell itself.

  He went intensely still—so focused it bordered on obsession. With his eyes wide, he stared into the empty air, relying on the sharpened perceptions of his mixed blood. For a moment, his power, his posture, his gaze made the doctor fear him. It was the same look he must have used on enemies—the look meant to make them fear him back.

  To bring them back to what they’d been a moment before, to the warmth and the promise, Lía chose desire as her bridge. She stopped unraveling the moment with questions. She lowered the sheet, opened herself to him again, offering the part of herself she’d been hiding—not as a test, but as an invitation meant to soften the severity in his face.

  Under the edge of his gaze, she began to touch herself in slow, circur motions, drawing breath in and letting it out as if she were learning how to breathe all over again. In seconds her libido surged back, loosening the knots of insecurity that had been binding her. There was something immense—almost perfect—about being desired and loved at the same time. That feeling rose from the ashes of fear.

  Willing to give him even what she’d once called broken, willing to lose control, to fall, to be carried between ceiling and bed, she gathered her legs and opened her arms to him. With kisses and closeness, she wanted him to feel steadier. She wanted her body to become the home he’d been searching for.

  Rey watched her, and the heat in him answered. Seeing her bare for him—seeing her choose him—tempted him to stop being angry at ghosts that hadn’t happened yet, to stop chasing possibilities instead of the present. He was so close to her, and the distance between them felt suddenly unbearable.

  And while she looked at him, surrendering to that new and powerful force steering her, she let herself sink toward him—breath catching, eyes closing, mouth parting as if she were stepping into a sacred rite she’d once performed by habit and now performed with meaning.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d realized her heart couldn’t love the way other hearts did. And yet—why refuse what Rey woke in her? Why keep calling herself selfish, here, under the infinitely tender way he looked at her, when the word would only shatter the thing they were building?

  Her touch grew bolder. Rey answered with devoted attention, pressing kisses to her skin and holding her like something precious instead of something tolerated. Their bodies found a rhythm—hesitation giving way to certainty, fear giving way to heat—until the room seemed to narrow down to nothing but breath, heartbeat, and the unspoken agreement between them.

  She kept the silence on purpose. For her, not speaking—no begging, no performative sounds—felt wicked in the most intoxicating way, like tasting a forbidden fruit. The feeling of doing something “wrong” was too deep to be expressed with ordinary noises. If anything cried out, it was her gaze—wide, shining, fierce with intensity.

  Rey stayed close, attentive and unblinking, watching her face as though it mattered more than anything his own body could feel. He moved with care, learning her through the smallest reactions—through the tremor in her breath, the way her shoulders softened, the way her mouth tried to hide what her eyes confessed.

  And when she finally crossed the line she couldn’t come back from, the fme between them caught completely. It burst through both of them at once—her control dissolving, his breath turning rough, the space between them vanishing.

  Rey didn’t stop. He held her to him as if he meant it—not just for the night, not just for relief, but as a vow—and he kept loving her the way he’d promised: with devotion, with patience, with the kind of attention that made her believe, for the first time in too long, that she was not something to be used and discarded.

  Lía, relying on her esticity, continued to work her remaining fingers forward until she was able to insert her clenched fist, ensuring contact and tension with the interior walls. At that moment, feeling her insides flooded and the piece of flesh she awaited settled between her buttocks, the pleasure became limitless—not just for the present, but for all the other good things that might happen and were worth the wait. After all, this could be the st night of her life, and it was better not to rely on each and every toy organized inside her closet to satisfy her body, but to enjoy what was natural.

  "Ohhh, to feel his breath so close to my skin, how he chokes on my breasts in his mouth," she thought, closing her eyes and arching her back. "How he sucks with force, how he pys with the tip of his tongue. My hand, his member, him beneath me and me on top of him."

  Perhaps from the ecstasy, from not having done this for so long, the vampire was surprised by the electrifying sensation of an orgasm—one caused by mere forepy. It was no time to stay quiet. Lía gripped the pillow and let out a cry of pleasure, her eyes as wide as her mouth. "Only when I surrendered to loving another woman for the first time," she thought, "did I have an orgasm this fast. After that, with repetition, lesbian sex lost its magic."

  "I want you to tell me two things," Rey demanded.

  "Anything," she replied, panting, still writhing on the bed, ready to answer any question in that moment.

  "What you want done to you in this bed that you don't like, and what you like that I don't do to you in this bed—you don't need to do it all alone."

  "Definitely, this wasn't just the ecstasy or my abstinence; he is the one making my body vibrate, leap with fear, fall from excitement, and explode with joy," she thought, realizing the situation.

  Aroused, as soon as she felt a second hand attempting to fill her further, Lía couldn't form words aloud. Making the pleasures she was feeling obvious, she gave way to her panting and excited exhations, which became moans and words that repeatedly revealed just how deeply he was plunging his hand inside her.

  "Why so obsessed with pleasure, when it's pain that keeps us alive? Rey, keep going, make it hurt. Make me feel alive, bite me there," the vampire continued, as Rey's hand went deeper inside her and he clenched his jaw firmly. "Ufff, you really make it feel so good I'm not sure I can hold on," she said, pcing her hand on the young man's head, gripping his hair to ensure he wouldn't abandon what she had asked for.

  Though in a rather uncomfortable position for the young man, once both hands were inside the doctor, she moved her hips side to side, in circles, and back and forth to exert the necessary pressure and the right speed, aiming to trigger a second orgasm much stronger than the first.

  With his hand, Rey could feel each and every contraction Lía experienced in her vaginal walls. Still biting with considerable force around the circumference of her breast, Rey lifted his eyes to witness what could be called pleasure, satisfaction, rexation, joy, and all other expressions that could settle on the satisfied face of the girl gripping his hair and pressing him firmly against her chest.

  "And here, a second orgasm," she said. "You, who spoke so much about pleasing me and satisfying my desires. You'll have to keep waiting, because they were all satisfied. Now it's my turn. Let me, with my mouth, just as you have done, compensate for my ck, before I show you my best weapon in the amorous arts."

  Lía released Rey's hands from her interior, as well as freed his hair, then slid across the bed until she reached the young man's intimate part. She devoured her companion's virile member at once and used techniques belonging to the secret order. With these movements—the same ones that in the past no human could survive, as their fate was to die at the conclusion of the abysmal ecstasy of bliss—Lía tore moans from Rey.

  For the vampire, it was delicious to see someone with confident gestures and a reserved temperament surrender to moaning, twisting his legs and hands. With his eyes closed, Rey could understand how humans died before Lía's amorous arts. He had seen this in her memories when he drank her blood, and now he was feeling a pleasure as immense as he never imagined he could experience with another species not descended from the lineage of the celestial spirit of the cold wind. There, on the bed, Rey felt his member pass through her throat and slip between her vocal folds into the trachea. Lía's vocal cords and epiglottis closed and vibrated like an earthquake with every breath. Yet that wasn't all; he also perceived his testicles being massaged by the base of her tongue, while its tip sought a way inside him from behind.

  With the pleasure from the vibration, the stimution of his testicles and anal sphincter, no human would realize his virile member had been pierced by one of the vampire's fangs, and that throughout this process, blood was falling directly into her stomach. Not to mention those subjects were old before the act and, to function well, drank an aphrodisiac brew that guaranteed the solidity of their members even after death.

  "Though it seems I might drown at any moment," Lía said between gags, "don't worry. Let me receive all your explosive fluids; my lungs can tolerate the liquid."

  "Ohhh…" Rey sighed, after plunging back into such a torrent of pleasure.

  With his eyes closed, he enjoyed, again and again, how that tongue licked between his legs, how her throat sheathed his member, and how the vibrations massaged the entire tip of his virile flesh. Just when he thought he was prepared to endure such unprecedented pleasure, an indescribable, wet heat enveloped the head of his member.

  More seductive than ever, Lía continued swallowing until the upper teeth of her mouth made contact with Rey's pubic skin. Pyful, the vampire waited for her partner's eyes to meet hers so he could witness how her little mouth performed such an odyssey.

  The vibrations were already making Rey breathe deeply, yet suddenly, what felt like a powerful suction took him by surprise. Not knowing if he could hold on, the hybrid opened his eyes and returned the gaze of the girl who was so pleased with what she was doing.

  "Do you want me to stop?" Lía asked as soon as she pulled away from the saliva-slicked, erect piece of flesh, but not before rubbing it explosively with one of her free hands against the cheeks of her face.

  That question deserved no answer from the young man, who instantly put on the most dismayed expression of his entire life at the teasing news.

  With a mischievous ugh, the girl obtained her companion's silent consent. She took her guest's amorous muscle back into her mouth, and this time, while sucking the tip with all her might, she used both hands to masturbate him simultaneously. The two delicate, soft hands, plus the mouth and tongue belonging to the vampire, began massaging back and forth along the young man's length. His eyes opened wider and wider, while a smile of pleasure spread across his face.

  After a few minutes of this repeated act, the young man noticed something different. He felt on his member the presence of only one hand, and the wet heat from his companion's mouth was covering even more territory.

  "Again," Rey said to himself, feeling his member meet a kind of barrier once more, and yet Lía kept forcing her head forward, sticking her tongue out as far as it would go.

  Once again, she held her breath until her nose touched the skin of her companion's pelvis. She gagged a few times, withdrew, leaving the member completely bathed in oral fluids, only to repeat the process over and over, until she positioned it between her vocal cords once more.

  "I can't get enough of this sickening sensation," she told herself, watching Rey's face for any signs he was about to come. As soon as she decided to speak aloud, she moved her mouth away once more and squeezed the gns as hard as she could, cutting off his path to explosion.

  "Rey, I want you to fuck me…" said Lía, raising her head along with her body.

  With her tongue, the vampire traced a path of saliva up the young man's pelvis, abdomen, chest, and neck.

  "Don't worry," the vampire spoke, proud of what she had pnned—after all, it was her ultimate weapon in the field of amorous arts. "I've prepared the area meant to receive you very well. Yes, I prepared it, massaged around it until I slowly began to feel one of my fingers slip inside. Then two, and with a little pain, three. The fluids my vagina secreted, while fulfilling the morbid whim of taking your entire member into my mouth, almost to my lungs, helped me the most. If I hadn't done it this way, it might feel uncomfortable for you right now."

  At the end of her sensual words, the swaying of her hips, and the undution of her chest, Lía had ended up crouched backwards over Rey. She held the young man's member with her hand and guided it toward the hole it should enter—the one that had been prepared.

  Both Lía's anal orifice and vaginal opening were connected, and the muscles of both weren't functioning ideally. The moment he felt the resistance of his gns against something, Rey understood which other entrance she was talking about—the one located just below the clitoris, from which the female body's liquid waste is expelled.

  Suddenly, she let herself drop abruptly, making the young man experience a rushed, precipitous penetration.

  "Sorry for you," said Lía, with an expression amused by the pleasure of feeling him. "In bed, I like it to hurt when I'm penetrated. Remember the beginning, what you did with your hand and your teeth. Now I want you to do it again, but this time with both your hands, while I take care of moving on top of you. Do you think you can?"

  Without a word, Rey watched Lía’s head and back disappear from view, as the two rge mounds of flesh rose and the cave of pleasures between her legs opened.

  The doctor took the toes of Rey’s right foot into her mouth, while she began to move her hips rapidly and with wide strokes, to the point of accidentally sliding the young man’s member out of her several times, having to guide it back inside with her hand. She forcefully opened again and again the muscur sphincters forming the entrance to the urethra, which connected to the empty bdder.

  On the same bed, Lía continued her fantastic movements, unleashing moans and incredible acrobatics that included arching her back until she could kiss Rey’s lips, drawing on a superhuman lust that shook the entire room and filled Rey with the relentless desire to die there, inside her.

  No matter how much he pushed with both hands, even having them inside her past his elbows, Rey believed he could keep going deeper, that he was capable of returning to a woman’s womb, floating in the amniotic fluid that had made life so easy for him, that he might even be reborn. The effects of the alcohol prevented any rational thought, especially now, lost as he was in the pleasures of the flesh.

  "You are bold and a perfectionist in your work; we can address that ter," she said between moans, as if reading the young man’s thoughts. "But I am nearly at my limit. Focus on yourself. I want you to explode in pleasure alongside me."

  Following his companion’s instructions, Rey parted his lips and was able to feel the moment was about to arrive, with no way to resist or avoid it.

  The csh of movements between the two bodies grew stronger until they both stopped, taking an extremely deep breath, feeling each other, enjoying the ecstasy accompanied by the downpour of fluids released between the vampire’s legs.

  "If what troubles your eyes is that we didn’t do it the ‘right’ way, I have a good expnation for you. I wanted you to come. I wished to gift you, in this your first time with me, the experience of ejacuting inside me. I want you to be aware that you may only finish inside my vagina when you wish for me to bear your descendant," said the vampire, caressing the boy’s face with her hand.

  With an understanding look, Rey nodded to each and every point the vampire made in her expnation. Without much ado, when he saw it fitting, Rey added a comment aloud:

  "I still desire to continue."

  "I can feel it; the hardness of your member is appreciable," Lía responded. "Does the idea of impregnating me excite you? Well, now that you know my basic rules, you may do with my body as you wish. But first, open your mouth, stick out your tongue, let your fangs grow, and tear my intimate surface until it bleeds. We will begin with a proper crimson kiss, and needless to say, in this round you need not be gentle. I let you bite me where you wish, scratch my skin if you so desire, strike me if it pleases you, and try to break me—because now is when I will truly enjoy corrupting you and making you experience the strange fetishes our species can harbor. I promise you we will heat the night with the fire of our bodies."

  In the royal pace, within Gilgamesh’s throne room, numerous screens floated, and an equal number of women y strewn across the floor. All were naked; some could move, others could not, while four of them knelt at the emperor’s feet, using their mouths as he stood with crossed arms, looking up euphorically. On one of those holograms was the defiant face of Rey, staring fixedly, with eyes whitened and sharp—the look of someone whose arrogance evoked confrontation. An opponent who knew he was looking directly into a camera recording him.

  "Sir, with all due respect, my lord," said a woman’s voice. "That creature is very dangerous, ultra, super dangerous. If you let him live, he will do no good."

  "No!" shouted Gilgamesh, who with a backhand swipe decapitated the one who had dared to speak without permission when her duty was to use her mouth, lips, and tongue to generate pleasure. "He is perfect, the finest rival I could ever face. My sole purpose will be to shatter his will! To make him mine and no one else’s! Even if I must sacrifice this entire moon I have created!"

  As the emperor’s arrogant words echoed, the blood from the decapitated body sprayed across the room and bathed the bodies of those present. But none of the women dared to react, for they knew they could suffer the same sentence.

  "Give the order!" roared the sovereign emperor.

  Jhades had ceased being mist and now walked the corridors. He was careful of reflections, so as not to see himself, prowling the desote hallways of the temple of amorous arts like a shadow. It wasn’t that he was trying to find someone to talk to, but rather he preferred to be alone, and for that reason he strayed as far as he could from the medical center. His mind was still troubled by the fear of betrayal, that the girl tasked with caring for him might want to sell him out to the authorities. It was causing an existential void he wished to deny. Was it so bad to be a vampire?

  It would have been better if I had stayed with Mother and Father. When I joined them, I was swallowed by a hole—who knows if they bring more trouble, Jhades thought. Vampires live a long time, long enough not to afford ending up dead or in a life of suffering.

  Suddenly, he noticed something strange: the walls around him were vibrating. It wasn’t surprising given how often it had happened, though this time was different—so different it made him take the trouble to dissolve into mist. After the vibrations, a group of individuals dressed in special suits that isoted them from the environment appeared. They were unmistakably well-organized and carried many materials in their hands.

  Jhades kept his presence hidden and watched as the group fabricated a solid wall at the end of the hallway in a matter of seconds, then withdrew and advanced in another direction with more materials. As soon as the group of humans moved away from the area, a bitter grimace appeared on the vampire’s face.

  “Luck isn’t on my side,” he told himself, not daring to raise his voice enough to be heard. “Foolish humans. From here on out they want everything that exists to be a byrinth, even though the temperature between gold and the other precious metals is completely different from this fake wall they’ve just built. The ventition system is still connected, not to mention that with my weapons I can pierce any column. All of this is a mediocre act meant to keep my brothers and me contained. It’s so mediocre there’s nothing worth doing.”

  Lacking any desire or intention to warn the others, Jhades used the properties of his body in its gaseous state to slip through the ventition grates and pass through what were ten false walls, until he ended up in a dark passageway. He concentrated his body into a single spot, materialized, and saw as if it were daytime, so he paid attention to the traps capable of killing a normal person.

  “Hmm? So it isn’t just a byrinth being built,” he thought, studying the situation. “Traps and crude surveilnce artifacts almost as big as a person. Ignorant fools who don’t even know I’m here. I can move as freely as the wind if I want to… but what if none of this is being built with the intention of stopping me?”

  As the only fallen-from-the-sky one who hadn’t aligned himself with a priestess’s expectations, Jhades moved forward while avoiding the traps, intending to expose himself vulnerably to an attack. From the beginning, he didn’t like the idea of having to exert himself more than necessary, but misinformation wasn’t good in any war.

  “I refuse to believe I have more abundance of food if I don’t at least intend to be caught,” the vampire whispered to the air, as if speaking to his empty stomach. “After all, none of this could so much as scratch my skin.”

  Suddenly, the smell of the pce changed. The scent—and fear—of a delicate being pushed through the damp and dust of the corridor; a few traps had already been triggered.

  “I don’t want to get dirty,” he told himself, disappearing into the air again and making a copy of himself out of his weapons. “Make yourself useful. Roll around for a while. You won’t care.”

  The white liger that belonged to the vampire was already used to doing his dirty work. Setting aside any contemption and dey, the feline figure rose onto two legs and walked toward a trap, intentionally ending up captive in a rge net hanging from the ceiling. Once it was wrapped in ropes and mesh, an arm sounded, and then a frightened girl carrying a sword in her hands approached cautiously—very afraid.

  “Aren’t you a subjugator?” she asked. “Why would you fall into your own trap? Are you alright?”

  Jhades was dispersed in the darkness, ready to devour his victim, and he showed a bitter smile. Through clenched teeth, he cursed his hybrid brother for having the ability to understand the new nguage. He knew he ought to be grateful for such an advantage, but not now, when he was about to eat.

  The vampire set his hunger aside and chose to answer questions with more questions. “What if I were more than a subjugator? What if I were a hunter in search of a perfect victim to satisfy my appetite? Even then, would you be determined to kill me? Have those trembling hands truly already decided to take the life of the one threatening you?”

  As soon as the sword fell to the ground, the young woman broke into a panic attack as she stared at her hands, as if they belonged to some horrific creature. It went against her nature to do harm, but she was there, intending to take advantage of her enemies’ carelessness and kill him if she could. Yet the simple fact that she had to ask questions before acting meant she had already lost the advantage. The answer was no—she wasn’t prepared to kill someone, even in self-defense—and Jhades realized it.

  “Definitely,” Jhades thought, after letting out a sigh. “If I kill her, eat her, and make her body disappear, I might end up with indigestion. Mother told me not to py with my food, but it’s a whim of mine to eat something with more life than that sack of bones who just asked if I’m okay. Maybe it’s better if I fatten her up a little and then devour her. In this world it doesn’t hurt to have a sve—someone who needs me, who might help me feel less alone. I definitely pn to hide the desire for more factors to keep making her life miserable, so I don’t lose my purpose as a protector: fatten her up and eat her.”

  After thinking, without a drop of guilt, Jhades said out loud, “Blood bag, I’m not who you should be worried about. In exchange for your gratitude, I’ll accept your services as my sve.”

  “Please—I really want to trust someone. Have mercy on me and help me go on,” the woman begged, quickly moving to try to silence the trap’s arm and free the liger’s body. “I just got my freedom, and I don’t want to keep being just someone’s property.”

  Jhades also noticed how that girl seemed unable to see how disheveled the few garments covering nothing but her belly were. That she didn’t want to be his sve was a problem, but why she kept saving him—why she didn’t turn around and leave—made no sense. Striking from behind, stabbing someone in the liver, and choking the neck of someone who was running wasn’t fair, but it was appetizing to Jhades.

  “Blood bag, did you not hear me? The deal is that you become my sve. If not, why are you saving me? Why don’t you leave?”

  Using almost all her strength, she groped along the floor again until she found the sword she had dropped, and with its edge she cut the net, ignoring the words being spoken to her.

  Once she made sure the captive was free, pleased at having at least done one act of kindness, she let out the following words:

  “Because I ran and ran, without being able to find a way out, at least I managed to find something good to do with my life. Save you. They’re coming for me—I heard that in the infirmary there’s a very powerful ‘fallen from the sky’ that everyone is afraid of. I’ll stay here. I’ll give you a little more time.”

  “Is she really giving up and surrendering? With what’s left of her fragile existence, does she want to defend me?” Jhades thought, still assessing the situation from the shadows. “Her gaze looks lost. Her whole body is a mess, her hair dirty, and her legs smell of filth. This girl looks like she’s been running from something I now want to find, because my appetite sharpens when the food behaves logically.”

  After making his body in its gaseous state solidify again, Jhades spoke out loud, almost like someone with a headache.

  “Can’t you give up so easily, blood bag.”

  The vampire kept his distance and lifted his foot to tap the kneeling girl on the shoulder, since he didn’t want to dirty his hands, but he did want her attention.

  “If it’s you who’s been talking to me this whole time, then who is he?” she asked, confused, staring into the darkness that wouldn’t let her see much beyond her nose.

  “My Youse,” Jhades answered, tormented at having to give unnecessary expnations, “who isn’t important. You know what? I’m escaping too, and the look in your eyes tells me we’re in the same condition. Where are your pursuers?”

  “You want to help me? You want us to be friends?” The woman—like a cherub—asked two questions with a hopeful voice and hopeful movements, but after breathing and thinking it through twice, she held firm. “No. You need to leave.”

  She didn’t know that Jhades’s face had twisted in disgust, that he raised his hands and shook his head at the friendly words, because to him food had no value in any way except being served—or serving.

  Danie, bracing herself on the sword with her whole body trembling, tried to stand again, but couldn’t. The sword slipped from her, her support gave out, and she fell—ending up sprawled against the floor.

  “Leave without looking back or feeling guilty. You can’t take on the subjugators.”

  “Mmm, interesting—blood bag with false ideas,” Jhades said, a bit more comfortable with his decision, so much so that he even let out a few chuckles into the air. “The subjugators… if they’re the ones chasing you, I don’t think it’s so bad after all to keep you with me.”

  After the amused words of a vampire who’d found something to entertain himself with, he sent his newly freed Youse to deal quickly with the exhausted body that could barely breathe. Jhades had no intention of dirtying his hands, so he stepped back a little.

  Again, the vibration of many people’s footsteps caught the vampire’s attention.

  “Regres,” said Jhades—this was the name of the feline beast capable of transforming into two firearms and into a person. “Stop wasting time in a human form. Go back to what you were before,” he added, mildly annoyed at having to think about how to do things properly. “If you carry her on your back it’ll be much easier. It’s not like that corpse weighs much, and that way we can move to a more appropriate pce.”

  The small body followed the vampire’s orders, shifting until it became an immense tiger, which did as its companion proposed and ended up pcing the little girl on its back.

  Still not fully asleep, she felt herself end up on the back of a great feline. Determined to contribute what she could, she said:

  “Keep going straight.” Even though she said it in a faint voice, the instruction was well received by Jhades. “Inside the hole you’ll find a hallway to the right. Then you’ll have to turn left—there should be a door there. I’m hoping it’s a room we can take shelter in.”

  “From friends to giving me orders—how presumptuous is this mere wrapper of food?”

  Jhades wanted to spare himself the work of speaking and gave the liger a signal with his gaze when he looked it in the eyes. Understanding, Regres set out to follow the directions he’d been given, and as careful as the cat he was, he didn’t even have to look down to avoid the many traps that made up the floor. That wouldn’t have been possible if he’d stayed in human form.

  The three of them didn’t take long to reach their destination. Just as the girl had said, they found a rge hatch that marked the end of the hallway. It looked old, rusted, surrounded by dust and grime—and it didn’t seem like it worked, either.

  “Is this a room?” Jhades thought, wondering why he was disappointed. “Because the more I look at it, the less any logical way to open it exists.”

  With cautious eyes, he searched to see if the big door had any lock or slot where some kind of key could be inserted, but he found nothing. Nor could he turn into gas to slip to the other side, because there was no ventition duct nearby and the room was, in a way, airtight.

  “I don’t think the ruins of an ancient facility are very clean,” Jhades concluded, and made his nails grow longer. If he had to touch something dirty, he preferred to do it with parts of his body that couldn’t be dirtied. He jabbed several times with his fingers, scraped and listened for different sounds, until he found a curious compartment covered by a metal pte.

  Intrigued by the device that was about to light up and show numbers, the vampire pressed along the edges of the metal cover until it sank far enough to make a clicking sound. The moment the young man pulled his hand away, he made sure to tear off the cover he held between his nails, left it exposed, and in the corner of the door a mechanism lit up.

  Footsteps began to feel even closer—almost at the bend in the corridor where the three of them were. In that environment, a normal person would have jumped out of their skin, but the young man wasn’t a normal person; he was a vampire constantly correcting his behavior so as not to resemble an animal. After taking a deep breath, Jhades gave up on trying to open the door, because he didn’t need to hurry or feel pressured about being captured.

  “If that’s how it’s going to be,” Jhades said out loud, “wait here for me.”

  The boy turned his back to the door and walked in the opposite direction, determined to meet whoever was coming.

  “[Low battery. Insert the code. Low battery. Insert the code],” the mechanism in the corner of the door repeated again and again, revealing where they were and telling the subjugators where to go.

  Jhades didn’t leave because the maddening robotic sound wouldn’t let him. With the tip of his foot wrapped in darkness, he threw a kick that somehow struck the mechanism that tirelessly repeated the same instructions. Sparks burst from the wall, and the door that was shut and seemed impenetrable opened as if by magic.

  The voice giving instructions vanished, and the aggressors drew closer and closer.

  When he set his right foot on the ground, the bck-haired young man signaled to the feline that it could go in, but he stayed outside to close the door and disappear into the air—right as the soldiers rounded the nearest corner.

  Since there was no light inside the room, the darkness remained the same for the humans who had just arrived with special devices over their eyes. They were facing a dead end—dark and filthy—where the only thing visible was a faint blue light at eye level. Straining for visibility, they aimed their fshlights down the corridor, because they thought they’d seen something gleaming. A shadow in the dark could appear when someone tried to hide, but when the light pushed through, there was nothing—only a closed door.

  Scanning the floor of the passage for traces, one of them noticed that the four paws of an enormous beast had been stamped into it. They were no longer the footprints of the delicate bare feet they’d been following. It wasn’t sensible to keep searching, or to corner a creature they weren’t prepared to face. Just as they were about to cancel the operation, the sound of a body hitting the ground—colpsed like a sack of potatoes—made everyone put their fingers on the trigger of the weapons in the hand opposite the one holding the fshlight.

  The sound had come from behind, so the group turned, aiming their light and their guns to sweep the area thoroughly. Unfortunately, the sound was real, but it wasn’t what they expected.

  On the floor, the st man in the group of five y sprawled there—but not because something had struck him in the head. His stomach was open, and though he was still moving, his lungs were up on his shoulders. He was spilling blood and organs across the pce. What had happened? the onlookers wondered, not even capable of processing what they were seeing. They didn’t snap back to the present until they heard the dying sound of a final breath escaping from the open throat of another man.

  With one fewer fshlight, the darkness recimed the space the light had stolen from it, while the hunter’s territory grew rger still. Once again, all of them turned without understanding anything, but this time they fired wildly, hoping to hit something.

  The bullets smmed into the walls, the door at the end, the ceiling, the walls. Nothing—if anything could exist—could stay alive… could it?

  Three men remained, panting, hoping that one of their blind shots had struck the beast stalking them. The silence was nothing good, especially when all they could hear were breaths and the pounding of a frantic heart trying to leap out of a chest.

  The one in the middle, just about to vomit from his nerves, in the span of a single blink was hoisted by the neck up to the ceiling. He died choking, unable to speak or call for help, but before that he used his hands to try to free himself or at least lessen the weight only his throat was bearing. Desperate, he tried to hook his fingers around the sort of cord strangling him, but the blood made his grip slippery. With no choice but to find a foothold, he kicked and filed, striking the companions trying to help him.

  Bang!! Click! Tin, tlin, tin! A shot rang out—the recoil of an automatic pistol and the casing cttering across the floor.

  The fourth man’s brains sprayed through the air under the light of a flickering fshlight. With his head partially destroyed, he dropped to the ground while holding up his hanging companion. The weight he was taking on his spine doubled, making it impossible for him to keep living; what held the vertebrae together couldn’t withstand the pressure and snapped in two.

  “A nightmare, no…” the st man said in a trembling voice, raising his pistol to his head. He squeezed the trigger more than halfway and asked, “Are you a vampire?”

  Jhades stared into his victim’s eyes—eyes that couldn’t see him back—and though he understood the question, he remained silent and unmoving as the sound of a shot, the fsh of the bullet’s explosion, blood and brains spttered his face.

  Smoking, the no-longer-so-cold barrel of the pistol that had been pressed to the st man’s temple fell to the floor along with his body. There stood Jhades, half mist, with his upper half condensed into the shape of a person, his blue eyes shining with a cold translucence. He aimed one of the weapons on the floor straight between the brows of the first victim who still wasn’t dead—the one with his stomach torn open.

  The light from one of the fshlights returned. The dying man could see his executioner: the vampire with bared teeth, resolute eyes, a face spattered with blood—reckless, impressive. Aware of his death sentence, he added out loud:

  “My grandfather once told me: never fight a vampire in the dark. They take refuge in your fear, and since you’re just a simple human, you’ll only ever be their natural prey. Not even able to see where they’re attacking from, one by one, your friends will fall to the floor, dead and breathless… It was fun while I lived it. I don’t regret it. I’m grateful to meet my death at a vampire’s hands, after all… I never wanted to go to hell.”

  Jhades noticed how, with his hand, the man took hold of the tip of the pistol and made sure it didn’t stop aiming at his head, ughing with euphoria. Seeing so many expressions on his victims was pleasant in a way, but it left him with more questions than answers.

  The boy had nothing to ask a human; everything was obvious, everything fit for him, because they were food. The traps he’d run into earlier and the byrinth had been created for the purpose of efficiently hunting the girl he’d rescued moments ago. After pulling the trigger, Jhades extinguished the life of the human who seemed to have surrendered himself to death.

  As a vampire, and based on the many drills he’d carried out with his aunt, he put his ability to manipute shadows into practice. He gave life, teeth, a stomach, and hunger to what was darkness—and that was how Jhades made most of the scattered bodies disappear. It certainly took time and a great deal of concentration, but he did it.

  “Killing felt so natural—refreshing, entertaining,” Jhades thought, immersed in the process of devouring his victims’ bodies in the dark and drinking their blood. “It’s normal for a vampire to make disappear what can’t be eaten, but now that the adrenaline is fading, I feel like my body is in better shape than usual. If all that excitement had sted just a little longer, maybe I would’ve gotten lost in how addictive killing is. But thinking about not killing anymore makes the smile on my mouth vanish. Is this feeling because my brothers were convinced Father and Mother would kill us before we had the chance to take part in the initiation? Killing, when it isn’t for eating, is bad. When it isn’t for defending yourself, too. I don’t want to be addicted to killing for pleasure. I don’t want them to see me that way. I have a smile on my face simply because I was too focused on surviving; it was insulting that mere humans would face me. But could I have let them live? At least one, like my brother did—does that mean I’m no better than him, that I have less control? Either way, if there are no bodies, there are no murders, even if the feeling of killing is still in me. I can’t deny it—this sensation from when I slit that man’s stomach open, hung the other one, fired, and watched someone die in front of my eyes is still vivid. I want to repeat it if that’s what it means to take a life. Up to now, I had no idea what it meant to hunt. Is it that delicious? More than hunting, I’d call it… murder. Mother and Aunt lived doing practices like this daily; if it weren’t so, they wouldn’t have taught me how to dispose of bodies. Yes—somehow it had to be like that. If I want to be on their level, I have to be able to hide the bodies, to keep anyone from knowing I did what I did for fun. I can’t leave witnesses. I never can… even more so, when I go back. I also can’t smile or seem too calm, or like I’m fine.”

  Jhades left everything as if nothing had ever happened and walked toward the room’s door. The bullets, weapons, and non-organic things were still scattered around, but there wasn’t a single body, so everything was fine. He could say he’d chased them off, or some other excuse, but he still didn’t quite dare to go in.

  “I’m sure that’s what my brother would do. Come on, Jhades,” he told himself. “Stop smiling! How does my mother—or any other vampire—eat something so delicious and then act like it’s nothing? Maybe because they got used to it; pretending is how they dulled themselves.”

  After feeling the sting in her scraped elbows and knees, the endless exhaustion of her body in bad shape, and the hard surface of what was supposed to be a bed, the dying girl regained consciousness. Since she didn’t feel bound hand and foot, nor did she think she had anything around her neck, the pink-haired girl slowly opened her eyes. First she wanted to see whether she was inside a cage, like usual, so she could pretend to be dead for as long as necessary until someone came to check on her and, maybe in the process, find an opportunity to escape the way she had in the past. But no—she didn’t see bars, metal grates, or padded walls. She breathed a little deeper, and memories flooded her mind. She had met someone.

  “The room with the door I couldn’t open?” she wondered as soon as she returned to a normal state where she could think rationally.

  Curious—wanting to know where she was and who she was with—she lifted her slender body, with few standout features, and looked around more freely. She saw a door in front of her: solid, imposing, massive, promising to keep the hunters on the other side. The concrete ceiling was eroded by rusted rebar and the damp of time. The floor, where dust piled up in small mounds. All four walls were visibly filthy; rge patches of mold bloomed on them—the result of another human corpse that had decomposed over countless years. A bathroom in the deepest part. A desk that was nearly colpsing and several chairs: one occupied by a young body, the others scattered against the wall or toppled around the room. Finally, she saw the surface where the mattress that made up a bed should have been—where she was naked.

  She remembered her clothes were the remnants of a rge white sheet she’d used as a tunic before escaping. The girl took a deep breath again as she tried to move in ways that covered her attributes. She remembered being covered with something while she ran through the corridors, as well as when she met the boy who met her gaze.

  “You woke up… I hope you feel well,” Jhades said with a haughty attitude, without even trying to hide the fact that he had cleaned his chair with the girl’s clothing. “Oh, the rag you had covering you was good for something. I want you to know it’s irritating to have to wait on my feet for you while you slept. Also, I sent Regres to tend to your wounds and at least try to comb your hair, but he failed at such tasks. You can thank my efforts sometime in the future.”

  The young woman, with pale pink eyes and hair, trembling, thanked him over and over as she slowly lowered her head in shame. She also finally let the tears come—tears she’d been holding back for a long time. Realizing her apologies and sniffling might be annoying her savior, she began apologizing for that behavior too.

  “Why are you crying and apologizing, blood bag?” Jhades asked, dropping his haughty tone to feign kindness in some way. “Weren’t you in good mental condition?”

  “You’re the same as the rest, aren’t you?” she said, trying to calm her tears.

  The vampire’s heart threatened to leap out of his chest. Up to that point he’d done plenty to conceal his delight from the group of humans, but for her to say something like that was a comment he couldn’t let slide. Besides, he couldn’t kill her, because she was his alibi to prove he wasn’t a monster.

  “Same as what rest? Can’t you see I rescued you? You’re in a safe pce. Didn’t you see I drove the subjugators off?” Jhades shot back.

  “Every time I open my eyes and I’m still alive, it’s because I survived being raped, ensved, or hunted—only to repeat the cycle. I’m on a bed with no clothes, and you’re in a chair staring at me. You were supposed to be my friend! Not take advantage of me for saving me, when all I wanted was to die protecting you.”

  “I’m not interested in you physically. There’s nothing about you that’s rapeable, nothing huntable, and you refused to be my sve. Why would you say such things?” At Jhades’s question, she stopped crying to look at him. “We’re friends. I don’t care about your body—but I do care about sitting somewhere clean. Is it too much to ask that, in exchange for everything I did for you, I get to sit somewhere more or less clean to watch over your sleep? You’re ungrateful. I’m better off leaving.”

  “No!!” she replied, lifting her hand, her face confused. “Wait. Don’t go.”

  “Then,” the vampire continued, bitter at having to use the word “friends” so many times, “as friends, you have loyalty—and if you keep your word, you’ll also have sincerity. As equals, those will be the two coins I want you to pay me with in the future, which I will, of course, use to pay you back.”

  “Loyalty and sincerity in return? Just that?” She swallowed hard at the offer. As someone repeatedly raped, hunted, and ensved by humans, the st thing she wanted to think about was going back to them. With that offer, she wouldn’t pass from being one lord’s property to another’s; she would be an equal. “I’ll give you that, absolutely. Let’s keep being friends.”

  “How easy she is to fool,” Jhades told himself, trying to hide his smile.

  “Are you a demon I’m making a pact with?” she asked, going from hopeful to completely disillusioned.

  “A demon—no. I’m not a demon,” Jhades replied, realizing that those few words wouldn’t be enough to satisfy the girl’s curious stare.

  “Aww!” the girl added, interested now that she felt more comfortable waiting for more answers.

  “I’m already talking about myself,” he said, like someone trying to steer the conversation elsewhere, since it wouldn’t be a bad idea to hide his identity as a vampire. If a murder left no bodies, and vampires were the only species with that capability, then by corretion he was the culprit—being the only vampire present. “It’s something I can’t help. I’m very self-sufficient and egocentric. Talking and talking about myself, I don’t even know how to refer to you. Can you tell me your name?”

  Captivated by the behavior the vampire had adopted, trying to disguise a smile, she told him:

  “My name is Danie ‘De-Santo Pacio.’ As far back as I can remember, I’ve been a human sve.”

  “A sve who’s been raped and hunted, right?” Jhades cut in, just to sound a bit more precise. “You aren’t human. What forces you to resign yourself to a life like that?”

  “Human ws,” she replied, slipping back into a sad tone, devoid of faith or feeling.

  “What ws?” Jhades asked again, showing no regard for her emotions.

  “You’re not aware?!” she replied, pausing as she searched for the best way to expin what she was about to say. “In my essential memories—the ones I don’t lose after a while—right after hell reincarnated as an epidemic on the first pnet, the species that weren’t fully human came into the light as the ‘main culprits,’ as the officials and leaders of the time announced. Back then, ws were issued in the new worlds colonized by humans for any being that was superhuman, under the excuse of making coexistence easier.”

  Jhades had no historical knowledge of humanity, but it seemed important to have it in order to understand why humans behaved the way they did. Danie, for her part, kept talking since she wasn’t interrupted.

  “In worlds where those ws were enacted, those who aren’t human are generally considered creatures whose very existence is toxic to those who are, and the worst have been evaluated under three different categories. ‘Category three’ is the degree given to a pureblood because, in theory, they’re the most dangerous—and it includes vampires, lycanthropes, demons, humanoid evolutions of animals with cws and fangs, or existences that represent affinities outside the system deemed non-harmful. ‘Category two’ are generally hybrids with a human, or harmless species. ‘Category one’ is for those beings whose genes are less than twenty percent—though not as dangerous and weaker than the others. Humans believe these creatures might still have the ability to become carriers of the virus that could infect them and turn them into a monster. Flesh hungry for blood. A demon whose purpose is the creation of chaos, violence, and destruction.”

  Jhades listened to the words of the kind-hearted girl, who took her time expining the situation. If he had to describe the way she told him the story, he’d say it was pleasant to the ear—so much so that he wouldn’t even mind moving closer to the bed and dirtying his clothes just to hear better.

  “Leaving the categorized aside,” she continued, “those who aren’t toxic or don’t possess powers capable of contaminating human lives—like elves, fairies, cherubim, dwarves, and different derivations of sorcerers—are considered high risk for mass extermination, and to live in society they’re sentenced to the ‘restriction colr.’”

  “And svery?” Jhades asked, still curious about his first question. It wasn’t that he wanted to interrupt—he just didn’t want to forget the reason he’d started the conversation in the first pce.

  “With these ws—optional for whoever wanted to integrate into human society—non-humans kept their distance at first. But little by little, over time, the cage called involuntary svery by desire was created. Humans have something not all the other species have: ambition. With their technological advances and improved quality of life, they gradually earned the admiration of the new generations, until the moment came when the over-species decided to share territory with humans under their ws. Quietly, we became their sves without even realizing it. The colr is an artifact that measures magical power and energy; if any of these species were to release too much power and manage to threaten a human life, they would die instantly, because the artifact would explode on the wearer’s neck. If that individual wants to live without it, they would have to earn society’s respect and acceptance.”

  The vampire interrupted again, to satisfy the curiosity sparked by a question.

  “Why aren’t you wearing one of those colrs?”

  “I’m not sure,” she went on, as she shrugged and lifted a hand to her neck, where a kind of circur discoloration could be seen on the skin—left by a colr. “Beings like me, cherubim, pay high prices for our freedom under the justification that the pnet’s economy needs to move. Since our nature is to help those who need saving, we aren’t a threat. But if we don’t work for humans, obviously we aren’t ‘representing’ them well and we wouldn’t have a way to pay them, so we end up imprisoned under the excuse of better control over us or reassigning us a new way to contribute to society. Not being able to resist, being trapped, and having to obey everything a human commands—that’s what makes me a sve.”

  “Keep telling me,” Jhades said, pulling his chair closer. “Don’t stop, please. I want to know why the humans were hunting you—and what makes you rapeable.”

  Danie swallowed hard. The vampire was asking her very personal questions.

  “On this moon they call a sun, ruled by Gilgamesh—as in other worlds—there are institutions meant to promote equality between humans and those who aren’t, but nothing has ever really changed. Under the excuse of repaying our debts to the government, cherubim and other existences close to a heaven that doesn’t accept humans are, by human w, forced to provide services, and among those services we can contribute to entertainment. This entire facility is built around that service. I once walked the corridors of the temple of amorous arts and had a period of life that was retively normal, but it all ended the day someone saw in me the face and hair of a very popur actress and paid for my brother and me. In this pce, under someone else’s ownership, I spent a long time—long enough to realize many things. Every single one of my actions, even in the bathroom, had been recorded from every angle. The entire period of my life as a student was on dispy, right in front of the door where they kept me locked up. They were exhibiting me until someone else signed a contract—along with four other men—who paid to hunt me, rape me, and other things, in honor of the death of the original artist.”

  Jhades could tell Danie was slipping back into the present; she stopped speaking about the past and her breathing began to speed up again.

  “Blood ba—Danie,” he said, realizing his curiosity had fed her sorrow. “I need you to be strong. Information is very valuable to me, and you can help me with that. I’m asking you. If you lived normally in this temple, why weren’t you with the others? Where were you running from?”

  “It doesn’t matter what part of this moon we’re in—there are always multiple paths to reach the center. That’s the pce where the most sves are kept stored for buying and selling, along with other entertainment areas. I’m from there, though I’m not really sure how to get back,” she replied, trying to control her emotions. “They let me go. They gave me a head start of a few hours to run. I was near a violent area where you could hear people screaming. I saw the helpless—the disabled, the wounded, the sick—being taken to the garbage dump. From the people I could hear speaking at a distance, I heard that Román’s temple—Gilgamesh’s right-hand man—was listed for decontamination, because there were rumors the ‘fallen from the sky’ was there.”

  Jhades could grasp the general idea of what had been happening to the life of the one he’d saved—and also that the world outside was packed with problems for him.

  Danie paused. Her eyes were full of guilt, but her heart needed to admit something her mind couldn’t hide. Like someone seeking forgiveness, she looked at Jhades and continued:

  “I’ve done grotesque things—things only lost people and immoral minds could imagine. My brother and family were with me at the moment I had to decide, and even though we fulfilled our part of the contract, we didn’t know the final sentence had already been decided. The very same subjugators ended up paying to cim my body and rape me when I was cold and dead, just as they surely did with my family… with my brother, whom I haven’t heard anything of since… to the point that I wouldn’t mind finding the ‘fallen from the sky’ and asking him for help, even if I had to sell my soul and hand over my dead body.”

  “You die so easily,” Jhades thought. He could have revealed that it wasn’t just one “fallen from the sky” but three—and that he was one of them—but in order to avoid unnecessary work, he spared himself the expnation.

  Crushed by the reality she was trying to run from, Danie tucked her head between her legs in search of refuge, pressing her hands to her ears. She cried in pain—tears of agonizing suffering. The memories made her feel guilty at every instant. That sobbing promised to haunt her all her life, born of the uncertainty of not knowing whether she’d made the right decision—whether the paradise she’d once been so close to had forgotten her and no longer heard her prayers, because her body had been defiled, stained, corrupted, used.

  Under the vampire’s disguised, cold eyes, a warm fme was breaking loose—one that was more than thirsty and ravenous—for the tears falling onto the bed. Each of those small, crystalline, salty drops didn’t belong to the girl’s tender pink eyes; in truth, they belonged to her deepest feelings. Jhades’s heart was being injected with fuel from another’s suffering, provoking in him a complex emotion that kept him from acting as cynically and cryptically as he usually did. He pretended to be shaken. He acted as if the helplessness inside his body screamed for justice. He faked that the rage in his heart—falsely heroic—demanded action, and he pretended empathy required him to take responsibility. That was why the young man decided to cover his face so as not to show even the most discreet of his feelings, reflected in the corners of his lips.

  With every breath and movement, the boy watched closely how weak the girl could be—she, who had had to be strong to stay alive, and now saw all that strength colpsing. With a strong, firm embrace, Jhades ended up pressing Danie’s head to his chest, not caring if he got himself dirty with the bed’s dust, showing her he was a refuge to cry into and fall apart against.

  “If you have to smear yourself with blood to kill your victims, how could you not get dirty when you want to enjoy their suffering… delicious, pleasing, pleasant, intoxicating.” That was what the vampire told himself as he widened the corners of his mouth and let his fangs show. “If being a friend is this profitable, it would be—if only as a business.”

  Clearly, Jhades’s actions were demanding Danie’s trust, but she needed more. She needed to hear comforting words in order to break fully and without restraint.

  “It’s okay to let your tears out—to do whatever was necessary to make it here, in front of me. I accept you as you are.” This was the right moment for Jhades to reach the strings of the soul of a creature exposed to his presence. “I’m here with you, and I’m the one who will make things different. Believe that not everything is lost—maybe your family is still alive. You can’t die. Keep fighting.”

  For the vampire, hope was a very important factor if you wanted people to end up disillusioned. So why not give hope? Lift those who believe they can reach heaven so they can fall harder.

  “If it were up to me, I’d send you to cry for all eternity,” the vampire told himself, disappointed—understanding that, with time, the fragile, shattered heart would rebuild itself stronger than before.

  Using her wrists and the backs of her hands, Danie pulled away from the vampire’s chest and wiped away the tears that had run down her pink cheeks, leaving damp tracks. When she could finally speak without sobbing, the cherub girl asked, “Your name? Can I know what you’re called?”

  “Jhades Priovan ‘De-Heavens,’” the vampire introduced himself, returning to his serious-faced persona and making a bow characteristic of those of the upper css.

  When the vampire lifted his gaze, he realized the girl’s eyes were full of doubts and—what he disliked most—hope.

  Danie knew that “Heavens” was guarded by the very prince of the celestial militias, and also that it was the lowest circle of paradise. Meanwhile, “Priovan” was the surname belonging to a lineage of vampires, particurly hunted, since the beginning of time.

  “Alright. No more questions,” Jhades said, careful not to put his foot in it and keep feeding the hope in the girl’s eyes, which he had enjoyed while watching her suffer. “Lie back down and don’t move, so you don’t hurt yourself more than you already are.”

  “You’re the ‘fallen from the sky’!” the girl excimed, springing on the bed. “But how? A vampire… your eyes…? How did Miguel allow the entry and birth of someone like you? Why in this world? Why me? Why here? For what purpose?”

  Jhades stopped looking at the cherub descendant who fired questions back and forth, bouncing like a rabbit. He squeezed his eyes shut as if an unbearable headache were coming on and told himself, “I have to keep her alive. I can’t kill her,” but then an enormous distrust surged into him, along with vibrations in the ceiling of the room.

  Subtle, imperceptible tremors caused by the steps of a group of people. The sound of boots cd in metal was characteristic of the subjugators.

  Danie fell silent, and even if she wasn’t paying much attention to her surroundings, what she could feel brought back bad memories. She squeezed her eyes shut, put her hands in front of her chest as if praying. She grew so focused that she could hear her own breathing, the pounding of her heart, and the bitter pain of her wounds.

  “Something isn’t right,” Jhades thought. He could have used it as an opportunity to change the subject, but seeing the girl’s reaction made him angry. “It’s another group. They… must have some advantage over her that keeps them one step ahead of their prey in a byrinth like this… Wanting whatever is most convenient for you doesn’t keep you alive if you don’t prepare for the worst first! React. I need you to stay alive on your own once I abandon you.”

  With a snap of Jhades’s fingers, Regres appeared and flipped the girl’s body onto her back on the bed.

  Terrified of the people chasing her and of what was happening without any expnation, Danie could feel the vampire’s gaze roaming, inspecting her naked body. Absolutely exposed—so much so that her buttocks were spread, shamefully showing what y between them. She was unable to cover herself, with the sound of her pursuers’ footsteps drawing closer and two bodies holding her down against the bed. As if they were going to rape her, she was at someone else’s mercy—when she had prayed with all her strength for the opposite.

  “Why?” the girl asked, disappointed.

  “The ‘fallen from the sky’ doesn’t necessarily have to be different from what you already know,” he answered, bringing his eyes closer to her skin. “And instead of praying, don’t these factors, in a way, make you angry?”

  Danie shook her head no, and as if she were fiercely refusing to keep submitting to the orders and whims of her new master, she tried to twist away, to kick, even to bite—but it wasn’t convincing enough in the vampire’s eyes.

  “You’re going to give yourself over to dying? To praying? Don’t make me ugh. Life isn’t fair—why should it be for you?” the vampire told her, dragging his nails over her bruised skin. “Since you’re drawn to the hope that I can miraculously free you from how your previous captors treated you, it’s so easy to make you resign yourself to going on that you don’t even notice. What is it? Are the traumatic events you’ve lived repying before your eyes? This moment resembles the others. I know you’re afraid. Stopping your fight because you don’t have the strength to make a difference isn’t an excuse, Danie.”

  She felt the young man’s words sink into her flesh. It was true—she was resisting, but it wasn’t enough. She still felt the need to have faith and wait for everything to miraculously change and be different. Meanwhile, the vampire’s nails traveled over her shoulders, thighs, ass, and what y between. Making her feel shame for having her intimacy exposed like this, fear at being unable to do anything to resist, panic, anxiety, and the urge to vomit. Following orders and fulfilling propositions was the st thing she ever wanted to go back to doing after having reached freedom.

  “Please,” she said in a stammer, terrified. “Friend ‘fallen from the sky,’ don’t look at me with those eyes. Don’t tell me things like that—not like this. I truly don’t like it, and you’re making me realize how repulsive my fate can become.”

  “What if I tell you I work with them—that I’m a member of the ones chasing you, the ones who cause pain and devastation and take away your freedom? The one you call friend would never let your people live a life of happiness.”

  The words the vampire whispered into the ear of the cherub descendant were meant to cause despair, hatred, rage, and anger. But they didn’t succeed, because Danie, even while resisting, held the firm belief that everything that happened had a greater purpose.

  During his inspection, the vampire noticed that on the girl’s right buttock there was an almost imperceptible scar—a wound made in a controlled environment, following Langer’s lines, meant to make scarring easier with aesthetic benefits.

  “I wouldn’t believe you…” Danie assured him, resigned to remaining at the boy’s mercy, since she didn’t believe he would go any further, as a friend.

  Jhades’s tongue made contact with the cherub girl’s skin. She, who still didn’t want to believe her savior was like all the other men she’d known in her life, had to accept reality. The one she’d considered a friend and savior might be nothing more than someone dressing his words in pretty phrases like loyalty and honesty, just to masturbate with the body of an angelic being.

  “Even if he can have me like this, working for the ones who chase me… he might not be the ‘fallen from the sky,’ but he still hasn’t hurt me… that doesn’t make him a bad person,” Danie told herself.

  Jhades, with as much saliva as he could gather after licking the cherub girl’s ass, smeared it onto the nails of two fingers, and with a movement of his right hand, sank those fingers into her delicate skin to a depth of about two phanges.

  Danie, shocked, felt something like the pain of an injection—something she hadn’t expected at all. As soon as she turned her head again, she saw what were two fingers completely driven into her flesh, and the smiling face of the one who had saved her. With tears in her eyes, she didn’t know what to do or how to react. Everything could be true and also a lie, but it was real—whether or not it was a nightmare.

  Probing through the girl’s muscle and flesh, Jhades managed to feel, with the tip of his elongated nail, the presence of a metallic object. As soon as he found a way to pry it loose from where it was anchored, he withdrew his fingers along with the tracker, then put his mouth over the wound and sucked with pressure.

  “Her blood…” he told himself, somewhat surprised. “Delightful and delicious… the wound I caused with my fingers doesn’t heal with my saliva. That was to be expected—I don’t feel love for my food; maybe it’s a natural defect. But even though I’ve already satisfied my hunger with the subjugators’ blood, this feeling of wanting to feed on her more is strange. On the other hand, no matter how much I try to shatter her soul with my actions and words, I don’t get the same results as when she cried against my chest… I think I’m getting capricious.”