The physical pain was a symphony of agony. Officer Kross sat in a sterile hospital room, his collarbone in a harness and his ribs tightly bound, but the torment in his body was a dim echo of the inferno of humiliation raging in his soul. A woman. A thing that looked like a woman had broken him and tossed him aside like garbage.
Justice was no longer the goal. Annihilation was.
As soon as he could move, he used his badge and his authority not for the law, but for his obsession. With his broken body, he spent days and nights buried in the deep archives, pulling file after file of old government records, land surveys, and forgotten local histories. He wasn't looking for a person; he was looking for a place. A place that could create a creature like her.
He found it in a heavily redacted file about a forestry reclamation project from the 1950s that was abruptly abandoned. The official reason was "unstable geology." But the addendums, filled with field notes from panicked surveyors, spoke of a "pervasive sense of dread," equipment inexplicably failing, and local legends of a "whispering grove" from which no one ever returned. The coordinates pointed to a remote, quarantined section of the state forest.
He took two men with him—officers loyal to him, men who valued brute force over questions. They followed the old, overgrown trail into the reclaimed forest. The air grew heavy, the trees unnaturally thick, blocking out the sun. It was a place steeped in ancient sorrow.
They found the cave hidden behind a curtain of thick vines. Inside, it opened into a vast, ruined temple. Weeds and thick grass grew from cracks in the stone floor. And at the far end, shattered into a dozen pieces, was the statue of a forgotten god. It was a place of desecration and death.
As his men explored the ruins with nervous apprehension, Kross was drawn to the center of the room, to the broken, blood-stained altar. There, nestled in a crack in the stone, was something that seemed to drink the very light from the air. A red gem, the size of a thumb, pulsing with a faint, inner luminescence.
He didn't know why, but he had to have it. He picked it up. It was warm to the touch, and it seemed to thrum in time with his own hateful, vengeful heartbeat. He was drawn to it, a moth to a malevolent flame. Unconsciously, with a mind that was no longer entirely his own, he put the gem in his mouth and swallowed.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, he was in fire.
An agony far beyond that of his broken bones erupted from within. It felt as if his blood was boiling, his skeleton being reshaped in a forge of pure pain. He collapsed, screaming, his body convulsing on the stone floor. Everything burned.
Then, just as suddenly, it stopped.
Silence. The pain was gone. Not just the fire, but the aching of his ribs, the grinding of his collarbone—all of it. He pushed himself to his feet, feeling a strength he had never known. He caught his reflection in a puddle of stagnant water on the floor. His eyes, once a flat brown, now blazed with a malevolent red light. He smiled, and felt the unfamiliar, delightful sharpness of fangs sliding over his lips. He was fully healed. He was something more.
The two men who were with him stared in open-mouthed terror, their hands instinctively going to their sidearms. They took a fearful step back.
Kross looked at them, but he no longer saw colleagues. He saw prey. He launched himself at the first one, the movement a blur of speed he hadn't known he possessed. He sank his new fangs into the man's neck and drank. The taste was intoxicating, a rush of life and power that made him feel like a god. He drained the man dry, dropping the lifeless husk to the floor.
The second officer was paralyzed by fear, unable to even draw his weapon. Kross strode toward him, the dead man's blood dripping from his chin. He looked at this last, trembling follower. He could feed again, but a new, cold intelligence was already at work behind his predator's eyes. A king needs subjects.
He grabbed the man and bit down on his neck, but this time, he didn't drain him. He pushed. He poured a fraction of the gem's fiery, corrupting energy into the man, a dark baptism of power. The officer screamed as the change took him, his body contorting before he fell to his knees, his own eyes beginning to glow with a duller, subservient red. He was a vampire now too. A lesser one.
Kross stood tall in the ruins of Elara's origin, a newborn king in a dead god's temple. He was no longer a broken, humiliated man. He was a predator, remade by hate and dark magic. And now, he finally had the power to hunt the creature that had wronged him.