"I came here to end this. And to learn the truth."
"Please… let me stay myself."
Somewhere deep inside, in the darkest part of his mind, a small, treacherous voice whispered:
"What if they're right? What if this is real power?"
Ethan shook his head sharply, driving the thought away.
"Let's go," he said hoarsely.
"I can still help."
Flash nodded, though worry flashed in his eyes.
They continued walking along the tracks. Suddenly Flash stopped and crouched, raising his hand in a warning gesture.
"Down!" he hissed.
Ethan instantly dropped onto the wet gravel beside him.
Ahead, about a hundred meters away, three red dots were slowly drifting above the railway embankment drones.
Their quiet buzzing barely cut through the roar of the downpour. Below them moved three figures.
Even at that distance, it was clear they weren't human.
Their movements were too smooth for ordinary guards.
Vampires. Two men and one woman, all in black, with assault rifles slung over their shoulders. One of them held a tablet, watching the drone feed.
"Patrol," Flash breathed almost soundlessly.
"With drones. That means Gérard has already mobilized everyone, they're looking for us."
Ethan squeezed the black stake. It creaked in his grip. The voices inside immediately came alive, as if they had smelled blood.
"Kill them… three of them, it's easy…"
"One strike and their souls are ours…"
"The depot," Flash nodded toward the dark building twenty meters to the left.
"Run there before the drones turn."
They crawled across the wet gravel, then jumped up and ran hunched over.
Ethan's heart hammered. He was terrified they wouldn't make it and would be caught.
They dove into the abandoned depot through a broken window. Inside it smelled of old oil and possibly corpses.
The huge space was almost empty: several overturned carts, piles of trash, and dark puddles on the concrete floor.
Flash immediately pressed his back against the wall by the window, peered outside, and froze.
"Quiet," he whispered.
"They're coming straight this way."
Ethan dropped into a crouch behind a rusty beam. He laid the black stake across his knees. His hands began to tremble and then it started.
At first it was just burning.
The black lines on his arm flared up. The pain was sharp and grew stronger with every second. Ethan bit his lip to keep from crying out.
"They're close…" the voices now chanted in chorus.
"You can feel them. Feel how easy… killing is…"
The darkness inside the stake began to break into reality.
It felt to Ethan as if the air around him had thickened.
Thin, almost invisible tendrils of smoke crept from the black wood, crawling over his fingers, up his wrist, and higher along his arm.
The skin beneath his veins twitched, as if something was moving underneath.
For a moment he imagined his own hand had become alien, his fingers lengthening, nails turning black, and a hungry mouth opening in his palm.
"No… no… this isn't me…" Ethan screamed silently, digging his nails into his own forearm.
He squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to think the way he had once been taught.
But the voices refused to quiet. They laughed, called to him, and promised that if he just let go of control for a single second, the pain would disappear forever.
"Ethan," Flash called sharply but quietly. "Hey, look at me."
Ethan opened his eyes. Flash was staring straight at him, unblinking.
"Breathe. Calmly…"
"Don't listen to them. The curse feeds on fear."
"The harder you fight, the louder they'll try to make you do something."
Ethan nodded.
The black lines now burned all the way to his shoulder. He was afraid that if he looked at his arm, he would see the skin cracking and the same black ichor that had pooled around Roy's body leaking out.
Outside, the buzzing of the drones grew louder as they approached.
One of the vampires said something in a low voice. The words were unclear, but the tone was commanding.
Flash pressed closer to the wall and gave Ethan an almost imperceptible nod.
"Quiet…"
Ethan clutched the stake to his chest with both hands, as if trying to hold back an entire storm inside.
His thoughts raced wildly. The guy was starting to lose his mind.
"I won't give in to them. I came here to learn the truth. I need to kill Laurent. I don't want to be next!"
"I'm not a plague victim… I'm not a plague victim…"
The pain became almost unbearable. For a second, a vivid image flashed before his eyes: himself standing in the rain with his head thrown back like those poor souls near the depot, black smoke slowly leaking from his mouth.
Ethan growled through his teeth and slammed the back of his head against the rusty beam once, twice. The sharp pain from the impact cleared his mind a little.
Flash reached out and gripped his shoulder tightly.
"Hold on," he said almost soundlessly.
"They're passing by. Just a little longer."
The drones flew directly over the depot. Their red lights slid across the broken windows.
One of the vampires stopped right outside. Ethan could hear his inhuman breathing.
The seconds stretched like hours.
Finally the footsteps began to move away. The buzzing of the drones grew fainter.
Flash exhaled and slowly relaxed his shoulders.
"They're gone," he said quietly.
"We can move…"
Ethan sat leaning against the cold wall, breathing heavily. The black lines still burned, but not as fiercely.
The darkness inside the stake had retreated.
He looked at his hand. All the changes had vanished it had been only an illusion.
"I'll remember for the rest of my life that you shouldn't kill a vampire with an ordinary object," he rasped.
"They wanted me to go out there and kill those three vampires."
"All of them."
Flash nodded, never looking away.
"I know. This is only the beginning."