The first thing Luke noticed was the noise.
Ear-splitting music pounded through the underground bar, bass so heavy he could feel it in his chest. Strobe lights slashed through the darkness in seizure-inducing patterns. Vampires writhed on the dance floor, grinding against each other, lost in the rhythm.
Apparently being undead didn't cure the urge to party.
Riven positioned herself in front of Luke, one hand resting on the hilt of her broken blade. He stepped into her shadow and raised the UV flashlight.
Click.
"AAAAAAHHH—"
A couple locked in a passionate embrace didn't even have time to separate. One moment they were making out like the world was ending; the next, their bodies were heating up from the inside. By the time they realized something was wrong, they were already ash.
The screams spread like wildfire. Vampires turned toward the entrance, eyes widening at the source of the devastating light—and then those eyes melted.
Luke swept the beam across the crowd, methodical and unhurried. The high-powered UV lamp was essentially concentrated sunlight, and he'd learned from testing that brief exposure only burned. You needed sustained contact for a full kill. So he held the light steady on each target, giving every vampire a few seconds to fully appreciate their long-lost relationship with the sun.
Most of these were turned vampires. Former humans. They'd lived in daylight once, before whatever poor life choices led them here.
Welcome back to the light.
Then the gunfire started.
Vampires near the back had pulled weapons—pistols, submachine guns—and opened fire without hesitation. They didn't care that other vampires were in the crossfire. The undead could survive bullets. The intruders probably couldn't.
Luke saw muzzle flashes. Heard the sharp crack of gunshots over the pounding music.
What he didn't see was any bullets reaching him.
Riven's arm blurred into motion—not movement so much as a series of afterimages, her broken sword tracing arcs of silver through the air. Sparks erupted where steel met lead. Bullets ricocheted wildly, embedding in walls, ceiling, floor. None touched Luke.
The vampires stared.
They had enhanced perception. They could track bullets in flight, react to gunfire faster than any human. But Riven wasn't just reacting. She was moving so fast that even vampire eyes struggled to follow, and somehow there was no sonic boom, no shockwave from breaking the sound barrier.
What they didn't understand—what Luke had figured out after watching her fight—was that Riven wasn't actually moving at supersonic speeds. The bullets had already slowed after passing through vampire bodies and various obstacles. More importantly, Riven wasn't intercepting them mid-flight.
She was predicting.
Watch the barrel. See where it's pointed. Move before the trigger pull completes.
For someone who'd fought Jinx and her arsenal of guns, rockets, and explosive traps across thousands of battles, reading human gunmen was child's play.
Luke filed away the sonic boom question for later. Probably something to do with game physics not translating perfectly to reality. Either way, he was grateful—a shockwave at this range would've turned his organs to soup.
With Riven handling defense, Luke focused on offense. The UV beam carved through the crowd like a scythe through wheat.
Then the vampires started running.
The bar had multiple exits—tunnels branching off in every direction. Standard vampire architecture, apparently. When you spent centuries being hunted by people like Blade, you learned to build escape routes.
Most of the survivors bolted for the nearest exit. But one vampire decided to be a hero.
He grabbed a light machine gun from behind the bar—because of course they had a light machine gun behind the bar—and swung it toward Luke with a snarl.
Let's see you block this, bitch.
He never got the chance to fire.
Riven moved. One instant she was at Luke's side; the next she was simply... there, directly in front of the gunner, sword already mid-swing.
The vampire and his weapon separated into four distinct pieces.
Still alive, technically—vampires were annoyingly persistent—but Luke's UV beam finished the job before the pieces hit the ground.
"Next time," Luke muttered, "I'm bringing an AA-12 loaded with silver rounds."
The movies hadn't prepared him for vampires packing military-grade hardware. In Blade, the bloodsuckers relied on strength and speed, maybe some pistols. But reality was different. Vampire hunters weren't invincible. They could be killed by conventional weapons if you brought enough firepower. Even Blade himself—the Daywalker with his superhuman healing—would die if you turned him into Swiss cheese with a belt-fed machine gun.
Of course vampires would adapt. They weren't stupid.
Then things got worse.
A new group emerged from a back room, and Luke's stomach dropped.
They were wearing suits. Not normal suits—specialized tactical gear with full-body coverage, helmets with tinted visors, gloves, boots. Every inch of skin protected.
UV-resistant armor.
That's from Blade 2, Luke thought grimly. Those suits weren't supposed to exist yet.
He hit them with the flashlight anyway. Nothing. The beam washed over them harmlessly.
Riven didn't hesitate. She closed the distance in a blur and started cutting.
The suits might block UV light, but they couldn't stop a sword stroke that could bisect a tank. Vampires came apart in sprays of limbs and torsos, and Luke followed up with the flashlight, catching exposed flesh wherever Riven's blade had torn the protective fabric.
They worked through the armored squad in under a minute.
After that, it was cleanup. Riven ran down every vampire that tried to flee, hamstringing them with precise cuts to the legs. They couldn't run without knees. Luke walked through the carnage at a leisurely pace, flashlight beam finding each crippled vampire and reducing them to ash.
It felt like being power-leveled. Riven was the max-level carry steamrolling the dungeon while Luke's low-level character scrambled to pick up all the loot drops.
Thirty minutes later, Riven set Luke down in their apartment.
She'd carried him home again. His stamina had given out halfway through the return trip. He really needed to work on that.
"Half an hour from breach to extraction," Luke said, pulling up footage on his laptop. He'd left a hidden camera at the bar entrance. "Let's see how fast their reinforcements respond."
The video showed their exit—Luke being carried by Riven, disappearing into the night. Approximately thirty seconds later, a convoy of vehicles screeched to a halt outside the bar. Vampires poured out, weapons drawn.
"Thirty-minute response time," Luke noted. "Could be faster or slower depending on distance from their headquarters. We'll use this as a baseline."
He switched to reviewing their haul.
Over a hundred vampires dusted, and they'd netted... just over twenty thousand dollars.
Luke made a face.
"That's less than two hundred per vampire. These turned vampires are broke." No wonder the purebloods looked down on them. They were basically the vampire equivalent of fast-food workers.
More useful was the intel.
"They're using cell phones for communication," Luke said, reviewing the audio recordings he'd planted. "No magic. No weird ultrasonic frequencies. Just regular encrypted channels."
He made a note: Bring signal jammer next time. Cut their communications, extend the safe operating window.
An EMP grenade would be even better—fry all electronics in the building, blind them completely—but he hadn't gotten that drop yet. Maybe eventually.
Luke was documenting his observations when something in his inventory caught his attention.
He stood up so fast he nearly knocked over his chair.
Riven tensed, hand going to her sword. "What is it? Danger?"
She'd already scanned their surroundings. No threats detected. So why was Luke—
"I got something good."
A weapon materialized in Luke's hands.
The blade was strange—elegant but aggressive, with a mechanism in the hilt that looked almost like a gun trigger. Luke gripped it properly, felt no rejection or incompatibility error, and drew.
The sword slid free with a satisfying shing.
The blade itself was a deep, violent crimson, the color of arterial blood. It seemed to drink in the dim apartment light, edges gleaming with an almost hungry sharpness.
Luke knew this weapon.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Jetstream Sam's signature blade. The Murasama—an ancestral Japanese sword passed down through generations of the Rodrigues family, later modified with cutting-edge high-frequency technology.
The High-Frequency Murasama.
The sheath wasn't just decorative. It housed a launching mechanism tied to the trigger in the hilt. Squeeze it, and the blade would eject at incredible velocity—fast enough to send a cyborg flying from the impact alone.
In the hands of Jetstream Sam, this sword had carved through Metal Gears, cyborg soldiers, and anyone else foolish enough to stand in his way.
Now it was Luke's.
PLZ THROW POWERSTONES
BONUS CHAPTER
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