Nigel looked up, watg the night sky close over the nebulous eye. The blue and e light painting the city disappeared with it, allowing the moonlight to once more have primacy. The macabre remnants of the city were illuminated in silver. The buildings were ed, like pstic models melted under a hot mp. Some ses had broken dowirely, leaking aterial that sparkled in the moonlight.

  Pools of blood and streaks of gore shone bder the silver light. They had no smell to them, as if everything that made the gealing fluids blood had been leached out of them. The sanguine aroma that had drehe air was no longer carried on the fresh night breeze.

  “You’ve been diligent in your training, I see.”

  Nigel span around on hearing Jason’s voice. His aura senses hadn’t registered the man’s approad still didn’t reise his preseo his supernatural perception, Jason Asano and the world around him were one and the same. Jason was standing on the roof in a floral shirt, tan shorts and sandals. He slouched casually, hands in his pockets. While moonlight washed the colour out of everything else, it lit him up like he was standire stage.

  “Nigel? You okay, mate? You look a bit shell shocked.”

  Nigel tio stare at him.

  “Yoing to ask that after what you just did?”

  “Yeah, fair enough.”

  “Are you back?” Nigel asked. “Or are you some kind of illusion?”

  “ly. This body is an avatar. A physical proje from another universe, like an interdimensional phone call.”

  “But you are still alive.”

  “Was that even a question? The answer is more plicated than you’d think, I’ll admit. I guess it depends on how you define alive.”

  “Are you undead?”

  “No. I guess I’m, I don’t know. Geographical?”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “Let’s put that aside for now. For practical purposes, I’m alive. You thought I was dead, though? I’d have thought the System would have put that idea to bed.”

  “One of the prevailing theories is that the System is what’s left of the magic that onhabited this pce. That the domains fell because you died and their power seeped into the p, and o permeated the entire earth, the System happened.”

  “People actually think that?”

  “The impossible isn’t what it used to be, Asano.”

  “I suppose not.”

  Nigel looked at the man, an utterly ingruous figure in the dark and blood-soaked city.

  “You seem rexed for a man that just turned a city into a grave.”

  “I’m trying to be a better man than the one who left this world. But I don’t have it io mourn the ones who had it ing. Not anymore.”

  “Who decides who has it ing? I won’t argue about killing vampires, but I just saower this Earth has never seen. What is to stop you from deg anyone you don’t like has it ing? Where’s the line?”

  “Wherever I decide it is.”

  “Why do you get to make that judgement?”

  “Who do you think should decide where I use my power, Nigel? Some fa leader? A president or a prime minister? A parliament or a gress? The United Nations?”

  “I don’t know, but you just wiped out a city. That’s a dangerous power to leave unatable to anyone.”

  Jason tilted his head, peering at Nigel. He realised that Jason was reading the emotions in his aura.

  “You’re askihis because you’re afraid of yourself, aren’t you? Of the power you have as a gold ranker.” Jason said.

  “Yes.”

  “Who do you work for now, Nigel? Who do you ao?”

  “Myself. My sce. My team and I are private tractors. This job is for Anna Tilden, but my team and I aren’t attached to any group. We ao each other, choosing which jobs to take and which to refuse. My team are the ones who hold me to at.”

  Jason smiled.

  “Mioo. I didn’t have them oh, which is probably how I went so astray. If not for Farrah, I’d have lost myself pletely, I think.”

  “Sometimes I question myself. The power I have at this rank is right out of a ic book. I could knock down a building with my bare hands. Throw a train like a javelin. My team are my brothers and sisters, but they don’t have this much power. It scares me sometimes.”

  Jason nodded.

  “I uand. Maybe more than anyone. You’re a gold ranker with no affiliation? You got out whework fell apart?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you were silver, then, and no one much cared, right? Until you hit gold rank and suddenly everyone wants a piece of you, and they aren’t scrupulous about how to get it.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I didn’t ha very well, so I might not have the best advice. For what it’s worth, though, I think you’re on the right track. Listen to the people you trust. Let them show you when you’re heading off the rails.”

  “I need more than that. Sooner or ter, someone is going to decide they don’t like a gold-rank free agent and start looking for levers.”

  “Your family. Your team’s families.”

  “Yeah. A lot of the team e from old work families, so they have prote enough for now. But if people with real power e along…”

  “You don’t trust the work fas to not sell them out.”

  “Exactly. I’ve been looking for a pce we all belong. Where our families be safe and the people in charge won’t use us for things we don’t want to do.”

  “Are you asking to join the Asano ?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know if they’d have us, and I’d want to know more before we agree to be a part of it. But I saw you, during your time here. What loyalty arayal meant to you.”

  Jason nodded.

  “When you have so much power that you solve most of the old problems,” he said, “you realise that it’s the fual things that really matter.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m not going to say you be in or out. I’ll leave that to my grandmother. But I think it might be a good fit, so I’ll have a word with her.”

  “There’s a few things I’d like to know, Asano.”

  “I’m guessing there’s more than a few, but go on.”

  “I uand you wao clear the city of vampires, but why do it this way? To show the rest of the world what happens when they cross you? Letting me see so I go bad tell everyone how dangerous you are?”

  Jason shook his head.

  “Nah, mate. The people who make the decisions in this world don’t scare, no matter how real the threat. I learhat the st time I was here. Once I’m back, they’ll take their shots and pay the price f. I don’t like it, but there’s nothing I do to stop it. Not without being just like them.”

  “Like them how?”

  “Letting i people pay the price for what I want.”

  Jasoured at himself.

  “This, the gawking tourist outfit, is aspirational. Casual. Fun. A little dorky. It’s who I want to be. But this…”

  He spread his arms out to indicate the city around them.

  “This is who I am. When I have to be. This wasn’t a show, his ractiecessity. I left all these cloud buildings inta the hope that the vampires would move in. I wasn’t taking their blood, but the remnants of reality core energy, from when they were infusing the power of those cores into blood.”

  “And that’s why some weren’t drained,” Nigel realised. “They were the younger ones, who had never fed oy core blood.”

  “Yes.”

  “How powerful are you? Are you at the rank after gold?”

  “That’s plicated. Teically, I’m both gold rank and a rank that’s beyond gold. In this pce, my domain, I’m extremely powerful. I don’t like the term ‘holy ground,’ but that’s essentially what we’re dealing with. I’m not a god, but I do certain things the way that gods do. When I e to Earth, it will be in a mortal vessel. Gold rank, like you. It will have power like what you saw here, but scaled back. It will be aension of myself, a more developed version of this avatar. Killing it won’t hurt me, just e time to make a new one.”

  “Did the same thing happen in Slovakia as happened here?”

  “Yes. But the vampires there kept their blood farm within the domain, so I was able to rescue those people. Here, the blood farm is off site, outside the reay power. This avatar ’t go beyond the boundary of my domain, so I ’t intercede there myself. You know the blood farms they used, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Nigel said. We’ve been here for months, scouted it all out. We just didn’t have the o rescue the people, or a way to extract them if we did. After your domai down, mainnd Europe fell eo the vampires.”

  “The offer you numbers and safety. Is the rest of your team nearby?”

  “Yeah. If I move fast, I reach them before they evacuate the region.”

  “Then please go and bring them back. In the meantime, I will the city.”

  “It’s quite a mess.”

  A nearby patch of blood smeared across the roof burst into ghostly white fme.

  “That won’t be a problem,” Jason said.

  ***

  Sophie swung her leg in a horizontal kick that hit nothing. A wind bde shot out, widening as it passed over the pin. The horizontal wave of razor-sharp air passed over the grass, shimmering like a heat haze and humming like an engine. In its path was a massive horde of stonehide lizards, the crashing sound of their feet overp the sound of the wind bde.

  It was a rge group, far too many to e from a normal maion. They were left over from the monster surge, four years previous, and hidden in an uninhabited mountain range. Sophie’s tract was firstly to elimihem before they caused havo the trading routes of the ftnds. Ohat was done, she o iigate what had driven them down from the mountains. They’d been up there for years without b anyone, and the Adventure Society wao know what had ged.

  As the wind bde struck the stampeding herd, sedary wind bdes erupted from the struck monsters. Those in turn triggered more and more sedary bdes, boung bad forth between the monsters until the massive herd became a meat grinder of rent armour and spraying blood.

  Sophie stood and watched, listening as the tless cracks of new wind bdes rang like a thuorm. The gem in her wristband started blinking, indig someone was tag her sky talk tablet. She pulled it out of a dimensional poud accepted the call. Clive’s face appeared oablet.

  “It’s time?” she asked.

  “It’s time. The portal to Jason’s soul realm has opened up again. Finish whatever business you’re on and make your way to Yaresh.”

  Sophie ehe call, put the tablet away and turned back to the horde of monsters. Despite the power of her gold-rank wind bde, stonehide lizards were tough, even for silver-rank monsters. They were all savagely cerated, but yet to fall. The only ohat had died so far were those trampled in the freampede. By the time the magic of her attack was expended and the bde storm came to an end, the stonehide lizards were rushing all the harder. Bellowing in rage, they hurled themselves across the pin in Sophie’s dire.

  She watched their approach, took out a sandwid bit into it. From the sky, a sound started at a high pitch, growing deeper as the source desded at breakneck speed. Humphrey nded in the middle of the herd like a bomb. The shockwave of his abrupt arrival flung the monsters away from his impact point. The force of the wave ripped bodies apart in the air, splitting them along lines broken in their armour by wind bdes.

  Pieonster flew more than a kilometre away, several ks avoiding Sophie as she maniputed the air to deflect them. A massive cloud of dust followed, again moving around Sophie thanks to her wind trol.

  Visibility died as the cloud surrounded her. A figure came striding out, tall and broad shouldered. Dust had caked onto his armour, muting its colourful rainbow scales. He pulled his helmet off with a grin.

  “Took you long enough,” she told him. “I was starting think that Nik would rank up before—”

  She dropped her sandwich as he pulled her into a passionate kiss. A moustachioed dog dashed out of the dust cloud like a cheetah, snatg the sandwich before it hit the ground.

  ***

  “…whatever business you’re on and make your way to Yaresh,” Clive said. The image on his tablet of Sophie nodded and the call ended.

  “Would it kill you to say goodbye like a normal person?” he muttered, and shoved the tablet into his ste space. He got up ao the outer office.

  “Jeff, horeparations for my trip away?”

  “Vice cellrantham reported that she was read up ohing and ready to stand in during your absence. She did request a meeting to go over any st details, and update you on the portal work project.”

  “That’s fine. Set something up.”

  “She suggested a dinner meeting.”

  “That’s fionight would be best, if she aodate it. I want to leave tomorrow.”

  “I’m sure she will, Archcellor. And, if I might suggest, sir, do dress up nicely.”

  “Why?” Clive asked. “I’ve got too much to do to go fang myself up just to eat and go over administrative details.”

  Jeff watched as Clive stalked bato his office, closing the door behind him. Jeff shook his head sadly.

  “That poor, poor woman,” he muttered.