A week had passed since that clash with Adelphe. Aria continued to train with him every morning and her sword skills were improving considerably, much more than with Anton.

  The imp had a rough way of doing things, he absolutely did not allow her to make mistakes and the exercises had to be done with extreme precision. This made her jump, putting pressure on her and inducing her to make mistakes, leading her to have to do the same exercises again and again.

  With Adelphe it was different. She had accepted his nature, even though on the first day they did not exchange a single word and the girl kept her eyes on him the whole time. The vampire, however, had a kind soul and entrusted her with only one exercise at a time, without putting pressure on her to finish it within a set time.

  He would go to the cellar to drink and come back when he heard Aria scream with happiness, to then give her a glass of wine and celebrate the results together.

  “Now you know how to defend yourself from the attack of the claws.” the vampire said, “The dummy was a brilliant idea.”

  In fact, since Adelphe didn’t want to be the one to attack the girl, he devised a sort of dummy that moved left and right, equipped with knives that had to be dodged or blocked with the sword. The goal of this exercise was to not get hit even once and, if this happened, Aria would learn to be more careful next time.

  So the seventh day arrived. Aria waited for the vampire sitting on the stairs with her head bowed on her arms. She was tired and didn’t feel like training much; she hadn’t stopped a day and, unlike the training with Anton, the vampire had come to visit her even on Saturdays and Sundays, considered days of rest. Sometimes she would train for more than six hours straight and, despite her goal being firm in her mind, she was starting to understand that training every day wasn’t good for her body.

  That night she had slept badly, spending all hours awake with a headache. A hot tea from the governess managed to calm her down, but it wasn’t enough to calm her worries, first of all having interacted with two vampires in the last period and not having killed a single one.

  “What am I becoming…”

  She waited until late morning but the teacher didn’t show up. It was clear that Adelphe wouldn’t be coming for class that day.

  “I wonder why… maybe he had a setback.”

  She was relieved, though, because now she could rest at least for that day.

  When she got up to go back to her rooms, there was a knock on the door. The girl went down the stairs and went to open it, only to find her personal guard in front of her.

  “Miss Zotova, there’s a letter for you.”

  The guard handed over the letter and then went back to patrol the gate. Aria looked at the letter and noticed that it had neither been signed nor had a seal been placed on it.

  Returning to her rooms and opening the letter, she began to read.

  “We need to meet this night. There has been progress on the Volkov case and we need your help. Let’s meet in the ‘Cellar’ when the sun goes down. Liza.”

  Unlike last time, she didn’t throw the letter into the fireplace, but instead kept it in one of the drawers of the cabinet. It was the first time Liza had sent her a letter and this filled Aria with joy. So much had happened that she didn’t even know where to begin to tell the story. She knew this ‘Cellar’, as it was a pub a few steps from her house.

  So she decided to wait for the sunset and get ready. For the occasion she had chosen a simple upper-middle-class dress, with a hat to cover her hair and a scarf to put in front of her mouth. No one would recognize her and, because of the problem with the guard, since Adelphe had used his powers on it, it no longer bothered to follow her wherever she went.

  She wasn’t proud of this choice, mind manipulation seemed like something evil to her, but on an occasion like this it was certainly nice to be able to leave undisturbed.

  Getting to the pub wasn’t difficult and, once she set foot inside, she looked around to see if she had seen Liza, but she didn’t see her anywhere. The place was mostly empty, like the other places in the city. Since Korotsk had closed itself off to the outside world, the little money that the citizens still managed to have in their pockets was used to buy food at the market and pay taxes.

  Aria decided to buy the first drink that came across on the menu, then go down the stairs and find herself on the floor below, the basement. It was a dark place and the long corridor foreshadowed the appearance of some drunkard at any moment.

  “Aria!” exclaimed a voice to her left.

  “Liza?” the girl asked instinctively.

  The two girls hadn’t seen each other for several days and, at first, Aria thought about hugging her, only to remember the cold look from the huntress.

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  “Follow me.”

  The huntress took her to a small room where she found Sonia waiting for them. The director was smoking a cigar and playing with rings to pass the time. A bottle of wine was empty in front of them and a second was about to suffer the same fate.

  “Here we are reunited.” she began, “As we anticipated in the letter, I managed to track down a member of the Volkovs who still lives in the city. For some reason he was not listed in the municipal land registers or in the land registers of noble families. Thanks to some friends, old hunters, I managed to get them to tell me a story about when one of them, during the war, came across a vampire who called himself Volkov…”

  The director noticed that she hadn’t had any wine in more than an hourglass, so she drained a glass and continued the conversation, “It seems his villa isn’t far from where we are now.”

  “So, I guess, we’re going to pay him a visit now?” Aria asked.

  “That’s right… we don’t know if he still lives there or not, so it’s best to always be alert.”

  “And how are we supposed to fight? We don’t have swords with us.”

  “Not the ones you use in combat, but Adelphe should have already shown you the modular swords, right? I hope she doesn’t make you use the wooden ones…”

  The girl hesitated in giving an answer and, even before she could provide one, the director continued.

  “Ah, I should have guessed. All right, anyway, we have a sword for you too.”

  It was Liza who was in charge of delivering the modular sword to Aria, it was a sword divided into two parts, extremely easy to assemble and easily hidden under clothes, so as to pass undisturbed by the gaze of the guards and curious citizens.

  “Can we go?” asked Sonia, getting up from her chair.

  “Let’s go.” the two girls answered in unison.

  The three women left the room to go and pay the bill, then went back to the street and advanced in the darkness of the night towards a very specific direction.

  After a half-hour walk, they arrived at a villa where the street lighting was dim, the windows were broken, and the garden was left unkempt. In general, it was a rather poorly maintained historic residence, and everything seemed to suggest that it had been abandoned for some time. The streets in Korotsk in those days were full of rot, excrement and carcasses of animals eaten by starving citizens, blood stains from recent battles and wooden crates broken to erect fences.

  “The villa doesn’t seem so bad considering the latest events.” Sonia joked, “But let’s not take the situation lightly, we are still talking about a vampire.”

  The gate was closed but it didn’t take long to break it. The director was quite good at this and in her handbag she had the strangest objects that a huntress should carry with her. Before entering the house, however, she walked around the perimeter twice to make sure that, at least on the ground floor, there was no one.

  No lights were on, and there didn’t seem to be a soul inside. Everything was quiet and not a fly was breathing that night. The chatter of the city was far away and the three women could even hear each other breathing.

  Going back to the entrance floor, Sonia managed to break the main door and so they managed to get in.

  “Let’s be quiet now. I’ll check the ground floor, Liza the first floor and Aria take a look at the basement.” she commanded.

  “Okay.”

  So, Aria made her way past the living room and to the space under the stairs. She first took out the two sword parts and assembled it, having a weapon to defend herself in case the vampire appeared. It was the first time she would seriously face one of them, because if you think about it, Kremer, the vampire who attacked her at the reception, was easily killed by Liza, while Boris and

  Adelphe had not posed a real threat.

  The fear of having to face a vampire was fueled by the basement, a place full of dust and cobwebs on the ceiling. Here the furniture had a finger of dust and the decanters, as well as the moldy food, seemed not to have been touched for several years.

  “How disgusting.” she said to herself, “Zotova Palace is definitely better.” she snorted, then began to advance, taking a torch from the wall, which she lit with a makeshift steel found nearby.

  Walking through the basement, she could see wine barrels scattered around and some cabinets with old utensils inside. The pantry could be recognized by the smell of mold and Aria promised herself she would never set foot in such a rotten place again.

  Continuing, she came to a wooden door. She first tried to open it normally, only to discover that it was supposed to be locked. So, not having the tools that Sonia had used, she thought about how to proceed.

  “Breaking it down doesn’t seem like a wise idea.” she thought, “But it could be useful in case I don’t find any alternatives.”

  She thought for a few seconds, holding the sword firmly in her right hand. If the vampire was behind the door, she should be ready to face him. What if he was sleeping? What if he wasn’t home?

  There were so many questions and her anxiety began to grow.

  She opted to use her hair pin as a tool to try to break down the door. She had seen Sonia do it a few minutes earlier, albeit with a different type of similar tool, so she tried using the pin, stopping a few seconds later.

  “I don’t even know where to start… and what the hell, I’m a noble, not a thief!”

  A hand touched her shoulder and the girl jumped. Whirling around, brandishing her sword, she was pushed aside by Sonia, who began to break down the door.

  “We didn’t find anything in the house, so we had to search downstairs… but I see you’re having trouble with this door.”

  The director tried to break it and, when she realized that it had to have a special lock, she decided to kick the hinges off and hurl the wooden planks into the next room.

  “We don’t have time to waste, if Volkov is here, we’ll face him.”

  Inside the room, which looked more like a real cave, they found a closed coffin in the center; nothing else.

  “Is he sleeping?” Aria asked.

  “Let’s find out.” Sonia approached the coffin and kicked the door, knocking it to the side.

  There was no one inside.

  “That he doesn’t live here anymore?” the director wondered to get a concrete answer, “Or maybe he’s out of the house for the moment… or maybe he knew we were coming?” she shook her head,

  “That the hunter didn’t tell me the truth? No… it’s not possible…”

  The three of them began to reason, but were stopped when a rustling made them jump. Liza had time to avoid an attack, which otherwise would have scratched her face, throwing herself to the side and unsheathing her sword.

  In front of them, a tall, slender figure with sharp claws and long hair materialized from a cloud, staggering left and right, holding a bottle of red wine in his hand.

  “That’s blood, not wine!” Aria exclaimed.

  “You’ve entered my property. It’s time for you to die.” said the vampire.