The sound of buildings collapsing in on themselves was a terrifying cacophony to the ears of desperately fleeing soldiers relying on the crackling reception of damaged augs.

  “Sergeant Crisp! We’re hot! Artillery fire in the warehouse district! It’s a coordinated assault! The bait has fled the coup! Repeat, the bait has fled the coup!”

  “P-5! What’s your status? P-4 Won’t respond!”

  “We were hit by artillery fire while trying to recover the targets!”

  “Status of captives?”

  The man coughed blood into his helmet respirator before groaning and lifting up the damaged faceplate. He took a breath of bitter smoke and coughed it out, eyes anxiously scanning the boulevard that had gone deathly quiet, New York’s citizenry now knowing to duck and cover whenever armed conflicts broke out in the city streets.

  “P-5, I need the status of the captives!”

  “We shot them dead,” the wheezing mercenary said with a raspy chuckle. “Fuckers thought they could escape? Hell no. We took them out just before they were going to jump through… whatever the hell it was.”

  “What? You shot the captives?”

  The mercenary frowned at the high-pitched voice.

  “Yes. As per protocol. Fleeing hostages are to be shot. Any target that’s not bargained for and retrieved per Song’s protocols is eliminated. Our enemies get nothing if they don’t play ball with us.”

  “Damn it, Zane! How are we supposed to lure the Contender—ABORT! Abort mission and return to base immediately!”

  The injured man scowled and grimaced through his pain. “Repeat?”

  “The wolves are hitting the citadel!”

  “I’m on it!” Zane said, snarling as he chinned a helmet switch that pinged against his spine… before soothing relief flooded his battered body, now breathing easier as his heart hammered with a powerful cocktail of stimulants, regenerative agents, and pain killers that were now flooding his system.

  He cursed his lack of a proper blaster in his hands, realizing that he’d have to rely on vibro blade and force shield as he pounded across the pavement in great leaping strides, caring nothing for the cracked blacktop behind him as he approached his target, only for the building he was approaching to explode in a shower of bricks, beams, and savagely roaring werewolves furiously clawing and biting at the reinforced armor of a fellow mercenary shouting for reinforcements in her comms.

  Zane cursed, slamming his cracked faceplate down as the other merc was slammed to the ground. She desperately lifted a crackling force field from her battered forearm as she screamed for help… only for the werewolf to latch fearsome jaws about her gauntlet before tearing it off with a vicious snarling snap of its hideously sharp fangs.

  Along with her hand… in a gout of blood and screams.

  “Marsha!” Zane roared as he crashed into the wild beast now launching himself for the fallen merc’s throat… before howling when eighteen inches of hypersonic vibro blade tore through its back with a massive spurt of frothy blood.

  The mercenary had time to spot a look of shocked surprise in the violet eyes of his lover before the giant, eight foot tall werewolf spun around and swiped him with a claw that sent Zane crashing to the ground as the beast roared and leaped, deadly sharp savage teeth flashing… before the air rang with a crack and the spray of blood as the beast was sent hurtling through the sky in a shattered heap, whipping through the air before slamming into a building two blocks distant.

  Zane took a shuddering gasp, trying to register his savior.

  He choked back a whimper when brilliant green eyes and a too bright smile locked with his own. He swallowed, dazed by the sight of a youth whose features were so exquisite, so perfect, that he could have been on the covers of a dozen billboards advertising his latest sponsored product or production in the Jitan hub. Only he wasn’t wearing an open silk shirt showcasing a sleek body and a seductive smile with a bottle of Special Reserve liquor in his hand.

  The youth’s body was rippling with raw potency and corded muscle far beyond what any movie star’s exercise regimen would grant him. Yet the biggest giveaway that this youth was the farthest thing from a young pampered scion was the bloody fist crackling with shockingly intense essence that felt like Winter itself, flaring so bright that even a low rank Bronze like himself could feel the awful pressure against his core.

  “Please…” Zane didn’t even realize he had uttered the word aloud until the wild-eyed youth slowly shook his head.

  “Sorry, no can do. My friends are feeling awfully hungry, and congratulations! You just offered to donate!”

  The man paled. Shocked, stunned, and injured he might be, but he was no fool. When the young man’s smile widened, perfect ivory white dentition becoming a hideously elongated maw of serrated death that could swallow him whole… yet somehow still fit perfectly inside an exquisitely proportioned mouth, made that damned clear.

  “You’re… you’re one of them!”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Vampire!”

  The youth chuckled coldly. “You know what? Had I evolved my class even slightly differently… probably. But no time for chitchat! We got lives to save, you and I.”

  “No… please, no!” Yet Zane’s words meant nothing. The figure moved so fast… So fast that it made his own 300 Quickness seem like an absolute joke when he was abruptly lifted off his feet, disarmed of his weapon so quicked that he only felt the agony of shattered gauntlet and broken fingers after he had been disarmed.

  But the worst part wasn’t how dizzying it was to be jolted in movement so abruptly without causing any whiplash at all, just awful nausea… it was Marsha’s screams when the monster swooped down to pick her up as well.

  “One of Song’s, right? Of course you are! Guilty as all fuck.”

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  “Please let us go, please!” Marsha begged, before screaming when the wild madman whispered a single word that had the air smelling of sizzling flesh… and instantly cauterized Marsha’s bleeding.

  “Don’t want to lose any more of your precious juices! It’s why I’m bringing you to the party, after all.

  “Please! Zane and I will leave. We’ll break our contact! We could work for you!”

  The obvious Contender’s manic grin froze to a cold glare. “And I might actually accept, binding you to oaths you’d never dare to break. If only my best friends weren’t minutes away from death because you assholes fucking shot them! So that option’s off the table. Sorry! But I’ll make sure that Grim keeps your donation as pain free as possible. Fair? Damn right it is!”

  Marsha pled for both their lives, but Zane could only wretch as the city whipped by him without any G-force at all. Which was absolutely insane. The whiplash should have been enough to send him reeling. And in the time it took to process that, they were before the crackling gate of liquid darkness that promised the most horrific of demises.

  “Please! We submit! We’ll do anything!” Marsha screamed.

  But their captor only smiled. “Now you two have fun! I’m off to grab that werewolf that nearly killed you both. I’ll bet his blood will be spicy as fuck.”

  And before Marsha could say another word, their ruthless captor had torn her trembling form free of her armor, wrapped an actual steel girder around her, and tossed her through.

  “No… what the fuck… no one is that stro—oh fuck that hurts!” Zane choked back a scream as a fist like an anvil shattered both his legs, then bent back both his arms.

  “Quarter! Quarter! You win, fucker! Please just let go of me!”

  “No problem!”

  A moment’s surprise became fiery agony when a pair of clamps… or was it hands? Abruptly squeezed his wrists so hard that all the bones shattered like glass exploding.

  Zane shrieked like a man thrown straight into hell, gazing at the horrific sight of his own pulpified wrists, purple fingers so engorged with blood and broken bone fragments that the tips had ruptured. Even beyond his agony, he knew there was no saving that limb. Not for him, or anyone lacking access to exotic healing arts or a newly ascended Terran adventurer’s priceless gifts to fully heal with a single night’s sleep. Or just an hour’s rest, had he been born in this world. A dream just as impossible as his chances of surviving the next 24 hours. He didn’t need the madman gazing at him with such ravenous glee to know that his doom was all but assured.

  Yet still, when all arrogance and pretense was stripped away, only a broken man was left, desperate for each precious gasp of air he could claim. “Please!”

  Zane’s agonized whimper choked off with a despairing sob when Death whispered in his ear, freezing it to his skull.

  “And when my friends begged for you to just let them go… did you listen? Or tear them open with blasters so viciously that they’re almost guaranteed to die, even after jumping into a portal with salvation just a single deferred plasma shot away, which you DENIED them, YOU MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE!”

  “I was just following orders!” Zane screamed, writhing in pain, and despair. “You already doomed my friends, my woman! You’ve already had your vengeance! Please! You’ve already crippled me on an alien world! I’m not native, I don’t automatically heal in my sleep! Please just let me go. I… I can be useful to you. I can serve you behind the scenes!”

  Bloodshot violet eyes lit up with desperate hope when his tormentor didn’t immediately cut him off. “I’ll tell Song you were killed, that your friend dragged your remains away! He won’t come after you any more, you’ll be a free man! I can tell you Song’s habits, his daily routine. I… I could plant explosives for you! You just tell me when and where! You’re looking to claim New York? I can help you! Marsha too, if you bring her back… Please, we can be so useful to you, I swear it!”

  His tormentor flashed a bitter smile. “Damn right you two will be useful to me. With every drop of your blood. But don’t worry. Once Grim’s done with you, I’ll be bringing you both back to finish atoning.” Pitiless emerald eyes met his own. “You want to enlist with me? You better believe you will. For eternity.”

  And before Zane could even inhale to shriek, he was shoved through the crackling gate.

  His was lost in a whirlwind of cackling screams and dizzying nausea before he collapsed in a grassy clearing. Then all was quiet for a single blessed moment. Before he heard the panicked screams of the woman he loved.

  Panicked eyes took in his surroundings, finding himself in the middle of a ritual circle painted in blood. He gasped, but couldn’t even scurry back without his shattered limbs tormenting him.

  He whimpered when he dared to look up, making out the giant looming skeleton with glittering diamonds for eyes wearing top hat and frock coat with a crimson eyed rabbit on his shoulder, both of them glaring down at him beneath the starlit nighttime sky in the middle of a forest glade, making it clear that he had left the surface realm entirely.

  “Ah. I see my dear fellow master-in-craft has brought us another worthy sacrifice eager to atone for his sins.”

  “Yup. He looks choice!” The rabbit agreed, nodding its head.

  The tall skeleton then pointed at the twisted things of blood, fangs, blinking eyes and squirming shadows crawling at the corner of Zane’s vision that he had done all he could to avoid looking at. Hideous caricatures of humanity, glaring with eyes filled with monstrous hunger. They moved less like humans and more like liquid darkness given furious life and form. Even now, a desperate-eyed Marsha was looking his way. “Zane, help me!”

  Before he could even inhale, the pair of liquid figures of shadow and blood launched themselves like feral beasts. Like werewolves themselves. And Zane was forced to watch, mentally howling with horrified dismay, when the woman he had planned on marrying after a quick, easy assignment on a newly blossoming world promising such easy cash and effortless growth… crumpled before his gaze.

  Her eyes widened with horror as all the flesh melted off her face. Her sleek, powerfully built body shriveled away to dry skin over brittle bones in the time it took Zane to scream his despair, her glossy dark hair turning brittle and white, her voice a dying croak. “Zane.”

  “Marsha!”

  But she had already collapsed, nothing more than a sack of bones covered in ancient skin.

  Zane howled like a beast in torment. “No! You didn’t have to do this! You’re monsters! Monsters!”

  The rabbit glared, crossing its strangely flexible arms as crimson lightning crackled between its ears. “All you had to do was let us go. We were already in the clear. But you just had to use your Bronze-tier skills to peer through the cloaking mist and lock onto our location while triangulating our exit point, despite all my efforts to throw you off our trail. So my friends got shot, because you wanted our blood more than you wanted to protect your own soldiers, and my ward wasn’t enough to stop T-3 blaster-fire. Now you're begging at my feet? You think my master wouldn't hire some Bronze-tier muscle in the blink of an eye to guard his real estate? You damn well better believe he would. Choice wages, too. But you just had to go and shoot our friends, so FUCK YOU! Their state is YOUR fucking fault, and this is the price we're all forced to pay, you stupid piece of shit!”

  The skeleton that had become a giant of a man with a smile so very similar to the monster who had first dragged him into this hellhole filled the air with his baritone laughter.

  “I suppose we are monsters at that, dear Zane. But lest you forget, it was you and your men who begun these hostilities. And I think a certain phrase from my youth is quite apropos.”

  Hypnotic eyes pinned a trembling Zane where he lay, now shrieking in fresh horror when he felt those two hideous creatures of blood and death latching onto his neck.

  The agony was everything he had feared and so much more, as every last experience point he had ever earned was claimed, every last drop of youth and vitality was torn from his frame. Only after experiencing the horror absolute loss, the consumption everything he could ever have been, was his blood drained as a final coup de grace as the lich’s awful words blazed away in his dying mind.

  “You reap what you sow.”

  “Ooh, that was a good one, Grim. ‘Appropos’ and ‘You reap what you sow.’ I like it!”

  “It does have a certain ring to it, does it not?”