#Chapter 214: The Counterstrike

It started with a blur, too fast and too close, the kind of shift in energy that makes your skin prickle before your mind even catches up. One second I was reaching for a second sleeper, still humming with leftover resonance, and the next there was a sound like ripping fabric and a sudden burst of movement behind me. I turned just in time to catch the glint of metal, a blade aimed straight at my head. The knife wasn’t ceremonial, ornate, or sharpened for show, just clean, narrow, and deadly, a weapon meant purely for killing. The vampire moved like he had already committed to this fight. There was no warning, no posturing, no demand for surrender. Just raw panic burning behind his eyes and a brutal, practiced precision that said he wasn’t new to violence. His lips curled back like he expected fangs to meet him, like some part of him had already decided I was the threat, and that the only way he left this alive was if I didn’t. I ducked low, not elegantly, but with enough force to s