The man who had just walked through the grand double doors was a towering monolith of ancient, predatory power. He stood easily at six-foot-four, his dark, silken hair cascading down to the middle of his back. He possessed flawlessly pale skin and a set of sharp, aristocratic facial features that could have belonged to a renaissance painting, highlighted by pair of gorgeous, bottomless black eyes. He was dressed impeccably in a bespoke dark red suit that gave him an undeniably wicked, regal quality.
This was Thorn Crimson. The 5,467-year-old vampire king, the absolute ruler of this sprawling supernatural dominion, the host of tonight's extravagant birthday bash, and—perhaps most terrifyingly for me—Chloe's father.
As expected of such an ancient and incomprehensibly powerful being, the wave of pure, unfiltered menacing intent that naturally emanated from him was absolutely dreadful. He didn't even have to try. He was like a conquering king of old, radiating such an oppressive, suffocating majesty that the other guests in the room—ancient monsters and elite mages alike—physically folded under the pressure. Those who weren't as powerful as he was instinctively lowered their heads, compelled by an invisible, crushing weight to bow before him.
I, however, remained standing completely upright. I was entirely shielded from that involuntary, supernatural compulsion by a faint, shimmering barrier of purple energy that Stella had instantly, silently erected directly in front of us.
I took a long, appraising look at the blonde half-demon standing next to me, taking a true measure of her power for the first time. Beneath this incredibly sexy, bubbly, and alluring package was hiding a genuinely terrifying being. I had no earthly idea what grade of demon she was, but the casual ease with which she blocked the aura of a five-thousand-year-old vampire king spoke absolute volumes.
Chloe, being an all-around badass herself, obviously didn't need any protection. She stood perfectly still, her pristine posture entirely unaffected, not the slightest bit cowed by her father's staggering aura of menace.
I seriously need to evaluate my life choices, I lamented inwardly, letting out a quiet sigh. Why is it that every single woman I meet these days is a breathtakingly gorgeous, walking weapon of mass destruction?
After letting the suffocating pressure hang over the room for a few agonizing seconds—just long enough to assert absolute dominance—Thorn released the tension. The atmosphere instantly lightened. He began to walk forward, parting the massive crowd of elite guests like Moses parting the Red Sea, only stopping to occasionally nod or exchange brief greetings with the handful of beings who possessed a status roughly equal to his own.
The room soon returned to a semblance of normalcy, the quiet hum of classical music and hushed, nervous chatter resuming as the grand entrance concluded. I leaned slightly toward Chloe.
"Your dad is absolutely fking scary," I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. "Was all that posturing really necessary?"
"Well, it was a calculated display of power," Chloe answered lightly, as if explaining basic dinner table etiquette. "Don't be fooled by the apparent camaraderie and gentlemanly behavior these supernaturals are projecting right now. Beneath the tailored suits, they are all just sharks circling in bloody water, desperately looking for a slight weakness to zero in on. The vampire code strongly recommends that the host explicitly showcase his prowess to his guests immediately upon arrival."
"There's a vampire code?" I asked, my eyebrows shooting up into my hairline. "Boy, the things I'm learning these days!"
Before we could delve any deeper into the fascinating nuances of undead politics, a movement across the ballroom caught my eye. I watched as Atticus White—the supreme head of the Magic Council—smoothly intercepted Thorn Crimson. The two ancient patriarchs greeted each other with practiced, aristocratic smiles. They seemed to speak pleasantly for a brief moment, exchanging quiet pleasantries.
But then, Atticus subtly raised his hand and pointed directly across the ballroom. Right at our secluded table. Right at me. He leaned in and murmured something quietly into the vampire king's ear.
Instantly, the polite, regal smile completely vanished from Thorn's pale face. His expression turned violently cloudy, a dark, murderous storm brewing in his black eyes as his gaze locked onto me from across the room.
A cold, heavy knot of pure dread formed in the pit of my stomach. Yup. I've got a really, really bad feeling about this.
Looking at the absolute, unfiltered killing intent radiating from the vampire king, I knew with a depressing certainty that I was in for a potential third death tonight. Honestly, at this point, I should probably just start carrying around a loyalty punch-card for the grim reaper.
As dark, morbid thoughts about the various ways my body was about to be dismantled floated through my head, Stella and Chloe finally caught on to the rapidly deteriorating situation.
Chloe's eyes started to emit a dangerous, glowing crimson light as she stared back at her father. They stood separated by a sea of guests, but something invisible and intense seemed to pass directly between them. After a few tense seconds, Chloe severed the eye contact, turning to me with a perfectly flat expression.
"My dad wants to meet you."
I blinked, genuinely confused. "How do you know? Did you just read his mind?"
"No, we talked telepathically," she replied, entirely unfazed.
"Wait, you know how to do that?!" I exclaimed, my voice pitching up slightly.
"Yes. Almost all supernatural races have their own innate methods of communicating unnoticed," she said, before turning her glowing eyes to the blonde half-demon. "Stella, we have to go see my father now. We'll be back in a few minutes."
"Yeah, go ahead. Don't worry about me, I'll just go to the bar or eat something," Stella said, waving us off and smiling mischievously, clearly enjoying the impending drama a little too much.
"Alright. Just please, don't cause too much mischief," Chloe warned her, a hint of genuine concern creeping into her melodic voice.
"You know me, I am a total Girl Scout," Stella replied, placing a hand over her heart with a look of fake, exaggerated seriousness.
Leaving Stella to her own highly suspicious devices, I followed Chloe out of the bustling reception room. We navigated a quiet, velvet-lined corridor and stepped into a private VIP elevator, taking it straight up to the hotel's most exclusive, secluded penthouse suite.
Before Chloe could even raise her hand to knock, the heavy mahogany door clicked and swung open entirely on its own. We stepped over the threshold into an impossibly luxurious, sprawling living room bathed in the soft glow of crystal lamps.
Surprisingly, Thorn was already there. He was sitting casually on a plush, dark leather reclining sofa, his long legs crossed, silently observing our entrance. As we stopped dead in the middle of the room, facing him directly, a heavy, suffocating silence violently descended upon the penthouse.
He didn't speak immediately. He just started observing me. And as his bottomless black eyes slowly scanned my body, the ambient temperature in the room began to plummet. I could see my own breath misting in the air. The killing intent I was feeling from him was escalating, becoming more dense, more palpable, and exponentially more dreadful with every passing second. It felt like standing directly in the path of a massive, unstoppable avalanche.
Finally, he shifted his intense focus away from me and looked at his daughter, a deep, disapproving frown carving a canyon between his brows.
"What's the meaning of this?" Thorn asked, his deep voice vibrating with power, speaking of me as if I were a piece of rotting garbage someone had dragged onto his pristine carpet.
This dude was seriously starting to piss me off. His kingly demeanor, his overwhelming arrogance, the sheer disrespect dripping from his every word... how the hell could such an absolute asshole be the father of someone like Chloe? Well, looking at her icy demeanor, I supposed the apple didn't fall entirely out of the orchard, but still, this guy was insufferable.
Chloe turned her head slightly, catching my eye as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. I just shrugged my shoulders, acting as nonchalantly as humanly—or supernaturally—possible.
Ignoring my silent, petty rebellion, Chloe turned back and replied calmly to the vampire king.
"I don't quite get your meaning, Father. He's my boyfriend, obviously."
CRACK.
The sound was sharp and sudden. Thorn's pale finger had unconsciously pressed down onto the solid oak coffee table next to his sofa, leaving a deep, splintered dent in the wood.
"Don't play these childish games with me, Chloe," Thorn said, his voice dropping to a dignified, yet incredibly lethal register. "I have told you this over and over again. Luke White will be your husband. I will not suffer any slight to my honor in this matter. I made a promise."
"Exactly! YOU made a promise, Father, not me!" Chloe snapped, her own pristine composure finally beginning to crack, her voice rising as she started to genuinely get pissed off. "I have zero obligation to marry that pathetic, sorry excuse of a man!"
Seeing that he couldn't simply command or speak reason into his rebellious daughter, Thorn's expression went entirely blank.
He stood up from the sofa. And then, he completely disappeared.
It wasn't a blur of speed. It wasn't a fast movement. He simply ceased to exist in my line of sight.
Before my brain could even register the visual anomaly, every single supernatural alarm bell in my newly upgraded system screamed in unison. A massive, blaring warning exploded in my senses.
But I didn't even have the time to flinch.
A hand ripped violently through my back, tearing through my tuxedo, shattering my spine, and bursting clean through my thorax. I looked down, paralyzed by shock, and saw a pale, blood-drenched hand protruding from the center of my chest. It was tightly gripping my beating heart.
With a sickening, wet squelch, the hand clenched into a fist, crushing my heart into absolute pulp instantly.
He didn't stop there. Through the gaping, horrific wound in my chest, Thorn sent a massive, highly concentrated pulse of pure, volatile blood energy directly into my circulatory system. I could feel the energy expanding violently beneath my skin, superheating my blood in a fraction of a microsecond.
Before my body blew apart into a million pieces of a fine, red mist, a single, incredibly cynical thought flashed through my fading consciousness:
Wow. What efficiency. I didn't even feel a thing.
And then, I died for the third time.
The first thing I felt was a gentle, cool breeze brushing delicately against my naked skin.
Wait a minute. WHAT DO YOU MEAN NAKED SKIN?!
My heavy eyelids snapped open immediately. I sat bolt upright, frantically inspecting my newly reconstructed body. To my absolute, profound horror, I realized that I was completely, unapologetically in the buff. My expensive midnight-blue tuxedo, my shirt, my shoes—everything had been completely vaporized in the bloody explosion.
Damn it!! Could this seriously get any worse?! I cursed inwardly, crossing my arms over my lap in a desperate, futile attempt to preserve whatever shreds of dignity I had left.
Observing my surroundings, I quickly noted that I was still sitting right in the middle of the luxurious penthouse living room. The plush carpet beneath me was heavily stained with a massive, drying pool of my own blood. Standing just a few feet away were Chloe and Thorn.
Speaking of the vampire king, he was currently staring down at me as if I were a literal ghost. The absolute, unshakeable arrogance he had displayed just moments ago had completely vanished, replaced by an expression of pure, unadulterated shock.
"What... what are you?" Thorn breathed, quickly reigning in his wildly flailing emotions and regaining his regal composure. After all, even if he was badly shocked by witnessing a boy reassemble himself from a puddle of gore, he was still thousands of years old. He had seen some weird shit.
"I am Samsara," I complained loudly, glaring up at him from the floor. "Why is it that you people always brutally murder me first, and ask questions later?!"
Chloe, who had been completely frozen with tension, let out a massive, shaky sigh of relief upon seeing me completely unblemished and complaining about my lack of clothes. Her crimson eyes hardened as she turned to glare dangerously at her father.
"You see, Dad? Even you couldn't kill him," she stated, her voice dripping with venomous triumph. "So you absolutely cannot tell me that he isn't powerful enough to stand by my side."
"Even so, it's still entirely impossible for the two of you to be together," Thorn countered, his voice turning freezing cold as he narrowed his eyes at his daughter. "You know it too. That is exactly why you haven't claimed him with the mark."
Mark? I thought, my brow furrowing in confusion. What the hell is a mark?
Chloe seemed to visibly hesitate after hearing her father's challenge. A complex war of emotions played across her stunning features. But then, she violently resolved herself. She turned to face me.
I gulped loudly. Her eyes were glowing with a blinding, terrifying crimson light, and as her lips parted, I saw the stark, gleaming white points of her elongated fangs slipping down.
I instantly guessed what this 'mark' was. It was the quintessential vampire bite. The blood bond.
"No. Nope. Nu-uh," I said rapidly, scrambling backward on the blood-soaked carpet, entirely forgetting my nakedness in the face of impending doom. "We absolutely never agreed to this part of the contract!"
"It will be painless," Chloe promised, her voice suddenly taking on a strange, hypnotic, dual-toned resonance. "Plus, it will ensure that every other vampire in this city knows that you are mine!"
A massive, suffocating wave of power suddenly rose from her body. Before I could even open my mouth to protest further, she physically vanished from my sight, zooming across the carpet with terrifying speed.
She crashed into me, her arms wrapping tightly around my bare shoulders, hugging me fiercely against her chest. Taken completely by surprise by the sheer kinetic force of the impact, I was rendered completely motionless.
And then, she buried her fangs deep into the side of my neck.
I braced myself for agonizing pain, but it never came. Instead, the absolute second her teeth pierced my skin and her venom entered my bloodstream, a roaring, uncontrollable fire ignited within my very soul. It wasn't a destructive heat; it was a wave of pure, unadulterated, blinding lust. It threatened to consume me entirely. My body violently reacted to the supernatural aphrodisiac pumping through my veins, and my 'guy' down there woke up with terrifying, immediate enthusiasm.
The raw, primal desire that exploded within me was simply too massive, too overwhelming to contain. All rational thought was entirely incinerated.
Before I could even attempt to control it, my hands were already moving with a desperate, frantic hunger. They were all over her body, gripping her waist, tracing the dangerous, beautiful curves hidden beneath her shimmering black gown.
Chloe let out a soft, shuddering moan of pure pleasure against my neck. It seemed that the intoxicating taste of my glitchy, supernaturally enhanced blood had caused her to completely lose her mind as well.
She continued to drink greedily from my neck, her body pressing flush against mine. Unable to take it anymore, I grabbed her by the shoulders and forcefully pulled her off my neck. I didn't push her away. Instead, I crashed my lips directly against her bloody mouth, kissing her with an intense, bruising passion.
The desire immediately cranked up another ten levels. Within seconds, we were rolling on the blood-soaked carpet, aggressively tongue-kissing, our bodies grinding intimately against each other in a desperate haze of supernatural arousal. I imagine we were giving quite the scandalous, deeply inappropriate show—especially considering I was completely, unapologetically naked. The sheer novelty of the experience, the intoxicating sensory overload of her venom, and the highly illicit situation all compounded to drive my arousal to unprecedented, mind-melting heights.
We were completely lost in each other, right on the verge of taking things entirely too far, when a sudden, violent force intervened.
Perhaps because he was absolutely, understandably pissed at having to watch his noble daughter lose her mind making out with a naked teenager on his carpet, Thorn violently intervened. He sent a massive, blunt pulse of blood energy crashing directly between us.
The kinetic force threw us violently apart. We slid across the room in opposite directions. The sudden, painful impact jarred my brain, and the powerful, intoxicating desire that had completely swept over me was forcefully, brutally pacified.
I found myself lying on my back about ten meters away from Chloe, staring at the ceiling and frantically gasping for breath, my chest heaving as my rational mind slowly rebooted.
I rolled over and looked up. But the drama wasn't over. Something was still profoundly, terrifyingly weird with Chloe.
She was kneeling on the carpet, her head bowed, but a blinding, pulsating aura of solid red energy was violently erupting from her entire body. She was glowing like a dying red star right in the middle of the penthouse living room. I could physically feel her power signature rising. It was expanding exponentially, growing heavier, denser, and infinitely more terrifying by the millisecond.
Even Thorn Crimson looked entirely shocked. He took a hesitant step forward, reaching out his hand to approach her.
But the moment he got too close, the chaotic, swirling storm of red energy actively repelled him. With a deafening shockwave, the 5,000-year-old vampire king was sent flying backward, crashing heavily into the far wall.
The sheer force of the energy burst stunned me completely. The gravity in the room seemed to break. All the heavy mahogany chairs, the plush couches, the shattered coffee table, and the crystal lamps lifted effortlessly off the ground, floating and spinning in a slow, concentric circle around Chloe's kneeling form.
The bizarre, telekinetic phenomenon lasted for what felt like an eternity, but was probably only about twenty minutes. Finally, the glowing red star collapsed inward, the energy violently receding back into her body. The floating furniture crashed heavily back down to the floor, shattering glass and splintering wood.
Chloe stood up from the wreckage. She looked exactly the same, yet fundamentally different. The aura she projected now was impossibly deep. She felt so much more powerful than before—by a staggeringly large margin.
Her father, his bespoke red suit ruffled and covered in plaster dust, scrambled back to his feet. He stared at Chloe, his black eyes wide with a mixture of profound awe and deep-seated terror, looking at his own daughter as if she had just evolved into an incomprehensible abomination.
His terrified, alienated look didn't escape Chloe's notice. She had completely regained her pristine control, her breathing steady. She looked at the vampire king with a deeply sad, melancholic expression, realizing that the massive gap between them had just permanently widened.
Without saying a single word to him, she completely ignored her father. She walked over to me, grabbed my arm, and gently pulled my naked body up from the carpet. She led me out of the ruined living room and into an adjoining master bedroom suite to desperately find me some clothes.
Rummaging through the massive walk-in closet, we miraculously found a dark, tailored suit that was characteristic of elite vampire attire. Luckily, the cut was a perfect fit for my newly broadened shoulders.
I quickly slipped into the attached marble bathroom to wash the dried blood off my skin and get dressed.
Standing in front of the vanity mirror, adjusting the dark lapels of the suit, I finally took a good, long look at myself. I realized instantly that the physical improvements from this third death were absolutely no joke. I looked completely, inhumanly beautiful. Every single inch of my facial structure was carved to absolute perfection, as if I had been meticulously sculpted from a flawless plastic model by a master artist. My eyes were a vibrant, glowing storm of deep blue laced with bright emerald green.
I mentally summoned my interface, eager to see the numerical damage. Instantly, the blue holographic screen flickered to life.
Name: Samsara Yu Age: 17 years oldRace: ?? Unique ability: Death with benefits Lifespan: 10,000 years
I stared at the glowing white text, my jaw dropping slightly.
My lifespan had just jumped to ten millennia. I let out a long, incredulous sigh, leaning heavily against the marble sink. At this exponential rate, it was only a matter of time before I outlived the entire universe.