The silence that followed was heavier than the subterranean roof pressing down upon them. It was a dense, suffocating vacuum where the only sound was the frantic, irregular thumping of Cattleya's own newly formed heart. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, jagged gasps, every inhalation burning her throat with the taste of sulfur, mold, and wet earth.
The vampire didn't charge. It remained crouched atop the mound of slaughtered dead, its single crimson eye boring into Cattleya as if trying to read a language it had long forgotten. The air between them tasted charged, thick with the iron tang of fresh gore and the cold, mineral dampness of the subway platform.
Cattleya kept her weight balanced over the iron pipe, her muscles trembling from the strain. Every instinct honed inside the thousa
