Chapter 784: Blood

Inside a sealed shelter beneath the ruins of another world, an older vampire stood so quickly that the stool behind him fell.

The others turned toward him.

He held up one hand for silence. The call had reached the blood he had spent so long hiding from the people outside.

Alucard’s inheritance.

Two names.

Proxima.

One of the younger men moved toward the sealed entrance.

The older vampire caught his shoulder.

"Where are you going?"

"To answer."

"You can answer from here."

The young man looked down at the hand holding him. Startled by the strength of his own grip, the older vampire loosened it before he hurt him. He had not meant to hold so hard.

The others had begun moving too. Someone tested the weight of a storage chest that had taken two people to carry the day before. Another pressed a palm against the shelter’s dim formation and watched the light steady.

Their blood was responding.

That didn’t mean he trusted the people who were calling them.

A woman by the wall began to cry when the voice repeated that they were not the only survivors left. The older vampire looked at her, then at the young man still waiting to leave.

"We find out who is calling," he said. "No one opens the shelter yet."

The young man’s expression tightened.

He stayed beside the entrance, but his gaze moved toward the seal again. The older vampire doubted another order to remain hidden would be enough to settle him.

The older vampire closed his eyes and answered the call.

"Who speaks for Alucard?"

***

Mingyue heard the question among several arriving at once.

She held her part of the call steady while Alex separated the voices. His Cognitive Matrix kept their overlapping words distinct; deciding which emergency they could handle first still fell to him.

Vesa moved between the two blood patterns, carrying a clear response through one while preserving another that began to distort at the edge.

Thepes watched her hands.

"Less there," he said.

She reduced the pressure on the part he indicated. The voice behind it stopped breaking, leaving a frightened woman asking whether they could hear her children.

Mingyue looked toward Vesa.

"Give her room to speak. Don’t make her compete with the others."

Vesa held that response apart.

Alex’s hand shook.

Mingyue could feel his excitement through their bond, mixed with the pain he was trying to ignore. There were people answering from places they had never reached. Some spoke like they had waited their whole lives for the names of successors.

Others demanded proof or accused them of using Alucard’s blood to lure survivors out.

One voice said they would come at once.

Another told them never to call that shelter again.

Mingyue did not try to make those answers agree.

"Keep the warnings and the calls for help separate," she told Vesa. "Anyone who only wants to listen can listen."

A fresh surge reached them through the altered pattern.

Thepes’s blood lost its shape along one edge.

Mingyue raised her free hand before remembering the injury there. Pain ran through her forearm, and she used her right hand to hold that short stretch of space steady instead.

"Close that part for a moment."

Vesa stopped the new responses entering it while preserving the ones already clear.

Thepes gathered the loosened sample again.

His face had tightened with effort. The blood was his, and maintaining the useful shape still cost him even though he was no longer trying to pull anyone through it.

They could not make him carry every damaged response at once.

Mingyue turned toward Alex.

"Lower the reach. Keep what we can hold."

He looked at her.

More voices were still appearing. She could feel how hard he found it to reduce the call when each new response might belong to someone who needed help.

Then his shoulder sagged, and he eased the power he was putting into the call.

The pressure in the room weakened.

The answers continued, though fewer new contacts pressed against Mingyue’s awareness.

"Your voice is quieter," a man said through one of the clear responses. "But the engine is holding. I can still keep the feed steady."

Another caller said the strength in her hands had not faded. Mingyue listened before lowering her own power farther. At least those changes remained when the wider call weakened; they were not simply being held up by the pair’s continuing effort.

Vesa looked up.

"The ones already awake are still answering."

Mingyue let herself breathe more deeply.

They had begun something that would continue beyond the strength they could spend in this room.

Alucard’s voice reached them faintly.

"Let them stand."

Vesa stopped trying to ask him another question. She kept the trace of his presence separate while working with the living voices in front of her.

Dorian appeared at the doorway with fresh cloth around his left forearm. He had heard enough of the answers to be smiling.

"They hid us under houses," he said. "Made our people afraid to lift a hand. Let the humans hear what comes out of those houses now."

"Some of them can’t even leave the bed," Mingyue said.

"Then we’ll carry them." He looked toward Alex. "How many are coming, King?"

Alex looked at the blood between their hands. "We don’t have a number yet."

Dorian’s smile thinned. Beyond him, two carriers were arguing over which building still had room.

Mingyue listened to the carriers arguing. No answer coming through the blood would give those beds another room.

"Keep the treatment route clear," she said. "We aren’t gathering everyone in this room."

Dorian sent the carriers toward Selene, then remained at the doorway to listen. Each new voice seemed to please him, even when it came with another demand on his soldiers.

Alex opened the nearest clear response again.

A pilot answered this time. There were wounded aboard his ship, and he wanted to know whether the people on Proxima could receive them before he changed course.

Mingyue looked toward the path leading to Edonia.

They would need people waiting at the other end, somewhere to place the beds, and someone who could hear the next ship while they dealt with the first.

Alex asked the pilot about the injured passengers.

While he listened, another voice reached Vesa through the inherited pattern.

The speaker called Alucard his Progenitor and said his people had already begun preparing to leave hiding.

Then he asked which of the two successors he should kneel before when he arrived.

Thepes gave a harsh sound from inside the restraint.

Mingyue kept her hand beside Alex’s and waited for his answer.