Chapter 453: Beyond The Myths

Stan passed her the shortened blade. In her hands it looked like a strange knife, heavier than it appeared.

"It grows or shrinks as you want," he said. "When you can feel Qi and move it, you’ll use it properly. Try and learn to use it as soon as possible."

She took it with both hands. "Thank you." The words were automatic. The rest of her was still catching up.

He was not finished.

The martial knowledge he carried, years compressed into instinct, body mechanics, the ugly practical poetry of how a human frame ends a fight, he sent outward. Into Sacha. Into the others. Every girl who was his except Camilla, whose path did not need his overlay.

Sacha’s second jolt was worse.

A lifetime landed in her skull at highway speed. Stances. Weight shifts. How an elbow creates space. How a breath becomes a strike. Muscle memory that her muscles had not earned. For a second the car felt too small; her hands knew what to do with a throat and a wrist and the knife in her lap, and her mind lagged behind, scrambling to file a library that had been dumped on the floor.

She gripped the seat. Inksea was still ahead. The engine still hummed. Her brother still drove as if he had not just rewritten her.

She turned her face to the window, not to hide from him, but to give the flood somewhere to go.

Stan kept his eyes on the road. Concern sat in him, practical and sibling-sharp. She would be safer now. She would also never again be only the girl who stole tomatoes at breakfast.

The Audi carried them toward Inksea, and Sacha sat very still, learning how to be more than she had woken up as.

The knowledge sat in the car like a third passenger.

Sacha had gone still with the sword across her lap, she put it in her hand bag as the martial flood were still rearranging itself behind her eyes. Trees thinned. Stan let the quiet last until it stopped being useful.

"As for Camilla," he said, eyes on the asphalt, "there’s something about her I forgot to tell you."

Sacha turned. The movement was small. Alert. "What’s that?"

"She’s one of those races I said were coming back. She came to Earth early. Unique circumstances."

Her brows lifted. "Really? Which race? True human?"

"No. Camilla is a vampire." He said it the way he said weather. "It should be obvious with those little fangs of hers. It doesn’t register when you see them after all who would actually believe vampires are real."

Sacha stared at the side of his face as if the words might rearrange into a joke if she waited. "She’s a vampire?"

"Yes, sis. She is. Don’t worry. I have everything under control. Trust my word on this one."

A long breath left her, the kind that tries to make room in a chest that is already full. "I still find it hard to believe that she’s a vampire. So that stuff about you two being comrades is really true? You two aren’t... close?"

"Yes. Comrades. Mutual goals. She’s to be trusted." A beat. Honesty, because the morning had already spent its ration of half-answers. "Though there’s a high chance we might get really close in the future."

Sacha sighed again and shook her head, exasperation and reluctant acceptance sharing the same motion. "You really are a bad playboy girls should fear. Mia. Camilla. Who knows if there are other girls you have." The teasing did not land clean; it had worry under it. "Anyways, wouldn’t vampires be afraid of the sun? Hunger for blood? I watched her go out on the balcony with the sun straight on her. Nothing. No smoke. No flinch. That’s why this still sounds insane."

"A lot of what people ’know’ from fiction isn’t true," Stan said. Patient. Not lecturing. "Vampires love blood. They can live without it. That’s what she told me, and she wasn’t lying. The sun doesn’t burn them the way stories want. They put a thin layer of Qi between themselves and the light. Hard to explain if you haven’t felt Qi yet. Just don’t trust movies. Don’t trust novels. Trust what you can verify."

Sacha was quiet. The engine filled the gap, a low civilized hum.

"I didn’t even think much of those fangs," she murmured. "Some humans have teeth like that. Though with all this I can’t be sure those people are human either."

She looked at him again. Conflict sat plainly on her face: the girl who had blown Mia a kiss an hour ago, now being asked to file a vampire under comrade.

"That she’s a vampire still makes me feel weird. But I guess I’ll trust you if you say she’s to be trusted. Stan." His name, used like a hand on a sleeve. "Be careful. Don’t trust too easily."

"Don’t worry, sis. I’m not that foolish. I’m not trusting her on feeling or instinct. We have a binding blood contract. Not a normal one. It keeps us from harming each other. From being dishonest with each other. So you can trust what I told you."

She processed that in the time it took a mile to pass. Shock was thinning into something quieter and heavier: protectiveness, the old sibling kind that does not care about realms or seals.

"I don’t know how to feel," she said, softer. "Or what to say about all that. But it’s okay. Just be careful. You’re the only one I have in this world. I won’t be able to handle it if anything happens to you. I’ll follow your advice. I’ll raise my strength as soon as I can. Whatever is coming, we pass through it together."

***

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