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Chapter 82: Adam The Menace I
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He infused his voice with warm gentleness. "Thank you. But consulting me is never a bad idea." He ended the call with a final, "I still have a vampire to take care of."
He slipped the communicator away, the smile still on his face. He let out a short, bright laugh, the sheer, twisted devotion of it all genuinely bringing him a spark of joy in this grim place.
He finally turned his full attention back to Dracula, who had observed the entire exchange with the patience of a glacier.
"My apologies," Adam said, not sounding sorry at all. "Something came up. I'm not usually this rude during a confrontation."
Dracula's lip curled. "Hunting me is the pinnacle of rudeness, mortal. But it is… understandable. The etiquette of you short-lived worms has never been consistent."
Adam shrugged. "Blame Mephisto. He's the one who set this game board. Told me where to find you."
"You're merely a piece he moved, a victim of his contract. Unfortunately, he doesn't want me to win. Fucking demons, huh."
"They can not be fucking trusted, I bet he wants us to kill each other off, and he somehow wins, and he made it so we have no choice but to face each other... Actuall pest."
The name landed like a stone in still water. Dracula's burning eyes narrowed, the crimson light within them intensifying.
He murmured, the words a low rumble of recognition and disgust. "So. The hell-lord's scheming encompasses even me."
He didn't question the truth of it. Mephisto's reputation for weaving mortals and monsters into his games was older than nations.
Moreover, Mephisto's warning had reached him. It's the demon that warned him of the hunt, putting more credibility to his words.
Moreover, someone as ancient as him is wise and knowledgeable enough to know not to trust a demon, so he wasn't surprised.
The revelation didn't spark fear in Dracula, only a colder, more attentive irritation. It also changed nothing.
"His machinations are of no consequence. His 'armies' would founder upon my shores. But you…" He focused on Adam, then Blade.
"You believe killing my children grants you entry to my throne room? They were mere appetizers. And in their destruction, you fed me. I have not felt such satiety in a century."
He spread his arms, his cape flowing like a wing of night. The chilling aura around him deepened, pressing down on the clearing like a physical weight.
"So, I ask you, little hunters… with what army do you challenge me? You have none."
A cruel, triumphant smile touched his lips. "But I… I have a legion."
He raised a clawed hand, his voice echoing with a command that shook the very trees. "RISE!"
The earth trembled. From the lake of congealed blood at his feet, shapes pulled themselves free.
Not just the reanimated, broken forms of the recently dusted, but older, fouler things; skeletons in rusted armor, zombies with flesh like cured leather, their eyes glowing with crimson light.
From the shadows of the forest emerged packs of monstrous, glowing-eyed wolves, their fur matted with grave dirt.
The sky darkened further as a swirling, shrieking cloud of bats descended, forming a living canopy.
From burrows and cracks, a seething, skittering tide of rats, their eyes pinpricks of the same hellish red, poured forth.
And behind Dracula, their forms materializing from the mist itself, stood the Soulless; elite creatures, risen through nechromancy, beasts that have no soul, grotesque abominations of flesh.
An army of the dead and the damned stood between the two hunters and the Vampire King.
The air thrummed with a silent, collective snarl. The final gauntlet was not a path to be cleared. It was a wall of fang, claw, and ancient malice, waiting to crash down upon them.
[Damn, he took the with what army saying and made it cooler!]
[Adam just blamed Mephisto, and Dracula 100% believed him! The demon's reputation precedes him.]
[Wait, now Adam has another party to always blame everything on, Hydra and Mephisto.]
[The list will keep growing, I just know it.]
[How the HELL are two guys and a sniper in the sky supposed to fight all that?!]
[How the fuck do they win this? I'm calling plot armor!]
For a short, trembling moment, silence held the clearing. The undead legion stood, a wall of gnashing teeth, clattering bone, and silent, crimson-eyed malice.
The two hunters did not cower. They did not strategize aloud. Instead, in a move of pure, arrogant synchronicity, they simply walked apart.
Adam moved to the left, his enhanced cybernetic eye whirring softly, analyzing data and weaknesses of the horde.
Blade paced to the right, his long coat swishing, one hand resting on the hilt of his silver dagger, the other hovering near a bandolier of sun-grenades.
Their backs were not to each other, but their positions created a deadly crossfire lane.
Blade's voice cut the oppressive silence, flat and dripping with contempt. "An army." He spat the word like a curse.
"You always need one. Can't handle the sunlight. Can't handle a stake. Can't handle a whiff of garlic without sneezing your damn lungs out."
"You're a flawed species, Dracula. A genetic dead-end. A bunch of inbred parasites allergic to everything in creation."
A slow, appreciative grin spread across Adam's face. He gave a single, firm nod. "True. Allergies run through your lot more than…"
He paused, his eyes glinting with mischief as he looked at the seething Vampire King. "…More than STDs through a brothel on nickel night."
[Damn, didn't know Blade had that in him.]
[Damn] [Damn] [Damn] [+1] [+1] [+1]
[The sheer disrespect is a weapon and they're BOTH masters of it.]
[Dracula's eye just twitched. Did you see it? He's trying so hard to stay regal.]
[Yup, they're tryin to get on his nerves.]
Dracula's magnificent composure developed a hairline fracture. His nostrils flared.
The hellfire in his eyes blazed hotter, but it was not just rage. A sliver of cold, calculating suspicion cut through the insult.
These were not brave last stands; these were the actions of predators who had already sprung the trap. Their lack of fear was… instructive.
His gaze swept the clearing again, past his magnificent, waiting horde, to the scorched earth, the lingering chemical smell of the truck detonation, the fine, almost glittering dust still settling.
He felt things amiss.
Pride, ancient and towering, warred with intellect. To hesitate now, before these vermin, was impossible.
Moreover, he didn't believe he would lose.
"Worms," Dracula's voice boomed, stripping away the cultured baritone for something raw and primordial. "I do not know where your confidence comes from, but TODAY, You Shall Fall! TEAR THEM APART! LEAVE NO ATOM CONJOINED!"
The command was a psychic shockwave. The legion erupted into motion.
And it was wrong.
The charge was not a terrifying, unstoppable tsunami. It was a stuttering, clumsy rush.
The skeletal warriors lurched, their movements sluggish, bones clacking out of rhythm.
The zombie things stumbled, their leathery flesh seeming to smoke faintly in the moonlit air.
The wolves' snarls turned into strangled yelps as they pushed forward, their coordinated pack tactics dissolving into disarray.
The cloud of bats faltered, individual creatures dropping like flies before regaining unstable flight.
Dracula's senses, attuned to the symphony of death and power, screamed in dissonance.
The strength he'd felt flooding back from his children's essence… it was thin. Tainted.
A vile, creeping weakness was threaded through it, a corrosion in the very source of his renewed power.
He felt it now; a metallic tang that wasn't just blood, a pungent undertone beneath the scent of pine and decay. The air itself was a slow, insidious venom.
The realization detonated within him. The truck. The explosion wasn't just to destroy the lodge or create a fire. It was a dispersal mechanism.
They had poisoned the well. They had fed him a feast laced with arsenic, silver, garlic, and what feels like every poison in existence.
He'd realized why the creatures he summoned, the ones that aren't vampires, still succumbed, that's because the air is poison, anti fucking existence kind of poison.
A roar of pure, undiluted fury erupted from the Vampire King, shaking the trees and causing the slower undead to stumble.
"YOU DARED?!" He thundered, the sound physically painful. "I shall devour you alive! I shall savor every scream as your blood turns to acid in your veins!"
The lake of black blood at his feet reacted to his rage. It surged upward, not as a wave, but as a shaping of his will.
It formed into two vast, tattered wings of coagulated gore that framed him, and a dozen sharp, spinning spears of crystalline blood hovered around his body, their points aimed at the hunters.
Before he could launch them, Adam burst out laughing.
It wasn't a battle cry or a taunt. It was genuine, shoulder-shaking mirth, bright and utterly out of place in the gothic nightmare.
He wiped a non-existent tear from his eye, his grin manic.
"Enjoying the birthday present, Vlad?" Adam called out, his voice carrying over the disorganized groans and snarls of the faltering army.
"I'll admit, I cooked up quite the cocktail in that truck. Nanosilver aerosol suspension. Garlic-derived enzymatic inhibitors. Ultraviolet particulate matter. A few old-world botanical agents even I had to look up."
He took a step forward, his mechanical arms unfurling from his back with a series of hydraulic hisses.
"Oh, and I threw in some of my own divine piss for good measure. A couple of viruses, too. Very nasty STDs. Consider it a gangbang… and you swallowed every last drop, Hahahahahaha."
[NO. HE. DIDN'T.]
[No way he fed him SUPER-STDs and Piss, must be trying to get on his nerves.]
[Actual mind terrorist, wtf.]
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