“You actually tried to make a deal?”

That was Irene’s only comment after I’ve summarized everything that had transpired so far. She listened, never verging close to another interruption until I had finally reached the end.

The Matriarch’s little snooze persisted on. The tranquility beset on her slumbering expression was polarizing, to say the least. Right then, setting aside the blood and the fangs, she looked like any other girl you’ll see walking by you in the streets. Normal, harmless… if only that was actually the case.

Finger and thumb cupped underneath Amelia’s chin, with all the cautiousness of a bonafide detective, Irene gently swung her head to and fro, her gaze meticulously surveying whatever it was she was trying to survey.

Another polarizing sight by the standards of reality. A Succubus intensely scouring the body of an unconscious vampire. Didn’t help that she was absolutely reeking with the smell of perversion, making for quite an emotional dissonance when it came to taking things seriously.

I gotta get new standards.

“That desperate already?” Irene asked, turning towards me.

I shrugged my shoulders. “What other options did I have? Not like I can go busting through a wall, stand in a pose, and save the day. What else did you expect me to - “

“Not you. I’m talking about her,” She nudged over at Amelia. “Did she look desperate?”

Okay, now I feel a little stupid. I let out a sigh. “Well, she pretty much said so herself.”

Irene made a face. “I see.”

It was a very telling face. Same face I saw when she was coming up with the whole vampire bait idea.

“Wait a minute,” Ria said, her head cocked at an angle. It seems like I wasn’t the only one who recognized that face of hers. “You don’t actually think the vampire is on to something, do you?”

Her silence was also very telling. That deep contemplative far-away gaze into nothingness. Didn’t even flinch when a growl emerged from somewhere out of sight within the dark depths of the building.

Adalia was still creeping about somewhere out there.

After a while, Irene finally broke out of her focused stupor, and what came out her mouth next wasn’t exactly a surprise for anybody. “Take the deal.”

Ria too acted well within expectations. “You’re as suicidal as he is. It’s like you’re made for each other.”

“Didn’t you just chew me out about being reckless?” I asked. “Had a change of heart?”

“Spare me the lecture,” Irene said, mildly irritated. “Let me give you the short version.”

So, short version - Irene thought we could use this opportunity to our advantage. Adalia was a threat that couldn’t be dealt with conventionally. We could blind, harm, obstruct her in any way we can but ultimately when it came down to subduing or even killing her, none of us would be able to do a damn thing. Why?

Well according to Irene, “A frenzied vampire can only be temporarily subdued by another vampire’s bite.”

It was probably what Amelia was trying to accomplish in that little skirmish they had that nearly collapsed the entire building and what she was planning to do again as well when trying to broker a deal between us.

“Except her plan won’t work,” Irene said, pointing down to Amelia’s neck, where two puncture marks laid bare, the only wound that did not disappear along with the rest. “Her sister bit her instead. Took her way, way down in terms of ability. If she somehow does get a bite in on the frenzied, I doubt it’ll even last for long.”

‘Why didn’t she just bite her before she frenzied?” I asked.

“She probably already did,” Irene said. “It just didn’t work.”

Turns out, so long as the vampire who’s doing the biting is stronger than the other one, the effect would hold for a much greater time. If a vampire who does the biting is weaker, well...

“So the hot-head is weaker than the quiet one,” Ria smirked. “Can’t say I’m all that surprised.”

So the plan?

“Work with her, get her to bite her sister. Vampires are at their most vulnerable while feasting, and if one is feasting on the other, they both become vulnerable. And if they’re both vulnerable, they’re both together... phoenix fire should do the trick.”

“So that’s where I come in,” muttered Ria. “Knew you kept me around for a reason.”

“You were supposed to be a last resort, I had other plans in place - UV lights, flares,” Irene said while lightly caressing a bruise on her arm. “Then things got complicated.”

I noticed her eyes were cold and aloof. Clearly, the swift decision to execute both Matriarchs did not weigh much on her conscience, but just in case…

“You’re fine with killing them, then?” I asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” She answered back, not a hint of remorse. “They’re a threat that must be dealt with, I’m dealing with them. The frenzied, especially. The longer we wait, the more she - “

Something reached out and seized Irene’s arm, a vice-like grip that punctured skin with razor-sharp edges.

“You’re not killing my sister.”

Amelia had awoken. Her eyes, seething with fury once more, locked themselves onto Irene. A snarl, a heave - impotent as she was, Irene could not pry loose from her hold.

“You broke out of that sooner than I thought,” Irene said, her expression blank of any emotions.

Amelia pulled herself upright. “You’re not killing her.”

“She’s already dead.” Irene tried pulling away again, didn’t work, Amelia’s grip only tightened. “You can’t save her.”

Words that added fuel to the already blazing inferno.

A reverberating boom that ruptured the ground. Amelia had lunged at Irene, toppling, and sending her crashing to the concrete. A gasp of pain expelled from Irene’s lips as the back of her head collided with the hard surface.

Already sharp fangs were creeping to her throat, barely grazing the surface before a web of flames had Amelia leaping back from the sudden burst of light. The web reshaped into a wall of fire, tearing them apart from one another.

Ria, to the side, had another arm raised towards the Matriarch, sparks crackling from her fingertips in warning.

“Did not appreciate you doing that,” Ria muttered, her hair blazing a crimson red. “Don’t do that again.”

For a moment, I expected Amelia to make a dash towards Ria’s position by the way her fingers kept twitching at her side, but surprisingly she remained where she stood, ready any moment to spur into movement.

Glares all around wherever she looked. Amelia’s eyes shifted back and forth between the three of us, getting increasingly exasperated with every passing second until she finally locked gazes with the only person in the corridor that showed no open hostility.

“My sister can still be saved. It’s possible, I know it is. Terestra - I just need to find Terestra.”

Desperate. She really, truly was right then. Why else would she look to me? Why else would she be pleading with the one she despised the most?

I didn’t answer her. Not because I was lacking for one, Irene just beat me to it. Wincing, straining back up to her feet. A fresh new wound trickling blood down her nape.

“We aren’t exactly inclined to believe you,” She said coldly. “Especially since you already know it just isn’t possible. Terestra isn’t here.”

Irene went ignored, not even a single glance her way. Amelia simply refused to break her gaze on mine. I bore witness to it all, every slight twitch of muscle, the quiver of her lips, the sea of emotions breezing through her face.

“Kill me, then,” she said, voice losing all fervor. “Kill my sister. You’ll take down the barrier, save the day. Go on… do it.”

“We’re not asking for permission,” Irene spoke again. “You know that there’s no other - “

“Do it… kill us both. Go ahead and kill your only chance of saving the elf. Get rid of the only opportunity you have of saving all those I’ve abducted. I die, my sister dies - there will be no one left to release them from their trance. They’ll be a shell, empty puppets without strings… they may as well be dead. You want that for them? For her?”

I wanted to believe that she was lying through her teeth, believe in the assumption that she’ll say anything to save her sister. Then Irene simply had to turn herself my way, simply had to stare at me that way. A single look on her face and the truth was loud and clear.

“I can break them out of it,” Irene said.

“No, she can’t,” Amelia cut through her. “She wants you to believe she can, she knows she can’t. No one can, no one but us.”

“I can try.”

“You can fail.”

Irene’s eyes were piercing through me. Both of them were. I knew why. The key element to both their plans, the one person they’ll never succeed without… and I had total control over her.

“If it’s all the same to you,” Ria said to me, her arms still raised, maintaining the barrier of flames. “I rather not do as the vampire says.”

“It’s not your choice, It’s not any of your choices,” Amelia said, her gaze drifting over from Ria to Irene then finally back onto me. “It’s his now and his alone.”

It hadn’t even had time to settle in yet. The gravity of the situation, the implications, I didn’t have the luxury of reflecting on it. Ultimatums like these… I never had them before, but even I knew these things take time to be properly considered. Time I didn’t have… confronted by the gazes of three.

“You had your time,” Amelia whispered. “I am not waiting any longer.”

Over my shoulder again, her eyes were set, meaning only one thing, I turned - Ash had gone from the ground. A gust of wind, a flicker in the darkness… and Ash was suddenly by her side.

“What are you - ?” I couldn’t finish.

“Time’s up. Whatever happens in the coming moments is all in your hands. Whether you save my sister, whether the elf goes free, or not - it's your decision to make, and no one else’s.”

A wave of flames came crashing down at their position. Ria, both hands channeling a surge of fire, had already acted. Yet for how fast she was to burst into action, the Matriarch was still faster.

A blink and you’ll miss moment. One second, they both were there. The next, they were gone without a trace. The spot where they last stood scorched to an unsightly black by Ria’s flames.

Silence fell once more unto the deserted corridor. The quiet had a great effect, I’ll admit. I was about to explode at how much of a convoluted mess everything has suddenly turned out.

A simple in-and-out rescue mission has escalated into something so much more… something way beyond me. Who am I kidding? I was never able to do anything since the start of this whole thing.

Now you’re telling me I’m responsible for how this entire fiasco would end?

You gotta be fucking joking...

“Well, isn’t she a dramatic one...” Ria commented, huffing away with a shake of the head.

Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t much for witty one-liners anymore. All I felt was this crushing sense of urgency, this suffocating feeling like there was no feasible way of escape. Mostly, I just felt anger… anger that I couldn’t just stomp away, try as I might.

“Were you ever going to tell me at all?” I asked, my question finding its way to Irene’s rigid stare. Still as cold, still as aloof as it always was. “Or were you just planning to keep that quiet and wait for me to find out for myself?”

“Oh boy…” Ria quietly shrank back, clearly sensing trouble.

“I didn’t tell you because I knew you would have refused,” Irene explained. “You won’t accept that there’s no other outcome. We need to kill them both even if it meant not being able to save any of the victims. If I was honest with you, you wouldn’t have understood.”

“I do understand,” I got up, pain disregarded, as I limped in her direction. “I just don’t agree with it.”

“The Matriarch won’t be able to subdue her sister long enough. No chance of releasing anybody then and we’ll just be right back where we started. Except with a stronger, crazier, Matriarch with no chance of being able to subdue her. You help her out, she’s going to die either way.”

“I help you and we lose our only chance to save Ash, to save the victims.”

“Eight victims,” she took a step forward, inches away from my face, the infuriated look in her eyes reflecting back into my own. “Eight to save tens, hundreds - thousands maybe!”

‘For God - They are not numbers, Irene! They’re people!”

“Yes, eight people! Not a hundred, not a thousand - just eight! We kill them now and it’ll stay at eight, it won’t rise any more! Why can’t you understand that? Look, I didn’t come here with a plan to save everybody. I came here to prevent any more victims from happening.”

“And I came here because I thought we could bring Ash back.”

“She’s just an Elf!”

That did it. Four words funneled into one resonating shout. That’s what finally led me to my decision. I finally had a taste of it.

I remembered how Ash would talk about her past and never once would she fail to mention how her race was constantly belittled and trivialized.

I thought to myself, perhaps with me, in this world, things would be different for her. Nobody to treat her with prejudice, nobody to jeer, nobody to see her as less than nothing.

Now here she was… a stringed puppet to a demented vampire, a sacrificial pawn to a callous succubus. Just another means to an end.

Yeah, I wasn’t having any of it, not anymore.

I was done arguing. Irene had given her answer. I started limping away from her.

“Ria,” I called out. “Pick me up. We’re going after them. Find out where they went.”

“Wait.” There was Irene again, outpacing me, and then obstructing me, with her arms raised out in front of her, a conflicted look on her face. “I didn’t… look - I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Yes, you did. You just didn’t mean for me to hear it,” I said, brushing past her shoulder. “Wouldn’t be the first time...”

Ria was next to approach me. “Can I… at least say something?”

“No,” I told her. “Transform.”

An affronted look but not much else from her. The next second, from a spiral of fire, emerged the phoenix - shrieking once it what seemed to be in a tone of displeasure before latching onto me once more, bracing to take flight.

“Don’t go helping her,” said Irene. “It won’t work out.”

“Never said I was going too,” I simply said, leaving her at that.

Ria stretched her wings wide and with one strong flap, off we went, soaring into the gaping hole that had formed in the ceiling.

It was true. I had absolutely no intention of following Amelia’s plan. That didn’t mean I was going to follow Irene’s either. No, I wasn’t going to help either one of them.

I was going to help Ash. It’s what I should have done from the beginning. They kept going on and on about how there was simply no other way… when in fact there really was.

If I’m wrong, I’m dead.

If I’m right, nobody has to die tonight.

A one in a million chance. The unlikeliest of possibilities. But I wouldn’t know if I didn't try.

So, risking my life it is.

Perhaps Irene was right about me, maybe I am a bit suicidal. But so long as I manage to save someone.

What’s so wrong with that?