I was still standing, frozen, at the door for some time after the Lunar Knight had stormed off down the passageway and around the corner. It was only when I became aware of the small presence beside me that I realised I was blocking the way for the young girl who’d rushed in to leave the room. I shuffled awkwardly to one side and she stepped by me without a word. Our eyes met briefly before she disappeared down the passageway, heading back the way she’d presumably come from.

I sighed deeply. That had gone… well to be honest, it couldn’t have gone worse, though I wasn’t sure whether the interruption before Scarlett’s departure had been a good thing or not.

I re-entered my own room and shut the interleading door behind me. The sight of the messy bedcovers reminded me of the embarrassment of the previous night. For a brief instance my memory flashed back to Neptilia’s pleading look as she’d left. Had I done something wrong? Well, maybe I had. Was Scarlett pissed? Definitely. Was Neptilia simply using me to get under her skin? Hmm, I wasn’t sure, but I wouldn’t put it past her.

I scratched my head frustratedly. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to ask Neptilia seriously about whether I’d transformed or not. If I couldn’t keep that under control well, I’d get myself into much more serious trouble than casual sex.

***

Scarlett squinted in the haze of black smoke that smothered the air around her. She coughed into the hastily torn fabric she’d wrapped across the lower half of her face as she powered through the dark wall, frantically looking around for any signs of life.

“Leo!” she called.

They’d passed scores of scorched corpses. Despite the haste she’d made in leaving the castle, the fire had already spread across the poor district of Kur. Scarlett hadn’t asked Neptilia how she’d found the discrete servant entrance they’d exited through; she wasn’t especially interested to know where that ginger bitch had been, she was simply begrudgingly grateful that she’d helped her get out at all.

The Babelonian guards had set up a perimeter around the district, not that that had stopped the pair slipping past anyway. Scarlett wasn’t sure why Neptilia had stuck with her this far. Seeing her fellow knight’s figure through the haze spewed into the air by the burning buildings around them she couldn’t help but be reminded of their younger days at the Academy.

“I can’t find anybody here,” Neptilia said. Her gaze was grim. Scarlett gritted her teeth.

They’d managed to warn a few residents to evacuate, but on the whole they’d found only empty buildings and dead bodies. She was shocked at the scale of the massacre underway right under the noses of residents of the larger city of Babel as a whole. Having finally arrived at Leo’s building, Scarlett had begun searching desperately for the man who’d helped her and Sander make their way into the inner city but to no avail.

“What was that?”

Scarlett stopped and turned to her rival. She frowned. To one side, she could most definitely hear some kind of scuttling sound. It was much too large to be a rat. The Lunar Knight stiffened as a concerned glance past between her and her fellow warrior of the moon.

A dark silhouette appeared amidst the smoke, growing larger as the volume of the sound encroaching upon them grew. Scarlett readied her blade, Neptilia her spear, their weapons together casting the familiar green glow upon the scene before them.

A large, clawed hand slashed at them from out of the smoke. Scarlett dodged to one side. Another of Stefan’s transformed victims? She felt sick to her stomach. How many had he infected? Another thought dawned on her then. How many of these corpses were already here before the fires started?

“Can I get a little help here?” Neptilia called as she batted away the monster’s arm with the shaft of her weapon. Scarlett nodded, raised her blade and swung it with a shout.

“Halbmond Schrägstrich!”

A crescent flash of energy flew at their assailant, knocking it back into the smoke from which it had come. Neptilia drew back and pointed her spear directly at the monster as energy rushed in from around her to charge up the attack.

“Mondpfeil Salve!”

A rapid fire of bolts escaped the sharpened tip of her weapon – the dark shadow of the creature only barely in sight flailing at the impact of the attacks. As the assault of magic ended, they heard a whimpering and just made out the shape of the thing disappearing as it scurried away like a scared animal.

Despite the smoke combined with the thin sliver that the moon beyond was that night, their combined powers had still been enough to drive away the creature it seemed. Still, using magic under those conditions had clearly taken its toll on the pair. They were both breathing heavily, their weapon arms hanging loose at their sides. A Lunar Knight's powers were very taxing under such conditions. However, against a creature of darkness such as this, what choice did they have? Mere blades would do little against such horrors. Neptilia raised her head, her mouth curled in disgust.

“You neglected to mention this sickness of yours had this kind of effect on the infected.”

“It doesn’t,” Scarlett replied with furrowed eyebrows.

“Oh? Then care to explain what the hell is going on here? I signed up to help you evacuate people, not fight monsters in a burning building.”

Scarlett gave her a nasty glare. “You can’t think I expected this either. I thought they’d all been dealt with already.”

“They?”

“The transformed. Victims of the vampyre left alive who changed permanently from their human form.”

“Vampyres? Here?”

“Just one. It escaped, but a hunter went after it. Sander and I parted ways with her. There were no other reports of transformed at the time, but it seemed that at least one had been hiding in the old sewer system beneath the district, so I suppose it’s possible there were more down there…”

“You didn’t bother to check?” Neptilia looked at her incredulously.

“We’re trying to address the root of the problem; not treat every symptom we stumble upon along the way.”

As they’d continued to argue, the girls had squared up, their faces drawn so near they were practically touching as they glared into each other’s eyes. They turned away in unison, however, as a new sound invaded their ears.

It was akin to a howling, a pack of ferocious hunters closing in on their prey. As dark figures began to appear all around them, the Lunar Knights found themselves standing back-to-back, their lunar weapons held out before them.

“We’ll continue this later,” Scarlett said. She gulped. It had already been a strain using enough magic to fight even one of these things, she shivered at the thought of how many had so suddenly surrounded them.

“Agreed.”

As the monstrous figures all around them came into clearer view, Scarlett’s eyes fell upon their massive hands, tipped with razor claws, eyes that glowed a fearsome red, and elongated faces that could hardly be called human any longer. Indeed, these creatures were not quite the same as the transformed girls she had faced before, but something far worse.