When the countdown hit zero, Vince was already there.

No mist. No fog. No atmospheric buildup. Just him, three meters ahead of me, standing in the dark without disguise or pretense. Purple hair, all black, completely still.

No disguise, I thought. Which means he’s not worried about witnesses. Which means he’s certain nothing gets said about tonight after tonight.

Which also meant I had more time than I might have thought. Nobody kills someone without explaining why first. It’s a universal truth that transcends species, apparently.

[Night mode activated.]

Night mode. I understood it the moment it landed. The darkness stopped being dark. Not bright exactly.

More like the world had been retuned, the shadows separating into layers, details sharpening, the campus reading itself to me the way the plain had read itself for twenty years except cleaner, more precise. Like someone had upgraded the instrument.

I could see Vince clearly. Every detail. The purple hair. The set of his jaw. The specific quality of stillness he was maintaining.

"Abram Nadez." He said my full name the way people say things they have been turning over for hours. Smooth. Deliberate.

His voice was calm. The specific calm that isn’t peace but control, the kind that has weight behind it.

"Vince Vale," I said back.

He smiled slightly. Like my saying his name confirmed something he had suspected about me.

The campus was completely silent around us. The kind of silence that had been made, not found.

"What brings you out this late?" I asked.

"Guess."

"You’re angry," I said.

"No." His eyes stayed on mine. "Disappointed."

"That sounds worse."

"You’re good."

He took one slow step forward. I didn’t move.

"I’m older than this city," he said. "I’ve seen more people than you could count in a lifetime."

He’s telling me things a man only tells someone who isn’t going to repeat them. More proof.

I ran through the page in my head. Easiest Way to Kill a Vampire. Step one: increase its anger. Vampires are most dangerous when calm and most vulnerable when emotional. Get them out of control.

"I know what has killed most people," he continued, still composed, still moving that fraction closer with each breath.

"Tell me," I said.

"Most people have looked death in the eyes. They thought they could provoke it. They thought there was an exit route."

"There’s always a route," I said. Twenty years on the plain had made that a reflex.

He laughed. Actually laughed, looking at me like I was something he hadn’t encountered in a long time.

"I am what your species feared before walls taught you to fear each other instead."

[Warning: Vampiric pressure detected.]

[Hostile entity significantly exceeds current parameters.]

I ignored it.

"That girl," he said.

The composure cracked. Just slightly. Just enough. His eyes moved away from mine for the first time since he’d appeared, not to the campus, not to anything specific, just away, the involuntary movement of someone touching something that still hurt. He couldn’t even say her name.

Gotcha.

A thousand years old. Seen empires rise and fall. Watched generations live and die like seasons. And he was standing in the dark outside a student hostel because of a girl.

"Is the only person I have ever loved," he finished.

I let that sit for exactly the right amount of time. Step one.

"You say you’re old," I said.

"I was here before your great-great grandfather died in the apocalypse."

Said without boast. Just fact. The specific flatness of something that has watched so many generations pass that the math has stopped being interesting.

"And yet," I said, "here you are. Standing in the dark, upset because a girl smiled at someone else." I held his eyes. "Come on, man."

He moved. There was no speed to describe it because speed implies a duration and there was no duration. He was there and then his hand was at my throat and I was against the wall, and the transition between those two states didn’t exist in any timeline I could access.

Just the impact, and the plaster cracking behind my shoulders, and the pain arriving from everywhere at once.

He lifted me off the ground with one hand. His face was still calm. But his eyes were not. His eyes were doing something old and cold and furious that the composed expression hadn’t caught up with yet.

The fury of something that had waited centuries to feel something real and was now watching it slip through its fingers because of a boy from the plain who had been inside the walls for less than two weeks.

That fury was exactly what I needed.

Good, I thought, hanging from his hand with my feet off the ground. Get angrier.

I grabbed his wrist. It was cold the way marble left outside in winter is cold. Fundamental. Not temperature. Composition.

I forced air into my lungs. "You know what I think?" I rasped.

His grip tightened. Controlled.

"I think," I said, "you came here hoping I’d be scared enough to make you feel in control again."

His eyes shifted. Small. Real. And his hand squeezed harder.

Good.

Because emotional, even for something that had existed for thousands of years, meant mistakes. And mistakes were the only window I had.

[Electrical Body: Launching.]

You delayed. Don’t do that again.

I pressed both hands to his chest and discharged everything I had.

My veins lit up. Visible through my skin, the charge moving through me and into him, my eyes bright in the dark for the first time. The kind of output that had taken down teleporters and CGI agents and level seven shadow walkers.

Vince didn’t move. Not a flinch. Not a step back. His expression didn’t change. He held me for one more second, then released me, and threw me across the campus like I was something he was setting down rather than something he was fighting.

I hit the ground and rolled and came up onto one knee.

The campus was silent. My shirt had rippled from the air friction. I looked at him. He was standing exactly where he had been. Not even slightly displaced.

The discharge didn’t touch him, I thought. Or it did and he absorbed it. Either way that was step one and I’m still standing.

I got to my feet.

"Is that it?" I said.

I needed step two. Now.