Walworth Escape Route

~1 week, 6 days until transmission

The flow of the duel between vampires pulsed around Grace like a heartbeat. Nothing existed in her mind, save for her opponent and the moves necessary to come out on top. Even the death of her supposed 'replacement' – that disturbingly calm version of Henry that she could only assume was a copy – sounded off in her head as little more than a footnote to be examined later.

Most of her attention was, naturally, focused on her own life-or-death situation. The only thing that peripheral battle meant for her right now was confirmation that the others weren't dead meat without her.

Good on them. Here on her side of the line, she needed to focus entirely on not getting hit.

She rolled low to avoid a horizontal swing from the blade, tumbling for about a step and a half before pushing off the ground into an uppercut in one fluid motion. Fist collided with torso – a little lower than she'd hoped to land the strike – but no less impactful as she felt the muscle and bone behind Măcel's ash-gray skin cave inwards.

Her own arm, likewise, took the brunt of the force redirected back onto it. Much of it groaned in protest, but below the surface she was funneling her own reserves of power into it to keep all the breakable bits knit together.

Power. Blood. Whatever you wanted to call it. It was what vampires used to determine pecking order, and how fights between them were ultimately decided. The one who had more – or knew how to spend theirs in a more skillful fashion – would always come out on top. Those who climbed above, stayed above.

And both of them knew it.

"You've gotta be running low on juice soon here, by my guess." Măcel spun and switched his grip, turning his horizontal strike into a diagonal from the opposite direction. "Those hits might be stronger on the surface, but each one costs you a little bit to heal back up. Honestly, I thought I taught you better. There's no way in hell you're going to be able to sap my reserves like that."

He grinned, placing his entire weight behind the slash. "I just need to wait you out."

Grace slapped the flat of the blade aside with her palm, giving her just enough space to disengage at the cost of a shallow gouge along her hand. "Or," she countered, "I get in enough solid hits in a short enough time, and you don't even get the chance to recover. Think you can keep up a perfect guard that long?"

"Hah!" He grabbed his sword halfway up the blade and thrust at her in response. "Playing for the long shot! I like! But there's one big problem I see with that plan…"

She noticed the twist too late to fully avoid the second half of the strike.

"...I trust my own skills with my life."

Even diving as far to the side as she could, she was just a hair too slow. Ever so slightly not flexible enough, just slightly too uncoordinated to manage a near miss. She was usually fully capable of making fluid moves such as that, but that did little to dull the reality of the facts in the short term.

The edge of the blade sliced a few centimeters deep, just above her hip. A clean cut, more of a graze than anything, but... it sent a rather grim message.

So much for not getting hit, but things could have been a lot worse, she realized. A few centimeters further inward, and she was looking at complete impalement. That would have for sure required everything she had to heal back up, not to mention left her wide open for a follow-up. Still, it was bleeding profusely enough that she needed to take a step back and heal.

An opportunity for which, she discovered, was becoming less and less likely with each passing second. The tempo had fallen squarely into Măcel's hands, and him giving that up was even less likely than her chances of victory. It forced her to focus on dodging first and healing second, the wound knitting itself shut too slowly to fully recover before her movements inadvertently tore it open again.

This is bad, she realized. He's way more experienced with high level combat than I could've predicted. Even if my strategy works – which is a pretty big if – I get the feeling that he'll still wipe the floor with me nine times out of ten... and that tenth one I'm not sure I'd even win.

The logical conclusion stung. She liked to think she knew her opponent well, after how many times she'd been forced to duel him on a whim. Always his idea, of course. What thrall or subordinate vampire could refuse, once they'd fallen in with his crowd? It was either take a chance in the ring, where he might give you an actual chance to learn something, or be killed on the spot without a single opportunity to defend.

Everyone ended up choosing the former, naturally. Some survived long enough to escape alive. Most didn't. He wasn't always in the teaching mood.

The wound on her stomach finally sealed shut, but at a rate noticeably slower than she was used to. That… probably meant she was about halfway through her reserves, at a rough estimate. She needed to find an opening now, or…

"Huh?"

Măcel shifted from pressuring her into a high blocking stance, for some yet to be determined reason. A whistling sound at her back indicated that something was flying in their direction, fast.

This was her chance. Not hesitating even for a moment, she sidestepped quickly, pouncing low toward his unguarded side-

"Nice try!"

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-And at the last moment, Măcel countered with a half-turn pirouette, bent low and switching to unarmed combat at the last moment. He kicked out his raised leg, squarely catching her right in the chest.

The force was immense. Something definitely broke that was more important than just her ribs, and she was sent flying bodily backwards towards the demolished buildings on the side of the street at breakneck speeds. Grace covered the distance in less than a second, and came to a halt in an even shorter time frame.

But, she was just barely able to catch a glimpse of what had almost caught the arch-vampire off-guard. A dirty knife, covered in blood and slicing through the air almost as quickly as she was.

It missed.

She fell to the pavement and rolled for a bit. More important things ruptured inside as she landed in a pile of dead vampire bodies. From the center of the street, Măcel feigned anger at the newcomer.

"Hey! I'm busy with something here! Take a number!"

The mist drifted lazily across the street, momentarily veiling the figure who had decided to get themselves involved. A dark, towering silhouette stood at eye level with the arch-vampire, eyes hidden behind two gleaming white lenses.

"Nah," he replied, aiming a pistol in Măcel's direction. "We're taking you on now."

That voice… There's no way she could ever forget that accent, after the Kennel Massacre.

The arch-vampire snorted, arrogant coming off his recent success. "We? Who's we?"

Grace was unsure what he meant as well. He plainly wasn't referring to her, and she was the only other combatant she knew of in the immediate area that had a chance of holding their own. For… a certain definition of hold their own, anyways.

God… damn it all, she cursed to herself as another wave of pain washed up the length of her body. I'd thought for sure… I'd thought for sure I could convince myself last time wasn't a fluke.

Măcel had generously called their last fight a draw, but perhaps a ceasefire would have been a more accurate statement. She and some other vampires had tried to stage an escape from his thrall-camp that fateful day, and unlike most escape attempts managed to make significant progress on their own.

They'd been so close, once they'd managed to work together to take down that rotten lieutenant of his. But…

She winced again in pain, though not from physical wounds this time. Some scars went deeper than just the body.

The moon had been overcast that night, she remembered. Darker than usual. We'd thought that as good a chance as we were going to get, and… even now, I think that was correct. What we didn't know was just how small that chance had really been from the start.

Stupid… why did I think I could take him on alone? There'd been five of us trying to get out that night, and I thought somehow I was special, just because I was the only one to finally make it?

A window shattered somewhere above Grace, showering her in shards of glass while a second silhouette sought to bring her back from her own traumatic memories.

This one – whoever they were – was much more nimble, built more like a marathon runner than a bodybuilder like the Constable was. He wielded a sword of his own, raised high above his head in a telegraphed, overhead strike. He sailed over the road, poised to challenge Măcel's similarly sized blade in silent contempt.

Steel met steel, the sound of the clash rang deafeningly loud through the streets.

The blades bit deep into each other, chips of metal flying from the impact as well as more than a few sparks. Măcel examined the weapon with something bordering on fanaticism.

"Well, damn! Where'd you get your hands on an odachi all the way out here?! Just getting this montante I have was a miracle!"

The swordsman said nothing. Not that the battlefield remained silent, as the arch-vampire spoke enough for the both of them.

"Shame it can't hold up to a clash on our level, eh? Hope you don't mind that little butter knife snapping in half on you once we really get going here. Personally, a katana probably would have suited you better."

They clashed a few more times, and a few bullets from the Constable joined the fray to officially make this a two on one. The second round of this battle began in earnest, and Măcel finally seemed to be the one being pressured in this showdown.

And Grace… could only watch.

She was stuck stitching herself back together from the inside out, splayed out across the top of a midden heap. It sounded bad, and for a sense of the word it sort of was, but things were pretty bearable once the deadened nerves stopped listening to her pain receptors.

I need to get back in there, she repeated to herself. I need to get back in there. This is personal.

Black spots darted around at the edge of her vision. She was starting to fade out. That only ever happened if she ran out of spare blood completely. If only… she… could…

Her face began to droop, toward the pile of bodies below her. The glassy, obsidian eyes of the undisguised vampires she'd formerly laid waste to stared back at her, almost mocking her efforts to best them openly.

Look at you, they seemed to call to her. For all your posturing at trying to be better, for all of us you've killed or watched die in the name of protecting others, here you are, forgotten and nearly nameless like the rest of us.

She was losing it, Grace realized. Death must be closer than she initially imagined.

What made you dare to think that any of us were any more than fodder? Who promised you false hopes of a life you once knew? You know you can't go back now. None of us can. None of us did. And even you cannot escape what lies in store for us at the end.

The difference your actions have made… can be measured in centimeters.

If she hadn't been sickly pale before, she was definitely looking so right now. The sounds of clanging metal began to grow faint, her heightened senses dulling down to unusable levels. Thoughts became hard to formulate, practically impossible concepts to piece together as the already dark world drifted even darker. So, rather than try to form something coherent…

She held onto the one last piece of solid resolve she had.

I'm not… done yet, she insisted despite herself. There's still… I need to…

Even now, that last notion was beginning to deteriorate at the edges. She was beating desperately against the inevitable with nothing but her own hopes.

Grace needed more than just hopes to save herself. So, she took what she needed.

Moving without thought, her mouth opened wide, fangs gleaming porcelain white even as her eyes remained firmly shut, reddish-black hair hanging low over her face. The veins of the nearest dead vampire split open, final dregs of inky blood it held being dredged up to keep her alive even just a moment longer.

She felt something small and broken come back together, fixed. Progress. But with so much left to repair, she would need to bide her time almost as much as she needed to hurry.

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