The smoke from a Cuban cigar, priced at a factory worker’s annual salary, drifted lazily through the air. It created a thin haze that refracted the light from the crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling of The Sapphire Dome. This was no ordinary VIP room. It was the heart of Las Vegas greed, a place where money no longer served as currency but merely as a scoreboard in a contest of wills between grown men. Oliver Warner leaned back in his leather chair, his expression flat. He looked as if he were waiting in line at the post office rather than wagering five million dollars in the center of the table. Across from him sat Mr. Henderson, a Texas oil tycoon with a triple chin, sweating like a pig that realized it was headed for the slaughter. "Are you going to call or fold, old man?" Oliver tapped his index finger against the mahogany table. "I have dinner plans in half an hour, and honestly, watching you sweat is ruining my appetite." Henderson growled, his hands tre

"You have two choices, Miss Saw-Tooth," Oliver said. His voice was steady, but his breath was shallow, sounding like an asthmatic at the end of a marathon. He gripped the TV remote as if it were a live grenade. "You bite me now and I make sure we both die a pathetic death, or you back off and let me breathe." Bella, or whatever creature was wearing the skin of the nurse named Bella, chuckled. The sound creaked like a rusted door hinge. She straightened her posture, but her murky yellow eyes never strayed from Oliver’s throat. "Empty threats from a man who can’t even lift a glass of water," Bella sneered. "What are you going to do? Throw that remote at me? Oh, I’m terrified." "It’s not the remote, idiot," Oliver hissed. "It’s this cable." Oliver’s trembling left hand was not holding the IV line. Instead, it gripped the power cable of the EKG monitor beside him. The monitor was linked directly to the hospital’s central alarm system. "You said you’re a 'Low-Level

The night air in Las Vegas usually smelled of money, gasoline, and cheap perfume. But tonight, for Oliver Warner, the air smelled like his own insides. "Heugh!" Oliver knelt in the alleyway behind the abandoned train station, retching stomach acid onto the cracked asphalt. His body shook violently, not from the cold, but from the physiological crash following the adrenaline high. He had just killed a living thing. He had just watched the body of an intelligent creature explode into a meat slurry against a steel wall. There was no glamour in the kill. No heroic background music. There was only the sound of snapping bone, the copper tang of blood, and a wave of nausea that now choked him. "Dammit." Oliver wiped his mouth with a silk handkerchief that was now filthy with dust and bloodstains. He tried to stand, leaning heavily on his stolen cane. His knees felt hollow. "I thought killing a monster would feel like hitting the jackpot. Instead, it feels like swallowing

"AARGHHH!" Oliver’s scream died in his throat, surfacing only as a long, agonizing groan. He clawed at the left side of his face, his nails digging into his skin until it bled. It didn't feel like laser surgery. It felt as if someone had poured molten lead directly into his eye socket, letting it boil before it froze instantly. The world around him spun. The cold marble floor of The Purgatory felt as though it were undulating like the deck of a ship in a storm. "Breathe, Mr. Warner. Don't die just yet. If you die in the lobby, I’ll have to pay for extra cleaning fees." The voice of Vork, the goblin concierge, sounded distant and echoing. Oliver panted, tears reflexively streaming from his right eye. His left eye remained clamped shut, throbbing wildly in sync with a heart pumping pure adrenaline. "Bastard..." Oliver hissed, spittle dripping onto the floor. "You said... it would hurt... but you didn't say it would feel like a drill in my brain!" "Knowledge i

The tip of the silver bolt shimmered coldly in the fading moonlight, hovering less than two inches from Oliver’s left eye. He could see his own reflection in the polished metal, a face scorched, bloodied, and utterly exhausted. "I’m going to ask you one more time," the woman’s voice said. She sounded flat and emotionless, like a schoolteacher reprimanding a naughty student who had brought a grenade to class. "You are human, yet your aura reeks of Purgatory. And you just tried to immolate a Feral Vampire using a gas pipe. That is either the tactic of a madman or someone very desperate." Oliver tried to swallow, but his throat was raw and parched from the scalding smoke. "I... cough... I prefer the term visionary," Oliver rasped. He attempted to shift his body away from the bolt, but the agony radiating through his frame pinned him to the pavement. "And please, Miss Robin Hood. If you're going to shoot, just shoot. Don't just point it. It’s making me cross-eyed." Cla