Page 26 of Eternal Ruin

It’d killed him, making that list. It’d killed him even more when Lusidio destroyed his people.

He reached his quarters and froze.

The door was open.

Although this space was communal, it was still considered rude to barge in uninvited on a claimed quarter. Slowly, Susenyos walked in. He half hoped it was the cockroach Makary House dranaic from the meeting. Here to finish what they started.

Even Uxlay law wouldn’t punish him if he was attacked first.

And because the day had truly been hellish, finally, the angels chose to smile down at him. It wasn’t the Makary dranaic. Sitting on the gray couch, metal-coated hand under his chin, was Samson the Usurper.

“So Professor Andreyas is done teaching you when to bite and when to bark,” Susenyos said, listening for Arin or Warde.

No one else was around.

“This—” Samson hurled the word at him with disgust. “This is the place you chose to hide in. With senseless laws and restrictions that make us no more than dogs.”

“Uxlay is restrictive but useful. But I doubt that’s why you’re glaring at me.”

A growl made his scar ripple. “You left us.”

There it was. Sixty years after he left Samson and his people in the torture cells of Lusidio’s camp. The reckoning he’d thought would never come.

“I had no other choice,” Susenyos said, the words well-practiced by now, cool and even.

Samson flew out of his chair and was on him, metal fist pulled back with all the strength of his vampirism. Susenyos didn’t dodge. He met the impact directly. Susenyos’s skull rang as the blow sent him crashing into a desk, then flat against the wall. The pain was extraordinary but he savored it, let it warm his entire face and burn. It would fade soon. That was the beauty of his immortality. He could handle a thousand blows and survive. He needed Samson to see he could not break easily.

Needed himself to remember.

Blood dripped down Susenyos’s shirt from his split skin, making him frown. Another custom Delarus shirt ruined. He didn’t mind blood, but it did spoil a lot of beautiful clothing.

Susenyos rolled his tongue, touching the silver nail piercing the roof of his mouth. The urge to shoot it straight into Samson’s thorax was nearly unbearable. But the bastard had to live until the blade artifact was secured.

Samson vanished from his sight.

Something shifted in Susenyos’s periphery, a glint of metal. He launched off the wall, seized the metal-gloved hand aiming for his face, and slammed Samson against the wall, relishing the sound of his groan.

There was also a theory he needed to test.

He yanked off Samson’s left glove, drawing out a satisfying cry. All of Samson’s fingers were blackened. His veins, once green, were now coal-like and unnaturally thick, pulsing, an infection moving through him like a worm. The only thing different since Susenyos had last seen it were two strips of oddly shaped leaves wrapping the length of Samson’s arm.

This was black rot. The visions that haunted him in Adane House. The sickness that killed his betrothed.

“You shouldn’t be able to stand, let alone fight me,” Susenyos said, forehead furrowed. “Half a day. That was your limit. Yet I hear you’ve been walking around all week.”

Black rot consumed everything it touched—plants, animals, humans. For vampires, it latched on like a leech, continuously feeding off eternal energy.

There was no cure.

And Samson shouldn’t have had the strength to fight at this hour of the day.

Samson raised his feet and kicked out, cracking Susenyos’s ribs and sending Susenyos flying onto the couch. He breathed through winded lungs. He had known this fight would eventually happen. And better here than at Adane House.

“How are you managing the pain?” Susenyos asked, chest heaving.

A victorious light shone in his enemy’s eyes. “You think this is like the last time we fought. Things have changed, wendem.”

The last time they fought, in the endless pouring rain of Gojam Castle, lightning had struck twice. God himself had been watching, choosing the victor, determined to banish them both to the underworld where they belonged.