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I caught Natasha’s eye across the garage and gave her a familiar look.

She understood immediately, shifting her position to cut off the last potential exit route.

From the corner of my vision, I saw my son moving Chanel further back.

He positioned her safely behind a concrete barrier while maintaining her line of sight. Good. She deserved to witness this.

“Old, perhaps.” I replied, allowing a trickle of blood to run from the corner of my mouth. “But weak, never.”

I let Lonzo land another blow to my sternum. As he committed to the punch, overextending himself, I made my move. Decades of combat experience compressed into a single motion. I pivoted around his extended arm, gripping his shoulder with one hand, and drove my other hand directly into his chest.

The sound was unlike anything human ears could discern.

There was the simultaneous ripping of skin, muscle, and bone as my fingers pierce through his ribcage with surgical precision.

Lonzo’s eyes bulged. Pure shock replaced triumph as he realized too late what was happening to him.

The garage grew silent, seeming to pause in respect for the grotesque tableau I created.

“This,” I said, my voice quiet but carrying in the sudden stillness, “is the difference between us.”

My fingers closed around his heart. A strange organ in newer vampires. It was still beating but not pumping blood. This magical organ served instead as a reservoir for the power that animates our undead forms. We had yet to understand where it came from or how it worked.

Lonzo’s mouth opened, but no sound materialized. His body went rigid, every muscle locked in place by my direct contact with his vampire heart.

“Teresa never taught you about this, did she?” I continued conversationally, as if we were discussing the weather rather than me standing with my hand buried wrist-deep in his chest cavity.

With a single, brutal movement, I wrenched his heart from his chest. The organ pulsed in my hand, unnaturally bright against my blood-stained skin.

Lonzo collapsed to his knees, his body still animated but paralyzed, unable to move while his artificial heart existed outside his body.

His knees gave out, and he fell flat on his back.

His eyes, however, remained conscious, horror and understanding dawning simultaneously as he stared up at his own beating heart.

I held it up for all to see. This was my trophy from vampire-on-vampire combat. This was the ultimate display of dominance. Blood dripped between my fingers, spattering on the concrete beneath us.

“You threatened what’s mine.” I told him. “You aligned yourself with my enemies. You must die.”

With deliberate slowness, I closed my fist around his heart.

The mass struggled against my grip like a bird trying to escape a cage.

Then, with one final squeeze, I crushed it.

The organ ruptured between my fingers, its contents running down my arm in rivulets of dark, congealed blood.

Lonzo’s body shuddered, a silent scream frozen on his face as the connection between his consciousness and his physical form began to degrade.

He isn’t dead, not yet. Vampire anatomy ensured he remained aware, even as his body failed him. His eyes followed me as I took a step back. He ogled with helpless rage mixed with a dash of fear as Natasha approached with a small metal container.

“The accelerant.” She announced, removing the cap.

The pungent smell of chemicals filled the air as she methodically doused Lonzo’s lifeless form.

My best soldier ensured every inch of him was covered with the flammable liquid.

The substance mingled with the blood on his chest, creating a macabre painting across his frozen body.

I turned to Chanel, who had appeared from behind her protective barrier. Her face was composed. Her eyes fixed on Lonzo with an expression that contained no pity, no hesitation, only a cold hard stare that made my chest fill with pride.

“Zand.” She called to me. “I want to do it.”

Natasha paused, looking at me for direction.

“Let her.” I said to Natasha.

Natasha took two steps back and wiped her hands on a black bandana before reaching into her jacket pocket for a silver lighter.

“Ms. Taylor.” Natasha said formally, extending the lighter toward Chanel. “The honor is yours.”

Chanel walked over and took the lighter in her hands. She approached Lonzo’s body. When she stood over him, she paused, looking down into his terrified eyes. She broke her gaze at Lonzo to look over at Morgan and then back at her stalker.

“This is for Craig.” She simply stated. “For Morgan. For those three people I heard you kill back in Minnesota and for every woman named Chanel Taylor who died because of your fucked up family.”

Her thumb flicked the lighter. The flame sprung to life with a soft click. She held it for a moment. The orange glow illuminated her face from below. Then, with a gesture as casual as lighting a cigarette, she dropped the lighter onto Lonzo’s fluid-soaked torso.

I moved with a quickness, grabbing Chanel around the waist and pulling her back as the flames erupted.

The fire consumed Lonzo instantly. Blue-white flames climbed higher as they found fresh fuel in his clothes, his hair, his flesh.

His eyes remained open and aware, as the fire melted the features of his face and turned him into more of a monster than he had been in human and vampire form.

We stood in a loose semicircle, me, Chanel, Natasha, Harlen, Donté and Morgan. We watched as the flames transformed our enemy into ash. No one spoke. No words were necessary.

Chanel leaned against me. My arm snaked around her waist, securing her against my side where she belonged.

In the flames, I saw not just the end of Lonzo, but the final severing of Teresa’s influence on our lives.

With both the Lopez siblings and my ex-wife reduced to ash, the threats that had hung over us dissipated like the smoke now filling the garage.

“If we’re going to keep killing vampires, I think we need to start using matches.” Natasha joked with a straight face. “Seriously, we must leave. I need to make sure the camera footage, didn’t record us.”

“Right. Natasha, you’re in charge.”

I took Chanel’s hand and ushered her away.

In the distance, I could hear Natasha giving out assignments for cleanup, which included retrieving the lighter that Chanel touched and the ashes.

I knew Natasha could handle it. I needed to get Chanel into bed, and I wanted to lie beside her.

Everything else could wait until the afternoon.

In the new world I aimed to create, endings were rarely permanent. But for now, in this moment, we carved out a space for me to be the vampire king that served justice with fire and blood.