James stepped into the moonlit clearing with the confidence of a predator who had never encountered anything he couldn't eventually kill. His pale eyes swept across the space, cataloging potential escape routes, defensive positions, and the tactical advantages offered by the terrain. Behind him, Victoria and Laurent maintained their practiced formation—close enough to provide immediate support, far enough apart to avoid being caught in a single coordinated attack.
"Three local vampires," James observed quietly, noting the way Eleanor, Edythe, and Jessamyn had positioned themselves at the clearing's edge. "And our mystery target."
His gaze fixed on the figure standing in the center of the open space—tall, powerfully built, with golden hair that seemed to generate its own light in the moonlit darkness. But there was something about the creature's posture, the way it held itself with absolute stillness, that triggered warning signals in James's predatory instincts.
"That's not human," Victoria breathed, her voice carrying the kind of recognition that came from centuries of studying prey animals.
"No," Laurent agreed with growing unease, "but it's not vampire either. The scent signature is completely wrong for any supernatural species I've encountered."
James felt the familiar rush of anticipation that accompanied truly unique hunting challenges. Whatever stood before them represented something new—and in his experience, 'new' usually meant 'valuable.'
"Fascinating," he murmured, beginning his standard pre-hunt assessment. "Look at the muscle definition, the proportional development. This creature has been enhanced far beyond normal parameters, but the enhancement appears natural rather than artificial."
He took a step forward, ready to begin the careful dance of psychological intimidation that typically preceded his hunts.
The creature smiled.
Not the desperate bravado of prey trying to project false confidence. Not the nervous humor of something hoping to defuse tension through social interaction. This was the smile of an apex predator who had just recognized that dinner had walked directly into its territory.
"James," the creature said, its voice carrying harmonics that seemed to resonate in frequencies that made vampire hearing uncomfortable. "Victoria. Laurent."
The casual use of their names hit all three nomads like ice water. In two centuries of hunting, James had never encountered prey that knew his identity before he chose to reveal it.
"You know who we are," Laurent observed with diplomatic caution, though his refined posture had shifted subtly toward combat readiness.
"I know what you are," the creature corrected, and there was something in its golden eyes that made even Victoria's predatory instincts suggest that retreat might be the wisest course of action. "Nomad vampires who kill for sport. Predators who terrorize entire regions because you believe yourselves to be untouchable."
James's tracking instincts were screaming warnings that his conscious mind was still processing. The scent signatures he was detecting didn't match any known supernatural species, but they carried undertones of power that went far beyond mere physical enhancement.
"And what," he asked with the kind of cold curiosity that had preceded countless successful hunts, "are you?"
The creature's smile widened, revealing teeth that looked perfectly human but somehow carried the promise of terrible efficiency.
"I," it said with quiet certainty, "am what happens when gods get tired of watching monsters prey on innocents."
The last word was still echoing across the clearing when the creature simply... vanished.
Not the blur of vampire speed, which even at its fastest was still trackable by enhanced senses. Not the strategic positioning that marked advanced combat techniques. The creature had been standing in the center of the clearing, and then it was simply elsewhere, moving at speeds that exceeded vampire perception entirely.
James had exactly enough time to register that something was wrong before a force like concentrated lightning slammed into his back.
He went down hard, his vampire reflexes completely overwhelmed by an impact that carried the kind of kinetic energy usually associated with industrial machinery. The forest floor rushed up to meet him with painful intimacy, and for the first time in decades, James found himself genuinely disoriented.
*What just—*
The thought was interrupted by Victoria's scream—a sound of pure terror that cut through the night air like breaking glass. James rolled to his side, his enhanced vision searching for threats, and saw—
Nothing.
Victoria had vanished. Laurent was spinning in a defensive circle, his refined features twisted with confusion and growing panic. The three local vampires remained at the clearing's edge, but their expressions had shifted from concern to something approaching awe.
"Where is she?" Laurent demanded, his diplomatic calm cracking under the strain of a situation that defied logical analysis. "Where did she—"
A wet, metallic sound echoed from the forest—the distinctive crack of vampire physiology under extreme pressure. Not the clean destruction of decapitation, but the grinding collapse that happened when supernatural strength met something even more supernatural.
James surged to his feet, every predatory instinct screaming warnings as he tried to locate the source of the sound. His tracking abilities, honed over centuries of hunting, found nothing but empty forest and the lingering scent traces of his missing companion.
"Victoria!" he called out, his voice carrying across the wilderness with desperate authority.
The response came from directly above him.
Something large and impossibly fast dropped from the canopy like a falling star, slamming into the ground with enough force to crack the bedrock beneath the forest floor. The impact crater that resulted was perfectly circular, as if carved by divine geometry, and at its center stood their mystery target—golden mane flowing in the night breeze, eyes blazing with inner fire, and one hand casually gripping what remained of Victoria's head.
The vampire's brilliant orange hair was still beautiful, still catching moonlight with supernatural radiance. But her features had been compressed into something that resembled modern art more than recognizable anatomy—her skull crushed inward with the kind of precise pressure that suggested intimate familiarity with vampire physiology and its specific vulnerabilities.
James stared at the destroyed remains of his companion, his mind struggling to process what he was witnessing. Victoria had been fast—faster than most vampires, gifted with evasion abilities that made her nearly impossible to catch once she decided to run. The idea that something could not only track her through dense forest canopy, but capture and destroy her in the span of seconds, challenged everything he understood about supernatural combat dynamics.
"Impossible," Laurent whispered, his diplomatic composure completely abandoned. "Nothing moves that fast. Nothing has that kind of strength."
The creature—whatever it was—held Victoria's crushed head for a moment longer, examining it with the clinical detachment of a scientist studying an interesting specimen. Then, with casual efficiency that somehow made the gesture more terrifying than dramatic violence would have been, it opened its fingers.
What remained of Victoria's head crumbled to ash and scattered on the night breeze, leaving no trace of the vampire who had terrorized multiple states over several decades of nomadic hunting.
James felt something he hadn't experienced in over two centuries: genuine fear.
Not the tactical concern that came from encountering potentially dangerous opponents. Not the strategic wariness that marked encounters with unknown supernatural entities. This was primal terror—the bone-deep recognition that he was no longer the predator in this equation.
"What are you?" he asked again, though his voice came out rougher than he'd intended.
The creature turned its blazing golden eyes toward him with the kind of patient attention that suggested it was considering the question seriously.
"I told you," it replied with terrifying gentleness. "I'm divine justice with claws and fangs. I'm what happens when protective instincts get backed by cosmic authority. I'm the thing that hunts monsters who think they're untouchable."
Laurent was backing toward the tree line now, his refined features pale with the kind of existential horror that came from realizing you were completely outclassed by forces beyond your understanding.
"This is impossible," he said, his French accent becoming more pronounced as stress overwhelmed his careful pronunciation. "Nothing in the natural order possesses this kind of power. Nothing supernatural, nothing divine, nothing—"
He never finished the sentence.
The creature moved again with that impossible speed, crossing the clearing in what seemed like a single fluid motion. But this time, James's enhanced senses caught fragments of the movement—not enough to track it, but enough to understand that what he was witnessing wasn't merely enhanced velocity.
This was something rewriting the fundamental rules of physics in real-time.
Laurent's scream cut off abruptly, replaced by the grinding sound of vampire physiology under extreme stress. When James's vision cleared, he saw the creature standing where Laurent had been, holding the diplomatic vampire's torso in both hands like someone examining a particularly interesting piece of sculpture.
Laurent was still conscious—vampire resilience meant that even massive trauma didn't immediately result in destruction. His refined features were twisted with pain and disbelief as he stared down at his own midsection, trying to understand how his supernatural durability had been overcome so completely.
"The fascinating thing about vampire anatomy," the creature observed with the tone of someone conducting an educational demonstration, "is that you maintain consciousness even when your structural integrity is compromised. Which means you get to experience exactly what your victims felt during their final moments."
Laurent's eyes widened with the kind of recognition that came from understanding cosmic justice in its most practical application.
"Please," he whispered, his diplomatic skills finally finding something worthy of negotiation. "We can discuss this. There are rules, protocols for supernatural territorial disputes. We didn't know this area was under protection. We can leave, relocate to—"
The creature's grip tightened with surgical precision, finding the exact stress points where vampire physiology became vulnerable to directed force. Laurent's plea dissolved into a sound that would haunt James's nightmares for whatever time he had remaining.
The diplomatic vampire came apart like a complex puzzle being disassembled by someone intimately familiar with its construction. Not the messy destruction of brute force, but the precise deconstruction that spoke of perfect understanding of supernatural anatomy and its specific weaknesses.
When it was finished, Laurent's remains followed the same pattern as Victoria's—crumbling to ash that scattered on the night breeze, leaving no trace of centuries of existence and accumulated knowledge.
James stood alone in the moonlit clearing, surrounded by the evidence of power that exceeded anything in his understanding of the supernatural world. His tracking instincts, honed over decades of successful hunts, were providing him with exactly no useful information about how to survive an encounter with something that could dismantle vampires like defective clockwork.
The creature turned its attention back to him with the kind of patient focus that suggested they were finally ready to have a serious conversation.
"And then there was one," it said quietly, approaching with movements that carried the inexorable certainty of natural law. "James, the tracker. The hunter who prides himself on being able to find anything, catch anything, kill anything."
James backed away instinctively, his enhanced reflexes searching for escape routes that might offer some chance of survival. But the creature's casual demonstration of speed suggested that running would only delay the inevitable while robbing him of whatever dignity remained.
"You followed my scent through miles of wilderness," the creature continued, its voice carrying harmonics that seemed to resonate in frequencies designed to inspire existential dread. "You tracked me like I was just another interesting challenge. Another trophy for your collection."
The golden eyes blazed brighter, and James felt something in his vampire physiology respond with the kind of involuntary submission that marked encounters with apex predators.
"But here's the thing about hunting," the creature said with the terrible patience of justice finally given form. "Eventually, you encounter something that hunts you back."
James tried to speak, tried to formulate some kind of response that might buy him time to think or plan or find some avenue of escape. But his voice seemed to have abandoned him entirely, leaving him mute before power that transcended anything in his understanding of supernatural hierarchy.
The creature smiled again, and this time the expression carried promises of education, revelation, and the kind of cosmic justice that made arguing feel like questioning the fundamental structure of reality itself.
"Let me show you," it said gently, "what it feels like to be prey."
In the trees at the clearing's edge, three vampire sisters watched in fascinated horror as divine justice began the final lesson of the evening—a comprehensive demonstration of why some prey animals were never meant to be hunted at all.
The night air filled with sounds that would echo through the Olympic National Forest for years to come, serving as a warning to any predators who might mistake divine protection for mere supernatural enhancement.
Some hunts, it turned out, ended exactly as they were meant to.
---
James stood frozen in the center of the clearing, his vampire senses hyperalert but finding nothing useful in the sudden, oppressive silence that had descended after his companions' destruction. The scent trails that should have told him everything about his opponent's location, intentions, and capabilities were mysteriously absent—as if the creature had simply ceased to exist in any trackable form.
"Where—" he began, his voice hoarse with the kind of primal fear he hadn't experienced since his human days.
The word was swallowed by forest silence so complete it felt artificial. No wind through the evergreen branches. No distant calls of nocturnal birds. No scurrying of small mammals through the underbrush. Even the three vampire sisters at the clearing's edge had gone motionless, their supernatural stillness adding to the atmosphere of expectant dread.
James turned in a slow circle, his enhanced vision scanning every shadow, every gap between trees, every potential hiding spot that might conceal something with the creature's demonstrated capabilities. His tracking instincts—refined over two centuries of successful hunts—found nothing but empty forest and the lingering chemical traces of his destroyed companions.
Then, from somewhere in the darkness beyond the moonlit clearing, came a sound that made his vampire physiology react with involuntary terror.
Laughter.
Not the cruel amusement that marked predators enjoying their victims' fear. Not the manic giggling that accompanied supernatural madness. This was something far worse—the warm, genuinely delighted laughter of someone who was having the time of their life.
"James," the creature's voice drifted from the forest, seeming to come from multiple directions simultaneously. "Tell me something. In all your years of hunting, have you ever been hunted back?"
The question echoed off the trees with acoustic properties that should have allowed James to triangulate its source. Instead, the sound seemed to originate from everywhere and nowhere, wrapping around him like invisible chains.
"I've faced other vampires," James called out, trying to inject confidence into his voice while his eyes searched frantically for any sign of movement. "Other supernatural entities. I've always emerged victorious."
"Other vampires," the voice repeated with obvious amusement, "are not divine avatars with a cosmic mandate to eliminate threats to innocent life."
A branch snapped somewhere to James's left. He spun toward the sound, his enhanced reflexes primed for combat, but found only empty forest and shadows that seemed to shift with malevolent purpose.
"But let's make this interesting," the creature continued from a completely different direction. "You pride yourself on being the perfect tracker, don't you? The hunter who can find anything, anywhere, under any circumstances?"
James felt sweat that his vampire physiology shouldn't have been capable of producing begin to bead on his forehead. "What are you proposing?"
"A game." The voice was closer now, though still impossible to locate with precision. "Hide and seek, with a supernatural twist. I'll give you exactly sixty seconds to find me before I start hunting you in earnest."
"And if I find you?" James asked, though his voice carried little hope that the answer would offer any real advantage.
"Then you get to try to fight me face to face instead of being systematically dismantled from the shadows." The creature's amusement was evident even through the acoustic distortion. "Though I should mention that Laurent tried the direct approach, and we saw how that worked out for him."
From the trees at the clearing's edge, Eleanor's voice carried clearly to James's enhanced hearing: "Is he seriously offering to play games with a nomad vampire who's been killing innocent people?"
"It's not a game," Edythe replied with refined precision. "It's education. He's teaching James exactly what his victims experienced—the terror of being hunted by something stronger, faster, and infinitely more dangerous."
"Psychological warfare," Jessamyn added with her honey drawl, though her voice carried approval rather than criticism. "Break down his confidence before moving to physical confrontation. Very effective."
The creature's laughter echoed through the forest again, confirming that he'd heard their analysis. "Smart women. I can see why fate arranged for us to meet."
"Sixty seconds, James," the voice continued, shifting location again with impossible stealth. "Starting... now."
James's enhanced hearing caught the faint sound of movement—footsteps that were deliberately audible, designed to give him something to track. He lunged toward the sound with vampire speed, crashing through underbrush and low-hanging branches with the kind of desperate determination that marked prey animals fleeing for their lives.
The trail led deeper into the forest, away from the moonlit clearing and into sections where the canopy grew so thick that even vampire vision struggled with the darkness. James followed the deliberately left signs—disturbed earth, broken twigs, scent traces that should have made tracking elementary.
But every clue led to nothing.
He would pursue a clear trail for dozens of meters, only to have it vanish completely at a seemingly random point. Footprints would disappear mid-stride. Scent traces would cut off as if their source had simply ceased to exist. The signs that had drawn him forward would prove to be elaborate misdirection, leaving him standing alone in forest darkness with no idea where his quarry had actually gone.
"Thirty seconds," the creature's voice called from somewhere behind him—which should have been impossible, since James had been following a clear trail leading in the opposite direction.
James spun around, his vampire reflexes enhanced by desperation, and tried to backtrack toward the voice. But the forest that he'd just passed through looked completely different now—trees that should have been familiar landmarks had apparently moved, paths that had been clear moments before were now blocked by undergrowth that seemed to have grown in real-time.
"This is impossible," he said aloud, his voice carrying the kind of strained disbelief that marked someone whose understanding of reality was being systematically dismantled.
"Impossible is a human concept," the creature replied from yet another direction. "Divine beings operate under different rules."
James caught a glimpse of golden light moving between trees about fifty meters ahead. He pursued it with vampire speed, crashing through the forest with the kind of reckless determination that abandoned stealth in favor of direct confrontation.
The light stayed just beyond his reach—close enough to maintain visual contact, far enough away to prevent him from getting a clear look at its source. It led him in what felt like a straight line deeper into the wilderness, away from any potential escape routes and toward sections of forest so remote that even his extensive tracking experience provided no reference points.
"Fifteen seconds," the voice called, though it seemed to be coming from directly overhead now.
James looked up to see nothing but evergreen branches and the occasional patch of cloudy sky. No golden light. No sign of movement. No indication that anything supernatural had ever been present in the canopy above.
When he looked back down, he discovered that the forest around him had changed again.
The trees were different—taller, older, with bark patterns that suggested species he didn't recognize. The undergrowth had shifted from typical Pacific Northwest flora to something that looked almost tropical, with broad leaves and flowering plants that had no business growing in this climate.
"Where am I?" he asked the empty forest, though he suspected the answer would be either unhelpful or terrifying.
"Exactly where I want you to be," the creature's voice replied from the darkness around him. "Time's up, James."
The last words carried a harmonic resonance that seemed to vibrate in frequencies designed to inspire existential dread. James felt his vampire instincts switch from hunting mode to survival mode—the kind of primal terror that made even apex predators recognize when they had encountered something higher on the food chain.
"You know what your victims felt during those final moments?" the voice continued, moving around him in a circle that James couldn't track despite his enhanced senses. "The realization that all their strength, all their experience, all their confidence meant nothing against something that was simply better at being dangerous than they were."
A branch snapped directly behind James. He spun to face the sound, his enhanced vision finding nothing but shifting shadows and the suggestion of movement that disappeared the moment he focused on it.
"The growing understanding that they were completely outmatched," the voice went on from his left side now. "That their deaths weren't tragic accidents or heroic last stands, but inevitable conclusions to encounters they were never equipped to survive."
James lunged toward the voice with desperate vampire speed, his hands grasping for anything solid, anything he could sink his claws into and drag down to his level. His fingers closed on empty air that somehow felt charged with the kind of energy that made his supernatural physiology respond with involuntary submission.
"The final comprehension," the voice whispered from directly behind his ear, so close that he could feel breath that carried the warmth of divine power, "that all their struggles were just entertainment for something that had been toying with them from the beginning."
James spun around to find nothing but forest darkness and his own growing hysteria. His vampire senses were providing him with exactly no useful information about the creature's location, capabilities, or immediate intentions. For the first time since his transformation two centuries ago, he was operating completely blind.
"Please," he said into the darkness, his voice breaking with the kind of desperation he'd heard from countless victims over the decades. "I understand now. I know what you are, what you're capable of. I'll leave this territory. I'll never return. I'll cease all hunting activities and relocate to regions where—"
"James." The voice cut through his panicked bargaining with divine authority that made argument feel like questioning fundamental natural law. "Do you remember what you told Laurent when he suggested discretion might be preferable to drawing attention?"
James's throat closed with the kind of visceral terror that accompanied perfect recall of his own words: "Discretion is overrated. We are apex predators in a world of sheep. Why should we limit ourselves to accommodate the sensibilities of our food sources?"
"Exactly," the creature agreed with terrifying gentleness. "You chose to view innocent people as food sources whose sensibilities didn't matter. You decided that being an apex predator gave you the right to terrorize entire regions."
The sound of approaching footsteps echoed through the transformed forest—not the stealthy movement of someone trying to remain hidden, but the measured pace of something that no longer needed to conceal its presence.
"So let me ask you," the voice continued, growing closer with each word, "why should I accommodate your sensibilities now that you've discovered what it feels like to be someone else's food source?"
James tried to run.
His vampire reflexes engaged with desperate efficiency, launching him away from the approaching footsteps and toward what his panicked senses suggested might be an escape route through the alien forest. He moved with the kind of speed that had allowed him to outmaneuver every threat he'd ever encountered, drawing on reserves of supernatural strength that should have made him untouchable.
He made it exactly ten meters before slamming into something that felt like running face-first into a brick wall wrapped in golden fur.
The impact sent him sprawling backward onto forest floor that felt softer than it should have, cushioned by what appeared to be moss that glowed with faint bioluminescence. When his vision cleared, he found himself staring up at the creature in its full divine glory—golden mane flowing in a breeze that seemed to originate from its presence alone, eyes blazing with inner fire that spoke of cosmic justice and limitless patience.
"Going somewhere?" Narasimha asked with the kind of polite curiosity that made James want to crawl under the glowing moss and disappear entirely.
"I... you said... the game was hide and seek," James stammered, his vampire eloquence completely abandoning him under the weight of divine attention.
"The seeking part is over," Narasimha replied with gentle finality. "I found you. Now we move to the next phase of your education."
James scrambled backward across the moss, his enhanced reflexes searching for any avenue of escape that didn't involve directly confronting something that had just demonstrated the ability to rewrite local geography in real-time.
"What education?" he asked, though he suspected the answer would be both comprehensive and terminal.
Narasimha's smile carried promises of revelation, justice, and the kind of cosmic balance that made arguing with natural law seem like a futile exercise in intellectual masturbation.
"The education," he said with divine authority that resonated in frequencies designed to inspire existential understanding, "that teaches monsters what their victims felt during those final moments when they realized that mercy was never an option."
The golden eyes blazed brighter, and James felt something in his vampire physiology begin to respond with the kind of involuntary compliance that marked encounters with power that transcended ordinary supernatural hierarchy.
"Class," Narasimha announced with the terrible patience of justice finally given perfect form, "is now in session."
In the distance, barely audible even to supernatural hearing, came the sound of three vampire sisters settling in to observe a lesson in divine justice that would serve as both entertainment and education about what it meant to share a mate who took protection of innocents very, very seriously.
The transformed forest pulsed with bioluminescent approval, and somewhere in the cosmic balance of things, the scales of justice began to tip toward their proper alignment for the first time in decades.
James's education was about to begin in earnest.
—
James lay sprawled across the glowing moss, his vampire physiology trembling with the kind of existential terror that preceded complete systemic breakdown. Above him, Narasimha stood with divine patience, golden eyes reflecting cosmic justice that had waited centuries for this particular moment of reckoning.
"Two hundred years," Narasimha said quietly, his voice carrying harmonics that seemed to resonate with the very foundations of moral law. "Two centuries of hunting innocent people for sport. Do you know how many lives you've destroyed, James? How many families you've shattered for your entertainment?"
James tried to speak, but his voice had abandoned him completely. The tracking instincts that had made him legendary among his kind were providing him with exactly no useful information about how to survive an encounter with something that operated under cosmic authority rather than supernatural hierarchy.
"Sarah Mitchell, aged twenty-three, hiking the Appalachian Trail in 1987," Narasimha continued with the precision of someone reading from an eternal ledger. "You stalked her for six days, terrorizing her through the wilderness before finally ending her life. She was a veterinary student. She volunteered at animal shelters on weekends."
The golden eyes blazed brighter, and James felt something in his vampire consciousness begin to fracture under the weight of absolute moral accounting.
"David Chen, aged thirty-one, camping with his two young daughters in Yellowstone, 1993. You killed him slowly while forcing them to watch, then left them alone in the wilderness to die of exposure. The daughters were four and six years old."
James's enhanced memory was being forced to confront every detail of hunts he'd compartmentalized as mere entertainment. The divine power radiating from Narasimha was stripping away the psychological barriers that had allowed him to view his victims as objects rather than people.
"Maria Santos, aged nineteen, backpacking through Olympic National Forest just last month. She was studying marine biology, planning to dedicate her life to ocean conservation. You tracked her for hours, savoring her terror, before finally granting her the mercy of death."
The transformed forest around them pulsed with bioluminescent approval, as if nature itself was bearing witness to this cosmic trial. James felt his vampire physiology beginning to shut down—not from physical damage, but from the overwhelming weight of moral judgment being delivered by something that possessed absolute authority to render such verdicts.
"Please," he whispered, finding his voice at last though it came out broken and desperate. "I understand now. I see what I've done. I can change. I can make amends somehow. I can—"
"James." Narasimha's voice cut through his pleading with divine gentleness that was somehow more terrifying than anger would have been. "Do you remember what you told Victoria when she suggested that maybe killing that family in Oregon was excessive? That perhaps you should limit yourselves to single targets rather than entire groups?"
James's throat constricted as perfect recall provided him with his own words: "Why show restraint when we face no consequences? We are gods among mortals, and gods take what they please."
"Gods among mortals," Narasimha repeated with the terrible patience of justice finally given perfect form. "You chose to style yourself as divine, to claim cosmic authority over life and death."
The golden mane flowed in the supernatural breeze, and when Narasimha spoke again, his voice carried harmonics that made the forest itself seem to lean in and listen.
"Let me show you the difference between a creature that thinks it's divine and actual divinity given form."
James tried to flee one final time, his vampire reflexes engaging in a desperate attempt at escape that drew on every ounce of supernatural speed and strength he possessed. He launched himself away from the glowing moss with enough force to shatter stone, moving faster than he'd ever moved before, desperate to reach the tree line and disappear into forest darkness that might offer some chance of survival.
He made it exactly three meters before divine power reached out and stopped him mid-flight.
Not the physical restraint of supernatural strength meeting supernatural strength. This was reality itself refusing to accommodate his escape attempt—space bending around him, momentum becoming irrelevant, velocity transformed into stillness through the application of cosmic authority that recognized no natural law as binding.
James found himself suspended in the air, held motionless by forces that transcended physics entirely. His vampire reflexes strained against the invisible bonds, achieving nothing but the demonstration of how completely powerless he had become.
"Victoria died quickly," Narasimha observed as he approached the suspended vampire with movements that carried the inevitability of natural law. "A moment of terror, then obliteration. Laurent had time to understand what was happening to him, but his end was still relatively swift."
The divine avatar reached James's position, golden eyes meeting the vampire's pale ones with perfect compassion that somehow made everything infinitely worse.
"But you, James, represent something special. Two centuries of systematic cruelty. Hundreds of innocent lives destroyed for your entertainment. You've earned a more... comprehensive... educational experience."
James felt his vampire physiology begin to respond to something in Narasimha's presence—not physical pressure, but the kind of cosmic judgment that operated on levels deeper than mere flesh and bone. His enhanced strength meant nothing. His supernatural reflexes were irrelevant. His tracking instincts provided no useful information about forces that existed outside the normal parameters of predator and prey.
"What are you going to do to me?" he whispered, though he suspected the answer would exceed his worst fears.
Narasimha's smile carried the kind of terrible benevolence that marked divine beings who understood that true justice sometimes required perfect mercy applied with absolute precision.
"I'm going to give you exactly what you gave your victims," he replied with gentle finality. "The experience of being hunted by something stronger, faster, and infinitely more dangerous than yourself. The understanding that all your power means nothing against cosmic authority. The recognition that your death is not a tragedy but a restoration of proper balance."
The golden eyes blazed with inner fire that spoke of judgments rendered across cosmic time, and James felt his vampire consciousness begin to fragment under the weight of absolute moral reckoning.
"And then," Narasimha continued with divine compassion that somehow made the promise more rather than less terrifying, "I'm going to grant you the same mercy you showed your victims."
The transformed forest pulsed with approval, bioluminescent moss brightening as if nature itself was celebrating the restoration of proper order. In the distance, three vampire sisters watched with fascinated attention as cosmic justice unfolded according to laws that transcended ordinary supernatural understanding.
James opened his mouth to speak—perhaps to beg, perhaps to bargain, perhaps to attempt some final desperate negotiation that might buy him a few more moments of existence.
Instead, Narasimha reached out with divine precision, and James discovered what it felt like when cosmic authority decided that a particular pattern of cruelty had persisted long enough.
The vampire tracker who had styled himself as a god among mortals learned, in his final moment of consciousness, the difference between thinking you possess ultimate power and encountering the genuine article.
His end came not with dramatic violence or prolonged suffering, but with the terrible efficiency of cosmic justice applied by someone who understood that true mercy sometimes wore the face of absolute finality.
The bioluminescent forest glowed brighter for a moment, then settled back into peaceful darkness.
James was gone, his pattern of cruelty finally concluded, leaving behind only the memory of lessons learned too late and justice delivered with divine precision.
The Olympic Peninsula was safe again, though its protector was just getting started with his new existence.
---
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