Chapter 106 — Selene's Favorability Rises
"Maybe you're just too beautiful. I couldn't bear to watch you die."
William grinned as he teased her.
Selene studied him for a long moment. Something about this man felt… off. As if he had other motives.
"Ridiculous."
As they spoke, the last of the bullets were forced out of William's body. One by one, they clattered onto the damp tunnel floor.
His wounds sealed shut instantly.
Faster than Lycans.
Faster than vampires.
Selene stared.
"What are you?
Your regeneration is stronger than those beasts."
William only smiled. "Everyone has their secrets, don't they?"
She held his gaze another second, then let it go. There were more urgent matters.
She stepped toward the Lycan corpse.
William was the bigger mystery, yes—but that weapon mattered more. Anything that could kill a vampire in seconds was a threat to her entire kind.
Before she could reach the fallen gun, William lifted a hand.
The weapon slid across the ground and flew into his grasp.
Selene's eyes narrowed.
"How are you doing that?"
Ignoring the question, William ejected the magazine and thumbed a round out into his palm.
".45 caliber… and this glow… ultraviolet tech."
He turned it under the dim light.
"Using sunlight as a weapon. That's clever."
The mind behind this was impressive.
Andreas Tanis — former historian and archivist of the Vampire Council. Exiled for recording Viktor's lies. Later aligned with Lucian out of revenge and developed these UV rounds.
A scientist type.
Brilliant.
Utterly untrustworthy.
Once William finished logging the UV round into his internal weapons database, Selene spoke again.
"May I see it?"
Selene's gaze was fixed on the round in William's hand, clear interest in her eyes.
William didn't refuse. With a subtle gesture, he used metal control to let the bullet float across the air and stop in front of her.
She caught it gently.
Even though this was the third time she had witnessed his strange ability, it still felt unreal.
But once the bullet was in her hand, all her focus shifted to it.
She examined the semi-transparent projectile glowing with a faint blue-violet hue. She didn't know the larger story—but judging from how her comrade had died, she could already guess what this was.
"Ultraviolet ammunition…"
Her expression hardened.
"This must be reported to the Council."
With that thought, she looked at the pistol in William's hand. "I need that gun."
The weapon itself was nothing special. The only thing of value—the UV rounds—had already been logged into William's arsenal database. He had no reason to refuse.
He handed it over.
"Thank you."
Selene hadn't expected him to be this cooperative. Her opinion of him rose—just slightly.
She turned as if to leave.
Then—
A distant wolf howl echoed through the tunnels.
"Damn it."
Selene cursed under her breath. Without hesitation, she grabbed William and pulled him in the opposite direction.
Truthfully, without weapons, vampires were physically outmatched by Lycans. Strategy for her kind leaned toward survival and positioning, not brute force.
Their fangs were small.
A Lycan's jaws were not.
And beyond that, the viral incompatibility between the two species made even minor exchanges of blood lethal.
William didn't resist as she dragged him along. The underground passages twisted like a maze, and under Selene's lead, they soon evaded the pursuit.
Then—
A faint noise reached her ears.
Voices.
A crowd.
Shouting, rowdy, almost like gambling.
Thanks to the enhancements from his healing factor, William's physical senses were comparable to a vampire's. He heard it too.
But Selene caught more.
Her sharper sense of smell detected something else beneath the noise.
Lycan stench.
Her pupils shrank. Her irises turned completely white—the mark of her vampiric state surfacing.
"That's impossible…"
"For centuries we've hunted them nearly to extinction. There shouldn't be this many gathered in one place."
She couldn't make sense of it.
William, however, remembered.
Kraven.
The current Vampire Council regent.
His secret deal with Lucian.
Lucian had cut away the branded flesh that bore Viktor's crest—proof of his slave status—in exchange for protection and Kraven's rise to power. In return, Lucian periodically supplied Lycans for Kraven to "hunt," preserving his political standing.
But William said nothing.
Explaining how he knew would be harder than the truth itself—and Selene wouldn't believe him anyway. People rarely accepted things they hadn't seen with their own eyes.
Selene thought for a moment, then glanced back at William.
She said nothing.
To her, he was still just a stranger—useful, perhaps, but incidental.
She turned to leave.
William could see it in her expression: a woman six centuries old, armored in ice.
Not easy to approach.
"Wait."
She stopped.
"What is it?"
The goodwill he'd earned—shielding her from the UV bullets and giving up the weapon—was just enough that she didn't ignore him.
"Let's at least know each other's names. William Blake."
He offered his hand.
She hesitated—then took it.
"Selene."
That was all.
She left.
What she didn't know was that William had already placed a mental marker on her.
He had no intention of losing track of her—whether for recruitment or the mission reward.
He glanced toward a nearby pipe tunnel. Behind a metal grate, a group of Lycans lurked.
With his current strength, charging in would be suicide.
He turned back instead.
Now that he'd confirmed vampirism was viral in origin, a new interest stirred in his mind:
Michael's Corvinus bloodline.
Perhaps that, too, was a form of virus.
But speculation meant nothing.
It would need to be tested.