THE DAY I SLAYED MY VAMPIRE LOVER

The cathedral hospital was quiet at midnight, the kind of quiet that did not belong to peace. It belonged to exhaustion pretending to be sanctity, to the low hum of machines that had already surrendered and the distant echo of cathedral bells that never truly stopped ringing. Cattleya Vermont stood motionless over the operating table, her white coat pristine despite the long shift, her gloved hands steady as surgical steel. The overhead lights cast harsh, clinical halos that turned every shadow into evidence. She had not blinked in several minutes. Blinking, she had learned, wasted precious seconds of observation. The patient was already dead. At least, that was what the records insisted. Time of clinical death: 23:47. Cause: massive thoracic trauma. Yet the body continued to breathe—slow, deliberate inhalations that mocked every line on the monitors. Not the frantic gasps of a dying man. Not even the shallow rattle of final struggle. Just… refusal. “I stopped the bleeding an hou

Morning arrived in the cathedral district the way it always did—quietly, as if the decision had been made somewhere higher up and merely announced to the light. Cattleya Vermont had not slept.
She did not look like someone who hadn’t. That discipline had been beaten into her bones years ago. White coat pressed. Hair tightly pinned. Expression neutral enough to pass inspection. Even exhaustion knew better than to show itself on her face. The corridors hummed with controlled urgency. Nurses moved like precise thoughts. Black-robed priests drifted through restricted wings without challenge. Everything occupied its assigned place. Everything except the events of last night. She paused outside the pathology wing, the UNKNOWN chart still tucked under her arm. The pages remained blank except for that single pressed indentation where ink had once existed and then changed its mind. She closed the folder. “Dr. Vermont.” Dr. Elias Brann approached, tablet in hand. He looked more exhaust


 Night returned differently in the lower city. Not darker—more honest. Above ground, the cathedral district still glowed with disciplined gold and stained-glass sanctity, a carefully maintained illusion of order. But far beneath its stone foundations and ancient burial vaults, the world shed its pretense. Here, the architecture no longer answered to human time. Rusty Vesper descended alone. The hidden elevator beneath the foundation clinic moved in perfect silence, dropping through successive layers of reinforced black stone that no public blueprint had ever recorded. With each passing level, modernity peeled away. By the time the doors opened, the walls had become cathedral ruins swallowed by eternal night. Ancient arches soared overhead. Black marble floors reflected low crimson light like pooled blood. Veins of silver ran through the stone like preserved fractures in reality. Nothing here belonged to humanity anymore. Two guards bowed as he passed. Neither spoke. Neither d


 The call came at 2:13 a.m. Not through hospital dispatch. Not through cathedral channels. Directly to Cattleya Vermont’s private line — the one very few people even knew existed. She stared at the vibrating screen for two full rings, the blue glow cutting through the darkness of her small apartment like a scalpel. Rain still pressed softly against the windows overlooking the cathedral district, turning the glass into liquid silver. She answered on the third ring. “Vermont.” Static hissed first, like breath caught in old wires. Then a voice. Male. Breathing uneven, labored. “You handled the body downstairs.” Not a question. An accusation wrapped in desperation. Cattleya sat up slowly in bed, the sheets pooling around her waist. Her free hand moved instinctively toward the bedside lamp but stopped. Darkness felt safer for this conversation. “Who is this?” she asked, voice steady, clinical. “You need to listen carefully.” The man sounded injured. Terrified. And trying, wit

The cathedral bells tolled for evening vespers, low and resonant, vibrating through the stone walls of the Vermont residence like a warning dressed in prayer. Cattleya Vermont sat at the long oak dining table, fork poised above her plate, but her appetite had long since surrendered to the weight of the day. Candlelight flickered across the white linen and silverware, casting elongated shadows that seemed to reach toward the high ceiling. Her father, Archpriest Dominic Vermont, occupied the head of the table as always—imposing even in silence, his black robes absorbing the light rather than reflecting it. “You have been distracted lately, daughter,” he said without looking up from his meal. His voice carried the same measured authority he used in sermons and secret council chambers alike. Cattleya set her fork down with deliberate care. “The hospital has seen unusual cases.” “Unusual.” Dominic’s gaze lifted, sharp as a scalpel. “Or impossible?” The word hung between them. C