When I Delivered a Warning to the Vampire King in a Dark Restaurant, His Fiancée Suddenly Stopped Smiling

That night I saved the vampire king’s life, and a few minutes later I discovered that the order for my death had already been issued.

I am Sofia Rios, and at that time I worked as a waitress at “Night’s Threshold”—a restaurant where one bottle of wine cost more than my monthly rent. People spoke there quietly, as if even the walls could hear their secrets.

At eleven at night, during my break, I entered the women’s restroom. I heard a voice from the neighboring stall.

“The hunters are already in the hall,” the woman said. “One is sitting at the bar, three near the kitchen. They have silver arrows ready.”

My breath caught.

I knew the voice.

It was Brenda Fuentes, our most frequent guest, a woman who wore black gloves every time and smiled at everyone as though she already knew how they would die.

“Tonight his three-century reign will end,” she continued. “Ricardo will lose the crown, and the city will no longer hide.”

A drop fell from the water tap. It seemed so loud to me, as if a stone had fallen onto the floor.

Brenda came out. We looked at each other in the mirror.

“Are you all right, Sofia?” she asked me.

“I just have a headache,” I answered and looked away.

She left. I remained frozen in the stall for several more seconds.

When I returned to the hall, everything was in its place. The man sitting at the bar had not touched his drink for half an hour. Three guests near the kitchen constantly watched the door. And by the window sat Ricardo Corona—our most influential client, with an old name, old money, and a calmness that ordinary people did not have.

Brenda sat in front of him and smiled.

I took a receipt from my bag. On the back I quickly wrote: “Your fiancée betrayed you. There are hunters in the hall. They have silver weapons.”

I left the receipt under the plate. When Ricardo read it, nothing changed on his face.

That was exactly what frightened me.

He only raised his eyes, and for the first time I saw that there was no human calm in his gaze. Something older and heavier was hidden there.

The man sitting at the bar slipped his hand under his jacket.

“Down!” I shouted.

I did not think. I rushed at Ricardo and shoved him. A silver arrow flashed past his head and stuck into the wall, exactly at the height of a heart.

At that same moment Ricardo disappeared.

Then he appeared in front of me.

His movement resembled a shadow. The attackers found themselves on the floor in one second. The glasses in the hall trembled, while I felt only his fingers on my shoulders.

“Your name,” he told me.

“Sofia Rios.”

He repeated my name slowly, as if somewhere, a very long time ago, he had already heard it.

That same night I was taken to his castle. There I found photographs of my apartment, my car, and the route to my work. The message said that the Stoneblood Pact did not forget and that I had to leave the city within three days.

“You will not leave my protection,” Ricardo told me.

Then he revealed to me that he was three hundred seventeen years old and ruled the vampire hierarchy. Brenda was his fiancée only because of a political alliance. She wanted an end to hiding and open rule over humans.

Matiane, Ricardo’s loyal guard, told me that by saving him I had created an old blood debt.

“He will now protect you as he would his own life,” he said.

And Ricardo quietly added:

“For the first time in three centuries I want to leave someone alive not because of strategy, but because of my own desire.”

Two days later we went to the Obsidian Tower, where Brenda and the leader of the Pact, Adrian Aguirre, were hiding. The hall was full of vampires.

“You brought your human pet too,” Brenda smiled.

“Do not call what you did courage,” I told her. “Killing your own fiancé from behind is only cowardice.”

Her smile disappeared.

Adrian appeared in front of me and closed his fingers around my throat.

“The blood debt forces him to protect you, Corona,” he whispered. “That is why you are his greatest weakness.”

I looked at Ricardo. The calm king was no longer visible in his eyes. Another creature was awakening there—the one that had taught every monster fear for three hundred years.

Ricardo raised his hand and the tower doors locked at the same time. Then his gaze stopped on Adrian, while Matiane placed a black leather folder on the table. Ricardo began opening the lock…

Ricardo’s fingers touched the folder’s copper clasp, but Adrian tightened his grip on my throat.

“First tell me, King,” he said, “how long will you endure before your blood debt turns you against your own people?”

There was no air left in my lungs. I clung to his wrist with my fingers, feeling his cold skin and my own pulse beating in my ears from fear.

Then Ricardo moved.

For one moment Adrian stood beside me, and then he crashed into the wall. Dust crumbled from the cracks in the stone. Ricardo’s hand was closed around his throat.

Every vampire in the hall fell silent.

“Touch her one more time,” Ricardo said in a voice that no longer sounded human, “and I will personally find every member of the Pact.”

Adrian tried to free himself, but Ricardo lifted him as if he were light fabric.

“For three centuries I built alliances,” Ricardo continued. “Do not confuse patience with weakness.”

Then he looked at everyone.

“Sofia is under my protection because of the blood debt… and by her own choice.”

The last words struck me harder than Adrian’s hand. By her own choice. It was as if with those words Ricardo had challenged not only his enemies, but his entire old life.

He threw Adrian onto the floor and turned toward Brenda.

“You wanted a new reign?” he asked her. “You started a war you cannot win.”

Brenda removed her glove. A black stone bracelet was visible on her wrist, on whose surface thin red lines moved.

“You were always too sure of yourself, Ricardo,” she said. “But today, for the first time, you do not see everything.”

“What do you mean?”

Brenda pointed at me.

“She was not there by accident.”

Cold poured through my body.

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“Do you think you overheard the hunters’ conversation by accident?” Brenda chuckled. “You were brought there.”

Ricardo stared into my eyes.

“Brenda, think about your words.”

“Three years ago one book disappeared from the city archive. It contained information about the bloodline that vampires have been seeking for a long time. Human blood that can open ancient seals.”

“Be quiet,” Matiane said.

For the first time I saw that he was afraid too.

Brenda continued:

“Sofia Rios is not an ordinary waitress. Her grandmother was called the daughter of the founder of the Stoneblood Pact. Her descendants are more valuable to us than any crown.”

“That is a lie,” I said, although I did not believe my own voice.

I remembered my father’s face. My mother’s silence. The small copper spoon with a crescent scratch that I had carried in my bag since childhood, and my mother told me never to lose. Why was a strange triangle engraved on it?

Ricardo came to me.

“Sofia, I did not know this.”

“Were you lying to me too?”

Pain appeared on his face for the first time.

“I only knew that something old was moving around you. I knew nothing about your bloodline.”

Brenda spread her hands.

“That is exactly why they saved you that night. They knew that Ricardo would be unable to refuse protecting you. The blood debt would bind his power to you.”

Matiane opened the folder. Inside were old photographs, copies from the archives, and a copy of my birth certificate.

In one of the photographs my mother stood in front of the Obsidian Tower, with the same black stone symbol around her neck that Brenda now had on her wrist.

I took a step backward.

“Did Mother know?”

No one answered.

At that moment the sound of a bell came from the tower’s basement. Once. Twice. On the third time the entire building shook.

Matiane looked toward the window. In the distance, above the city, a red light came on.

Ricardo’s phone rang. He answered and listened for several seconds.

Then the color left his face.

“What happened?” I asked.

He slowly lowered the phone.

“Your mother is alive,” he said. “And she has just handed the Pact the city’s main protective seal…”

A sound of stone breaking came from beneath the tower. The floor cracked under our feet, and someone’s voice came from the darkness:

“Sofia, if you want the truth, come down alone…”

The voice coming from the darkness belonged to my mother.

My heart clenched as if someone had squeezed it in a hand. Since childhood I had believed that my mother had died ten years ago, but her voice from the tower basement shattered all my memories at once.

“Do not go down,” Ricardo told me.

“All my life they told me she was dead.”

“That is exactly why this may be a trap.”

Brenda smiled quietly.

“Or perhaps for the first time someone who was afraid of you is waiting for you.”

Ricardo held out his hand to me.

“Stay with me.”

I looked at his hand. His fingers were cold as ice, but at that moment I wanted only one thing—an answer.

“If she is my mother, I have to go to her.”

Matiane opened a hidden door in the wall. A stone staircase descended toward the basement. With every step the smell of damp earth grew stronger. At last we found ourselves in a round room, with a stone table in the middle.

A woman stood there.

Her hair had turned completely white, but I recognized her immediately. She was looking at me from the only photograph of my childhood.

“Mother?”

The woman’s lips trembled.

“Sofia.”

Ricardo stepped in front of me.

“You should have been dead.”

“I had to hide,” she answered. “Death was the only lie they would believe.”

“You helped the Pact,” I said.

My mother lowered her head.

“I asked them to protect you.”

“The arrows? The surveillance? The threats?”

“Brenda controlled everything. I made an agreement with them so they would not touch your blood. But when they learned that Ricardo had created a blood debt, the plan changed.”

Matiane took one sheet from the folder.

“This is the main record,” he said. “On the night Sofia was born, her mother signed a protection agreement. It says here that using her blood is forbidden.”

My mother placed her hand on the sheet.

“But this agreement was authenticated with the Pact’s seal. Brenda stole the seal and forged the document, as if I had handed my child over to them.”

Ricardo looked at Brenda, who stood behind us.

“Is this true?”

Brenda’s face changed.

“The only truth is that the city is weak. The hidden life of humans and vampires is over.”

“You wanted to use Sofia,” I said.

“Her blood will open the ancient gate. From it will come a power that no king can obey.”

“And for that it was necessary to kill me?”

“No,” Adrian interrupted, appearing on the stairs. “We need her alive. Not her consent.”

Ricardo moved with lightning speed, but red symbols lit up on the floor of the room. An invisible force threw him backward.

My mother cried out in fear:

“The seal is already activated!”

I put my hand into my bag and my fingers touched the little copper spoon I had carried since childhood. The triangle engraved on it suddenly grew hot.

Everyone looked toward me.

“This spoon is the key to the gate,” my mother whispered.

“Why did you never tell me?”

“Because if you knew, they would steal even your thoughts.”

Adrian raised his hand. The red symbols climbed from the floor onto the walls.

“Give me the key, Sofia.”

“No.”

“Then your mother will die.”

He pointed his fingers toward my mother. An invisible chain wrapped around the woman’s throat.

Ricardo stood up, but he could no longer move.

“Sofia, do not give it to him,” he said. “Whatever happens.”

My mother looked into my eyes.

“I hid the truth from you once already, child. I will not leave you without a choice a second time.”

With her own hand she struck the red symbol. White light filled the room.

At that same moment Ricardo’s phone fell onto the floor and rang. The name of the city hospital appeared on the screen.

Ricardo answered.

A child’s crying could be heard on the other side.

“Sofia,” he said with his eyes wide, “the blood of every newborn in the hospital is being changed. The Pact has begun experiments on the city’s children.”

Adrian smiled.

“If the gate does not open, they will kill them all.”

I looked at the spoon. New words appeared on its heated surface—words that my mother saw and immediately turned pale.

“What does it say?” I asked.

My mother answered quietly:

“‘The gate can be closed only by the king’s death.’”

Ricardo heard everything.

“Sofia,” he said, “if you need to do this, do not hesitate.”

And exactly then the first bell rang from the top of the tower…