I Was Kidnapped by a Vampire Queen, and Now the Vampire Born from My Soul Wants to Take Me Back

Matt aimed upward.

The bow-lance was in its weapon form, held in his right hand, arm extended diagonally toward the cave ceiling. The yellow string connecting both ends of the bow vibrated with a low hum that Matt felt in his bones.

Between the string and his fingers, an arrow was taking shape.

It wasn't a normal arrow.

It was golden.

The bow-lance's energy concentrated at a point in front of the string and stretched forward, growing, lengthening, becoming denser with every second that passed.

The golden glow lit Matt's face from below, casting long shadows against the walls of the room.

The arrow was already larger than his arm.

And it kept growing.

"More."

The girl's voice came from the bow-lance.

"I need more energy, Master."

Matt clenched his teeth and pushed harder.

The arrow grew another half meter. Its thickness increased. The glow intensified until Matt had to narrow his eyes.

"Now we need to compress it."

Matt didn't ask how. He felt it. The bow-lance was sending instructions directly through the soul bond. Not words. Impulses. Sensations. Like someone moving his hands from the inside, guiding him.

Matt closed his fingers around the string and pushed the energy toward the center of the arrow.

The arrow started to thin.

The size didn't change. The length stayed the same. But the thickness shrank. What had been a thick lance of golden light compressed until it was the width of a finger. Then thinner. Then thinner still.

The energy concentrated in that tiny space made the air around the arrow tremble.

"Master."

"What?"

"Use your blood."

Matt frowned.

"What for?"

"To hide my energy. If you fire this as it is, the queen is going to feel it from wherever she is. I need you to cover the arrow with your blood so the energy signature is yours and not mine."

Matt processed the information.

It made sense.

The queen knew Matt's energy. She'd been sensing it for years. If the arrow went out with the bow-lance's signature — a signature the queen had never felt before — there were going to be questions.

Many questions.

Matt bit the inside of his cheek.

Blood.

He felt it pool in his mouth. Warm. With that metallic taste that no longer bothered him after all these years. He spat on the arrow.

The red blood touched the golden surface and spread. Not like a normal liquid. It moved with its own will, covering the arrow from center to tips, wrapping it in a thin, even layer.

The gold disappeared beneath the red.

The arrow, which had been shining like a small sun, was now dark red. Almost black at the edges. The energy was still there, compressed, ready to explode, but the signature it radiated was no longer the bow-lance's.

It was Matt's.

"More blood, Master."

Matt bit down again.

More blood.

He spat on the arrow again.

The red layer thickened. The golden glow leaking through from beneath vanished completely.

"Enough."

Matt adjusted his position.

"Ready?"

"Ready, sir!"

Matt released the string and the arrow flew.

There was no sound at first.

Just a red flash that crossed the darkness of the room like a straight, perfect line, rising at a speed Matt's eyes could barely follow.

Then the sound came.

FWOOOOOSH!

A deep roar that shook the cave walls. The air displaced with such force that Matt had to plant his feet to keep from losing his balance.

The dust on the floor shot up in every direction.

The remains of the mechanical boss still scattered across the room rolled and crashed into each other.

The arrow rose.

And in its wake, everything lit up.

The room's walls, which Matt had only ever seen in darkness or by the faint light of his own abilities, appeared for an instant under an intense red light.

They were enormous. Larger than he'd imagined. The boss room was a vertical cylinder of black stone that stretched upward for hundreds of meters.

And in the ceiling, the crack.

Matt saw it for an instant before the arrow reached it.

It was a dark, irregular line crossing the ceiling from one side to the other. Wider than Noxx had described.

The arrow hit it.

CRAAACK!

The impact was brutal.

The ceiling stone exploded upward. Enormous rock fragments broke free and began to fall. The crack, which had been a line, became a hole. And the hole grew larger as the arrow kept rising, boring through layer after layer of stone.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Matt could hear the arrow still penetrating.

Each impact against a new layer of rock sent a tremor down the walls and up through his feet.

The sound grew distant, grew fainter, but didn't stop.

The arrow kept rising and kept opening the way.

"Master!"

The bow-lance's voice came out urgent.

"We have to go now! The hole won't last long!"

Matt didn't need to be told twice.

"Merge."

The bow-lance vibrated once and dissolved in his hand. The silver liquid compressed in seconds, retracing its path until it became the tiny ball at the center of his palm.

Matt crouched.

The light gun was on the floor where he'd left it before preparing the shot. He picked it up with his right hand. The heavy one was already in his left.

The wings spread. The air moved around him as he extended them fully.

Matt looked upward.

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The hole in the ceiling was visible now. An irregular opening raining debris. Rocks of every size descended in a steady shower, bouncing off the cylinder walls, breaking into smaller pieces as they collided.

Matt bent his knees and jumped.

The wings moved with a powerful thrust and his body shot upward. The cold cave air hit his face. His hair, long and loose, whipped behind him.

A piece of debris passed to his right.

Matt dodged it by rotating his body without losing speed.

Another came from above, directly at him.

Matt folded the left wing and turned. The rock passed centimeters from his shoulder.

More debris.

More falling stones.

The tunnel the arrow had opened wasn't straight. It had curves, turns, sections where the rock was harder and the arrow had been forced to deviate slightly before continuing upward. Matt flew through that irregular path, dodging the falling fragments, adjusting his trajectory with quick wing movements.

A large rock appeared directly in his path.

Matt crossed his arms in front of his face, guns pointing forward, and drove his body through it.

The rock split in two on contact with the energy coating his skin.

The fragments scraped his shoulders and sides but didn't stop him.

He kept rising.

The tunnel narrowed.

Then widened.

Then narrowed again.

Matt felt his heart racing.

Not from the effort.

Not from the danger.

From something else.

Something he hadn't felt in a long time.

Something that resembled excitement.

'I'm getting out.'

The thought crossed his mind and stayed there, bouncing around.

'I'm getting out of this place.'

He'd been inside for months.

How many exactly?

Matt ran the calculation while he flew.

The first days in the cave, before the real trial began. The weeks of repeating rooms.

The months of training with Noxx in the mental world.

The boss rooms.

The reset.

The hundreds of additional rooms.

The final fight.

The day stuck to the wall.

Ten months.

Eleven at most.

They'd felt like an eternity.

Matt squeezed the guns in his hands.

'What am I going to tell Mom?'

The question appeared out of nowhere.

He hadn't expected it.

Not in that moment.

But there it was, floating in his head while his body tore through layers of rock at full speed.

'What excuse am I going to give her?'

Because he was going to need one.

His mother knew nothing about any of this. She didn't know about the cave. She didn't know about the queen. She didn't know about vampires, or ego weapons, or soul division, or any of it.

To her, Matt had simply disappeared.

For almost a year.

'Damn.'

He didn't have an answer for that.

Not yet.

But he was going to need one soon.

The light changed.

Matt looked up.

Above, at the end of the tunnel, there was something that wasn't darkness.

It was faint. Grey. Diffuse. But it was there.

Light.

Real light.

Light from outside.

Matt beat his wings harder.

The tunnel widened one last time. The debris stopped falling. The rock walls opened and suddenly there was no more ceiling.

No more cave.

No more darkness.

Matt came out.

The blue sky received him. Open in every direction, no walls, no ceiling, no limits.

And in the distance, the sun.

Matt stopped in the air.

His wings held him in place, extended, while his eyes adjusted to the light.

After almost a year in the darkness of the cave, daylight was aggressive. It hurt and made his eyes water, but he didn't close them.

He didn't want to close them.

Below him, the hole in the mountain was closing. The rock moved on its own, the edges of the opening slowly drawing together, like a wound healing itself.

In a few minutes there would be no trace of a hole ever having been there.

Matt breathed.

Fresh air.

Cold.

The air was cold and Matt was naked.

The woman's body he was wearing had nothing on it. No clothes, no armor, nothing. Just skin exposed to the freezing mountain wind.

Matt felt the cold on every part of his body.

He didn't care.

He closed his eyes for a moment and let the wind hit his face.

'I got out.'

Two seconds.

That was all he had, before sensing her again.

A presence that appeared in his perception like an enormous weight. A mass of energy so dense, so concentrated, so absurdly powerful that the air around him changed temperature.

Matt opened his eyes.

The queen was flying toward him.

Fast.

Very fast.

Matt tried to dodge her. He rotated his body to the right, folded the left wing and launched himself diagonally.

It was useless.

The queen was faster.

Much faster.

Her arms wrapped around him before Matt could complete the turn. Two cold, strong arms that closed around his torso and caught him.

Matt caught her scent and wrinkled his face.

"Let go."

The queen didn't let go.

She hugged him tighter.

"My girl…"

Her voice was soft. Warm. With that maternal tone Matt had learned to hate during the years he'd been trapped in this farce.

"What happened in there?"

Matt had both hands occupied. The heavy gun in his left. The light gun in his right. Both arms pinned to his sides by the queen's embrace.

'I could shoot her.'

The thought crossed his mind.

He had the guns in his hands. They were pointing downward, but a twist of the wrist and he could drive a shot into her side.

At this range, even without a soul contract, the damage would be considerable.

'I could shoot her and fly away.'

The idea was tempting.

Very tempting.

But then Noxx's voice sounded in his head.

A memory. A conversation they'd had months ago, during one of the training nights in the mental world.

"You're very impulsive, Matt. That's why you ended up here."

Matt clenched his teeth.

Noxx was right.

As much as it annoyed him, she had a point.

Matt ran the calculation.

His body was weak. Almost a year without eating properly. The cave had given him the minimum to survive, nothing more. His muscles were exhausted. His energy was low. The wings cost him more effort than they should.

The guns had no soul contract with him. Without a contract, their power was limited. He could use them, yes, but not at full potential. Not even close.

The bow-lance was merged with his hand, hidden. Bringing it out meant revealing it. And revealing it meant questions.

And the queen…

The queen was in perfect condition, with all her power available.

Even if Matt shot her. Even if he caught her by surprise. Even if he managed to wound her…

And then what?

Where was he going to go?

How was he going to escape the entire vampire kingdom, alone, weak, without food, without clothes, in a woman's body that could barely stay airborne?

And the problems that would come after…

The Vhalden Clan.

The other nobles.

The royal guard.

Iris.

It would simply be impossible to manage.

Not now.

Not like this.

Matt released the tension in his hands.

The guns were still there, but he was no longer thinking about using them.

Not today.

The exhaustion hit him, all at once. As if his body had been waiting for his mind to stop fighting before finally surrendering.

His eyelids grew heavy.

The wings stopped moving.

It wasn't a conscious decision. His body simply stopped responding. The muscles loosened. The tension in his shoulders disappeared. His hands, which had been gripping the guns tightly, relaxed just enough not to drop them.

Matt fell asleep in the queen's arms, hundreds of meters above the ground, with the sun on his face and the cold wind hitting his naked body, and slept.

Iris stopped in the air.

She'd been flying toward the mountain at full speed, with Eleonora in sword form held between her arms, when she saw the red flash come out of the Forge Cave's ceiling.

Then she saw the rock explosion.

Then she saw a figure come flying out of the hole.

Then she saw the queen launch herself toward that figure and catch it in the air.

Iris flew closer, slower now, careful.

When she was close enough, she stopped.

The queen was floating in the air, holding Matt in her arms. Matt's eyes were closed.

Asleep, or unconscious. Iris couldn't tell the difference from this distance.

But that wasn't what left her speechless.

What left her speechless were the weapons.

Matt had two weapons in his hands.

Two.

Not one.

Two.

They weren't swords or axes or anything Iris had ever seen in the hands of vampire royalty.

They were… guns?

Iris blinked.

One was red. Crystalline. Large. It was in Matt's left hand, pressed against his side by the queen's embrace.

The other was blue. Crystalline. Smaller. In the right hand.

'What in the…?'

Iris knew ego weapons.

She'd grown up surrounded by them.

She knew what they looked like, how they worked, how they awakened.

And what Matt had in his hands didn't resemble any of that.

The ego weapons of vampire royalty were melee or ranged weapons. Swords, lances, bows, crossbows, axes, scythes. Weapons used in combat, wielded with the hands, that cut and killed.

Nobody had guns.

Nobody.

'Why are they split into two?'

The question kept turning in her head.

Iris sifted through the memories she had of Matt.

The few she'd been able to observe during the years they'd spent together.

Matt playing in his room with those strange devices he brought from his world.

Glowing screens with moving images.

Games, he called them.

Shooting games.

Matt played shooting games.

Iris remembered seeing him sitting on his bedroom floor, fingers moving over controllers, shooting at things on a screen.

'Did he make weapons based on that?'

It was the only explanation she could come up with.

But it didn't make sense.

There were no weapons like that in the cave to awaken. Or at least that was what she remembered.

So why did Matt have guns?

And why two?

'Did he fail to awaken an ego weapon and just built these himself?'

It was possible.

Matt was stubborn.

If he couldn't awaken a weapon the normal way, he was perfectly capable of trying to make one himself.

Two, even. Just to prove he could.

But fabricating an ego weapon was impossible.

Wasn't it?

Iris didn't understand what she was looking at.

And there was something else.

Matt's appearance.

Iris looked at him more carefully.

He was still a girl. The feminine body the queen had given him when she turned him was still there.

But something had changed.

It wasn't the same as before.

The hair was shorter than Iris remembered.

Not by much, but enough to notice.

And the features of his sleeping face were different. Sharper. Harder. The jaw had an angle that hadn't been there before. The cheekbones were slightly more defined.

He barely resembled the princess Iris remembered.

Still a girl, yes.

But a different girl.

Iris felt something cold in her stomach.

A bad feeling.

She didn't know why.

She didn't know exactly what was bothering her.

But something about the way Matt looked now — asleep in the queen's arms, those two strange weapons pressed against his chest — told her that whatever had happened inside that cave had changed something.

Eleonora said nothing.

She was in sword form, held between Iris's arms, voiceless, bodiless, with no way to express what she was feeling.

But she was feeling it.

All of it.

Eleonora watched the two crystalline guns in Matt's hands through the limited perception she had in her weapon form.

She couldn't see the details.

She couldn't distinguish the colors clearly.

But she could feel the energy they radiated.

Two signatures.

Two ego weapon signatures. freewebnσvel.cøm

Different from each other.

Different from hers.

Matt had done it.

He'd entered that cave and come out with new weapons.

Not one.

Two.

Eleonora felt the rage first. It rose from the center of her consciousness to the edges of her sword form.

The blade trembled slightly between Iris's arms, but Iris didn't notice.

'He replaced me,' she thought, with sadness. 'He went into that cave and replaced me.'

Then came the despair. It mixed with the rage and turned into something worse.

'I waited for him.'

'Almost three years.'

'I waited for him.'

'And he came out with two new weapons.'

The sword blade trembled again.

Iris pressed it against her chest without realizing it.

The queen, floating in the air with Matt asleep in her arms, looked down.

The hole in the mountain was closing. The rock moved slowly, the edges drawing together, the cave repairing itself.

The queen looked back at Matt — asleep, naked and exhausted, with two strange weapons in his hands that he wouldn't release even in sleep.

The queen smiled and leaned forward.

Her lips touched Matt's forehead, and she kissed him.

"Welcome home, my daughter."