The "Tomato Juice" tasted like copper and copper alone.
Alucard sat in the darkness of his apartment, the only light coming from the moon filtering through the heavy velvet curtains. He was looking at his hands. Even though he had scrubbed them until the skin was raw, he could still feel the phantom heat of Julian’s blood. He could still hear Anne’s voice—the way she had begged a monster for a release he had forbidden.
He had reset her mind, but he hadn't reset his own.
Every time he looked at her at the precinct, he saw the bruise he had left on her wrist. He saw the way she winced when she heard the sound of a whistling kettle. The hypnosis was a bandage on a bullet wound—it covered the mess, but the infection was spreading underneath.
The Precinct: 2:00 PM
Anne Jones was not looking at maps. She wasn't looking at case files.
She was looking at a mirror.
She pulled back the collar of her shirt, staring at the base of her neck. There was nothing there. No marks. No scars. But in her dreams, she felt a sharp, electric sting. She felt a weight over her, a coldness that felt like safety and terror all at once.
"Detective Jones."
Anne jumped, her hand flying to her holster. Standing in the doorway of the breakroom was a man she didn't recognize. He was thin, dressed in an impeccably tailored tweed suit that looked fifty years out of date. His eyes were sharp, deep-set, and possessed a terrifyingly cold intelligence.
"Professor James Moriarty," the man said, offering a slight, stiff bow. "I’m a consultant for the District Attorney's office. Occult forensics."
Anne let out a breath, her heart rate slowing. "Sorry. You caught me off guard. We don't usually get 'occult' consultants in the 12th."
"Usually, you don't have monsters sitting in the desk across from yours," Moriarty said smoothly.
He walked toward the coffee machine, his movements precise. "I’ve been following your career, Detective. Especially your partnership with Alucard. Tell me, do you ever find it strange how often you... lose time?"
Anne froze. "I don't know what you’re talking about."
"The theater. The penthouse. The basement in the old textile mill," Moriarty listed them off like a grocery list. "Significant events where your reports are remarkably... vague. 'Gas leaks.' 'Adrenaline-induced amnesia.' It’s a fascinating pattern."
He turned to her, a thin, cruel smile on his lips. "Did you know that the human brain, when subjected to repeated hypnotic suggestion, begins to develop 'synaptic echoes'? You aren't forgetting, Detective. You’re just being told to look away. But the truth is still there, isn't it? In the back of your mind, screaming to be let out."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, glass vial filled with a shimmering silver gas.
"If you want to see what your partner has been hiding in the dark, meet me at the Sanguine Gala tonight. I’m going to show the city that some legends are better off dead."
The Gala: 9:00 PM
The Sanguine Medical Gala was the event of the season. The elite of New York—half of them human, the other half Carmela’s "inner circle"—moved through the ballroom like sharks in a reef.
Alucard stood by the marble pillars, wearing a black tuxedo that made him look like a prince of the underworld. He hated these events. The scent of a hundred different blood types was a sensory nightmare.
"You look like you're planning a funeral, Alucard," Carmela whispered, appearing at his side. She was draped in diamonds and blood-red silk.
"I feel like I'm attending one," Alucard snapped. "Where is Anne? She hasn't answered her phone."
"Probably realizing that her partner is a pathological liar," Carmela said, sipping from a flute. "Oh, don't look at me like that. You can't keep her in a dream forever. Eventually, the princess wakes up, and she’s usually quite grumpy about the whole 'vampire' thing."
Suddenly, the heavy oak doors of the ballroom opened.
Anne Jones walked in. She wasn't wearing a dress. She was in her tactical gear, her badge pinned to her belt, her Glock visible at her hip. She looked like a soldier entering a lion’s den.
Beside her stood Moriarty.
Alucard’s eyes turned a sharp, dangerous crimson before he could catch himself. He stepped forward, but Moriarty raised a hand, holding the silver vial.
"Ladies, gentlemen, and... things," Moriarty’s voice projected through the room, amplified by the ballroom’s acoustics. "Tonight, we’re going to perform a little experiment in the Science of Deduction."
He smashed the vial against the floor.
A cloud of shimmering silver mist exploded into the air. It wasn't poison. It was a neutralized silver-nitrate aerosol—a "Hypnotic Inhibitor."
Alucard felt the mist hit his lungs. It burned like liquid fire. In his mind, the walls he had built around Anne’s memories began to crumble. The locks he had placed on her mind snapped.
Anne gasped, clutching her head as a flood of images hit her:
The theater... Alucard’s face shifting into a monster...
The hospital... the creature in the vent...
The basement...
She saw it all. She saw herself on her knees. She heard herself calling Julian "Master." She felt the forced shame, the rhythmic movement of her hands, and then—the explosion of red rage as Alucard tore Julian’s throat out.
The ballroom went silent as Anne looked up, her eyes wide and wet with tears. She looked at Alucard, who was standing ten feet away, his true face fully revealed, his fangs bared in a snarl of agony.
"Alucard," she whispered, her voice trembling. "You... you were there. You watched me."
"I saved you," Alucard rasped, reaching out a hand.
"You let me believe it was a dream!" she screamed, her hand flying to her gun. "You let me live in a lie while you carried the memory of my shame like a trophy!"
"It wasn't a trophy, Anne! It was a curse!"
Moriarty stepped between them, looking like the cat that had finally caught the canary. "Elementary, Detective. He didn't save your dignity. He just wanted to be the only monster in your life."
Moriarty pulled a remote from his pocket. "And now, let's see how the 'Great Detective' handles a city that finally knows what he is."
The windows of the ballroom shattered as SWAT teams—Moriarty’s private militia—began to rappel from the ceiling, their weapons loaded with UV-pulse rounds.
Alucard stood in the center of the chaos, caught between the woman he loved and the truth that was finally going to kill them both.
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