The garage door, a slab of greasy iron, groaned as I muscled it upward, each inch a silent, sweaty battle. My mind still rang with the memory of the brute's hyper-sensitive hearing. An ironic fact, since this whole damn plan hinged on that freakish trait, but if the Minotaur lumbered in before I was set, it'd all go sideways immediately.

  My enhanced frame was the only reason lifting it was even possible. Unlike average garages with their flimsy flip-up, metal sheet doors, Mike Mechanics’ place was built to handle serious hardware – beat-up army jeeps, the odd transport truck when the outpost got overbooked. Security wasn't a joke here. This door, towering over me and wide enough for two semis abreast to enter, was a solid chunk of metal, rigged to a pulley system that’d lift it parallel to the ceiling. Problem was, that pulley screamed like a banshee. Manual labor was the only quiet option.

  Once I wrestled it past the halfway point, the weight eased, counter-balance finally kicking in. I shoved it just before it started its automated climb, then snatched the thick cable to my right. A sharp tug, then a slow, careful feed of slack. No goddamn way was I letting it slam into place.

  Things were going to get loud soon. But right now? Silence was key.

  The cool night air, thick with grime and the acrid tang of rotting corpses, hit me like a slap, and for a heartbeat, I let myself soak it in. Inside this makeshift arena, despite the cavernous space – a two-story hangar with a slapped-together office loft – the heat was a suffocating blanket. For the last hour, I’d sealed every crack, every vent, every goddamn pinhole that could offer a breath of fresh air. And along the walls, a junkyard barricade of cars, busted machinery, and overturned tables held my arsenal: dented buckets and metal drums, each half-filled with diesel, burning low and mean, coating the walls and windows with a slick of black soot.

  A tight, humorless smile stretched my lips. Who the hell would’ve guessed that years of busting my ass on construction sites would give me the knowledge to win this? It was there, under the blazing sun and the foreman’s bark, that I’d learned a simple fact. Gasoline? That shit went boom, fast and messy. But diesel… diesel just simmered, the fumes themselves feeding the fire, burning slow and dirty. It burned long too. And it was suffocating.

  Every move, every drop of metaphorical sweat, had been for this one shot, this desperate gamble to put down the Minotaur. The cleared kill zone in the center of the floor. The dozens of stinking fires. The three hulking gas generators I’d wrestled into each corner. Even stripping down to my damn boxers, bare-chested and raw-footed on the cold concrete – it was all part of the play. One chance.

  It didn't matter that I was wasting valuable diesel. The gas station across the street would have enough for me to fill up the APCs ten times over. The only thing that mattered was this moment. The fight that was about to take place.

  I sucked in a lungful of the oily air, feeling it coat my tongue like a film.

  “Why? Why must we do this? Is it because we have given our word? Even the little bloodbag had said that if it’s too dangerous we are to retreat. And a simple word like dangerous does NOT begin to describe this” the Animal’s mental snarl was a broken record, the same panicked rant it had been spinning for the last hour. Pointless. My mind was a locked vault.

  And I'd been deliberately ignoring it. Shutting my mind to it, by way of the work I had to do for this strategy to have even a snowball's chance in hell of working. Mostly because I was afraid that if I allowed myself to talk to it, the Animal would make me reconsider. Now, with all the pieces of the plan well and truly done, it was too late to back down.

  Might as well address the elephant in the room.

  “What the hell have I done my whole life?” I whispered back mentally, my tone flat and hard.

  “We have survived, that’s what we’ve done” the Animal snapped back its retort.

  I gave a slow nod, the movement stiff. “Yeah. Survived. Scraped by. Ran when I had to. More often than not, I ran. When the shit hits the fan, you get the hell out. Simple, healthy logic. And where’s that gotten me? Stuck in the same damn loop. Broke, beat down, blackmailed, you name it. Let’s call it what it was: I was a nobody from the gutter, going nowhere. And you know what? I’d accepted it. Just grit my teeth, hope that maybe tomorrow’d be better. But that ain’t gonna cut it anymore. Not with how the world's changed. Stagnation will mean only one thing.”

  "Death." it hissed back.

  "Exactly. So why do we have to do this? Because it needs doing. Because I've decided that one of those two APCs are gonna be mine. And the only way to get them is to take down that monster."

  The Animal snarled in the back of my head again. "We do not disagree, but we are not yet strong enough to face it, we..."

  "You're supposed to know all that I know, right? So why are you acting as if you don't know the plan I've come up with?"

  For the longest time it said nothing. So much that I'd walked over to the first generator, thinking it had just decided to return back into the depths of my subconscious. But it responded.

  "We are afraid. We are afraid this strategy will not work."

  "Good. Fear is good. It's healthy. Keeps you alive. The only moment it becomes bad, is when it freezes you up."

  "As we know too well" it whispered, referring to Andreas. There was no insult, no malice in its voice. Just a statement of fact.

  "As we know too well" I echoed its words. "So? Why do we have to do this?"

  "Because we've let ourselves be prey to fear for long enough."

  "Why do we need to do this?"

  "To become strong. To be strong is to fight, and to fight one must be strong."

  I let myself sneer. "Then stop your bellyaching, you prick, and lend a paw to make this work."

  "Yess, my most beautiful and beloved self" it rumbled back, its mental claws sinking deeper, not into my core, my reason, or whatever scrap of humanity I still clung to. No, this was different. It sharpened the edges, honed the instincts.

  My heart spasmed into rhythmic thumps, pushing the lifeblood from within my gut in a steady stream across my body. Enhancing. Empowering.

  And this time, I leaned into it, welcomed the raw, primal surge, the offer of shared power. My senses cranked up, sight flickering on the edge of ultraviolet, smell pulling apart the greasy air into its component parts, hearing picking out the faintest creaks and groans of the old building. My muscles coiled beneath my skin, a hair-trigger mechanism set to unleash violence. My perception stretched, the world expanding in stark, brutal detail, a hyper-awareness I hadn't felt since that moment in the parking lot, surrounded by the dead. But this wasn't that. It wasn't Frenzy. It was the Animal letting go of the reigns fully and handing them over to me.

  I could hear the slosh of blood in my own gut, the sluggish flow through my veins, the distant thump of Shashka’s heart all the way up in the makeshift office.

  My fingers tightened around the cold pull cord of the generator, a final breath drawn in, a mental brace against the coming chaos. Then I yanked.

  In the suffocating silence of the night, the generator’s sudden roar ripped through the stillness, a mechanical awakening that mirrored the bellow already tearing from the Minotaur’s throat. The ground vibrated, a thunderous rhythm of steel-hard hooves pounding the asphalt just outside this "arena".

  No time for second glances, no room for calculation. I just bolted, every fiber of my being focused on the next generator, the Blood Buff sending a jolt of raw power through my legs. My hand snatched the cord, a mid-stride pull, the second engine screaming to life just as I launched myself towards the third.

  Before the echoes of the second generator fully joined the other two, a colossal shape exploded into the garage.

  Fifteen feet of nightmare, muscles rippling beneath black, leathery hide. Cloven hooves the size of buckets, shoulders wider than a man was tall, the blind Minotaur roared again, a raw, disoriented sound, its massive head swinging wildly, trying to lock onto the source of the deafening noise. Where eyes should have been, there was only a landscape of torn flesh, a brutal reminder of my shotgun’s kiss. It lifted its scarred face, nostrils flaring, trying to snatch a scent, only to recoil violently as the acrid stench of burning fuel slammed into its snout.

  I moved in a swift, silent arc, circling until my hand found the rough cable hanging by the door. A hard pull, and the iron slab slammed shut with a deafening clang. But in this enclosed hell, with three heavy-duty generators screaming their mechanical fury, the echoes bouncing off concrete walls, the sound was swallowed, directionless.

  Sight. Scent. Hearing. All stolen. And now, it was locked in with me.

  The sense-deprived behemoth froze, every muscle in its immense frame going rigid. Whether it was some primal sixth sense or just animal instinct screaming danger, it seemed to know something was off. Slowly, it sank to its haunches, a hand the size of a human torso pressing against the cold concrete.

  The bastard was trying to feel its way out.

  Too late. By the time the realization had sunk in, I had already retrieved my two machetes, their weight familiar and comforting in my grip. Without even clothes to betray my movements, and the cacophony a perfect cover, I was a ghost to the blind monstrosity, a silent predator in its sensory deprivation.

  The last ten paces vanished in two predatory lunges, and I let the Blood Buff take hold, just before striking. Blood erupted, a hot geyser filling my arms and back, bloating my muscles with a raw, savage power. Both machetes hissed through the air, a cut strong enough enough to bisect a man, crotch to crown, delivered with brutal force.

  Despite the fury of the blow, the monster was a mountain. Flesh as tough as an old oak, bones as hard as iron. The blades bit into the Minotaur’s hide, limestone-hard and resistant, scoring two disappointingly shallow cuts right into the vulnerable tendons behind its knee. A bellow of pure, unadulterated rage ripped from its throat, followed by a backhand swing that could have pulped my skull. Had I still been there.

  But I was already a shadow, circling, then surging in again, aiming for the same exact spot. Lunge, slash, retreat. This time, I felt the tremor of something tearing from the back of the monster's knee, vibrations running up my blade.

  Another lunge, another surge of power from the Blood Buff, and I thrust both blades into the small of its back, an inch above the crude loincloth. They barely sank past the length of my thumb, but the Minotaur spasmed, a tremor running through its massive frame as the steel grazed its spine. It twisted, a devastating crescent of muscle and horn aimed at my chest.

  Only to stumble, topple, as it put weight into the blow. Weight that fell directly on the ligaments I had savaged.

  Having seen what point-blank shotgun blasts had done – which was jack-shit – I wasn’t surprised by the resilience of its flesh. I was ready for it. My strategy wasn’t about carving deep; it was about precision. The ligaments behind its knees. The spine. The arteries. The blades might not be able to cleave bone, but they were sharp enough to nick. And for a beast this size, all it took was a nick to a ligament, for it to start unraveling under weight.

  This had been the first part of my plan. It didn’t matter how much stronger, how much faster it was. Blind, deaf, and without a sense of smell, it was a lumbering mountain until I was on it. And for all its lightning reflexes, that sliver of a second between the cut, the pain registering, and the counter-attack was all I needed to become a ghost again, slipping out of its lethal reach.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Before the Minotaur could regain its balance, I was on it, slamming my right machete into the back of its other knee, the left raking across the back of its thigh, trying to hamstring it completely.

  A pressure wave of displaced air slammed against me a heartbeat before the impact, and I scrambled back, a fraction of a second before both cloven hooves slammed into the space I’d occupied. It had braced itself on its arms for that double kick, and if I'd been a fraction too late, it would have probably burst my entire upper body. My face split into a soundless snarl. Keep care. Keep my head on a swivel. Just because my strategy was working, didn't mean this was a sure win. I just needed to keep at it. Buy as much time for the second part of the plan to come together.

  I dropped low, circling the fallen behemoth. My weight shifted to the balls of my feet, a silent, predatory glide like a jungle cat stalking its prey. The monster thrashed, its massive axe whistling through the smoky air as it tried to lever itself upright. But it was a staggering, reeling effort. The fact that it could even manage a half-standing position was a testament to its monstrous resilience. I was almost certain my strikes had severed the ACLs in both its legs. The violent spasms and twitches rippling through its thigh and shin muscles screamed confirmation. But the beast was pushing through the agony, fueled by nothing but raw, incandescent rage and a primal need to kill, using its axe as a makeshift crutch.

  “More. We need to cripple it,” the Animal’s mental snarl was a guttural agreement echoing my own thoughts.

  Crimson rivers gushed as I plunged back into the dance of death, both blades sinking deep into its kidney, a brutal punch of steel and fury. I was a blur, gone before its enraged counter could even graze me. A second too late. Blind, deaf and mobility shot, the monster was always a second too late.

  Again and again, I became a whirlwind of motion, surging in, slashing, stabbing, ripping, tearing at its flesh. Each attack flowed smoother than the last, the Animal tasting the metallic tang of blood in the air, honing my instincts to a razor’s edge.

  My lips peeled back, teeth elongating into sharp, predatory fangs. My face, a snarling mask of pure animal savagery, bared itself to the wounded beast.

  “Kill. Rip. Rend. Feed,” the Animal’s guttural chant pulsed in my skull, a primal rhythm that infused my attacks with a brutal efficiency. The time between each strike dwindled, the distance I needed to evade its clumsy counters shrinking. The Animal wasn’t driving me to recklessness. It was making me efficient. Sensing the shift in the hunt, it emboldened me, sharpening my focus with every passing, blood-soaked second. I wasn't retreating anymore. I was dancing around increasingly clumsier counters.

  My blades sang a deadly harmony as I pivoted, spinning around an ax thrust, the motion adding brutal momentum to my swing. The right machete cleaved through the Minotaur’s inner thigh, a clean, sickening slice that sent a strip of meat and muscle flying in a wet spray. The left followed up, blade biting into the wound, ripping out with a cascade of blood. The femoral artery.

  A bellow ripped from its throat, the deep guttural rumble twisting into a high-pitched note of fear as its footing faltered. The aggressive assault devolved into a desperate, clumsy swing of its axe. But it was off-balance now, the cumulative damage to its legs and knees finally overwhelming even its single-minded ferocity. Its stability was gone, and with it, the brutal force and speed of its blows. The axe whistled harmlessly overhead, a wild, desperate arc that didn’t even come close, and I drew both machetes in a swift, brutal draw cut across the twin sides of its other knee, feeling the sickening snap travel up my arms as I finally severed its remaining ligaments.

  This time, no counter-attack came. The roar that accompanied the wet, tearing sound of steel raking through meat and scraping bone was pure agony. Like a lumberjack felling an oak with precisely placed cuts, I had whittled away at the monster’s unnatural resilience. And now, the support had finally given way.

  Its leg buckled completely, torn ligaments snapping, carved muscle tearing under its own immense weight. As the left leg collapsed, the right followed, equally shredded and useless. The Minotaur crashed to the concrete in a screaming, shrieking heap, a dark pool of blood already spreading beneath it.

  “Back now!” I hissed, the word a sharp counterpoint to the animalistic elation that still thrummed through me. Every fiber of my being wanted to revel in that intoxicating freedom, that pure, instinctual high. But I’d survived this far by sticking to the plan. Overconfidence now was an invitation to disaster. A cornered rat was the deadliest kind.

  I launched myself back before it even fell.

  As if to confirm it, the prone Minotaur lashed out blindly, spinning that monumental axe like a willow switch, blade biting into concrete like it was malleable mud. Any single one of those blows could have split me in half had I remained close.

  I pulled my blades back in a smooth, fluid motion, flicking off the clinging blood. The weight of the fight settled in, a dull ache in my arms, muscles tight and trembling, not from any exhaustion, but from a deeper, more primal resonance. The battle had been brutal, and its intensity lingered in my bones. I took a steadying breath and slowly crouched, eyes on the thrashing creature, the raw violence of our encounter still echoing in my mind.

  It lay crumpled on the ground, twitching weakly, its massive body trembling with the futile effort of trying to rise. The wounds to its knees were catastrophic, tendons severed, muscles shredded. I'd crippled it. Robbed it of any chance of escaping my trap. Still, the monster’s will to violence was terrifying. Despite the tremors wracking its body and the sporadic spasms of its legs, it still angled its head, its one massive arm raised, the axe clutched in its meaty paw, trying to pinpoint my location, ready to strike.

  But it was too late. I'd won. And now, all I had to do was wait.

  Seconds turned into minutes and I didn't move, didn't even twitch from my crouch, just watching from a safe distance as the Minotaur swung his ax, pulled itself from one side to another, desperately trying to create a defense around itself. Even crippled, the beast’s will was a tangible thing, a furious, silent promise of violence. It scrabbled with its massive claws, a desperate, futile attempt to regain purchase, its blind head still swiveling, trying to locate the source of its agony.

  A strange hush fell over the roaring chaos of the garage. The generators still thrummed their mechanical dirge, the fires still licked at the air, but around the fallen monster, a pocket of eerie stillness formed. Its immense chest heaved, ragged breaths tearing through its throat, each one a testament to the pain it was enduring.

  Eventually, when nothing came, it starting moving. A slow testing motion at first, growing more and more desperate with each passing moment. Slowly, agonizingly, it began to drag itself forward, its powerful arms pulling its useless bulk across the concrete, leaving a smear of blood in its wake. Its blind face was a mask of primal fury and confusion, nostrils flaring, trying to escape something. Animal instinct recoiling against this odd "something" that was making it more sluggish with each breath.

  I shadowed its clumsy progress, a silent predator observing its dying prey. The frantic beat of its heart, a thunderous drum against the backdrop of the mechanical roar, hammered in my ears. Each ragged inhale was a labored gasp, a desperate plea for air in the increasingly toxic atmosphere. It was working. The hypertension, the wheezing in its lungs, it was all the proof I needed to know that the second part of my plan was working.

  Something that its primitive mind could never comprehend. The reason I had wasted so much diesel. Carbon monoxide poisoning.

  By the time its massive form reached the cold, unyielding wall, a wet, blood-flecked froth bubbled at its lips. Its breath had become a choked, rattling wheeze. The huge claws, moments before weapons of lethal destruction, now scrabbled weakly at the concrete, leaving trails of snapped and splintered nails. Panic, raw and untamed, finally broke through the beast’s primal rage. It knew, on some fundamental level, that its life was ebbing away, yet the reason remained a terrifying, incomprehensible enigma.

  That was the insidious horror of carbon monoxide. An odorless, silent thief, stealing life breath by invisible degrees. The dozens of smoldering fires, burning for nearly an hour, had already saturated the enclosed space with the deadly gas. Enough to kill a grown man in seconds. The sooty tendrils clinging to the ceiling corners were a visual testament to the invisible killer at work. What had kept the Minotaur standing for so long was its unnatural resilience, but even the largest rock gets eaten into a pebble by a river.

  Heart hammering a frantic, desperate rhythm, a futile attempt to deliver oxygen to starved organs. Lungs burning with each poisoned breath, its immense body growing heavier, more leaden with each passing second, the very concept of movement fading into an impossible dream. And its brain, a fogged, misfiring mess, unable to grasp the simple truth of its demise.

  To me, it was a clinical observation. The poison was a non-factor, not even an inconvenience. Immortality had its grim advantages.

  But for the monster, it was a slow, agonizing death. An ugly death.

  The Minotaur began to retch, violent spasms shaking its massive frame. Its arms trembled, barely able to support its weight. Its mouth stretched impossibly wide, a silent, desperate scream for air that would never come.

  “You got my apology,” I murmured, the words swallowed by the generators’ roar, a hollow offering to a creature that likely couldn’t comprehend human speech, even if it could still hear. “If I were stronger… this would have been quicker. Cleaner.”

  The sentiment felt like ash in my mouth. A lie. A pathetic attempt to paint a veneer of regret over the grim satisfaction that coiled within me. The truth was a sharper, uglier thing: a deep-seated vindictiveness that had always lurked beneath the surface, long before vampirism. The monster had hunted me. It had tried to kill me. And now, gasping its last in my makeshift arena, it was simply facing the brutal consequences of its failure.

  “Never the matter. Just end it,” the Animal rumbled, its mental tone surprisingly flat, devoid of the expected bloodlust. An odd calm emanated from it, almost… comforting.

  With a resigned nod, I pushed myself up from my crouch and hefted the Minotaur’s discarded axe. A monstrous thing, easily over a hundred kilos of solid black iron, haft and all. Even with my enhanced strength, wielding it properly would have been a brutal undertaking.

  But for a final, merciful blow? It would suffice.

  I shifted the weight of the axe over my shoulder, moving with the silent grace of a jungle cat, towards the twitching, spasming form on the concrete. Aiming for the juncture of neck and jaw, the vulnerable hinge of its massive frame, I raised the weapon high above my head and brought it down.

  THUNK. CRACK.

  The brutal sensation of splitting flesh and bone jolted up my arms an instant before the sound slammed into my ears. The axe’s sheer weight, amplified by my unnatural strength, bit deep, severing muscle and cracking bone until the heavy iron lodged itself in the spine.

  One last shudder ran through the Minotaur’s immense body, followed by a wet, rattling sigh. Then, stillness. The frantic thrumming of its heart finally ceased.

  I left the axe embedded in its throat and stepped back, resting my hands on my knees, the tension finally leaching from my muscles.

  “Drink,” the Animal’s mental growl was a command.

  “In a minute, I gotta…” I started, only to be cut off with a sharp mental edge.

  “No. No minute. Now. You want to dissect your conscience, your precious humanity, the supposed depths of your ruthlesness? Fine. Knock yourself out. See how much good it does us. But now? Feed. Give this fallen beast the respect a predator owes its kill. Let its lifeblood fuel us, strengthen us. Otherwise, this entire bloody struggle was for nothing. And that is not the way of a predator. A predator always has a reason.”

  I didn’t argue. Couldn’t. For all the alien logic of the Animal’s pronouncement, it resonated with a strange, undeniable truth. A primal understanding.

  I reached for the Minotaur’s throat, my fangs finding purchase in the suppurating wound, and began to drink.

  Hot, thick blood flooded my mouth, cascading down my throat, a searing warmth spreading through my body, dwarfing the heat of the blazing fires.

  It was life.

  It was bliss.

  It was… the spoils of a hard-won hunt.