Lucian Draven had not fed in three nights, and the venue was empty. He stood at the edge of the stage, boots on cracked concrete, and stared at the rows of folding chairs. Twelve people. His death metal band, Torture Ritual, had sold twelve tickets. He wanted this band to swallow the world. Instead, the crowd had drained away like blood from a wound. He knew where they had gone. They had gone across the circuit to see Axel Graves. Lucian pulled up a photo on a fan's abandoned phone. Axel grinned back at him, skull paint smeared across his face, a metal shirt stretched over his chest. Every metal fan in the region packed Axel's shows. Lucian felt the hunger twist in his gut, and beneath it, something older and hotter. Rage. If he could not draw the crowd, he would remove the man who stole it. "You're going to kill him," Luna Nightshade said. It was not a question. She leaned in the doorway, blonde hair spilling over a leather jacket cut like Lucian's own. Fake vampire teeth clicked when she smiled. She had followed his band across three cities, dressing like him, worshiping him. Tonight her worship had a use. "He trusts a pretty face," Lucian said. "Bring him to me." Luna's eyes shone. She wanted to please him more than she wanted to breathe. "Where?" "The empty house past the tree line. I already checked it. No one for miles." She went. Two hours later she returned with Axel, half drunk, one arm slung around her shoulders. Lucian waited inside the old manor, in the dark of the front hall. Axel stumbled through the door and squinted. "This the after party?" "For one of us," Lucian said, and stepped from the shadow. Axel saw the teeth. Real ones. He turned to run. Luna blocked the door, still smiling, and Axel understood too late what she was. Lucian moved fast. He caught Axel by the throat and drank. The hunger of three nights emptied itself. Axel's boots scraped the floor, then stopped. Lucian let the body drop. He felt strong again, clear, alive with stolen blood. The rival was gone. The problem was solved. Then Luna held up her phone. The screen glowed in the dark hall. "I filmed it," she whispered. "For us. So we'd always have this night." Lucian went cold. The video showed his face, his teeth, Axel's last seconds. Everything. "Give me the phone, Luna." She stepped back, clutching it to her chest. "You need me now," she said, and she was right. "You'll never leave me behind." Outside, headlights swept the windows. Axel's bandmates had come looking for their frontman. Fists pounded the door. Lucian stood over a corpse, holding no phone, with a witness who now owned him.

The door burst open. Axel's bandmates poured into the manor's front hall, three of them, shouting their frontman's name. Lucian stood over Axel's body. Blood still darkened his mouth. Luna gripped her phone against her chest, teeth clicking, eyes bright with panic and thrill. The first man to enter stopped cold when he saw the corpse. "He's dead," the man said. His voice cracked. He was young, skull paint smeared like Axel's, a metal shirt hanging off thin shoulders. The other two crowded behind him. One reached for his own phone. Lucian saw the screen light up. Another witness. Another recording. His arc, his band, his future, all of it about to bleed out on the floor. Lucian did not run. He turned toward them and let them see the teeth. "You came to find your singer," he said. "You found something older." The young man raised his phone to film. Lucian crossed the room before the screen focused. He caught the man's wrist and snapped it. The phone hit the floor. Lucian fed fast, drinking until the body sagged, then dropped it beside Axel. The second man swung a fist. Lucian took the blow, grabbed him, and finished him too. Blood ran warm down his throat. The hunger of the kill made him quick and cold. The third man bolted for the door. Luna stepped into his path, smiling, arms spread wide. She meant to help. She meant to please Lucian more than she feared the blood. The man shoved her hard. She fell. Her phone skidded across the floorboards and stopped at Lucian's boot. Lucian caught the last man at the threshold. He drank, then let the body fall on the porch of the dark cottage. Silence returned. Four corpses now. He wiped his mouth and turned. Luna sat up, dazed, reaching for where her phone had been. Lucian looked down at the device by his foot. The screen still glowed. Her recording of Axel's death waited inside it. He bent and picked it up. "Lucian," Luna said. She scrambled to her knees. "Give it back. That's ours." He held the phone above her. For one breath he weighed crushing it. But the young man's dropped phone lay across the room, and he did not know what it had captured before he broke the wrist. He needed Luna now for a different reason. She had lured Axel. She knew this house. She would clean what he could not. "It's mine now," he said, and slid her phone into his jacket. The blackmail was gone. Her power over him died on the floor with the others. Luna's smile faded. She understood. She had traded her leash for a graveyard. "There are four bodies," she whispered. "And more people will come looking," Lucian said. He stepped over Axel toward the door. "So we bury them before dawn. Then we play the next city."

The four bodies lay in the front hall of the cottage. Lucian counted them again. Axel's skull paint had smeared into the floorboards. Luna knelt beside the porch, a shovel across her knees. Dawn pressed at the windows. Burying four men before sunrise was impossible. Lucian knew it. He needed another plan. Luna wiped dirt from her cheek. She still wore the fake fangs she used to look like him. "The ground's too hard," she said. "We'll never finish. Someone will find them." Lucian looked at the corpses. Axel had drawn a crowd Lucian's own band never could. Three bandmates. Four throats. Four bodies to hide, or four bodies to use. An idea moved through him, cold and clean. "We don't bury them," Lucian said. "We keep them." Luna stood. "Keep them? They're dead." Lucian crouched over Axel. He bit into his own wrist. Dark blood welled up. He forced his open wrist against Axel's slack mouth. Blood ran down the dead man's throat. Luna backed into the wall. Axel's fingers twitched. His chest jerked. His eyes snapped open, red now, like Lucian's. "They can play," Lucian said. "They can tour. And they never die." He moved to the next body and did the same. Then the next. Blood, mouth, wait. Three bandmates gasped back to life. They rose off the floor, confused, hungry, staring at their own gray hands. Luna's shovel hit the floor. "Lucian, stop. You said we'd hide them." He turned to her. She had lured Axel. She knew this life better than she admitted. She wanted to be like him. He would grant the wish and bind her at once. "You wanted the teeth," Lucian said. He gripped her jaw. "Now you get them." "No—" Luna twisted, but he was faster. He tore his wrist open again and pressed it to her lips. She fought. She swallowed. Her body went rigid, then still. When her eyes opened, the fake fangs had fallen out. Real ones pushed through her gums. Luna touched her own mouth. She tasted the blood. She did not scream. She smiled, wide and wrong. Lucian stood in the cottage among the five of them. Axel and his three men flexed new muscle. Luna laughed low. No bodies to bury now. No witnesses to fear. Just a crew that could not tire, could not die, could not quit before the next city. "You murdered me," Axel said. His voice was thick. He looked at his hands, then at Lucian. "And you brought me back." "To play," Lucian said. "For me." Axel's red eyes narrowed. He had led his own band once. Now he stood in another man's house, remade by the rival who killed him. He said nothing. But the look told Lucian the truth. He had not buried a problem. He had raised five hungry mouths, and one of them still remembered being the star.