Yes, Gideon and Bruno had many questions. They wanted to ask a lot about his abilities and even suspected something, but right now, surviving was far more important than asking stupid questions.
"It's about to get really hot."
Susie continued whispering the spell, though her voice trembled from pain and exhaustion.
"Protection from the sun…" she repeated over and over.
"Let the light not touch us… let the light not touch us…"
Gerard raised his head. His face was twisted in inhuman agony.
"I… won't allow it…" he wheezed.
But the souls no longer listened. They had chosen a new master. The curse could not transfer to a vampire.
Gerard, standing in the center of the raging soul vortex, suddenly doubled over sharply. His body began to shake as if in a fever. The souls he had so greedily absorbed refused to become part of him. They rebelled, tearing him apart from the inside, screaming in unison.
"You are not ours!" roared the chorus of thousands of voices from his own mouth. "You are a stranger!"
Gerard coughed. From his mouth burst not a scream, but a black beam, dense as a bullet, saturated with pure, uncontrolled darkness. The beam shot upward with such force that the air tore apart with a deafening crack.
It pierced the warehouse ceiling, broke through the roof, and continued upward, higher and higher, until it slammed into the massive magical barrier protecting the city from the sun.
A thunderous boom rang out, as if the sky itself had cracked.
The dome, woven from Gerard's ancient magic and that of his followers, burst at a single point. Through the newly formed hole poured real, merciless daylight. Bright and deadly for vampires.
Everyone in the hall froze.
Gerard's vampires, standing in a dense ring around the battlefield, simultaneously lifted their heads. Their faces twisted in horror. Some instinctively covered their faces with their hands, others staggered back. No one was burning yet. The magic cast on them still held, but everyone understood it wouldn't last long. The dome had been breached at one point.
"What… what is that?!" one vampire in an expensive suit whispered, staring at the sky with wide eyes.
"The dome…" another exhaled.
"It's… it's broken…"
Gerard knelt, coughing black, smoking blood. His face was twisted not only with pain, but with genuine, deep shock. For the first time in hundreds of years, this cold, calculating being looked truly broken.
But the energy did not stop.
The black beam that had pierced the sky returned downward in a different form, as a massive, roaring hurricane. It swirled above the warehouse, sucking in the remaining souls, darkness, screams, and power. The hurricane grew denser and more furious until it turned into a giant black vortex.
And suddenly, this vortex shot downward.
Straight toward Ethan.
His body, which everyone had already considered a corpse, lay against the wall in a pool of blood. But the moment the hurricane touched him, Ethan's body arched sharply. Black energy poured into him like a river finding its channel.
"AAAAAARGH!!"
The wounds on his body began to smoke. The black lines flared brighter than ever before. His fingers clenched convulsively, and his eyes, still closed, trembled beneath his eyelids.
Susie, who had been lying near Flash, ran to Ethan in the same instant.
"Ethan…" she whispered in a trembling voice.
"What's happening to you?"
Flash stood motionless, not lowering the hand that still held the group at a safe distance. His face was grim.
"He has to accept them…" he said quietly.
"The curse won't let a human die…"
Gerard, still on his knees, watched with a mixture of hatred and fear.
"No…" he wheezed.
"That was supposed to be mine!"
But it was already too late.
The energy fully poured into Ethan's body.
And above them, the city began to slowly but inevitably light up with real sunlight.
The dome protecting the vampires from the sun cracked with a sound like shattering glass, a sound that seemed to reach every resident of New York.
At first, a thin, blindingly bright crack appeared, as if someone had struck a giant black glass with a hammer. Then it spread, widened, and through it poured real, merciless daylight.
The first golden rays broke through like red-hot spears. They fell on rooftops, streets, and the heads of Gerard's vampires standing in a dense ring around the warehouse.
The screaming started instantly.
"Sunlight!" one vampire in an expensive suit howled as a ray touched his shoulder. His skin immediately began to smoke, turn black, and char. He fell to his knees, trying to cover himself with his hands, but the light reached everywhere.
"It burns! It burns!!!"
The entire perimeter of the warehouse turned into hell. Hundreds of vampires screamed, writhed, and tried to hide in the shadows or behind each other. Skin cracked, flesh melted, and thick columns of black smoke rose into the air.
Those closest to the breach burned almost instantly. Their bodies flared up like dry paper, leaving behind only piles of ash and charred bones.
Gerard stood in the center of this chaos, head thrown back. His face twisted with rage and panic.
"No!" he roared.
"Not now!"
He raised both hands to the sky, trying to seal the breach with his darkness. Black tendrils burst from his palms and shot upward to patch the hole. But the souls inside him continued to rebel.
They tore at him from within, not letting him concentrate. Gerard jerked, coughed up black blood, and fell to one knee.