Despite her empty hands, the Chinese vampire didn’t hesitate, attacking Tanya and her blade with blurring kicks and open strikes of razor-clawed hands. Her long, ornate fingernails must have had steel bonded underneath them, as they left scratches on the hardened sword.

Tzao’s kicks hit like a speeding truck as she fought with the ancient combat arts of her homeland, her style possibly so old that Tanya wasn’t actually able recognize all of her moves. Her legs swept out in spinning arcs almost too fast for Tanya to see, her arms pinwheeling away punches, kicks, and sword strikes while returning an equal number of counterattacks.

But it was the Elder who was perhaps the most surprised. It was one thing to face a fifteen-year-old girl, no matter how great a prodigy she was, but entirely something else to trade blows with the same fighter at twenty-five. Tanya hit back just as hard, and her blade had scored a half dozen times, slashing Tzao’s ceremonial silks deep enough to split the tough vampire skin underneath.

The battle occupied every available surface, as the vampires drew on their unique abilities to manipulate energy to Cling, Move, Pull, and Push at their opponents, using the unique combat art form that Tanya’s husband called Vampire Fu. For every physical attack, there was an invisible one wielded with arcane energies as they spun, flipped, twisted, and twirled through the confines of the rock-hewn chamber.

Interspaced around and throughout her own fight was her grandmother’s battle with Mausya.

Senka fought with a blend of arts from all over the world, shifting effortlessly from karate to savate to capoeira to aikido to kung fu. Tanya only caught glimpses of their battle, as her own occupied most of her attention; yet being aware of everything around her was vital.

Mausya fought back with spare economy, her motions the fast grappling strikes and throws of sambo, but applied with the surgical precision of someone who could sort through probable outcomes and go for the highest percentage attacks. Senka’s jarring, rapid-fire shift through fighting styles was designed to avoid giving her opponent any time at all to process the fight. And as the fight progressed, she actually sped up, changing her attacks and blocks in a blur of almost random violence.

She was faster than Mausya, and her mastery of her opponent’s own martial art, as well as a dizzying array of others, was beginning to really press the Russian elder. Finally, after receiving a truly brutal flurry of explosive fist and elbow strikes, Mausya leapt backward to create distance and time, both of which favored her talent.

She studied her opponent with a calculating eye and then shot forward to attack, seemingly confident in predicting her opponent’s responses. Instead, Senka shouted a word in Hungarian and used her awesome power to Pull herself sideways, away from Mausya and directly at Tzao.