Dusk has settled over the world, ushering in vampires from every house, and where the creatures of the dark roam, the mages of light rise to meet them. Some fight for their house, while others struggle with what lies inside of themselves, but all fi...
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The blankets fell off of his shoulder, and Alaric snapped hi eyes open to Iris sitting up on the bed. His mate. Naked down to her waist where the blankets till covered her, she was a vision of pale skin, supple breasts and golden curls rolling over it all, but the frown creasing her lips and knitted brow killed his affectionate purr in his throat. After a glance around the room, she nearly jumped out of the bed and into her clothes.
"Iris?" Alaric chased her and had his pants on and shirt buttoned halfway up when she turned back to him.
"Something is wrong." She paced the carpet between her book case of spell books and the bed. She kept in the living room so that she could enjoy the stars from the broad balcony windows. "I don't know what, but I can feel it. Why is it so quiet?"
"Oh, sorry. I left my barrier up." Alaric lifted a hand and swiped it to retract the spell, expecting the chirping of birds, but there was no soft ambient noise to greet them.
Sirens from emergency vehicles sounded so loud that Alaric covered an ear, and he could hear the horns of jammed vehicles as they fought to move. Yells, horns, and despairing cries. So many of those.
Iris had her balcony door open in moments and Alaric was at her side as they looked out over the city. Smoke billowed from where the mage complex was supposed to be, but tendrils crawled up into the murky air from dozens of other locations in the city. Someone had demolished half the city, and groups of humans ran the streets below, rallied like they were at war.
"What the hell is going on?" Iris gasped as she clasped the railing, and she ran inside to secure the rest of her mage wear.
Thankfully Alaric had been decked out the night before since it had been a formal occasion, and he tucked his short blades onto his back holsters as he followed Iris out of her apartment door and down the stairs. The stopped at each door to look into the different levels, but no one seemed to be out of their homes. They were likely frightened of what was going on below.
At the lobby, Alaric held Iris back, and they peeked around the corner at disconcerting splatters of blood on the walls around a pile of corpses. The perpetrators were gone, so Alaric slipped forward with Iris at his back only to stop cold. On the wall, written in the fallen family's blood was the word Devils. Alaric knelt to touch the man whose head was no longer attached, severed by light magic, but the woman and child who lay at his side were human. They'd been murdered for merely associating with one of his kind.
"Take this," Iris gave Alaric her long coat, and he raised a questioning eyebrow as she slipped his arms in and pushed the hood forward over his head. "Whoever did this was targeting vampires and they were trained for their execution. You're from the battlegrounds and you stick out like a sore thumb in that embroidered getup with your weapons."
"Thank you," Alaric uttered rather than insist that he didn't need it. The man on the floor had been a weak, helpless vampire from society just living his life. Alaric was a war general of the Shade, and no mage of this pitiful rebellion would be no match for him.
