Change is sweeping through the world, as humanity fights for autonomy, discord tears apart the foundations of the vampire order, and dhampirs return to the world after centuries of war between two powerful peoples. Dhampirs, creatures known to heral...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The melee ahead got out of hand faster than Tara imagined possible. First, the vampire named Ghost, who'd saved Jesse, stood in the face of a specter one and half times his height with no fear. Tara'd been sure the crude man with barely any unburned clothes was about to gut Ghost, but then some freaky undead arm thrust out of the void like a strike of black lightning, shooting through the specter and blowing him up for lack of better phrasing. Pieces of the apparition rained on the pavement in a sickening cascade of goo that lost its undead energy as it sank into nothingness.
Those same tendrils of death lowered toward Ghost, and Tara was sure again that their ally was about to be a smudge until they wrapped him like a sash and lifted him off the ground. The undead energy was so thick that Tara was physically holding her mouth shut to avoid dry heaving, and as the specters fled from Ghost, it only worsened the pulse of their power. More arms reached from the void and ghostly fingers sank into several specters as they turned to flee. They dug their claws into the ground, shrieked, and scrabbled for life but ultimately ended up yanked back into the void from which they'd come.
With the void still open, more slipped out to take up the fight, and Falz backed ghost in pushing them back and keeping them off the rest of their party. With that half of the fight covered, Tara turned back to Neil who was not faring as well. Vampires circled him, living ones giving off dark energy while more specters forced Vincent back. Each time Vincent tried to help his son, another damned ghost grabbed his arms and yanked him back with raucous laughter. All Falz and Vincent could really do was keep pushing the back only to have them rush at their face again.
It was a lost fight unless Tara could seal their entry point, but she didn't want people to die getting her there. Walls dug up from the ground around Neil, but they splintered and exploded as the living vampires broke them down. In their place, Neil stood back to back with Silvia, and a hurricane surrounded them, tearing up anything too close and blowing back anything further off.
It was only a delaying tactic, because these vampires weren't easy pickings. Dark magic more powerful than Jesse's came off of each of them, saturating the air and marking them as generals, as they called them. Two specters took the lead among the living to keep them that way, and Tara offered her hand to Tanya reluctantly.
"They need our help, and we won't get past Dev at the gate if we don't down his lackeys, right?" Tara said as Tanya hesitated. The ghost hooker crossed her arms in frustration that she had to do work, but eventually touched Tara's fingers.
Every time Tanya joined with her body, it sizzled her insides, and Tara wondered if it wouldn't permanently damage her to rent out space in her body. That was a worry for another time though. For now, she had to focus as much as Tanya, using her ability to see seconds into the future to aid the ghost in pushing back her own before felling the living.
The first two living vampires dropped without much effort because they'd been paying her no mind. Tanya slipped up behind them as they went for Neil and executed one with a scythe blade into the face, and the other got their skulls crushed from the swinging weight on the other end. What was the thing made of?
