There are certain known facts about vampires. They revile change. They are obsessive-compulsive. They are illogical. They are cursed. They will burst into flames in sunlight.
They are dying.
With less than a hundred vampires left in the world, Yas...
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"Give me control of the Circle."
August reached for the imaginary rope linking them, passing it from his hands into Yasuko's. The bond lingered at his touch, preferring his hold, but it surrendered itself to Yasuko. Understood was the promise that it would return to him at the slightest whim.
Gripping onto the magic like reins, Yasuko stood. August was compelled to follow. She bared her teeth, and from her poured a wave of rich, red aggression, almost beautiful in its purity. Violent, untamable—it washed over and into him, and his own lips peeled back into a snarl.
The barrier trembled again, and the sorceress, her gaze cold like ice beyond a childlike mask of distress, ripped her magic down and away. She'd betrayed them, then, and because Yasuko wasn't surprised, neither was August.
"We'll deal with that later." He told her, thinking rather than saying, and he felt his intentions brush against her mind. Felt her agreement, in return.
A beast crashed across the open air where the barrier had been, flanked by a familiar winged man and a white-haired ghost. August knew that Emil was a shapeshifter and had seen hints of the man's true form, but in their haste to evacuate Yasuko from the scene at the park, he hadn't been able to get a good look. Probably for the best. As an animal, Emil did not cut a handsome sight.
Even as he crouched low and forward on four legs, his shoulders were as tall as August's. He was vested in huge, thick plates of iron, black fur sprouting from the gaps between like weeds cracking through concrete. His head had feline ears, small and pointed, but his snout was long and thick like a dog's. The teeth that jutted past his black lips were steel gray, thick and wet with drool, and the claws on his feet were of similar color but much, much larger. Sharper, too, gouging the tabletop with the ease of a hot knife through butter. Behind his canine hindquarters and emerging from the final plate that defended the base of his spine were two chains, each link as thick as a finger and as big as August's palm. They swung back and forth as if alive, and August realized that they were in fact tails, curling and lashing like a hunting cat's. Yellow eyes pinned both August and Yasuko, laden with a carnivore's intelligence.
