The huntress woke with a start, her hand flying to the pistol rattling on the Jeep's center console. 

I grabbed her wrist before she could take the weapon, my tone sharp with disdain. "If you shoot me," I said as my gaze flickered between her and the dirt road. "We're going to have a problem."

Halefield, as its name would suggest, was little more than a region of fields left fallow by the winter and skeletal trees half-buried in autumn's dead leaves. The land was flat and dark in the small hours of the night, difficult to navigate and all but impossible to find a black mage in. 

A cursory glance through a gray phone book stashed in an abandoned phone booth had revealed a number for one Marian Harris living somewhere in Halefield. Harris wasn't an uncommon name in the entirety of Itheria's county, but there weren't many people to be found in the wide, sweeping agricultural plains of Halefield, and a single Harris was listed as a resident.

It was possible this Marian Harris was a relation of Lucian Harris, possibly his wife, given that mages didn't have sisters and wouldn't take the surname of their mother. Unlike witches, who often begot their children with anonymous human males who never saw their offspring or the witch again, mages frequently married or formed lasting relationships with the human women who carried their sons. It was yet another reason for the syndicates' fierce subjugation of Terrestria: witches, bearing their own children, could survive a societal collapse. Mage mothers were inherently powerless and needed the protection of their fathers to survive a magical incursion like the one being created by my brother, Aurelius. 

While having an address for a possible connection to our black mage was all well and good, finding that location in a rural setting without a map, GPS, or the existence of street signs was more of a daunting task than I would have thought it to be. 

Connie had fallen asleep around midnight, too exhausted to keep her eyes open any longer—which didn't bode well for her future in vampire hunting, if I were to be frank. I'd driven for most of the evening past quiet farm houses with dark windows and the wrong surnames written on the mailboxes. In truth, the mage could be at any of the houses I'd seen tonight. He might not even be in Halefield—the man might not even exist, in which case I'd have to find Everett Robinson again and quite literally pummel him to death.

The huntress muttered a half-insentient apology and slumped against her seat, ponytail drooping down past her ears as she shrugged her shoulders and stretched her legs. "We should go back to the motel. We ain't going to find him tonight," she said, not for the first time. Did she remember repeating herself earlier? If she did, she should also recall my response: no. 

The tires hit another pothole on the dirt road and Connie grunted, the gun banging on the console where she'd left it.

As I drove, the headlights flashed across another low, crooked street sign, and the reflective quality of the sign caught the light, the name Hobby Street clearly visible against the stark green background. I hit the brakes on instinct and felt the seatbelt cut into my shoulder as the Jeep lurched to a stop. 

"What?" the huntress asked, sitting up. I nodded at the sign and we both stared at it—or, more specifically, at the bloody hand-print streaked across its side. "Dang. That's the road we want, ain't it?" 

"Indeed." Gritting my teeth, I took the gun for my own before Connie could claim it and directed the car onto the open lane. "Find yourself another weapon from your cache. Our quest may have just taken a decidedly unpleasant turn." 

The speedometer never eased past ten miles per hour as I drove, headlights flared, bathing the barren road in yellow light. I opened the window and listened to the sound of the tires dragging along the earth, feeling the toothless bite of the cold wind seep through my skin as my breath coalesced into white steam. The long grass and mounded earth was crusted with dirty ice, the drainage ditch on either side of the road filled with debris and more clouded snow. There were few houses, and those that could be found waited like marooned vessels in the dark plains, shining with gentle light. 

What I didn't hear was the sound of animal life. It was still wintry in this clime but spring was rapidly approaching, meaning there should have been some sign of life hiding in the undergrowth, some appearance of diurnal creatures stirring as dawn's approach became more apparent. I heard nothing beyond the noise of the Jeep and the bitter hiss of the breeze.

"Something's not right here," I muttered as I stopped the Jeep and Connie clamored into the back, opening the weapons' hatch. I hefted the gun in my hand but found the weight wasn't reassuring. In my lifetime, guns were a recent occurrence, a fancy new toy none of the Original Sins had been fond of. The world was filled with terrors who did not balk at the sight of a gun or when they were pumped full of bullets. "Take this and give me a blade." 

She didn't take the pistol, but she did retrieve the blade I requested. "Here." 

I paused as I wrapped my hand about the haft and yanked the thing over the seat. "Is this a bloody machete?! Why, by the Seven, do you have a machete?" 

"So I can machete things, of course." 

I didn't point out that machete was not a verb, seeing as the huntress now had a loaded shotgun in her hands. I went to tell her to find me something more practical, but was interrupted by a hair-raising shriek that tore asunder the night's silence. I had enough sense to brace myself before the creature slammed into the Jeep's passenger side and cracked the window.

They came from no where. Damn vampires. 

Tightening my grip on the machete, I spilled from the vehicle, ramming the door into the face of a short vampire who hadn't thought to move back. Being in the Jeep didn't afford me space to move, one of my few advantages over the creatures while I was a mortal. Staying in the car would be foolish: mad as they were, vampires could still open doors.

Connie followed my example and, after throwing the Jeep's hatch open, came leaping out with her shotgun braced against a shoulder. She took aim at the nearest leech that came skulking from the dark and fired, the buckshot hitting him in the center mass. The blow rung in my ears.

The vampire that had been the first to appear came lunging out from behind the car and bared her stained fangs, profile glowing under the still blazing headlights. Taking a moment to balance the worthless blade in my grip, I swung at her and she retreated, the blunt edge of the machete catching against her jacket—before I leapt forward, arm rigid, and the sword plunged through the creature's chest.

I didn't bother to remove the machete as the vampire crumpled to the earth. I used the handgun to fire a single round into the dazed leech I'd struck with the door, then threw the gun into the Jeep where it belonged. The smell of gunpowder filled my nose as Connie approached, hands on the shotgun, pale beneath the sunburn on her cheeks.

"That'd explain that hand print," she said with a backward gesture.

It would, but it did not explain their presence here, nor their agitation. Distance between Aurelius and the vampires wouldn't give them sanity, but it should have given them a measure of calm. Sethan's past exertion of the Call had been directly related to distance between himself and the susceptible bloodsuckers. An Absolian being the holder of the Call had dire consequences for the vampire species, but the base elements of it should have remained the same.

If Aurelius wasn't near, the vampires shouldn't have been so agitated.

I glanced skyward, then at the creatures who lay crumpled at our feet, riddled with cuts and bits of metal. Shit.

Before I could tell the huntress it was time to return to the Jeep, a scream rose from a distant farmhouse, followed by a masculine shout of protest and the reptilian chorus of vampire cries. They'd found something—someone—to hunt and were closing in on their target.

I snapped my fingers at Connie, though my eyes remained on the distant house with light glowing from its windows. We were by a driveway, and the dented mailbox at the end nestled in the brown reeds read Ahlberg.

We didn't have time for this and had no reason to risk our lives for the sake of humans, but what other choice was there? Could I stand by and let anonymous people be ripped apart? The colder part of me said yes, and that I'd done it before without problem, but what battered shred of conscience I retained told me this was my fault. I'd helped Sethan create the vampires when I'd given him my energy, and I'd done nothing to assist with their initial disposal. I'd been content to let their savagery continue unchecked, and this was the result.

"Give me something else," I told the huntress, slamming the Jeep's door. "Hurry—and make it something useful."

The sound of metal blades and heavy guns being scattered shook the car, then Connie slapped the handle of a long dagger into my palm. Like many of her weapons, it was ill-balanced and had too many ridiculous flares added to it. "King's breath, when this is over, get better blades!"

I set off at a quick run, Connie at my heels with the shotgun rattling in her hands. She was calmer now than she'd been with the black mage, leading me to believe she truly did have more experience dealing with dens than she did with syndicates. I crossed the drive, rushed through bushes and—when I came upon a wooden fence—clutched the top rail and easily kicked my legs over the edge. I heard the huntress follow, exclaiming at the effort it took to keep pace.

A feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach was growing, chills slipping along my spine.

There were more here than there were on the road, and it was too late to retreat to safety. The vampires had already spotted us. The front door of the farmhouse was open, light spilling across the porch and the red streaks painted there. Two male vampires, larger than the others, rushed from their spots in the yard with their arms outstretched. Driven by the Call, they lacked common sense, and thus all but dove straight onto the point of my slashing dagger.

A third grabbed me about the middle, his hands clawing my legs as we hit the ground. I snarled at the painful scouring of his fingers curling into my flesh and had to brace my forearm against his throat to keep the creature from lunging for my neck. He snapped ferocious jaws together, teeth bright in the house's illumination, his eyes unfocused and surrounded in black veins.

The huntress fired her gun, hitting the vampire on top of me, and I shouted a litany of curses when the shot rang in my ears. A fourth vampire ran from the porch with the intent of either kicking my head in or tearing my throat out, so I used the strength in my legs to hurl the carcass off of me and into the living vampire. He stumbled, surprised, and never saw the blade that dashed across the tender part of his throat.

Both bodies crumpled, silent at last.

A cry came from the house, then the fragile jangle of glass breaking. I jerked my arm straight and slung blood from the dagger onto the dead grass as Connie rushed ahead, leaping over the steps to land on the porch, her shoes sliding on the snow and spatters of red. She held that gun like it was a shield, and when the next vampire pounced, they both flew backward and hit the earth with a silent gasp of protest. I plucked the vampire off of her, my blade finding its ways through his shrivel chest. I left it there.

I was through the doorway. I focused on the only vampire who remained, a lean male with unruly black hair and a ruined sports coat, and gave the rest of the country styled kitchen little attention. The huntress entered the room after I did and immediately retreated, shrieking with alarm. A lake of scarlet soiled the linoleum, separate mounds rising from the liquid like ghastly islands. There was a man, and a woman, their scattered parts indistinguishable in the carnage wrought by Sethan' schildren.

I ignored the devastation as only a demon could. It was yet another image of sin to burn into my memory.

Their daughter hung limp in the hands of what must have been this den's Father. She was missing an arm, but her chest still rose and fell in shallow intervals. She was alive, though only just.

I was breathing heavily, my legs sore from the vampire's punishing grip, and I was more tired than I wanted to admit, but I had an advantage this creature didn't: I wasn't mad. I was filled with the cold clarity brought on by anger, the uncontrollable nature typically inherent of rage buried under the need for exacting violence.

My hatred for these creatures was unfathomable, and I had helped bring them into being.

Intuiting danger, the already glutted creature dropped the girl and flashed toward the window, tearing the paisley curtains from the rod. He broke through the glass with minimal effort, utilizing that preternatural strength that made his kind so deadly to humans, and disappeared into the dark waiting somewhere beyond the scope of the light. I should have chased him, but my feet stalled.

"Connie!" I shouted, my voice loud in my tender ears. She brought her head up from where it'd been down between her knees and her face was a shade of green I'd never seen on a person before. She would be of no use to me, so I ordered her after the vampire with a sharp jerk of my chin. The huntress ran, footsteps fading fast.

I didn't pause to examine my motivations. I knelt by the girl and rolled her onto her back as I passed a clinical hand across a bruise swelling on her cheekbone, then over the shoulder where an arm should have been attached. It lay next to her: the vampire had torn it like a child popping the limb off a plastic doll.

The nauseating dread in my middle bucked and writhed until I could taste bile on the back of my tongue.

She was going to die. I stared at her young, agonized face speckled in the blood of her parents as I imagined what terrors she'd witnessed that night and felt the seeds of guilt grow like briar thorns in my veins. She couldn't be older than eight or nine. I didn't often feel guilt, but even monsters like me couldn't shrug off blame when one of their shirked responsibilities was a shredded child. The vampires were going mad because of Aurelius, and they'd been made by Sethan's hand with my assistance. In Wrath's absence, the vampires should have been my responsibility, but I'd neglected them.

It was a point of pride to recognize such a shortcoming.

My hands dropped to my belt and I ripped it from the pants' loops, cinching it about what remained of the girl's arm before tying it off and lifting both her and her limb into my arms. Small as she was, she was nearly weightless.

"Connie!" I yelled for the huntress as I jogged from the house, each step down the porch jarring the dying child. "Connie! Get to the car, now!"

She didn't respond, nor did I hear the thunder of distant gunfire or cries of surrounding vampires. It was quiet again, my panting loud and gusting like wind through a turbine, and as I sprinted by Wrath's killed children in the direction of the parked Jeep, the dreadful sensation in my gut erupted, spearing fire through my nerves. I slid to a halt as cold sweat dripped along my spine.

No. No, impossible. Not here.

What heat there was to be found in the atmosphere streamed upward, creating fiery ribbons of friction in the air that hung like tears in the void and burned my eyes. Every breath was a gust and my heart was a war drum racing in my chest, but the farm was a silent necropolis where sound didn't exist, and the tufts of snow disturbed by my footsteps hung suspended where they flew.

I'd hoped to never experience a taste of his power again, but I should have known better. It was natural for an Absolian to be drawn to a mecca like Itheria, where magic seethed in greater quantity, and the Call allowed its master to sense the presence of the night creatures. So many successive deaths of vampires was bound to draw Aurelius' curiosity.

He slung energy toward the earth and its screamed like a jet's engine as it tore through the cold air. Like the bridge in Verweald, the bloody farmhouse crumpled, disintegrating into pebbles and splinters. I hit the ground and covered my ears, body shielding the child from the resulting downpour of debris, allowing a single pained grunt to escape when something struck my back hard enough to split the skin.

Through streaming eyes, I stood and watched Aurelius descend, the wind pulling at the loose fabric of his slacks and tunic. He was as pristine as that day we'd met in Verweald, so I assumed his glamour was hiding the filth he accrued in the chaos he stirred. What blood and gore painted the creature's perfect face? What evidence of savagery did he hide under his mask?

The Absolian was ten feet above the smoldering ruin when his wings vanished like ash on a wayward breeze and he plummeted, creating a crater where he landed among the split beams and pulverized walls. His blue eyes danced as he surveyed the land with a passive, listless gaze and found where I stood, waiting.

"Oh," he said, the barest trace of an inflection lifting the word. He stepped forward and, coincidently, his foot landed on the corpse of a vampire. Giving no notion of noticing, Aurelius continued and the downward force exerted by his single leg crushed the creature's chest, showing yet another example of the impossible strength hidden in the Absolian's deceptive form. "You again."

"Me."

We stared at each other from a pace of five yards, nothing between us but a patch of scorched grass and melted puddles. He did look remarkably like me, but his face was sharper, cleaner in a way mine could never be. It was as if none of the Absolian's deeds left any impression upon him, and mine remained as stains in my expression, growing darker and darker with every passing year. A shadow hung in my eyes, a certain tightness ever-present in my jaw that wasn't present in Aurelius'. Though my skin was young, emotion and Sin had changed it, had changed me, rage and sorrow and fear carving furrows into my being that never disappeared.

There was none of that in Aurelius. He was...blank. Stoic. Clean.

He leaned forward, rocking on his heels as his brow lowered, speaking to himself. "No. It...can't be....Could it?"

In that moment, I didn't know what option provided the most likely avenue of escape: plead ignorance as a stupid little mortal, or claim our relation. Which man would Aurelius be less likely to obliterate?

"Afraid, brother?"

I sensed the energy gathering in the Absolian's palm, invisible but no less stifling in its intensity, and his arm rippled behind the transparent rills as his fingertips glowed. The house behind his outline was partially in flames, casting his form into silhouette, but Aurelius' eyes were still visible—and they were cold. Unfeeling. Uncaring. In an instant, I would be dead.

I spoke before I could give the line much thought. I repeated it verbatim from my one and only memory I had of Aurelius when we'd both been winged creatures in that soaring realm. "No. Simply tired of patching you up when you take things too far."

Surprise slowed the Absolian's motions. His lips parted on a silent word as dark wings ghosted into being in his shadow. "...Darius?"

"Aurelius."

A single thrust of those outspread wings took the Absolian across the fifteen feet separating us and dropped him before me, the scents of copper and chamomile overwhelming, the latter stirring memories I hadn't known I'd retained. Though no images came to mind, I recognized the smell as his, as Aurelius', and I knew it had always clung to him just as the smell of dry parchment had clung to Sethan. Such a temperate odor for such a wild abomination.

"To think you survived," he said with a small, rumbling laugh. His amusement was hard and lacked any inclination of brotherly affection. "But you're human, yes? Mortal. How...odd."

My lip curled as my grip doubled upon the girl. She'd grown colder. "One sees many odd things when he leaves his gilded perch."

"Always with the cutting retort. It is odd, too, that your degradation had no effect upon your legendary wit."

Aurelius' wing shot forward, bending around his immobile body, and I dodged the blow before it could land, feeling the brush of cool feathers graze my cheek as my head twisted. Their touch was surprisingly sharp, leaving a stinging trail of warmth across my face that began to burn like road rash. The speed had ripped skin from my cheek.

He would've struck again and would've undoubtedly beheaded me this time, when a gun fired from the surrounding dark.

The buckshot wouldn't have fazed the Absolian even if it had struck him, but Aurelius only had to flick his eyes in the direction of the coming projectile to summon a protective barrier. Creation magic was as innate as breathing to the High King's thugs, but it did require a measure of concentration to control, no matter how slight that measure was. In that minuscule window of opportunity, a second blow hit Aurelius—and this blow didn't come from a shotgun.

Crystallized light flew from the opposite direction and struck my brother in the eyes, the ripple of its effect almost potent enough to blind me as well. Aurelius shrieked as he laid his hands over his wounded face and his tone rose in cadence, vibrating with potential ruin, and blood oozed from my ears in sticky rivers.

"Run!" a muffled voice called. I stumbled and tried to find the speaker as Aurelius' scream continued to scramble my balance. A high-pitched whine rang beneath his shriek, the promise of oncoming deafness if I didn't run before my brother managed to shred my eardrums.

I had seconds before he recovered.

A man stood beyond the fence and would have gone unseen in the swarthy colors of the night if not for the constructs he wore about his person like planetary rings. They hung mid-air, each sparkling with a different hue, responding to the graceful movements of the man's hands.

Not a man—a mage.

I ran despite the difficulty I had staying upright, throwing one foot in front of the other and refusing to let my legs crumple. Heading straight for the mage, I saw him twist his arms and bend his elbows, breaking one of the spinning constructs into a millions shards of vermilion light. A wall of green fire enfolded the farmhouse and its yard, the heat singeing my blood-soaked face as I passed beneath its rolling veil.

A black mage.

Aurelius' scream shifted, changing as the fire collapsed in upon him and the house. He took to the skies again, the downdraft of his liftoff hitting the earth with a boom of sound, and the mage slung another bolt of light at the airborne creature as I drew level with him.

A gray coat flapped in the breeze, the lining blacker than the predawn shadows. His hands were painted in blood-red runes. "Run!"

I saw nothing more of the man. Holding the child to my chest, I took off into the night with the black mage at my side.