The Sin of Lust listened to the rapid patters of raindrops striking her umbrella and sighed.

She resisted the urge to lean against the wet town car at her back as she gazed upward at her own tower. In the night, most of its black windows reflected the hazy glow of the city's ambiance, though a few were yet bright from a careless employee leaving the light on or from someone working late. The tower rose ever into the misty dark, a javelin of obsidian threatening the heavens above. 

The voices of John and Wilson, her guards, interwove in a masculine jumble of words as they exchanged shift information. Amoroth thought their presence superfluous and didn't much enjoy waiting for such technicalities to be completed, but appearances were important to her survival. The CEO of a company who'd recently survived a terrorist's assault would go nowhere without bodyguards, thus Amoroth needed the musclebound ex-military men to stay with her.

Even so, her patience could only be stretched so far.

She released another drawn-out sigh and tipped the umbrella just enough for the water to dribble onto Wilson's already wet shoulder. "Must you two make this farce duller than it already is?" she complained, rolling her shoulders to dispel the ill feeling settling between them. "Let's go."

"A moment, Ms. Amoroth," Wilson replied, wincing when her eyes flicked toward his.

Neither man knew what she was, but both had been serving under her for long enough to recognize Amoroth's eccentricities and to understand she was not like normal, mortal women. They were paid well for their silence.

She again gazed at the tower, then her eyes roved over the skyscraper across the avenue that housed Khrest Technologies and the high-rise beyond that where DPC Innovations lay. Both were companies she presided over with Cuxiel acting as the silent partner. With him gone, she'd assumed total control of both enterprises and wasn't sure what she wished to do with them. It seemed pointless to hold onto the industries without Cuxiel backing her.

Everything seemed pointless without him. 

The ill feeling grew in strength and she again rolled her shoulders, baring teeth at the creeping sensation flowing along her spine like thick sludge. What was that?

"Wilson," she snapped, all but flinging the umbrella to him. The rainwater would ruin the white silk of her suit, but Amoroth suddenly wanted her hands free and could care less about a ridiculous garment. "We're leaving." 

Disgruntled but feigning obedience, the man went to open the town car and see her into the vehicle—but Wilson didn't move quick enough. The ill feeling became an ominous weight of great portent, and the Sin of Lust's knees went out from under her before she knew what was happening. In the split second before she collided with the concrete, Amoroth scoured the halls of her memory and recalled when, in a bygone age where women were expected to have more petticoats than sense and she'd played the part of a twittering court woman, she'd felt this sensation before.

At that time, Cuxiel had come, and in a flash of blinding, he decapitated her foppish host and had wrapped her in his arms, spiriting them away to the Realm before they could be hunted down.

"Absolian," she gasped in Gehen, the word slicing through the rain like an unsheathed blade as Amoroth scrambled to her feet and ignored the raw scrapes opened on her palms. Both Wilson and John had a hand under one of her elbows, but Amoroth shook them off with a rigid jerk.

"Run," Cuxiel had warned. "If you ever sense one and I am not there, you must run. Avoid using the Realm if you can, as they can sense the rips we open within it every time we move. Kill your host to sever your anchor and flee Terrestria. Flee, my Amor." 

"Get in the car," she snarled at Wilson, not bothering to mitigate her strength as she grabbed his wrist and propelled him toward the front passenger door.

"But Ms. Amoroth, are you—?!"

"Get in the car!"

The man finally relinquished and did as he was told, which was smart of him because Amoroth was near the limit of her patience and had begun to consider killing Wilson to get the fool out of her way. She got into the town car as well and, as she shed her wet jacket, told the driver, "Go to Jackson's! Now!"

The driver didn't argue as her guard had, which was a relief. He spun the wheel and maneuvered the car into the flow of traffic as the Sin regarded the oily man seated next to her on the backseat. He was older than Amoroth appeared, and had a narrow countenance coupled with deep-set eyes that would unsettle most women.

Amoroth wasn't most women and she wasn't intimidated by the mortal wretch, though she would have preferred an assistant with more social bearing. He was all she could find after Dorian disappeared.

"You," she ordered, for she had quite forgotten the man's name. "You are to initiate the Omega protocol."

"T-the what?" he stuttered, fumbling at his pocket for his phone. Amoroth bared her teeth as she willed the cold, clawing ache to leave her be.

"The Omega protocol. You're to liquidate Klau's assets and reallocate my accounts to the specified subsidiaries. The Omega protocol—it was in your bloody packet!"

The sniveling man paled and instantly dove toward his briefcase stashed under the seat. Amoroth swore to the King Below if she returned to Terrestria once the threat had passed and found that the worm hadn't done his job correctly, leaving her nearly penniless, she'd hunt him down and have him castrated.

The feeling of the Absolian's descent had yet to extract its talons from her heart, and so Amoroth bashed the button for the moon-roof and clamored to her feet. Her assistant squawked in protest, but she ignored him as she stuck her head and shoulders through the opened window and spun in place, searching the murky skyline.

The wind and rain tore through her unbound hair and lashed at her face as Amoroth balanced her hands on the car's roof and peered through narrowed eyes. The majority of the sky remained swaddled in voluminous clouds of silver and iron—but, there, to the north, where the valley began to roll upward toward those begrudging foothills, the bare sky was visible through a tear in the moonlit clouds.

It vanished an instant after Amoroth spotted it, and yet it confirmed her worst suspicions.

Absolian. Oh, by the Pit—Balthazar screwed us utterly before Gaspard gouged his heart!

Amoroth settled within the car and shut the moonroof. Her assistant spoke her name with an entreat for information, but she heard nothing of what he said. She could only turn her gaze toward the window and offer a prayer to a self-proclaimed King that the driver would drive faster.

Jackson Klau resided several miles to the east of Verweald in the upscale borough of Lindengrove, where many of the properties were surrounded in acres of unfettered land and walls higher than most could conceivably climb. Jackson's estate was a modern monstrosity conceived in sharp angles, false mirrors, and recycled metal. The drive itself was paved in crushed coral and was but one example of his needless extravagance.

Of course, had Jackson Klau been a generous and less egotistical man, he wouldn't have called the Sin of Lust down upon himself and Amoroth wouldn't have been there at all.

The house was quiet, the long drive empty of vehicles aside from her own. The thick, jagged windows facing the eastern expanse of the high desert were dark and none of the lights on the lower level were flared. Had Amoroth not known better, she would've said the ridiculous house was empty—but the woman knew her foul, fetid little host and knew he rarely ever left home. If he'd been out at some gathering or social event, he would have mentioned it to her when they spoke earlier that afternoon.

"Forty years for nothing," Amoroth grumbled, eyes flickering northward to where the anomaly had appeared in the sky. "Forty years, and one winged bastard robs it all from me."

Tonight, Jackson Klau would be drawing his last breath though the contract held between him and the Sin of Lust was incomplete. It rankled Amoroth to know she had come so far—that she had survived so much—only to lose it all now in the face of an Absolian incursion, but Cuxiel had forced her to swear to never try to ignore such an event. He'd warned that it'd be her undoing.

No—our undoing. He'd said our. At the time, it'd been such an innocuous word choice, but Amoroth now understood that Cuxiel wouldn't have fled without her. If she was bullheaded enough to stay, he would've stayed, too.

Cuxiel was gone. She had to survive alone.

"Dammit!" Amoroth yelled into the stilted silence, startling everyone in the vehicle. The driver swerved on the drive and swore when she threw open the door, heedless to the howling downpour and moving car, and rushed over the waterlogged lawn.

The front door was locked but offered little resistance against her overpowering strength. It swung inward and slammed into the interior wall with a clash of breaking glass as Amoroth strode forth, chased by the rumbling thunder and the rapid footsteps of her guard and assistant. She called out to Jackson, and her voice echoed back to her in response.

"Jackson?" she shouted as she crossed the foyer and mounted the glass stairs. Her heels clacked upon each step and reverberated in the cavernous space. Amoroth's assistant entered the house with his briefcase held uncertainly before himself while Wilson hurried up the stairs after her.

The hall branched in two directions at the head of the steps, the right branch leading to the east wing of bedrooms and offices while the left branch wended toward the second dining hall and the gallery. Amoroth threw a manicured hand in the latter direction. "Go, Wilson."

He obeyed, and though by all appearances the house was empty and undisturbed, her tone had the man reaching for the gun he kept hidden in the inner fold of his coat. Amoroth hurried to the east wing and hoped to find Jackson asleep in his bed. She could end his life with him none the wiser, though the man deserved a far more gruesome death for the petty torture he'd dealt to her over the years. For now, Amoroth would settle for getting out of the realm alive.

Jackson's bedroom was as large as the scale of his mansion would suggest. It encumbered most of the east wing and included two closets, a walkout balcony, and its own ensuite bathroom. When Amoroth walked into the room, she found the balcony doors flung wide to the raging storm beyond, the sheer curtains billowing in the wind that issued inside as the rain splattered upon the tiled floors.

Amoroth squared her shoulders as she passed through the room with her silent, efficient grace. She ignored the open balcony doors entirely and went to the broad bed sprawled beneath a canopy of black drapes. She snatched back the rumpled covers but didn't find her scrawny, withered host sleeping beneath them.

Jackson wasn't here.

The ice-cold brush of the Absolian's presence hadn't grown stronger—but a different insidious splinter of dread had begun to work itself under the Sin's skin as she laid her palm against the slight dip in the mattress.

Still warm. He'd been here only minutes before, but was gone now.

Swearing, Amoroth reeled back and swung to the open balcony, determined to find the bastard—when a scream broke above the storm's passive blustering. Amoroth froze and dragged a long drought of essence through her lungs, further chilling the air until her breath coagulated into misty plumes. Her fists trembled, but Amoroth nevertheless followed the sound into the dark house.

No other noises chased the solitary cry. Amoroth paced the lone hall back toward the stairs and heard nothing aside from the click of her own heels and the rain striking the roof above. She kicked off her shoes to quiet her footsteps and continued forward, though every nerve in her body was screaming for Amoroth to escape.

Something was wrong. Something had happened here.

A soft oof of expelled air and the clatter of something metallic hitting the floor drew Amoroth's attention to the west wing's gallery. She followed the sound through the long corridor with the expectation of finding Wilson inside the room—but he wasn't. Jackson's priceless collection remained hung and pristine upon the walls behind glass and alarms, untouched by any intruders.

In the middle of the gallery's floor lay Wilson's gun. It was encircled by a fine mist of ruby blood.

Get out, Amoroth's intuition howled. Get out now—!

From the shadows, they flew at her in a hurricane of motion. Instinct threw the Sin aside, away from the closest blur and into the second. Claws raked themselves down her back as their owner snarled and the second creature sank elongated teeth into Amoroth's raised arm, tearing through silk and skin to suck with greedy mirth at her flowing blood.

Vampires...? What are they doing here?

Amoroth's hand snapped forward to the second vampire's throat, her fingers curling through the supple flesh before she ripped it free and the vampire came unhinged from her arm. The first leech came at her again, aiming at the Sin's neck—but Amoroth swung her elbow upward and slammed it against the vampire's temple, shattering bone.

A third and a fourth creature hurtled over the bodies of their fallen brethren without thought, their hands extended and their eyes blazing with mad fervor. Amoroth dispatched of them in a similar manner—and choked when the fifth vampire landed on her back and her gaze took in the magnitude of their numbers swarming in the peripheries.

They must have been sent here—!

Amoroth slung the vampire from her person with a grunt and darted to the room's middle. She kicked Wilson's gun into the air and snatched hold of it with practiced ease, her body swaying with controlled grace toward the gallery's second entrance. A female vampire sprinted at her with a feral hiss—and Amoroth shot her between the eyes.

The cacophony of the gun going off only alerted more of the creatures to her presence. They swarmed the gallery, their cries rising in a song of hunger and uncontrolled vigor as Amoroth shot two more and broke another's neck. With horror, she watched as the crazed leeches fell upon each other and feasted on their fallen brethren.

Vampires weren't cannibals. Their blood was tainted, too rotten, to be recycled in that way—and yet it was happening before her eyes.

These creatures weren't just mad; they were unnatural. Perverse.

Amoroth killed yet another vampire and found an opening between their amassed numbers. She passed through the hall, her stride even and quick as she rushed to the ground floor and threw the gun when its ammunition was spent. She didn't have time for these monsters. She had to find Jackson. If they'd killed him, she would feel herself being dragged into the Realm—which was what she wanted, but wasn't sensing. No, Jackson was alive somewhere. She had to find him or find another way out.

The entrance was before her with the door open and waiting. The Sin ran to the threshold and dodged a vampire's lunge as she looked for her car—and found it idling in the drive, the windows shattered, the tires slashed, and the engine smoking as gangly, underfed bloodsuckers crawled over the roof and hood.

Her driver lay splayed over the lawn, his blood diluted by the falling rain.

Marooned on the cement pathway, Amoroth's heart skipped a beat in her chest as the remaining vampires began to circle. She tipped her head back and, despite the cold caress of the rain breaking upon her face, glowered at the swarthy clouds. The Absolian's descent and the sudden incursion of vampires upon her host's domicile couldn't be unrelated. Life was never that convenient.

Sneering, Amoroth watched Wrath's abandoned children edge ever nearer and knew, in her heart, events beyond her scope were beginning to unfold. She didn't know what it meant, but she wouldn't remain blind for long.

The Sin sucked air through her teeth, tasting salt and the coppery twang of blood upon her tongue. "Well...this complicates matters."

She vanished into the Realm.