“Those Nightwalker armies evolved into the vampire houses, each bloodline led by the successors of the original Firstborn. Today, only two of the Firstborn still live: Jiao-long and Luscian. Luscian is the Eldest, the first Nightwalker. When the Sentinel armies rose to oppose him, he forced the other Firstborn to meet in council under his leadership. Over the millennia, that military alliance became the heart of their society. It now rules every major aspect of Nightwalker civilization. That’s what the Court of Shadows is. To the vampires, it is the center of the universe.”
“I can see why the last Wind of Earth would want to destroy it then,” said Ana. “And they’re based in Egypt?”
“It’s impossible.” Antonio scowled. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Idle curiosity.”
He gave her a hard stare. “Alexandria.”
Rory’s brow furrowed. “Why there?”
“Apparently, Luscian was instrumental in the establishment of the Great Library. He relocated the Court there to oversee it personally. Our history states that the Sentinels of the era believed he intended to use its knowledge to manipulate the human race, or alternatively, to gather what little remained of the world’s wisdom and preserve it for posterity. In any case, he set great store by it. Why else do you think we burned it all down?”
Ana rubbed her eyes, and her expression grew pained. “Antonio, you’re not exactly painting our race in a positive light here.”
“Welcome to our world, Anaba Nizhoni.” Antonio smiled. “We live by the Four Keys, the basic tenets of Sentinel battle tactics. I trust you know what they are?”
“Identify the enemy,” Take said softly.
“Isolate him from reinforcements,” continued Rory.
“Eliminate the threat.” Ana sat up straight. “Scorch the earth as a warning to others.”
Antonio nodded his approval. “We are the instruments of total war. From the beginning, the Founders were no different. They cared little for the plight of the humans, seeking only to destroy the works of the enemy. Eventually, they might have succeeded, if a greater power than magic had not intervened.”
Ana cocked her head as she studied the image of the Earth. “What kind of power?”
Rory stopped pacing and frowned at the map, the first to notice the change. He pointed it out to Ana and Take. “Look at the poles. The ice caps are expanding.” All three of them watched mutely as the glaciers advanced from above and below.
“Everything changed as the Ice Age descended,” said Antonio. “War on a large scale became impossible, as the natural environment became inimical and the food supply dwindled. Without the advanced magic and technology of the First Age, the mortals of the Second Age, human and Sentinel alike, were forced to withdraw from the affected territories to seek more favorable climates. War for survival became the new objective: fought locally all across the globe as competition for resources escalated.
“The vampires, however, were immune to the ravages of the permafrost and were secure in their citadels, even locked below the ice. They retained enough of the mystical sciences from the First Age to provide for the basic needs of their enslaved human populations, raising them like livestock to sustain the Nightwalker race through centuries of winter.” Antonio snapped his fingers, and the image of a world encased in ice disappeared.
“They waited it out,” said Take softly. “But if they hid behind their walls for all that time, then what happened to the Sentinels?”
“Without the presence of Nightwalkers to kindle their powers, the Gift subsided into dormancy,” answered Antonio. “Only the time capsules left behind by the final generations of Sentinels of that era allowed us to reconstruct this much of our history.
“From that point on, we can only speculate. The Sentinel Gift was seeded among the Founders’ descendants, and those bloodlines slowly intermingled with the human populations as they migrated across the world. Meanwhile, as the ice receded, the Nightwalkers re-emerged from their fortresses, confident in their ability to reconquer the world.”
“So why didn’t they?” asked Ana.
Rory stood in the center of the room, his eyes unfocused as he tapped the processing power of his Gift to run his own simulations, extrapolating from the information he had already heard. “Contagion.”
Antonio’s head snapped around, and he gazed at Rory with new respect. “Yes, exactly.”
Take frowned. “You mean some kind of disease?”
Antonio shook his head and then faced Ana. “Not contagion in a biological sense but rather in a mystical sense.”
Ana blinked in surprise, then began to laugh. “Damn. I’ll bet that must have been quite a shock.”
Takeshi crossed his arms and fumed. “Could one of you explain what you’re talking about to those of us with smaller brains? Preferably using short words?”
Ana tried to maintain a straight face. “The Gift has to be inherited from both the mother and father for a child to be born Sentinel latent. Once that child grows up, if it produces offspring with a human mate, then those offspring become carriers of the original Gift, but they aren’t latents themselves. If two carriers produce offspring, then those offspring have a chance of inheriting the full Gift and becoming latents in turn.”
Takeshi shrugged. “Okay, I think I remember that much from Genetics class.”
“Contagion is the principle that once two objects are mystically joined, they remain joined even when physically separated,” said Ana, warming to her subject. “It’s like Christmas lights. Each light socket is connected to two wires, like the two bloodlines required to create a latent Sentinel. Pass electricity through those two wires and the bulb lights up. In this case, the electricity is contact between the power of the White Wind residing in the Gift, and the power of the Red Wind, residing in Nightwalker blood. When the two connect, the light goes on and the Gift kindles. While the Gift was dormant, the spread of the Sentinel bloodlines created lots of latents, all across the world, but because of contagion, they all remained connected. They became a string of lights, all wired together and plugged into the same power source.”
Take’s eyes widened. “And when you plug in a string of lights—”
“They all turn on at the same time,” answered Antonio with a feral grin. “When the Nightwalkers emerged from hiding and led their first raids on human society, eventually a latent became exposed, and the Gift kindled. Everywhere. Simultaneously.”
Take took a sharp breath as his Gift of Earth explored the strategic implications. “So instead of facing a single adversary, like the Founders back in the First Age, they created a distributed enemy, scattered throughout the entire population.” He whistled in awe. “They went from fighting armies to fighting guerillas.”
“And so it has remained, since the Awakening began the Third Age.” Antonio rose from his seat and walked to the window and looked down at the city. “They raised armies on occasion, and then we gathered to defeat them, but those incidents became rarer as the Nightwalkers learned to turn our own tactics against us, avoiding overt conquest and ruling the daylight through proxies and subterfuge. By not presenting themselves as a unified target, they became as difficult to engage on a large scale as we are.
“Only when they get careless and drunk with power can we finally identify and destroy them in significant numbers. That is the only reason humanity has not been swallowed up by the Children of Darkness. Every time the vampires accumulate a power base strong enough to rule the daylight, they expose themselves to attack by Sentinels or to internal wars within the Court of Shadows.”
Rory began to pace again as his simulations diverged from the analysis Antonio had presented. “I don’t understand. If the Gift kindles worldwide when a latent is exposed, how did we go so long without coming into our powers?”
“When the lights came on, to use your metaphor, the kindling of so many latents appears to have broken the links of contagion that allowed the event to occur. Since then, latents kindle when expo
sed, but that effect does not spread to other latents.
“In the meantime, we have become a territorial people, opposing Nightwalkers primarily at a local level, mounting small but continuous attacks, striking from concealment among the humans. Only when the Winds emerge in each generation do we unite and carry the fight to them.” Antonio turned away from the window to face them expectantly. “And here you are. I hope you enjoyed the last night of your old lives, because they’re over and done with.”
Takeshi took a deep breath. “No.”
Antonio blinked, taken aback. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re expecting us to throw ourselves into a frontal attack, all guns blazing,” Take said calmly. “That didn’t do the last Wind of Earth any good, and I’m certainly not going to repeat his mistakes.”
The older Sentinel met his gaze with amusement. “And what do you propose instead?”
“We live our lives, and you keep our existence secret while you teach us what you know about the various houses.” Take folded his arms on the table in front of him. “When we know everything there is to know about them, we work together to take them down—house by house—making sure we kill them all before we move on to the next. Anything less and they’ll just rebuild after we turn our attention elsewhere.”
“You wouldn’t be first to try to have it both ways, my friends,” Antonio said sadly. “Fighting a war takes focus, discipline. You can’t do it part-time.”
“Maybe not,” admitted Rory, “but I’ll be damned if I throw away everything we’ve worked for to fight a meaningless holding action for the rest of my life.”
“I agree,” said Ana. “We need to find a way to win, or nothing will change.”
Antonio’s mouth twisted in a faint smile. “Sentinels don’t fight to win, Ana. They fight to kill the enemy. There are always more of them around the corner.” He shrugged. “You’re young. You’ll learn. In the meantime, we’ll play your game. Where would you like to begin?”
Takeshi grinned. “Home is where the heart is.”
Antonio drummed his fingers on the table. “The entire western United States is held by House Jiao-long. You want to start by pitting yourself against one of the Firstborn?”
“Identify the enemy,” Take said coldly.
Antonio’s smile widened. “So be it.”
CHAPTER 4
March 2020; House Jiao-long Stronghold, Hong Kong, China; Five years later
Aleksei Magister Talizered stepped silently over the charred bodies of his enemies as he surveyed the carnage in the skyscraper. Amid heavy fighting, the Jiao-long vampires had attempted to retreat to the ground or the roof, only to find the way barred by House Talizered soldiers advancing from both entry points. The jumper blocks the intruders had cast over the building prevented their prey from teleporting away, while new Talizered soldiers jumped in from their staging areas on neighboring rooftops, using the perceptions of their comrades already on site.
The battle was fierce, but the House Jiao-long forces, already decimated by Sentinel attacks over the preceding months, were outnumbered and cut off from reinforcements. In the end, it had all come down to cold numbers. His forces had triumphed, and the enemy commander who had ruled the base was shackled to the floor with chains of magic.
Aleksei regarded the opposition leader with an affectation of disinterest. “Tell me your name and rank,” he said in a heavy Russian accent.
The enemy vampire glared at him, her fangs fully extended as she hissed in reply, “I am Chan-juan Consul Jiao-long, and you will suffer for this insult, my Lord. When my Master—”
Aleksei backhanded her across the face, feeling her jaw break beneath his forceful strike. Ignoring the gruesome crunch of fragmented bone, he grabbed her chin and held her head still. “Your Master is not here, Consul. He has abandoned you to seek bigger game across the sea. You and your people will all die here tonight … unless I allow you to live long enough to swear allegiance to me. What say you?”
The vampire kneeling at his feet grimaced, revealing a mouthful of fractured teeth, and quite deliberately spat in his face.
Aleksei nodded gravely. Placing a hand on either side of her head, he crushed her skull before ripping her head from her body. The severed head clunked to the floor as he walked away without a backward glance. Wiping the bloody spittle from his face, he addressed the strike leader who led the House Talizered forces. “Kill them all,” he said casually. “Burn the bodies and scatter the ashes. Let the name of House Jiao-long be forgotten here.”
The soldier bowed. “Your will, Master.”
Aleksei strode from the room toward his escort of handpicked soldiers. He had numerous House Jiao-long bases to visit this night. He wondered idly what he would do if one of the base commanders accepted his terms and surrendered. Why contemplate the impossible? House Jiao-long was beaten. They would not sacrifice their honor just to live with the knowledge of their defeat. He smiled. If they did prove honorless and attempted to save themselves, he would simply turn the traitors over to Jiao-long in America. It would be a fitting punishment for such a betrayal. Cheered by his thoughts, he teleported himself and his entourage through the jumper block to the next battlefield.
CHAPTER 5
March 2020, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
“So you enjoyed yourself, then?” Edgar asked with a smile.
Nick was bouncing in his seat as he waited for them to complete their final descent. “Oh, yeah. This one guy Scott took me aside when he learned I was on tour with Nightfall, and we jammed a little. He offered me a place with his band next year, since their lead guitarist is graduating.”
“Assuming you get in.”
Nick stopped his fidgeting and gave his father an exasperated look. “Well, yes, of course, I’m assuming that. Why wouldn’t they let me in? My grades and SAT scores are top notch, and there are not many applicants who can say they toured the entire country as an opening act for one of the hottest bands in the world.”
“I just think you have to keep your expectations balanced, that’s all.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Jeez, Dad, way to bring me down. At least Mom believes in me.”
Edgar frowned. He reached out and covered Nick’s hand with his own. “Nicholas, I have always believed in you. If you want to be a musician for the rest of your life, then I am behind you one hundred percent. But I want you to always have the option to choose a different path. That’s why your mother and I wanted you to apply to this school. With an education of this caliber, you’ll be able to follow your dream without closing any doors, in case you change your mind down the road.”
Nick smiled at him. “I’m doing what I love. I won’t change my mind. Rory even offered to shop my demo mix around to some of his contacts.”
Edgar snorted in amusement. “Rory again. Are you sure you should be hanging out with the headliners so much? You never stop talking about him.”
“I like Rory. He’s my friend.”
“Balance, Nicholas. You have a working relationship while you’re on tour with his band. Your friendship might not last beyond the end of the tour. Don’t mistake a tactical alliance for a personal one.”
Nick subsided in his seat, growing sullen. “He’s my friend, not a chess opponent.”
“Just be careful, okay? Trust me.”
“Why are you so down on Rory, anyway? He’s been nothing but nice to me, and you keep telling me to dial it back.” Nick looked up at him, eyes intent. “Seriously. Do you have some kind of problem with him?”
Edgar met his son’s gaze and chose his words with care. “You’re seventeen years old, and he’s twenty-seven. I’m concerned about the amount of time you’re spending with him.”
Nick looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Um, you’re not accusing him of perving on me, are you? Because Rory’s not like that.”
“I’ve seen you two together, Nick. You flirt with him, and he doesn’t object.”
“We’re just playing, Dad. He’s usually
so tightly wound, I just try to lighten the mood a little to relax him. I don’t even know if he likes guys.”
“So, if he ever decided to take you up on one of your invitations, you’d turn him down, right?”
Nick was silent for a second too long. “Of course.”
“I see.”
“Dad, do you trust me?”
“Yes, but—”
“If you trust me, then back off.”
Edgar considered Nick’s defiant expression. “All right, Nicholas. Use your judgment.”
They didn’t say anything more to each other until they arrived at the gate.
* * *
Edgar dropped Nick off at the trailer he shared with the rest of his band. On his way back to the rental car, he stopped in the security office. “I need to speak to Rory Brennigan.”
The security officer raised his eyebrows. “For what?”
“It’s a personal matter.”
“Sure. Why don’t you leave your name and—”
“My son is a minor and touring with him. I have some concerns. Do I really need to draw you a picture of how ugly this could become?”
The security officer regarded him thoughtfully. “I could let you speak to the band’s executive assistant. He can make a decision as to whether you need to speak to Mr. Brennigan personally.”
“Thank you.”
The officer wrote him a temporary pass and directed him to one of the buses farther down the parking lot. Edgar followed his directions and found the bus with the correct number. He knocked on the door. Then, feeling something strange, he laid his hand flat against the cool metal. What the hell? The damn door was warded!
The door opened, revealing Antonio, who stared at Edgar in shock. “Ed? What are you doing here?”
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