Page 19 of The Shadows of the Dawn

When they entered the building, they went through the front entrance into the lobby. He sensed the pull of Katsuki’s illusion cover up the noise of the door opening and closing. The first thing that Nikola observed about the alarmingly empty lobby was the scent of blood—both human and vampire.

Asher was practically bouncing on his knees next to Nikola, Liam and Moss shivering and cowering together behind them. Nikola raged a war inside himself, one side wanting to rip apart every intruder in the building and the other side wanting to grab everyone and flee far away.

But they needed to be here—at least according to the whims of the patrons—so they couldn’t run. The side of him bathed in Blood won out.

“Should we try her office first?” Nikola whispered.

It was his voice that broke the spell. Though they had anticipated it breaking immediately anyway, Nikola still grimaced in guilt as he felt their stealth fall away, leaving them exposed in the middle of the lobby.

Blood Followers Nikola didn’t recognize leaped from the top of the escalators, landing with the grace of felines between the secretary desk and Nikola’s company. Nikola posed to strike, doing a sweeping headcount. Only about a dozen. Child’s play, really, especially with both him and Asher.

But he wasn’t naïve enough to think the building wasn’t crawling with more. This was just the first wave. Where the hell was Morrigan and the remainder of her units?

“Bunch o’ traitors, eh?” Asher hissed, stalling, giving the Moon Children time to work their magic.

The Blood Follower in front of the pack, a scruffy burly man with a large forehead and thick eyebrows, snarled a laugh. “Oh, the irony, coming from you, Master Asher.”

The Blood Followers surged forward. With a feral screech, Asher lunged to meet them, Nikola close behind him. It was a dance of Nikola and Asher truly fighting side-by-side in its purest form. Asher bared his teeth in a snarl, but Nikola could see the lifted corners of his mouth, a wild smile that reflected the spirit singing in his veins.

It was the same song that singed Nikola’s blood vessels with the welcomed heat of combat. A song that sounded a lot like drumbeats.

Nikola’s brute force, his methods of bulldozing and throwing down his opponents with the impact of a speeding truck, complimented Asher’s agility and lithe style that could very well be described as Master Asher Black-inspired martial arts. Asher expertly danced around Nikola, avoiding the crossfires of Nikola’s devastating blows as Asher picked off would-be attackers with swift kicks and even quicker knuckles.

Nikola wouldn’t have been surprised if the intruders knew his face. But on the off chance he had encountered them before, they were lost to the decades, a blur of glistening fangs and shining red eyes. None of these vampires were newborns; only those who had survived Grander’s worst could have survived recent developments.

Which meant it wasn’t as easy razing through them like it was with a mob of poorly trained newborns, most of whom had been picked off on the winter solstice.

Asher and Nikola did not strike to kill, though the drive to do so hummed ever louder beneath Nikola’s skin. But that didn’t mean they were fully holding back.

Bones broke beneath fist and heel, teeth cracked free from jaws. Fabric tore as Asher evaded attacks and Nikola threw off those gunning for him. It was all made possible because of the Moon Children’s support.

Alarm and uncertainty flashed across the features of the Blood as they heard screams and calls that weren’t truly there, offering Asher and Nikola the window to shatter a knee or snap a neck. Most of the illusions fell deaf on Nikola’s ears, but the eerie whispers in the air slipped through. Distracting, yes, but unlike their opponents, he knew the origins and could ignore it.

With the intruders confused, frightened, and no match for the likes of Asher Black and Nikola Kingston teamed up, the room quickly filled with the prone forms of Blood Followers. Asher walked around the fallen bodies, kicking the heads of any still groaning and attempting to stand up.

He theatrically slapped his hands clean of imaginary dirt. “All in a day’s work. But if those bozos know anything, they didn’t send down their best all at once. We gotta be prepared for the worst the further we go in and the closer we get to Morrigan... if she’s even still here,” he added in a mutter.

“Liam?” Trish spoke over Asher. Her brother’s breath sawed between clenched teeth, exploded pupils fixed on the splashes of red marring Morrigan’s shiny floors.

Asher and Nikola had agreed without needing to speak it out loud that they would spill as little blood as possible for the sake of the newborns’ unwitting presence. But the effort was not without error. Bone fragments breached flesh, stray claws had nicked Asher and Nikola’s neck each.

Asher crept closer, palms out, as if handling a wild animal. Perhaps that wasn’t far off. “Yo, you good?”

Liam blinked several times, shaking his head like a wet dog. Forcing himself to look directly at Asher, he croaked out, “Y-yeah. All good.” Well, the kid was still lucid enough to process what was being said to him and answer back, so that was promising.

Remarkably, Moss was holding themselves together, more shell-shocked over the violence than anything else. Nikola wished he could reassure them that it would soon be over, but wouldn’t that be a lie? Part of the curse of immortality was ceaseless bloodshed. And it was Nikola who had dragged Moss into the endless night.

The best he could hope to achieve tonight was to get everyone somewhere relatively safe.

“Right,” Asher responded to Liam, dripping with doubt. Liam straightened his back out of spite, steadying his uneven breaths. “Let’s go. We takin’ the elevator. Lead the way, Nikki.”

Nikola Kingston had ridden in this elevator hundreds of times but never crowded with those sparking with so much feverish energy, equal parts fright and exhilaration. And, oh, was Nikola exhilarated. Did he miss it, the thrill of a fight he knew he would win? The Blood side of him, the side he was still in the process of unearthing, was certainly drawn to the battlefield... but no. He did not miss the stroke of death—or the uncertainty of what waited for them on the other side of the elevator door.

Asher fidgeted with unkept excitement. When he brushed his fingers across the back of Nikola’s hand, Nikola could taste the adrenaline oozing from Asher’s pores.

Did he miss it?

Nikola did not have long to ponder it. The elevator jolted to its stop. He heard Kat’s faint whisper, “Make them see double. Make them look upon their own reflections.” Trish acknowledged Katsuki with a gulp that audibly clicked.

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