Page 92 of Fallen Heirs

My dad kissed the top of her head, then eased from her.

“We best get going,” he said, moving in to give me a hug goodbye.

He didn’t make it a step further, though, as his phone started emitting a high-pitched, urgent beep.

“What now?” he grumbled, pulling it from his suit jacket pocket.

His face paled as he took in the screen, which was showing a flashing red exclamation mark.

“The compound is under attack,” he told us.

He dialed rapidly, then pressed the phone to his ear, leaning against the stone table, the fingers of his free hand digging into it.

I listened with my vampire hearing as it picked up and Dante’s voice sounded down the line before my dad could get a word out.

“Constantine’s acolytes have just hit the compound. They’re trying to breach your ward. Four hundred sorcerers and sorceresses, one hundred witches, two hundred vampires and at least a hundred defected Light Fae.”

“Any sign of Constantine himself?”

“Not yet.”

“Lenora?”

“No.”

“Did you put the defensive protocol into effect?”

“It’s taken care of.”

“Good. I’ll be right there.”

He hung up and pocketed his phone, then turned to us, “Change of plans. Constantine’s army is already at theExemplarcompound.I’ll teleport us in through the ward, the two of you retrieve the blood samples, then get clear.”

“Got it,” Vanessa said.

“Understood,” I answered.

With that, my dad swept us up in a cloud of indigo smoke.

The walls shook,the very compound quaking under the force of so many magic-wielders assaulting the ward protecting the building and all those within.

Those the enemy wanted to do harm to.

Those they wanted to punish.

Those they wanted to utterly destroy.

When we’d first arrived, my dad had teleported us a couple of hundred feet from the compound to survey the situation, wherein the acolytes had been surrounding it on all four sides. Beyond the obvious issue of the attack itself was the fact that Constantine had been able to recruitsomany more to his cause,even with him facing temporary defeat both at Abigail’s hands and at Electi Academy when we’d beat back one of his units there too.

People had been far too easily swayed to his side—away fromExemplar.

I hoped to shit that what Orpheus had created would turn the tide there, that faith would be restored, or at least given to something that wasn’t Constantine fucking Vale. It just showed how desperate things had become for people. How desperate he’d made them with his attacks and fucked-up actions that had wrought havoc all over. They were in fear and up in arms because of what he’d done, yet they were following him because of that fear also. It made me sick to my stomach that there was so little hope there.

My dad had managed to thin the herd a little, downing almost a hundred of the enemy who’d been positioned at the west side of the building assaulting the ward with one of his mammoth magical shockwaves.

“The ward shouldn’t be shuddering this much,” Vanessa spoke, behind me and eyeing the door as I stood in front of one of the safes at the rear of the Archives Room and swept a glowing palm over it, breaking through my dad’s magic as only I could do with us being family.

“I know,” I called over my shoulder as I reached past one of his grimoires and grabbed the three vials of his blood from the shelf at the back. They glowed with his magic, keeping them in a temperature-controlled state, preserving them. Even with the number of beings coming at the ward, my father’s power was such that his ward should be able to withstand it even under a lengthy assault.

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