Page 33 of Livewire Witch

I step closer. It’s a guy stumbling and giggling under his breath. He’s clearly wasted or on something.

“You all right?” I call out.

The guy doesn’t seem to hear me. I catch a flash of movement in my periphery as I flick my head around to meet Zeph’s eye.

When I turn back, the guy is gone.

Huh.

“Did you see that?” I ask them.

“Drunk guy just disappeared into thin air?” Z says. “Maybe the guy has super speed?”

“There were two of them,” the diner guy says. “Someone grabbed the drunk guy and zipped off with him.”

Weird.

I don’t get a chance to investigate any further since Zeph’s phone buzzes and he freezes as he checks the screen, staring at it like it might attack him. When he looks up at me, his face is grim.

“Shit. We need to go.”

10

Dante

There are few species more arrogant than mages.

And Nexus mages really take the cake.

Despite that, I somehow have ended up with one of them splayed against the wall of my spare bedroom. His gaze fixed on the witch lying unconscious in the bed.

We have history, myself and these mages. But even if we didn’t, they wouldn’t be on my Christmas card list. They all walk around with this air of arrogance, untouchability, knowing their daddies will get them out of any scrapes.

It used to fill me with rage. The sheer damn cheek of the mages swooping in and taking over space and businesses, treating the people already in the space like drudges, with nothing better to do than to make them money.

That rage has set to more of a simmer recently. Although, that’s nothing to do with the mages. More a symptom of the general sense of ennui I’ve been fighting.

And now I have one of them in my private space where I invite precisely no one. And I don’t quite know how I got here.

Although... that’s a lie.

I know exactly how.

It’s all thanks to an enchanting young witch that caught my attention when nothing else could.

You have to understand that vampires are around for a long time. Longevity is something that comes with the territory. You drink blood when you have to. Live forever as a result.

No one tells you though, that living such a long time can be... duller than you might expect. After a while, you’re just going through the motions. Working, sleeping, watching other people fucking. It all loses its luster after the third decade.

I’ve found myself growing increasingly detached of late. Struggling to attach my interest to any one thing in particular.

And I shouldn’t be feeling this way. Not yet, anyway. It’s far too soon for me to be losing interest in life like I have been. It’s not like I’m an elder, old as dirt. I’ve not been around for millennia and seen societies rise and fall. Nor am I a youngling barely able to cope with their blood lust. I sit somewhere slightly above the middle of the vampire hierarchy in Arcanum society.

It’s only taken about a century for me to turn intothis; an emotionless, joyless shell.

Until one day when a young witch barged into my office and forced me to take notice. She fought against the compulsion that is second nature when I’m on the defensive and I was hooked. She captured my interest and made my blood pump in my veins when it’s lain dormant for decades.

She intrigues me.

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