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Exposure Level 2 vi
~ Vescovi knew the stories about The Coming. About how the city of Zanu was swallowed back into the sands, from where it rose to glory. Details about its demise were sketchy, and for most, it was a mere story. A fable. One that illustrated the dangers of magic and why the use of it should not be taken lightly.
Because of the lore, travelers rarely explored the Zanu desert. The locals tried to warn them that their presence would awaken the revenants. Protectors of the secrets of Zanu. According to the locals, the magic thought dormant was very much alive. They spoke of it like it was a living, breathing thing. Vescovi thought they made it seem more ominous than it was worth. That some details were wholly exaggerated. He was wrong. And to their collective dismay—the locals were right.
The magic here countered Ava’s shadow magic. Repelled it. Until the peop
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Enter the Shadows Exposure Level 2 vii
~All around them, the sands funneled up into mini-tornadoes. “Brace yourselves,” Vescovi said. One after the other, the tornadoes formed, encircling them in a ring of swirling sand. Vescovi counted nine of them. Blurred figures stood inside the funnel. The revenants. Men and women who had long since passed. Vescovi wondered how Salvay and Sven had feared on their journey here. Vescovi wished for them the worst kind of death. When the earth shifted under their feet, the sand mound they were on gave way. It sent them sliding down the sides, separating the group. Ava, thrown off balance, lost her hold on the shield. It flickered, then disappeared. The earth kept shaking under them, shifting the sands, making it hard for them to stand up against their enemies. As abrupt as it started, the quake stopped. H
Enter the Shadows 23. The Fallout i
~8 months … After the virus break and the ill-fated trip to the Zanu Desert. The fallout from the virus was massive. It extended right across the continent with Pentorium taking the brunt of it. So far, they contained the virus to the five cities of Pentorium, but that was not the only thing on the loose. The footage, pictures, eyewitness accounts all gave away the existence of the vampires. To take down the infected and protect the lives of the humans, werewolves had to expose their existence as well. Suffice to say, the humans did not meet their efforts with gratitude. Relations with the races crumbled faster than a house of cards in a category five hurricane. The lines drawn had the humans on one side, and everything else clumped up on the other.
Enter the Shadows The Fallout ii
~Inside the lab, Marx found the others gathered. Helick, Garrick, Zigor, Ichiro, Shea, and Anabella with Martha and Philippe facing the room. Martha started the briefing once Marx took his seat. “As you all know, we finally figured out what the virus was—is,” Martha corrected herself. She was wearing a white lab coat, her honey blonde hair in a pile on the crown of her head. As Anabella said, the events of the last eight months brought about changes in everyone. For Shea, she had gone cold towards the humans, for Martha, she was more self-assured. When she spoke, she did so with authority. Confidence. She, too, had grown. “As we also explained,” she said, referring to Philippe and herself, “the mechanics of it are genetically coded to the DNA of the vampires targeting what we call the primitive gene.” “It being genetically coded,” Philippe picked up, “m
Enter the Shadows The Fallout iii
~Vescovi looked like a different man. Standing in his cell, hands behind his back, he was a different person. Marx approached the triple-plated ballistic glass. He forced himself to see Vescovi as he is—bitter and angry—and not as he was. “Do you know vampires do not use vervain?” Vescovi lifted his gaze to the vents above him. “We stamped out the plants like weeds. It always fascinated me the choice werewolves made to grow wolfsbane in flowerpots, tending to their weakness.” When Vescovi looked at Marx, his eyes were hard. Marx could sense the other man’s grief, though he gave no voice to it. Suffering a loss of his own, one that left part of him forever lost, Marx could relate. Empathize with the internal agony Vescovi faced with each waking breath. Every time he closed his eyes. But even though Marx felt for him, he could not condone Vescovi’s action
Enter the Shadows The Fallout iv
~Marx met Anabella out front. She was already in the car, Xavier in the driver’s seat. “Who else is coming?” Marx asked when he got into the back seat. “Penny is following behind us,” Anabella said. “And?” Marx prompted. “Ichiro and Garrick went ahead of us,” Anabella said. “Get a lay of the place. We have two teams on standby in the tunnels. Things go sideways we—as they say—light them up.” “Coms are in the case on the back seat,” Xavier said. “Put them in.” Marx took a com for himself, tucking it into his ears as he handed Anabella the box to retrieve the second. “I guess Philippe designed the courthouse.” Xavier w
Enter the Shadows The Fallout v
~“We all need to stand down,” Marx said, giving watchtower an order while trying to quell the tensions in the room. “I was just asking a question, Mr. President. What do you think would happen if I chopped off the head of the snake?” Anabella repeated the question. “How do you know that all the men who serve and protect you are, in fact, human? For over two centuries, vampires and werewolves have lived amongst you, and no one was the wiser. We look like you; we talk like you. How would you know?” Anabella turned her head to the Chief of Staff. “For all you know, Mr. President, your Chief of Staff could be one of us. Hiding in plain sight. Do you really know who you can trust?” Her eyes moved back to the President. Doubt was the easiest thing to plant when fear made fertile ground. The accusation caugh
Enter the Shadows The Fallout vi
~ It was becoming more and more apparent they required distance. A full-scale drawback. Shea was happy to hear that Marx had come to his senses. He still held hope for peace, but at least he was now willing to see the humans had no such plans. War was their agenda.Shea oversaw the watchtower as Marx and Anabella went before the country’s leaders again. All across the world, tensions were high. Though the virus was only active in Pentorium, other countries were arming themselves against the ‘threats.’ There was a strain on diplomatic relations with allied countries as they tightened their restrictions on persons allowed inside their borders.Vampires and werewolves had little to fear about traveling all the same. There were two sides to this world, and most humans were only privy to one. Between the underground railways that crisscrossed the c
Enter the Shadows The Fallout vii
~Ava strode into the lobby of Anax Corp, escorted by armed guards. Though it was a private security firm, the lobby was never this militarized. Then again, neither was Pentorium. Now barbed-wire barricades were blocking off certain streets and armed guards at every corner. She had heard about the conflict. About the fact that the secrets the vampires went to great lengths to keep were out, and the werewolves were just as exposed. Several times, she thought about coming back, but she couldn’t. While she left Marx and the others to deal with the human element of their situation, she was hunting down the supernatural. What she found was most disturbing.Martha and Shea came out to meet her in the lobby. Happy as she was to see Ava, Martha went in for a hug. Shea was the one to pull her back by her lab coat.“Oh,” Martha said. She adju
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