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“Shit, now what?” Julian asked.

Kian came down from the trees, inspecting the area where the vamp kid had disappeared.

“There’s some sort of distortion magic here,” he said to himself, feeling the air around him and looking a bit like a mime building a box.

“Can they see us right now?” I asked, sniffing the air. “Like could they be standing right here, laughing their asses off at how dumb we look?”

“More or less.”

A deep voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “Were it not for the vampyr in your company you would already be dead. Speak now before we change our minds.”

“We mean you no harm,” Kian responded. “We were born in another world, and have come here to stop the king.”

A chorus of laughs echoed around us, and I turned around, trying to find its source.

“Stop the king?” another voice said. “Word has reached even us that he has the twin wolves. Nothing can stop him now. Both of our realms are doomed.”

A lone figure stepped out of thin air, tall with long, black hair. He crossed his arms, his tongue lightly touching the tip of one of his long canines as he chuckled. “I’m not sure why you’ve sought us out, but whatever your reasons, we will not aid you in this quest. King Alaroth believes us all to be dead, and we wish for him not to learnotherwise.”

Cam spoke next. “The female wolf twin, she’s our pack’s omega. Believe me, she doesn’t want this war. We came here to save her, but we don’t know anything about this world. We need information mostly, and maybe a place to stay while we figure out our next move.”

He sighed deeply, considering Cam’s words before looking at Kian. “And you? Why do you aid these shifters?”

“The vampyrs in our world lost their magic when we closed the portals a hundred years ago. If he manages to reopen them, he’ll finish the job he started and finally eradicate us all, and we’ll be powerless to stop him.”

The vampyr walked around Kian, slowly inspecting him. “And yet you must have had some magic to enter here? To follow Paxe undetected?”

Julian snorted. “An elephant could have followed that kid undetected.”

“An el-ee-font?” the vamp asked, arching an eyebrow.

I waved my hand to dismiss the subject. “Big animals, don’t worry about it. Regardless, our omega’s parents came to our world to escape the king, and we believe she must have had the magic in her blood. She passed it to us, and to a few vampyrs, who are now trying to share it to better protect themselves from a possible invasion. But even if all the shifters and vampyrs on Earth got magic fighting powers overnight, there are still billions of non-magical people who are at risk. We can’t let the king use our omega.”

He sucked in a breath and looked at Kian. “I must discuss this with the others.” And then he turned around and disappeared.

Insects chirped nearby, and Julian shrugged. “At least they didn’t try to kill us?”

A disembodied cackle sent shivers down my spine. “If these are the kinds of stunts you guys used to pull before the magic well ran dry, I totally get all the creep vampyr lore now.”

Kian ran his fingers through his hair and then continued to inspect the magic wall that the vampyrs were hiding behind. “I think I’m starting to understand this. Perhaps if I…”

56

KIAN

“…just rearrange the air here, I can…”

I stopped, now noticing the eyes of close to fifty vampyrs focused on me, and they did not look happy.

Surrounding them were their servaglios, who outnumbered the vampyrs at least three to one. Adding in the young boys scampering through the crowds, giggling and pointing behind me, there were probably close to two hundred people here.

I turned around to see what the children were laughing at, and saw the shifters standing at the entrance of their small village, glowering at what would be nothing to them.

They really did look like big, naked idiots.

The vampyr who’d shown himself grabbed my arm and led me away, hissing. “We haven’t decided yet, and you weren’t invited.”

“I’m sorry, I was just curious about the magic. I didn’t mean to break in.”