Ant didn’t flinch when the guards closed in. He’d already calculated their approach vectors, their speed, and the trajectory of their movements. Numbers and patterns made sense in a way emotional panic never would, but for now, Ant trusted Viktor to keep him safe.
Behind him, Viktor’s snarl reverberated through the garden. It was a sound designed by evolution to trigger primal fear in prey animals, at least according to papers written by Doctor Pike. Ant made a note to let him know that it seemed to work on lesser-ranked vampires as well. The guards hesitated. Not long, maybe half a second, but it was enough.
Ant placed both palms flat against the fountain’s stone rim. The talisman network lit up in his magical sight like a circuit board, brilliant lines of power running beneath the soil in very precise geometric patterns. Seven distinct magical signatures, just as he’d identified earlier, all converging on the one single focal point.
The artifacts Claudius had spent centuries collecting and burying throughout the estate all lent their own energies to his own ability to create wards. By aligning the artifacts and running his wards through them, Claudius had managed to attain far more power over a wider area than any single vampire should possess.
It was actually quite impressive from an academic standpoint. Doctor Pike would’ve been thrilled to examine something so intricate, as the main focus of his recent studies had been vampiric gifts. The level of magical engineering required to maintain such a complex matrix without it collapsing on itself demonstrated considerable skill.
Or incredible luck, because the matrix was also fundamentally flawed. Ant sent mental apologies to his colleague, but he already knew there would be nothing left of the structure once Ant had finished with it.
Tracing the ward structure with his mind, Ant followed each thread of power back to its source. Blood magic anchored the fountain’s talisman to the northwest corner. Death magic saturated the rose garden. Binding spells were layered through the foundation of the house itself, and extensive protection wards wrapped around the perimeter. All of it funneled through the talisman buried under the fountain, with the fountain itself serving as both an amplifier and a distribution point.
The lockdown dome Claudius had activated wasn’t a separate defense. That surprised Ant, who thought that it stemmed from Claudius’s gift. But no, it was an extension of the existing ward matrix, stretched thin to cover the entire estate. And that was where Claudius had made his mistake, creating a structural weakness. Claudius had overextended his magical architecture, spreading the foundation too wide without sufficient reinforcement.
“Kill them!” Claudius’s voice cracked across the garden. “Now!”
Ant ignored him. Viktor wasn’t going to let anyone near him, and neither was Able. Out of the corner of his eye, Ant saw the first guard had reached Viktor, who caught the vampire as he leaped into the air, twisting him into the pretzel configuration Viktor seemed to enjoy for some reason. The sound of bones cracking was quite distinctive.
Ten seconds.
Ant sank deeper into his core magic, past the surface-level energies he barely used for everyday work, and then past the intermediate reserves he tapped for scene readings. At the coreof every mage was a well of raw power - in his case, the core that earned Ant his Level Twelve classification. The magic responded eagerly, rising up to meet his demands as though the energy had been waiting for exactly this moment.
The world sharpened and focused all at once. Ant couldseeevery particle of the warped magic. This - Ant’s ability to see beyond the surface - was exactly why Claudius should never have bothered to threaten him. Ant identified the exact structural point where Claudius’s ward matrix was weakest. As he expected, it was at the junction where the seven stolen magical signatures converged beneath the fountain. The architecture was elegant but rigid, like a house of cards. If Ant removed the keystone, the entire structure would collapse.
Ant gathered his magic. He could not afford to let his magic travel anywhere through the lines already there, or he would simply be feeding the problem. He had to focus so that his magic hit one very small spot.
Eight seconds.
Two more guards attacked Viktor simultaneously. His mate moved quickly, using their momentum against them. One vampire sailed through the air and crashed into an ornamental shrub on the other side of the fountain. The other received an elbow to the face that sent him sprawling across the gravel path.
“Stand down, Viktor!” Claudius commanded, still trying to invoke his misguided beliefs in laws that had long been revoked. “Lex antiquacompels you…”
“Go fuck yourself,” Viktor snarled as he swung his arm into the neck of another guard who’d gotten too close.
Six seconds.
Ant’s magic was getting impatient. The ambient energy around him began to swirl, disturbed by the gathering power. Leaveslifted from the ground. The fountain’s water started rippling despite the still air. Able pressed against Ant’s leg, keeping him anchored to the physical world while his consciousness reached deeper into the magical one.
Nathaniel charged from the left. Viktor intercepted him with a straight punch that would have killed a human instantly. The older vampire staggered but didn’t fall. Viktor grabbed his arm and twisted, forcing Nathaniel to the ground before a knee to the chest knocked the wind from him.
Edmund emerged from the other side of the fountain, his fangs bared, and his eyes crimson. “You always were a traitor, Viktor.”
“And you were always Claudius’s lapdog,” Viktor shot back. He pivoted, putting himself directly between Edmund and Ant. “Come on then. Let’s see if your meager few centuries here have taught you anything.”
Four seconds.
The ward matrix pulsed in Ant’s magical sight, each thread of power clearly defined. He could see exactly how Claudius had woven the stolen magics together, see where the bindings were strongest and where they frayed. The lockdown dome overhead pressed down like atmospheric pressure, but it was just energy. Beautiful, wonderful energy that could be redirected, disrupted, and scattered, but that never truly disappeared. At the moment, it was caged.
Ant selected his target - the tiny spot where blood magic, death magic, and the binding spells met beneath the fountain’s base. It was there, like a bullseye just waiting to be hit. All Ant needed to do was push.
Edmund darted around the side of the fountain, aiming for Ant, but Viktor caught him midair by the throat, spun, and slammedhim face-first into the fountain’s opposite side. Water sprayed across the garden.
Two seconds.
More guards were coming from somewhere. Ant hadn’t known exactly how many people actually lived there, but it seemed like everyone was converging on where he and Viktor were. Viktor wasn’t going to be able to hold them all off much longer. Ant had already noticed blood dripping from a cut above his mate’s eye - someone had landed a hit - but Viktor’s expression remained absolutely feral.
“Whenever you’re ready, babe,” Viktor called as he threw another guard into a rose bush. “Now would be good.”
