~ “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

~ 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

~ Anabella stood staring at Ava and Marx. She wasn’t sure if she was hearing what they were suggesting. Though Marx’s lips moved, she heard nothing pass ‘we need you to go into Sven’s mind.’ Since nothing else he said mattered, she held up a hand to stop him.“No,” Anabella said. It was the sanest answer she could give to their absurd request.Ava and Marx exchanged looks. “We need to know what Salvay is planning,” Ava tried to reason.Anabella gave Ava a withering look before walking off. She wasn’t happy to have the Queen of Shadows among them. Ava was the catalyst to the catastrophe they were now trying to survive. She knew Ava also blamed herself, and that was the most they agreed with each other.

~ Ava was back in the Mountain. She ran into Zigor and Ichiro as they made their rounds. Preparations were on in earnest to create the New Colony. Marx was finally facing the fact that there would not be a happy accord with the humans. Their collective fears outweighed their common sense, and that meant more deaths on both sides. Pulling back from them was the only way to have some resolution to the problem. Squashing the dispute with the humans would free up their resources to focus and take down the actual threat—Salvay—and his ever-elusive partner, Passerini. “Heard you were back,” Zigor said. “In more ways than one.” Dressed like the others, Ava no longer wore her cloak. It had been more for a disguise than fashion. With a solid form, she could move about without the garb to keep her unstable form hidden. Ava could dress as the others did and althoug

~ The first man gave them six locations. The first yielded less than a dozen armed men in a small safe house. None of them had anything of value. They were just more foot soldiers following a cause they did not understand. Ava incapacitated them as she did the first man in the underpass. She didn’t feel it fair to kill them for being stupid. At the following two locations, Ava did the same thing, Penny snorting her disappointment. They were halfway through with no actionable information, leading them to the head of the snake.  Zeroing in on location number four, Ava felt a trace of shadow magic. They were in a train yard; the tracks occupied with unattached carriages. Some possibly in use, others left to gather rust and vagrant occupants. Penny picked up the trail leading the way to the source. She stopped Ava, stretching out a hand to block her path. Ava looked up at the werewolf, who had her n