The silence that followed the death of the machine was not empty; it was heavy, pressed down by the sudden, collective expiration of a thousand artificial lives. The machinery of Oakhaven had ceased its rhythmic pulse, and in that vacuum, the predators finally emerged from the woodwork.
The vampires of the Council, stripped of their command, were no longer the aristocratic, shadowed masters of the dark. Without the violet fluid flowing through the city”s veins to stabilize their hunger, they were reverting. Their skin, once polished and pale, began to crack and slough off in grey, necrotic patches. Their eyes, deprived of the controlled, chemical glow, dilated into abyssal pits of pure, insatiable famine.
They swarmed out from the vents, the rafters, and the shattered mirrors”a legion of
