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.Phillip popped into my mind, clinging to the legs of another vampire, Percy, the one I d always seen in the glass case. Help me, Phillip begged Percy. Nomen est omen, Percy whispered. Names are destiny.Yours means lover of horses, and his the bespectacled vampire looked at me his means all powerful. A sense of Percy bounced against the wave of my psyche.He was powerful, an Emperor like me, and old from an age of chamber music Ididn t recognize.Percy d been around for centuries.at least.One more Emperor to add to my hit parade. Sorry about all this, Percy thought at me. He s controlling the wards, and I fear he s gone and activated his failsafe.No one can get in or out. He faded before I got out a reply.The wards will tear you apart! That time it was definitely Scrythax. So what? Fang and I rolled backward once more, the magic shield sliding with us, drawn by the purple fire in my eyes. It doesn t take all thatmuch to put my dead ass back together again. On our next charge, the shield cracked and so did my jaw.Shards of magic sliced me to ribbons like paper through a shredder, but Fang keptrolling until his front end knocked the front doors down.I slid off the hood in a mass, re-forming legs first as he stopped.Almost formless, I keptmoving, a mass of writhing reincorporating flesh, all sliding back together into the shape of one very angry vampire.Thralls, some belonging to Phillip, others not, rushed out to meet me, weapons in hand.A man thrust a stake into my chest and the stakeexploded, taking his hand off and splintering him with slivers.Spirals of blue protective magic formed around me as the wards thrust me back outinto the street, still crackling with bursts of electricity.Wings of tenebrous leather tore through my T-shirt, and my fangs and claws became disproportionate to my size as I turned into the uber vamp.My claws, normally black like my uber-vamp skin, were edged in gold, my body larger than before, a good eleven feet, maybe twelve. Little pig, little pig, I roared. We defend the masters, a young man with dark hair shouted.The flamethrower in his hand shook, the fear-tremble uncontrollable.He cut loose with the flames, but I didn t move.Fire lit my skin, tracing my muscles like red orange highlighter, and didn t burn me so much asilluminate me more Balrog in appearance than vampire. Let me in! The thralls faltered as one.Retreated.Bats covered the moon.Rats poured out of the sewers.But when they touched the protective ward, theyburned.Or I ll huff and I ll puff and I ll blow your house in. Hmmm. Buildings like the Highland Towers, built between the turn of the century and the start of World War II, were already using steel construction.Before steel they d been using massive iron columns with load-bearing walls.The Highland Towers more modern construction was problematic.Modern buildings are sturdier, the weight well distributed.but maybe.Anticipating my command, Fang zoomed off, looped the block, and came back at top speed, plowing into the northeast corner at more than ahundred miles an hour.Shards of stone facing filled the air, and when the wards bounced him back, Fang was already regenerating.I d seen himdo it before, but he did it faster now, healing as quickly as me.The exterior facing broke free, but the concrete underneath it was only cracked.Fang revved his engine and began to make another pass, but Ishook my head.I needed something bigger than my car to break these wards, something so epic that they couldn t just hurl it back out. Something my eyes raked the building really I looked at a manhole cover in the middle of the street massive. I wonder.What are you doing, Eric? Scrythax asked, his voice high-pitched and singsongy.Tearing the cover off a manhole is easy.Fitting an uber vamp sized body down one isn t.Void City s sewer system is huge not Paris huge, butstill big.Punching an uber vamp sized hole through the street isn t easy, but if you have a sturdy metal tool, say a manhole cover, and you have atremendous amount of supernatural brawn, you can get the job done.I kept waiting to hear sirens, to have Captain Stacey and his goons from the VCPD show up to mess with my day, but they didn t
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