"Falz!" Meredith Aurion hopped over broken bits of concrete and nearly landed face first in a pile of fallen architecture, but Falz grabbed her arm to steady her. "Thanks," she sputtered as she stabilized herself.

Falz Aurion looked as all of the Aurions did, golden hair, blazing blue eyes, and pitch attire speckled by moons, though his tattered, war-torn ensemble was marred with the injury that had killed him a life. Blood stained the edges of his torn tunic and revealed the stab wound that never healed if the man didn't let it. Falz had yet to find peace and move on in all the years, but he seemed more lingering for his own self-satisfaction than hung up on his past. He was also Meredith's distant relative, a few generations back. Some great, great, great grandfather or something. Vincent hadn't cared to figure it out the last they'd seen of each other.

"The vampire is right," Falz said to Luna, meeting her dead eyes just as tears overflowed them. "Dhampirs are different, so they have a chance. Hope is not lost for your daughter, but living bodies are so upsetting to the balance that they are torn apart by any lingering spirits in the void. Don't ruin your daughter's chance of being with you again by throwing your life away."

Luna searched for some way out of this life only to find Ezra slumped where he'd been left. Turning from the void, she went to him and sank to her knees to wrap her arms around his neck. Luna cried silently into his shoulder, and Ezra sank his hand into her silver hair to hold her back. Vincent had never seen the woman so close to a vampire before. Bearing a child together had changed the veteraned battleground mage into something kinder than she'd been when Vincent still breathed.

Vincent took his eyes off the scene as the specters slipped back from their party once they realized they were not the only ones with power. Vincent was quick to pull an isolation spell from the ground, winding silver threads up and around them in a dome that ended just beyond the void and surrounded the remains of the complex. If the spirits escaped, it would be hell to restore the balance. The lost Aurion souls hit the barrier and hissed before turning back to him with all their rage.

"Can I help at all?" Neil asked, by his side in an instant with Phoenix hugging his shoulders.

His son had never approached him so quickly, and Vincent wanted to tell him that he'd handle this and to rest at ease, but he knew better. Specters were susceptible to magic from their own, but they also could slip through it, and he didn't relish chasing around these deranged mages for hours until he corralled them into the void opening near the alleyways.

"Lend me Phoenix," Vincent said down to him. Neil pinched in his expression as Vincent slapped a specter behind him in the face with lingering silver threads. "Phoenix can feel the weight of the imbalance in this world, which is why he could not return me. If he touches any of these specters it will return them to their realm and lighten the pressure on him." Vincent glanced down Neil's fingers which were still as stone in holding his son against his chest. "Would you like to play a game of tag, Phoenix?" Vincent tried a different angle.

"I can do it!" Phoenix said happily, bouncing in Neil's arms enough that his son had to shift so he didn't drop him.

"And you can keep him safe?" Neil asked skeptically. While his son was willing to be near him, it seemed he was comfortable relinquishing his son's safety to him only if there was no other option. That was understandable considering Vincent's ruthless reputation. In life, he'd protected no one, allowing the weak to perish to cull the herd.

"I have thus far," Vincent was better off using current events that any verbal promise to convince his son of Phoenix's safety. "Phoenix is uniquely necessary here or I would not involve him. I would not wantonly endanger your son, Neil."

Vincent opened his arms for Phoenix, and the boy jumped from his father's arm with so much force that it knocked Neil to the ground. Neil sat up with a grumble as Phoenix giggled and accepted Vincent's hold, and Vincent didn't wait for Damien to figure out what was transpiring. He took off with Phoenix while the mage was distracted with his distraught family. A real vampire would never stray their attention from their master, but Vincent was in no position for admonishment.

The first few specters didn't expect him to run at them, and Vincent grabbed them by the throat in turn making it easy for Phoenix to tap them on the forehead with his small hand. With each, an expression of relief passed oved Phoenix face, and he settled into Vincent's arms with less stiff muscles. No child should suffer ill effects from something they had no control over, and with how quiet Phoenix was, he likely hadn't told the truth about how bad the recoil had been from trying to put Vincent back earlier.

Phoenix was too innocent.

The boy had never suffered loss as Neil had as a child, had never been abandoned by the only person he'd had left, and the more Vincent spent in this world, the more he realized why Juliana was right. He should have left Phoenix well alone to his father. Vincent could give the boy nothing, could make up for his lacking parenthood with Neil no longer. When this was over, it was time for him to settle down with his wife and watch from a distance.

A specter reached for Phoenix, and Vincent pulled its arm down with silver threads just enough for Phoenix to pat him on the cheek with a little giggle. This child was having way too much fun for his situation, and Vincent could help but smile as they cornered the last two mages. They screeched at them as they backed up to the border of the barrier, and Phoenix wrapped his arms around Vincent's neck for comfort. Neil would have cried as a child if faced with this scene, but his son had been a human. Phoenix was a dhampir and stronger of heart than both Neil and himself. Vincent wondered if he'd ever been this determined as he skipped over a specter who dove low at them.

Vincent jumped into the air and grabbed silver threads as it rushed at them from below. The second took the hint and darted at them from the side, and Vincent flipped back from both of them and landed a few yards away. Great they were working together. Vincent summoned his silver threads, but the specters warped and wriggled out of them in a display that had Vincent sinking in annoyance. These last two must be more powerful and cognizant then the herd, which made sense. Someone had to lead the wayward spirits.

Just as Vincent was contemplating ways to get Phoenix close safely, an unearthly howl shook the area and had the living crouching with hands over their ears. The side of a broadsword cracked against a specter's head and it fell at Vincent's feet. Phoenix reached as Vincent knelt, and it vanished into the void as Falz Aurion dragged the last by the back of its neck. The man held up the last squirming specter, and Phoenix poked it in the forehead. As it dissipated, Falz crossed his arms and leered at Vincent.

The man had spent centuries torturing vampires in the void after death.

They weren't friends.

"They'll eventually find their way back out if we don't seal the tear," Falz said as Neil came to Vincent's side. Vincent offered Phoenix back to his father and Neil edged back from Falz as he eyed him. It was the stance any Aurion used when faced with a vampire, stiff muscled, arms crossed, and chin lifted with their eyes looking down on what they perceived as undead trash.

"Nicholas said we needed a Medium to remedy any rift the children might make," Neil said. Damien joined his side, but the mage glanced back at his sister and daughter as they held each other.

"Nicholas is a piece of shit vampire, I would assume?" Falz spat, his hand flexing where they held his biceps and blaring those ugly blue Aurion eyes in Neil's direction.

"My grandsire, yes," Neil replied so quietly that Vincent was considering strangling Falz. No one should make his son feel small, less so in Vincent's presence. The gesture would be futile in silencing him, but enjoyable at the least.

"Well, your medium is injured." Falz gestured with his chin, and both Vincent and Neil followed his gaze to a blond woman crumpled on the ground.

Vincent had barely noticed the human. She was small in stature, skinny as a human could come, and the red streaks in her light hair accented the pool of blood thickening below her legs. They'd be lucky if she ever regained consciousness in that condition.

"That will do though, wont it?" Falz took a few steps past them before looking up to the hole in the void. "The anti-magic of a medium passing through the scar will heal it, conscious or not. You're vampires, so just lob her through. Sure, she'll be killed on the other side, torn limb from limb as she screams in pain desperately for her end, but what do you care?" Falz turned on them, his blue eyes burning with his hatred for their kind and his lips tightened in a disdainful scowl. "What's one human life if it solves your problem? On vampire or one child? As long as you get what you need, you monsters will destroy anything."

"Nicholas did not mention how the medium could help. I did not know it would cost her life." Neil's gaze lingered on the woman, and Phoenix hugged his father's neck to try and soothe him.

"Of course, he did not mention it. Nicholas doesn't care. Nicholas is the one who murdered the dhampir child to close the last rift. The vampire will stop at nothing to preserve his own life and power. All of you will."

"Dude, Falz, shut up." Meredith Aurion's voice jarred all of them, shaking life back into his son. The woman walking over, her cinnamon eyes narrowed and he shoulders squared, encouraged Neil to straighten up. While Vincent hated the woman, she'd always been a good friend to his son. "Seriously, I get you're damaged and all, but I had hoped you'd mellowed out. Guess, not. Neil didn't know about anything but needing a medium, so cool your jets."

"That means to calm down, right?" Remus joined her now that she'd retreated from her family. They liked her mate, Remus Shade, as little as they liked Vincent. The vampire dwarfed his mate in muscle mass, but stood a head taller than her as he brought an arm around her waist and pulled her closer.

"Yes, good job." Meredith pat Remus on his muscled arm, and the man inhaled her scent where her frizzy, curled hair touched her neck. Ew. The last thing he needed was to watch those two drool all over each other. He'd rather someone kill him again than watch those two eye hump each other. "So aside from murdering an unconscious woman, is there anything we can do about the gaping vortex sucking everything is?"

"If Falz can pull the stick out his ass, we can temporarily seal," Vincent said, desperate for a subject change that would distract Remus Shade from his aim. "Using our undead light and dark magic, we can sew a web over it, but like any barricade, it will eventually break. It will suffice to keep more specters from slipping through, but it's a stopgap. That is if Falz can stomach working with a monster like me." Every eye there looked to the dead mage, and he let out a disgusted breath.

"Seeing as I'm cornered into being the bad guyif I don't, I will work with the vampire to hold the gate here, but you need tofigure out a permanent solution. Or the world of the dead will crash into thatof the living and there will be no going back."

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