Lying between Central and the bunker’s dome was the main rail line, which transported workers in glowing, caterpillar-like pods to the various production zones that provided the city with the necessities of life. But with dusk coming on, there was little movement in the yards, and the city’s drawbridge had already risen, securing Central against the coming of night.

The inhabitants of Chaos—which was the long-accepted name given to the ramshackle collection of buildings that clung to the curved sides of Central’s curtain wall—had no such protection. It was an interconnected mess of metal storage units, old wood, and plastic that was ten stories high and barely five wide. The upper reaches bristled with antennas and wind turbines that glimmered in the wash of light from Central’s UV towers, but the lower reaches of Chaos already lay encased in darkness. Lights gleamed in various spots, but they did little to lift the gathering shadows.

And it was in these shadows that the vampires reigned supreme.

The shifters might have claimed victory in the war, but in truth, the only real winners had been the vampires. While they’d never been a part of the war—or of society in general—their numbers had certainly grown on the back of the war’s high death toll. They were creatures untouched by the basic needs of the living. Water, power, sanitation—the very things humanity considered so vital—had no impact on the way vampires lived their lives, because their lives consisted of nothing more than hunting their next meal. And though they preferred to dine on the living, they were not averse to digging up the dead.

Before the war, most cities had relied solely on the UV towers to stop the vampires. But the cities of old had been built on a network of underground service tunnels, which gave the vampires access and protection. With most of these cities lying in ash and ruin after the war, the shifters had taken the chance to rebuild “vampire-proof” cities for both victor and vanquished to live in. So not only were there massive curtain walls and UV towers around every major city, but services now ran aboveground, in special conduits that had been “beautified” to disguise what they were.

Chaos, unprotected by either lights or walls, and still sitting on many of the old service tunnels, was regularly hit by the vampires—but neither the inhabitants of Chaos nor those in charge of Central seemed to care.