“Will AJ and Erzsébet come to us?” I ask as I reluctantly pull out of the hug with Zev. As much as I long for his touch, I’m giddy at the thought of being reunited with my dearest friend who’s been through so much because of me.
“We’ll have to see,” Rune says, finally stepping forward to join the conversation and holding a baby that somehow looks clean and content. Where the shit did he find a fresh diaper? “Before we can safely--”
Rune abruptly stops talking, his eyes on Darius. I look to the vampire as well, who stands near the door, a serious look on his face as though he’s lost in thought. A few seconds of silence pass, then he looks at me.
“I need everyone to stand behind me but stay close.”
“Why? What’s happening? Where are we going?”
Darius puts his hand on the large, marble door handle, listening through the stone for sounds I definitely can’t hear.
“They’re waiting,” he says. “It does us no good to stay hidden away.”
“What’s our plan?” Zev asks.
The four of us exchange looks, and the haunting realization that we’re still in the vampire kingdom washes over us. We’re surrounded by angry survivors without a plan of action, and companions of a prince who just brought death and destruction to his own doorstep.
“I don’t want to force you to fight,” I say to Darius. Pledged to me or not, I can’t ask this man to kill more of his brethren.
“I don’t know if we’d win a fight at this point, without the dragons flying overhead,” Darius says.
“Can we get them on our side?” I pose my question to Darius, but I’m happy for anyone in the room to answer. “Help them see our cause?”
The moment the words leave my mouth, I realize how important they are. The Sexies see it on my face. “That’s it,” I whisper.
The three princes look at each other, not yet as sure of my epiphany as I am.
“You all believe the prophecy is bogus, right?” I say to a chorus of nods. “Then that’s what we have to do. We can’t fight everyone. We have to make them understand that--”
“That the Last Witch is more important alive than dead,” Rune says, finishing my thought with a little artistic license. “She can save us all, or fall into the Érintett’s hands and save none of us.”
This is the only path forward. Timót’s army is too big, his dragons are too fierce, his magic is too powerful. If we want to stand a chance, we need a united realm.
I can feel in my lovers that they know I’m right.
Without another word, Darius opens the door and we all walk out. I grip my wand, terrified of what might come for us. Rune keeps Rain held tight against his chest, putting her safety above his own, as always. Zev stays right beside Darius, prepared to fight and die for his old friend.
As we move into the open air, climbing on top of the fallen debris from the earlier battle, there’s no immediate threat. No vampires jump out at us. I don’t hear any sounds from them as we step out, and I’m not sure what Darius was listening to earlier.
When we move a little higher, climbing up the fallen columns, the scene becomes more apparent.
I thought most of the vampires died in the attack.
I clearly underestimated their numbers.
Hundreds of them stand on top of buildings and fallen structures, staring down at us as we emerge.
No one looks to attack. No one even moves.
Except for one vampire, who slowly walks toward us, coming out of the rubble that was once a sacred chamber.
It’s Emerus.
And he’s carrying King Vladimir’s crown.
Chapter Six
It’s not so much that we’re out-numbered. I mean we are, greatly so, with vampires on every rooftop and some certainly lurking unseen in the shadows.
That’s not what scares me. We’ve been outnumbered before, and if there’s one thing I trust my powers to do, it’s light shit on fire. The vampire’s greatest weakness is my greatest strength. The numbers don’t scare me.
It’s the volatility.
It’s the fragility of this shaken realm, and the realization that just hit me like a ton of bricks.
We need them.
Every last one of them.
Timót’s army flies on the backs of enormous, unbreakable flame throwers. He has countless men following his lead, and I’m confident he has even more fighters waiting back at a camp somewhere. Now he has the strength and durability of a vampire. He’s all but invincible.
I’ve spent the last few weeks wondering if I’d be on the run for the rest of my life, trying to raise my child in hidden chambers while a council of paranormals chased us down. In an instant, that’s all changed. I don’t want to run from these vampires, and I don’t want to kill them--even if that’s what they want to do to me.
I want to convince them to join us.
Emerus leaps off a crumbling wall, landing gracefully in front of his brother. He and Darius stand just a few feet apart, staring at each other in silence. Given the stakes of this showdown, I have to keep reminding myself that these are two brothers who just lost their father.
Darius has his own issues to sort out with the king’s death, but it’s nothing he won’t recover from. With Emerus, I don’t know anything about their relationship. I don’t know if he saw his maker as a despicable, murderous monster, or the head of state who helped promote the best interests of his kind. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
“I know why you came, brother,” Emerus says, keeping his voice diplomatic while his balled fists show he’s ready to throw diplomacy out the window if need be.
“I don’t believe you do,” Darius responds. He’s calm and collected. A face-off with his brother could be violent and scary, but now that he’s done fake-betraying me it’s clear he feels a sense of relief.
“No? I understand how pledges, bonds, and oaths work.” Emerus gets a little more oomph in his voice after each word, the anger starting to peek through. “I can smell your blood bond a mile away. I read your thoughts even as you tried to keep them from her, and if our father’s mind wasn’t so poisoned with anger over you leaving, he would have seen through you as well.”
Darius looks at his feet, flashing back to those moments when he was still shunning me, moments I now know nearly crushed him. I’ll have scars from those heartbreaking hours, but I’m positive the vampire’s wounds will take even longer to heal.
“Then I’m lucky,” Darius says. “We’re all lucky. If the king saw through me and killed Bernie, we’d all be dead. That Érintett army would have murdered every last one of us, but the goal was to keep the mother and child alive.”
“He killed hundreds! And had we sacrificed the child--”
“It would have done nothing!” Darius spits as he yells back, as impassioned as I’ve ever seen him get regarding the prophecy. He climbs past his brother, standing atop a chamber wall so he can address all the vampires, most of whom are probably just waiting for Emerus to give them the cue to attack this traitor.
“Don’t you see? There’s no sense in the prophecy, written by the Fates themselves, if the final act is to kill the last of their kind.” Darius lets his words hang while the angry crowd considers what he’s said. “The battle for magic and power has led us here, with three races at each other’s throats and one nearly killed off, and the baby’s blood would do nothing to change that.”