by Al K. Line
Faz and Kane were thrown aside and I strode forward, my body burning, flesh and bone consumed not with hatred but a weariness over the whole damn thing. I looked down at myself and I was white, shining like a damn angel of death. Incandescent with sparks of dancing light that fizzled and burned the floor, my footsteps charring the rock itself.
Everyone moved away as I approached Oskari. As my aura grew more fierce, the inner strength of a mother scorned finally surfaced and I truly awoke to a power I hadn't known existed. This was why Kane was who he was, how he was such a person. I had given it to him, I had this all along and now it had manifest.
"The One," said the lead dwarf as he nodded, seemingly in approval, from the closing circle of dwarves and trolls.
"The One," they all repeated.
I looked around only to see nodding heads and confusion on the part of my friends and family, and then I understood what the dwarf had been telling me.
This wasn't about Kane, or Faz, or anyone else, this was about me and the future of my kind. About the future of vampire. With access to the Empty, something missing had finally been restored, something great and something dangerous and something I had to find for myself.
Vampires would know magic and they would cease their killing of innocents. Magic was ours if we wanted it, and it would help stem the terrible urges we felt, help control the craving for blood. We could take fuel and sustenance from the Empty. It would take time, it would hurt like hell, same as it did for all magic users, but there had to be a price to pay, there must be a cost for such a life, such a curse, as was right. We could exist, even thrive, but we must pay for our very existence with pain.
Somehow, everyone in the room understood this, and Oskari wasn't exempt. He knew what had happened, understood things could never be the same again. The old days were over, a new dawn was beginning, and, love it or loathe it, I was to lead this new age, at least in our country.
I was the Mother, I was the First, and I was to bear this terrible burden of change upon my shoulders. The One.
A small price to pay. I had my son; I had my husband; I had my humanity.
"You ready?" I asked Oskari, not unkindly.
"I am."
Oskari knelt, and so did everyone else. I stepped up to him, looked down with tears in my eyes, and I whispered, "Goodbye, Father."
I don't know if I was talking to him or someone long dead but still always in my head, or maybe just the past itself. But as I slammed out my rigid fingers and crushed Oskari's head, I put it all where it was meant to be, in the past.
Oskari slumped to the ground and I looked up, saw the truth of the future that awaited me, that awaited us all. It wasn't exactly pretty, but it was better than it had been, and at least we'd stand a chance.
The trolls moved as one, saying nothing. They just left, silent but for their footsteps. The dwarves weren't quite as hushed, were already telling tales that would grow ever more outlandish as they were repeated through the centuries. But this was where it all began, where a reluctant vampire enforcer first changed the course of history not just for vampires but for every Hidden species there had ever been or ever would be.
Me, I just wanted a cup of tea and a lie down. But that didn't happen.
The head dwarf, whoever he was, and maybe he was nobody special, same as me, took my hand. I was too stunned to resist, and with the others trailing, he led me away.
The Looking Room
Exhausted as we were, once we were taken to the Looking and Listening Room there was no way we could just leave when such a momentous change was occurring in the Hidden world. We watched for hours, Ward after Ward, House after House, country after country. Dwarves and trolls appeared from the gateways and fought against Hidden. Or in the case of the trolls simply walked through robust defenses, through buildings, through walls, and destroyed vampires on an epic scale.
It didn't end there though.
Local Heads, country Heads, even those on the World Council themselves, all became part of the final cleansing. The trolls led the action, with the dwarves doing most of the killing, as the large mass of the stoic watchers was more suited to squashing en masse than being selective about who to kill and who to spare.
People were eliminated without a reason given, others were told they were in charge without an explanation, but as bodies piled up and time passed and everyone communicated, it became clear this was happening for a reason. House cleaning Hidden style.
Nobody could stop it. There was nowhere to hide.
The trolls knew everything, where everyone was, where they hid, probably thanks to their own silent communications and the dwarves' strange rooms, which I suspected were more numerous than we'd been led to believe.
There was no warning, no quarter given, the trolls simply knew who was to be destroyed and who should be spared. Maybe they got it right, maybe they didn't, but there was no stopping them. High or low, powerful or just a novice or apprentice, nobody was exempt. Every human Hidden was a target, every mortal or ex-mortal that resided permanently on planet earth was judged, seemingly in an instant, yet I got the feeling they had been weighing us up since the beginning.
The trolls knew, and with the help of the dwarves they carried out a worldwide attack that began the instant I defeated Oskari and took upon myself the mantle of responsibility for my country and my kind. With our actions, we had made a choice for everyone. We gave the trolls the green light to put right so many wrongs and set human Hidden on a path that led not into darkness but hopefully into light.
Guess it had been a long time coming.
Life changed forever that day, and I knew I could never go back to how things were, no matter how much I wanted to. But I had my husband, I had my son, and I had my friends.
And that was all I ever wanted from this life. Family.
The End.
Get new release notifications first via the Newsletter.
Author's Note
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this, the third and last in the Hidden Blood series.
Kate's adventures begin directly after book 8 in the Dark Magic Enforcer series, although you do not need to read one to enjoy the other.
But if you do want to find out more about how we got where we currently are, learn how Kate and Faz got together, what happened on honeymoon, discover what Intus got up to that scarred everyone for life, and how Mithnite came to be their lodger, then please check out the Dark Magic Enforcer series.
Read about Faz's adventures, beginning with book 1: Black Spark, and trust me, it's a real blast. Literally.
Stay jiggy,
Al
