by Izzy Shows
Her words echoed what Gray had said to me, and I felt some of my anger at him for saying them ebb away. He wasn't alone in his thoughts, obviously, and probably the majority of the people would think similarly, that what I wanted was unrealistic. A pretty dream but nothing more.
Eva said you have a bigger destiny than all of this. You have a dream that could be made real, so don't let go of it.
The thought, in the voice of my abuelita, bolstered me.
Maybe everyone else thought the idea was unrealistic, but that didn't mean that I had to let go of it.
As I had told Gray, it was something I thought was worth fighting for.
Seventeen
The storm broke at last.
We were all sitting down to Sunday dinner when the hybrids attacked. I didn't have my magic spread out around the house, having let the calm week lull me into a sense of security, and now I was paying the price for it.
There were ten of them in the house before I knew what was happening, and then to my horror, there were vampires as well. The house was small and full of blood mages to begin with, but now it was full to bursting.
"Get upstairs!" I cried, jumping up from the table and running toward the living room, to get between the enemy and my people. Ten hybrids was impossible enough, but I was looking at five vampires, and a quick search of my magic told me there were fifteen more outside.
The hybrids didn't seem to know what to do with the situation, with the vampires in the room with them and the blood mages scampering up the stairs to all hide together.
"You don't have to do this," I said, speaking in a low, soft voice, both to the hybrids and to the vampires. "At least let us take the fight outside."
"Why should we do that?" A pale, blond vampire spoke, snarling at me.
At the same time, the largest hybrid let out a roar and took a step toward me.
"Look, fifteen on one isn't a fair fight in the first place, but you could at least do me the courtesy of letting me pretend that my people have a chance by fighting me on my own while they stay inside. Then you can kill me and come back in for them, right?" I sounded a little hysterical as I spoke, but that was all an act, to keep them from realizing what I was doing. All the while I'd kept them talking, I'd been spreading my magic over the lot of them, a giant net that I tightened the hold on at last.
Get out. Walk out the door.
I issued the mental command, throwing all of my strength into it. This was forbidden magic—if Eva knew I was working it, she'd throw me out on my ass as fast as you could blink. I'd done it once or twice before, in the castle, when I'd almost been caught hunting. But that had only been one person at a time.
The effort it took to command all of them was staggering, and I felt a wetness at the corner of one nostril that could only be blood. Still, I pushed on.
All of them had hazy, confused looks on their faces, and I felt them pushing back against me. But I had to get them out of the house. This spell was difficult to work, but I knew that it would have taken even more power to use the killing spell on all of them at once. I had to take what I could get and figure out how to keep my people safe once they were out of the house.
The hybrids went first, slowly backing out the door. The vampires, likely because of their sharper minds, were more difficult, but I pushed them back one at a time, and then I followed them out of the house.
To my great surprise, Alex was standing outside, shouting at another vampire. I wavered in place as I fought to keep control of the fifteen I had under my spell, not daring to drop it just yet. Not until I figured out what I was going to do. I didn't have the strength to send them all away, and I was rapidly losing energy just by keeping up the spell—killing them all wasn't going to be possible. I knew that.
"You can't do this!" Alex snarled at the black-haired vampire in front of him. "The king will have your head!"
"I don't give a damn what the king wants! I've got my orders, and I'm not backing down. There are ten blood mages in there. They're coming in."
"Alex…" I tried to raise my voice, but it sounded weak and thready to my ears. "Hybrids…"
He lurched around, his eyes wide, as if he'd just realized what we were dealing with. "Oh. Shit."
I wanted to laugh at the drop of decorum both he and the opposing vampire were exhibiting. They didn't need to put on a show for me when it was just one-on-one, but usually vampires were much more subtle with one another. They had such difficult ways of speaking, always meaning something else, that it gave me a headache just to try and follow a conversation.
It was a mark of how truly upset Alex was that he'd allowed himself to lose his temper and shout at the other vampire.
Upset for me. He's trying to stop them.
Well, that was nice, but we had ten hybrids that were about to tear us all apart, and the energy I was using to keep them contained was rapidly draining me. I had to let go of the five vampires, or else I would have fallen down—they took considerably more energy than the hybrids, because they were fighting back much harder.
"The blood mage was in our minds!" The pale vampire from before shouted at the black-haired vampire Alex was arguing with. "She used her magic on us!"
"You wouldn't…get out…of my house."
Alex barked out a laugh. "You always did know where to take a stand."
"Hybrids," I snapped, glaring at him.
His expression grew more stern, and he turned back to the black-haired vampire. "Right. Thomas, please see reason on this. We can settle our disagreement about the mages in a moment here, but the hybrids are going to rip through everyone if Nina can't hold them in check for much longer. Everyone, as in you and me as well. You remember the fight at the castle, do you not? You lost a brother there."
The black-haired vampire looked somewhat subdued at that. "Yes, and…" He looked over at me with a curious look in his eyes. "And I didn't lose a sister."
He didn't say it, but it was pretty clear he was thanking me for that.
I grunted. "Hybrids."
As far as I was concerned, if he would just stow his blood mage hatred for the two minutes it would take the vampires to tear through the hybrids while I held them down, we could forget about it. I had to worry about one thing at a time.
"All right, Alex, you have a deal."
"Losing…control…" I whispered, and one of the hybrids broke loose.
That apparently settled things for the vampires. The twenty vampires converged on the hybrids as one, focusing first on the hybrid that had broken out of my spell, while I fought to keep control of the others. It was so damned difficult…I could feel the blood leaking out of my nose and another trickle at the corner of my lip. My mouth tasted like metal right now, and my vision was growing blurry.
"Wait!" I managed to cry as Alex turned on the last hybrid. "Leave it."
I was already working on a more permanent paralytic spell than the one I'd used before, trying to get the creature as contained as possible before I lost what little reserves I had left.
Alex looked at me, perplexed.
"Why?"
"Have to…study it…find out…where it came from…"
Because somehow I'd gotten lucky. My vision was blurry, my mind was flickering, but I could still see that this hybrid didn't have the telltale signs of rabidity the others had. Its eyes were clear and trained on me. It knew that I was holding it, and it knew that I was the one that had spared it.
Hope flickered in me. This hybrid might be the key to everything.
The black-haired vampire turned to me. "Now, the blood mages."
Eighteen
"Thomas, I said no!" Alex stepped between me and the vampire, blocking the entrance to the house. I sagged onto the steps, withdrawing my power from the hybrid now that I had it contained. The spell I'd put on it had taken almost all of my remaining strength, but it would hold it for a little while until we could get this resolved.
If I was alive to deal with it later, anyway.
&nbs
p; "And I told you, I have my orders."
"Think what you're doing," he said. "Do you know who this is? That's Nina. She was the king's thrall. You risk his wrath by touching her."
Thomas looked around Alex at me, and I offered him a weak smile and a wave of my hand.
"Hullo."
"I know who she is, and as I said, I didn't lose a sister that night. I'm willing to leave her here, but the other blood mages have to come in. We can't ignore a cluster of blood mages and allow them to roam the streets. They have to be rounded up just like all the others are."
I struggled back to a standing position, raising my chin, though my attempt at intimidation was ruined when I stumbled a bit.
"You're going through me if you want them," I said. "And I might not look like much, but I can be pretty damned ruthless when it comes to what I care about."
Thomas regarded me with a pitying look. "I owe you, Nina. I do not want to harm you. You may not recall, but we did speak a few times, and I truly enjoyed it. I did not know you as well as Alex here, obviously, but I do miss your presence at court. Please, do not force me to spill your blood."
"Do not force me to spill yours," I said in return. "You would not stand aside to let me slaughter your sister, would you?"
He flinched. "No. No, I would not."
"I have family in that house. Think what you're asking me to do."
"I am sorry. I have my orders."
"Then you will die here."
"Nina, wait!" Alex turned and laid a hand on my arm just as I'd been raising it toward Thomas. "Think about this. You can't possibly fight through all of his men, and mine will not fight with you. I was coming to warn you, and possibly to hide you, but that's all I can ask of them. You will die trying to stop this, and that will leave your people unprotected."
"What alternative is there, Alex? I cannot possibly live with myself if I allow this to happen."
"Come with us." He lowered his voice so that I almost couldn't hear him, and I realized he was trying to keep the other vampires from hearing him. If I could have, I would have deafened them, but I didn't have the energy. "Thomas will spare you and leave you here if you ask it of him, but if you voluntarily come with us and convince the other mages to do the same, a lot of pain and suffering could be spared. Everything will be okay. We'll get to the castle, and then Gray can handle the situation. Trust him."
I frowned, shaking my head sadly. "What you say sounds nice, and I want to trust him, but more likely than not, this situation will just repeat itself. Gray will let me go and imprison the other mages. I can't let that happen."
"Please. I can't stop these vampires, Nina. They won't let this go, and they will kill you if you try to fight them. Even if you could fight them, they're good people, with families. They're just doing as they're told right now—if they knew your family like they know you, they wouldn't do this. They need that chance to get to know them. They won't get it if you fight them here and now."
I hesitated, glancing out at the crowd of vampires. I recognized some of them, and Thomas was becoming more familiar now that I wasn't looking at him as just a threat to my family. There were people here that I'd known at court, that I'd laughed with, and they were all looking at me with anxious eyes. They didn't want to fight me. They didn't want to kill me.
It's just as you told Tita. There are good vampires.
I knew that. I knew they weren't all monsters. The world wasn't as black and white as that—they were living in a world in which they had been taught that blood mages were as evil as we had been taught the vampires were. They thought keeping us in chains was the only thing that kept them alive.
How could I fault them for doing what they thought was the only thing they could to survive?
And then I remembered what Gray had said, about the blood mages supposedly having terrorized the world before the vampires had come to power and controlled themselves and the mages. Did they all think that? How had they been fooled into thinking all the blood mages, all the healers that I knew them to be, had been so bloodthirsty?
Remember what Eva said? There were blood mages who hunted and killed. She said their souls were tainted from the first kill.
I thought about that, and then I thought about something I'd read once. That there was a grain of truth in every biased story. The vampires had it wrong that all the blood mages were evil, that we'd terrorized the world, but maybe there had been some blood mages that had gone bad. It only took a few bad people to ruin the reputation of an entire group. If enough of them had gone bad, they would have blacked out the memory of the healers and all the good they had done for the world.
And of course, there would have been a few greedy vampires who wanted complete control, who would have taken that and twisted it further. Teaching their sons and daughters that it was all the blood mages. And the story would have spread to the humans, too.
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. And the less and less I could blame the vampires for fearing us. They had been lied to, their fears preyed upon, and fighting and killing them wasn't going to stop this vicious cycle.
Wasn't it my dream to bring peace to all of our peoples? To do that, I would have to step into the light and face the music. Show the world that there was nothing to fear of us.
Alex was watching me as I deliberated, and he must have worried I was taking too long, because he pushed on.
"You love Gray, don't you? Trust him to do the right thing."
I looked sharply at him, my previous thoughts fleeing as I remembered Gray bowing to the Council before.
"He hasn't done the right thing yet. He's always bowed to the Council."
"That's not true, actually," he said. "The Council wanted to kill you, back in the beginning, when we first found out what you were. Before you offered to work for them, before the hybrids attacked, even. You were in the dungeons, and they were fighting with Gray. They wanted you dead and, well, he didn't know what he wanted at the time, aside from the fact that he couldn't stand the idea of you dying—he told me as much later—and he wouldn't let them do it. And then you escaped, and then you came back, and you saved us. And still they wanted to kill you. And this time Gray was a lot harder on them; he wasn't going to let anything happen to you at that point. Ever since he met you, Nina, he's been changing, for the better. I know he's been slow sometimes, and I know he has knee-jerk reactions to distrust you, but you have to think about the world he's come from. None of us can trust one another. Gray and I, we have the closest relationship I've ever heard of in our world, outside of mates, and yet it was only after meeting you that he began to trust me with more of his inner thoughts. You're changing him, Nina. Give him a chance to prove he's worthy of your trust."
I wavered. I hadn't known that Gray had fought the Council for me or how close I'd come to death at their hands before. I'd thought that I'd won over the Council, convinced them to spare me in return for me working for them. But now he was saying that the whole thing had been rigged from the beginning, that Gray had already decided I would live.
What was I supposed to think about that?
"Alex, if it was just me, that'd be one thing. I could trust Gray with my life. But there's too much at risk here. My people are counting on me to keep them safe."
Alex glanced over his shoulder, and I saw that Thomas was watching us with suspicion in his eyes. But it looked like he was trying to figure out what was going on, not that he had heard us and was suspicious of what we were talking about. Alex stepped closer to me, lowered his face until our cheeks were side by side, and whispered in my ear.
"I know Gray will do the right thing. But if it will convince you, I swear an oath to you here and now that if he doesn't, I will make sure you and your people will go free."
I jerked, shocked. "How?"
"I'm not the only one that wants things to change, Nina. Gray told me about your vision for the future, for a world where all of us—the wolves, vampires, mages, and humans—could live side by
side, in peace. I want that. And I'm not the only one. I can get you back out of there. I swear it."
I let that sink in, not sure how to feel about it. But I had to remember what Gray had said and what I had seen in the eyes of the vampires here. There were those who liked me and missed me at court, many of them watching me right now.
"Answer me something, Alex."
"Yes?"
"Gray said there are vampires who miss me at court. And these people, they don't want to kill me."
"That's…yes, that's true. What's your question?"
"These vampires here, they know what I am, and they still don't want to kill me. The other ones, at court, that miss me. Do they know? Does everyone know what I am?"
"Yes," he said softly. "Yes, everyone knows. The Council tried to keep it quiet, but that thrall—I think her name was Kati?—she told so many people, vampires and thralls alike, before they could reach her and keep her quiet. After that, there was no way of containing the secret. It spread like wildfire through the court."
My throat tightened, and I blinked away tears.
"And they still miss me?"
"They do. Nina, you were a blood mage who lived side by side with us, and you didn't hurt them. Oh, and they know about the vampires you did kill while you were there, by the by," he said dryly. "And they also know the things those vampires did to earn their deaths. The rapists. Not only is touching someone other than your mate abhorrent in our world, but forcing yourself upon someone…" He shuddered. "It is unthinkable. I won't lie. There are some who are…anxious about the fact that you killed them. But even they think it was justified. And there are many more that see what you did as good and necessary, that you protected the rest of them from predators in their midst. It's happened before, that a man has forced himself on thralls, and we didn't know about it because, as I have grown to understand after knowing you, the thralls do not trust us enough to come to us with their problems—which, by the way, I have been working on fixing—but after the man grows tired with the thralls, he turns his attention to his fellow vampires. If we had known about it when he was attacking thralls, of course we would have stopped it then, but we never found out about the problem until it escalated to that point. You stopped it from ever getting there. Because the thralls trusted you, you were able to do what none of us could do. They don't just miss you, they are grateful to you."
