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.“While I would welcome his presence at any time, I wish truly that he did not have to be here tonight.Mister Matthias Vanden is a visitor to our country, and it has treated him in a manner that is unspeakable.I have asked him to come before you all and tell his story.I would have you hear this firsthand account of the threat we face.Matthias, please …”They had all noticed the vampire sitting in the shadows away from the main ring of chairs, and had wondered why he had not partaken in the mingling over wine and blood that preceded each council meeting.Now they understood: this man had borne witness to something terrible and was in no mood to exchange pleasantries.He stood, a man who might have been twenty-five and yet moved like someone much older, as if weighed down by a great load.Matthias would have told them, had he been asked, that it was only within the last week that he had come to move in this manner.He felt as if he had aged all six of the centuries through which he had survived in the seven days since his children’s deaths.Matthias took the stage to polite applause.He looked out over the assembled members of the American council and spoke in his heavily accented English.“I will tell you my tale.At the end of it, I will give you the message that I have been ordered to deliver.I will save it until the end in the hope that you will understand at what terrible cost it comes.”Matthias took a deep breath, closed his eyes, collected himself, and began.“Seven days ago, both of my fledglings were murdered before my eyes by a human woman,” he began.The story came out of him in fits and starts, and several times he paused to hold back tears.Matthias didn’t know if his tale had any effect on the assembled vampires or not.He didn’t care.He had been tasked with delivering a message, and so he would because he had understood in the blonde woman’s parting stare one simple fact: if he failed in this duty, she would hunt him to the ends of the Earth in retribution.She would hunt him until she found him, and when she did, she would take her time killing him.“She gave me a message,” he told them, this silent group of vampires who would be tasked with responding to what the blonde woman had said.“She told me to inform the council that the day of reckoning is at hand.”Matthias paused now, looking out over the members of the council.At last he spoke again.“I can tell you no more.They left, and I do not know where they went.I know only that they chose me as their messenger, and that they wrote their words in the blood of my sons and of three innocent humans.”He sighed again and shook his head, wishing that he had the words to tell them how it had been, how she had been.“God help me.God help us all.”He stepped away from the podium.There was no applause this time, only a deafening silence as the assembled vampires tried to digest the story he had told.Matthias sat back down on his pew in the dark, put his face in his hands, and tried not to weep.He heard William step back to the podium and clear his throat.“I do not think, my friends, that I need to tell you what this means,” he said, and there was a murmur from the audience.“It was Tori,” someone said, and Matthias looked up at this.The council’s attention seemed focused on a petite girl with short, messy blonde hair.“Yes, Two,” William said.“It does seem that way.”Matthias stood up, peering at the speaker.“This woman … you know her?”The girl who William had called Two nodded.“Yes, I think so.Her name is Tori Perrault, and she used to be a vampire.I saved her life, I guess, and she saved mine.I left her in Ohio where I thought she’d be safe, but the Children of the Sun found her.I don’t know what they did, or how they did it, but they changed her.They made her hate us.I wouldn’t have left her, if I’d known, I … I’m so sorry.”Matthias closed his eyes, sat back down in his chair, and put his hands back against his face.* * *“Thomas is gone,” Naomi said, and Two glanced up at her in surprise.These were the first words Naomi had spoken to her since the kiss nearly four weeks ago, and they were not what Two had been expecting when she saw Naomi approach.“Wha—why? I mean … where did he go?” Two asked, and Naomi shrugged.“I assume he was called back.”“Are you sure? Maybe he took a vacation or something?”“The new bartender said he put in his two weeks’ notice and left, never telling anyone where he was going.The staff thought a competitor had lured him away, but that’s absurd.He would have told me if he was going somewhere else.”“Yeah.” Two sipped at her glass, filled with warm blood kept thin with anticoagulants, and pondered this news.“Anyway, it would make no sense for him to go to another bar.There’s no better place to watch you than where he was.”“Of course.”“Well … shit,” Two said.“I kind of hoped that when it all went down, he might decide he liked being a bartender.”“As did I.It seems, though, that he remains loyal to his masters.”Two thought she could hear a slight ache in Naomi’s voice, a sadness that hadn’t been there before, but it was hard to say; there was already so much grief in Naomi’s voice these days that the addition of another layer made little difference.“Are you OK?” she asked, and Naomi smiled a little.“I’d like you to stop asking me that.”“I’m your friend, and I’m not going to stop giving a shit about you.”“I know.Two, I … please, I’m only asking that you do me the favor of pretending that it’s not so obvious.”Two bit her lip, considered, and nodded.“Well … that sucks.It sucks that he’s gone.He didn’t even say goodbye!”“I doubt he wanted to tip us off,” Naomi replied.“No, I guess not.This is bad, Naomi, all this stuff with Tori … I feel so fucking awful for that Matthias guy.”“I do, too.The council made a terrible mistake.We knew where Tori was, and we did nothing about it.When her parents were killed, still we opted to wait and see.Well … now we’ve seen.The Children have taken her and turned her into their weapon against us, and this time it will not simply be a few Burilgi that disappear.”“They’re coming right at us,” Two said.“Not only that, but they’re so confident that they’re telling us ahead of time.They want us to be ready because it will be more fun for her that way.”“If she’s this dangerous, it may not matter whether we’re ready or not.”Theroen had wandered up next to Two as they were talking, and he spoke up now.“Tori was ruthless as a vampire.Efficient.Built for killing.If the Children have added training and discipline to her speed, strength, and ferocity, she is going to be dangerous even to the oldest and strongest vampires.”Two made a noise of frustration.“We have to find her and talk her out of this.It’s crazy.She’s killing people!”“She has been killing people since three hours after Abraham turned her,” Theroen said.“This is different.She’s not some animal anymore, Theroen.I was with her.She can talk, and think, and … she’s just not like that anymore.”Theroen shrugged.“Perhaps she has merely learned to control that side of herself, rather than doing away with it entirely.”“It doesn’t matter,” Naomi said.“She’s threatening us, and we need to prepare.It sounds like this other woman, Vanessa, is nothing to be trifled with either.I’m sure the same can be said for the rest of them.”Two put a hand to her face, closing her eyes and rubbing them for a minute.“Yeah, well, just don’t expect me to start shooting at her without at least trying to talk.”“You know I would prefer to settle this with diplomacy,” Naomi said.“We have reached out to the Children in the past, tried to begin a dialog with them [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]