Battle With Fire (Demon Days & Vampire Nights)

“Debatable,” he said in a strong voice, but I could feel the turmoil roiling through him.

Her eyes sparkled. She was enjoying this.

“She was very beautiful,” Ja said.

“Yes, she was,” Darius replied, joining Ja’s little dance. The wait was killing me.

“You met her in the village, correct? She pulled the damsel-in-distress routine? What was it that happened, again?”

Darius tilted his head a little, anger starting to work through him. I couldn’t tell if it was because of Ja, or being bamboozled by someone he’d almost let himself love.

“Her bonnet flew off, and she rushed into the lane to get it. She was nearly trampled by a horse,” Darius responded. “I pulled her out of the way.”

“Yes, that’s right. That horse—it was pulling a carriage, correct?”

Darius inclined his head. Yes, it was.

“Do you remember the crest?”

So many feelings exploded through the bond that I couldn’t comprehend or even name them. “I do not.”

She reached down, picked up the clutch, opened it, and extracted a piece of paper. It was the only thing in there. She leaned forward and passed it to him.

He unfolded the paper and surveyed the design without comment.

The suspense was too much. “Do you recognize it?” I asked.

“It is Vlad’s family crest, when he needs one,” Darius answered as he folded the paper back up. “Ja is insinuating that Vlad orchestrated my misfortune and put me in a position where I would need saving. He kept me alive long enough to turn me into a vampire, his goal since before I’d even met Ernesta, apparently.”

Ja nodded.

I closed one eye and screwed up my face. “Except…that seems like a lot of work for a guy that now just invites people to parties under false pretenses, feeds them a drink, and voila, new vampire. Why would he go through so much trouble?”

“Things were different then,” Ja said. “We weren’t nearly as organized as we are now. We didn’t have the same resources. It was important to be a lot more secretive at that time.”

Cold anger bubbled within Darius. I should feel bad for him. All this time he’d believed one thing, and the truth was a different thing entirely. I knew I should feel bad, but…wasn’t that kind of what he did to people, too? He didn’t do it anymore because of me, but he’d turned a great many people into vampires over his long life, and I doubted he’d asked most of them for permission. He definitely had not said sorry. Obviously many had forgiven him, or he wouldn’t have been able to gather hundreds of vampires for this coming battle, but still. Being mad was like the pot calling the kettle black.

Ja sat quietly for a moment, watching Darius, who watched her back. It looked like they were silently communicating, but they couldn’t—not like I could. Still, they were probably communicating with looks and body language.

“That information changes nothing between us,” Darius finally said. “It does not help me in any way.”

“Doesn’t it?” she asked.

Did I detect a little annoyance in her tone?

“I assume you are referring to the agreement between Lucifer and Reagan, whereby Lucifer will hand Vlad over if she requests it?”

Ja didn’t comment, but her eyes had taken on a keen edge.

“What good would it do to kill Vlad?” Darius asked with an indifferent tone, though his anger hadn’t subsided. “It won’t disband his followers or quell their delusions of greater representation within the Realm.”

“Which they should have anyway, and we need to see that everyone is represented in the ruling tier,” I cut in, because I’d forgotten that bit, and it should be included in this great plan of balance that I did not, in any way, want to institute. What a stupid position I’d found myself in. This was so not my jam, why had no one realized that?

“Vlad and Lucifer have the unicorns now, with Reagan’s blessing,” Darius said, ignoring me. “They are building their forces as more and more creatures leave the Realm, searching for someone who will tear the elves from power. With Vlad or without him, Lucifer is setting himself up to sweep through that battlefield and take the prize.”

I lifted my eyebrows and studied him. I didn’t know what to say. No one had told me the scales had tilted that far in my father’s favor. Would we even be able to stop him?

Ja was silent for a long moment, the two back to staring at each other, a game of silent chess. Her eyes slid to me.

“You know, of course, that it will be easy to kill all the vampires fighting with Vlad?” she asked.

“Because the elves might fight during the day and pull down the illusion of the fake sun that protects them, right?”

A glimmer of rage flashed in her eyes.

She thinks you are intentionally being belligerent, Darius thought. She thinks you are mocking her.