I knelt at once, too, but I wasn’t checking on her. I was keeping low as I sent my senses out to discern who else might be on this peak with us. So far, I felt nothing but vampires. Over a dozen were inside the open-air amphitheater, and at least that many were also around its perimeter. To my relief, I didn’t hear any sounds of violence. Only talking from inside the amphitheater, too low for me to make out individual words.
Ian knelt next to me. “Nothing but vampires so far,” he whispered. “A few spotted our movements and are closing in.”
“We should teleport inside,” I whispered back.
“No,” Xun Guan hissed in an equally low voice. “They’ll think you came to murder them. Let me handle this.”
“Halt!” a familiar voice ordered moments later.
“Hands behind your backs,” Xun Guan ordered, now so low I could barely hear her.
I did, glad to see that Ian followed suit. Then, Xun Guan rose from her crouch and strode toward the guard.
“Stand aside, Vachir,” she said to the tall, bearded Law Guardian, whose new look reminded me of Leonidas from the movie 300. “I have captured the murderess and her miserable jackal of a husband. Now, I am bringing them before the council to face their judgment.”
Ian’s mouth quirked; the closest he’d come to expressing his admiration for how she’d found a way to insult him and waltz us in before the council all at the same time.
Vachir’s swarthy complexion darkened further when he looked at Ian and me. “Where are the prisoners’ bindings?”
“You think I would trust regular metal on these two?” Xun Guan scoffed. “Magic binds them.”
“Announce them,” he ordered to Priscilla, another Law Guardian I’d long been friendly with.
The blonde Viking gave me a look that said she’d blood-eagle me herself, if she could. Then, Priscilla went farther down the path around the theater, which was in the shape of an open ladies’ fan and was tucked into the side of one of the mount’s rugged peaks. Even from our higher vantage point, we couldn’t see inside the theater, but it was easy to know when Priscilla told them we were here. Voices erupted in anger, and she returned with satisfaction stamped on her ivory features.
“Bring them in, Xun Guan.”
Vachir spat at my feet as I walked past him. “Traitor.”
I didn’t take offense. I’d spit at me, too, if I believed what he did.
We circled around until the terrain sloped down to the base level of the theater. Behind us, the city of Athens shone brightly, while in front of us, row after row of seats in the open-air theater surrounded the stage. The rocky section we’d recently stood on rose past them, blocking out the lights from the rest of the surrounding city.
The stadium seats were all empty. The only people seated in the entire theater were in the large, ornate thrones spread out on the circular stage. There were eleven thrones, but two were empty, and the malevolence coming from the remaining council members was palpable as Ian and I came closer.
“On your knees,” Xun Guan barked, pushing us down.
“Bit much,” Ian muttered as his knees hit the floor.
I didn’t care. We were exactly where we needed to be. Phanes would get a hell of a surprise if he attacked the council now. I almost hoped he would. I couldn’t wait to give him a taste of what he deserved, if Ian didn’t beat me to it.
Until then, we’d reason with the council about the real dangers facing them. If they didn’t believe us, we could always do a snatch-and-grab. Ian had the teleporting ability; I had the magic. We’d get them to safety whether they liked it or not—
Ian vanished. Gasps barely had time to sound before he reappeared behind Haldam’s throne. Then, Ian stabbed Haldam through the heart and twisted the knife.
Over the instant war cries from the horrified Law Guardians and multiple crashing sounds as thrones hit the floor from fleeing council members, I heard Ian shout, “Freeze this room, Veritas!” before he disappeared again.
I felt almost numb as I released my power, covering the amphitheater and immediate perimeter around it.
Instantly, everything froze as if it had been turned into a living photograph. Council members were suspended in mid-run or mid-flight, depending on their abilities. Silver knives that the Law Guardians had flung were also suspended in the air. One must have reached me because my back now stung. I moved away, turned, and saw Xun Guan holding a silver knife with a bloody tip. From that now-fading sting in my back, she’d been in the process of knifing me through the heart.
I couldn’t really blame her. Ian had murdered the council’s appointed spokesperson right in front of her, and she’d been the one to bring both of us in here armed and unrestrained. She probably would have turned the knife on herself next.
Ian reappeared, proving that he was still immune to my time-freezing abilities. He paused to give a disgusted look at Xun Guan before he yanked the bloody knife from her hand.
“One simple vow, and she couldn’t keep it for five minutes. So much for her fabled honor.”
I stared at him. “She thought we tricked and betrayed her so we could murder the rest of the council! After what you just did, why would she think anything else?”
“Can you release the council member’s heads while leaving their bodies frozen?” Ian asked, ignoring that. “Or would that take too much power?”
Even for him, this was going too far. “You are not going to gloss over murdering a council member, Ian!”
He cast an unconcerned glance at Haldam, whose expression was frozen in a mask of horror as he stared at the silver knife that Ian had twisted in his chest.
“He’s fine,” he said in dismissive tone.
Eating that cursed fruit must have warped his mind. That was the only explanation. “Dead is the opposite of fine.”
“No need to shout,” he said with infuriating amusement. “Besides, didn’t you tell Xun Guan that Haldam would be the first council member you killed if you went on a murder spree?”
Did he think murdering Haldam was . . . was akin to being chivalrous? Dear gods, he had lost his mind.
“That didn’t mean I wanted you to kill him,” I began, only to stop as Ian held up a hand.
“Trust me, luv. I do know what I’m doing. Now, can you release the others’ heads alone, or not?”
I already felt like a door being hammered by a battering ram since the power I’d sent out kept crashing back into me before reverberating out to envelop the amphitheater again. Freeing the council members’ heads while keeping the rest of their bodies in time-suspended animation? That would hurt so much worse.
Trust me, luv.
“Bring the pain,” I muttered, and did what he asked.
Awareness returned to the council members’ expressions. Then, fear followed as they realized they were completely immobilized from the neck down. Shock was next when they looked around and saw the rest of the amphitheater in the same freeze-frame state, right down to the dust particles suspended in the air next to them. When their gazes finally settled on me, I schooled my features while I inwardly braced.
It still didn’t take away the sting of being looked at as though I were pure evil.
“See what she can do?” Ian’s clear voice broke the silence. “Despite all your power, your many protectors, and your bloody inflexible laws, she could slaughter the lot of you if she wanted, and you couldn’t even lift a finger to stop her.”
“Ian!” This was hardly the way to open things!
“No, they need to know,” he continued in a cruelly cheerful tone. “They created laws to oppress people out of fear that one day, they’d be the ones oppressed. You have all the power they feared and more when they outlawed magic and blending the races, yet did you oppress them? No. You served under them for centuries despite being worlds more powerful than all of them. Even when they arrested you, you didn’t strike out to defend yourself. No, instead you’re still trying to save them even while they’re meeting to put a bounty on yo
ur head.”
“Haldam’s death and our current immobility hardly seems proof that she is here to save us,” Hekima said, with an emphatic glance down at her time-frozen body.
She’d long been the council member I was friendliest with, but Hekima’s hard stare my way reminded me that she was also a formidable opponent. As a vampire, she was the council’s first female judge. As a human, she’d been Japan’s first empress regnant back when she went by a different name.
“I’m sure Ian is building to a point,” I said, while thinking, Please, let him be building to a point instead of this being a sign that the cursed fruit that is slowly killing his body has overtaken his mind.
“I am. Release Haldam’s entire body, Veritas.”
I hesitated for a moment, and then again chose to trust that he did have a logical reason for all of this. With a painful burst of power, I freed Haldam while keeping everything else frozen in the same previous moment in time.
At once, Haldam’s body slumped forward, and he fell off his throne to sprawl onto the floor.
I concealed my shudder as I absorbed the power that slammed back into me from what I’d done. This ability was one of my most dangerous ones, and it was also my most draining. Unfreezing parts of people while keeping the rest of them in suspended animation only made it worse, as did encompassing the entire amphitheater and the immediate space around it. I wouldn’t be good for much after this, and I doubted I could hold it for more than another twenty minutes—
Haldam groaned.
My shock almost caused me to drop the entire room from suspended animation. Dead vampires didn’t groan. They also didn’t sit up, snatch the knife from their chest, and hurl it aside, but that’s exactly what Haldam did.
My gasp was echoed by the other council members. Even if Ian hadn’t twisted that blade in him—and he had, we’d all seen it—no vampire whose heart had been pieced with silver would have had the strength to do that. Haldam should be shriveling into a vampire’s state of true death, not looking at the time-suspended room around him with amazement.
“Behold.” Ian’s voice rang out in the stunned silence. “Your real traitor.”
Chapter 28
Haldam immediately tried to run. Ian teleported over and caught him before he made it one step.
“Not so fast, mate. You’re my Exhibit A.”
Haldam struggled with a surprising display of strength. I refroze him without even pausing to think about it. His latest lunge at Ian ended with him flat on his face.
Ian swung around to face me. “Really?” he said with exasperated amusement.
“I know, you could’ve handled it,” I replied, sheepish. “What can I say? It just slipped out.”
He rolled his eyes and then grabbed Haldam by his long, white beard. He dragged him by that beard over to the center of the stage. Once there, he began to strip him.
“What are you doing now?” Hekima asked.
I was wondering the same thing.
“We’re at court,” Ian replied, yanking Haldam’s shirt off to reveal his parchment-pale skin. “Courts require proof, so I’m getting it for you. Bet it’s in his trousers. Few would want to venture near his hairy old arse.”
With that, Ian ripped Haldam’s trousers up the back, revealing that Haldam’s ass was, indeed, hairy. That wasn’t what made me stare. It was the small, tight cluster of smoke-colored swirls under his left buttock.
“Haldam has Dagon’s brand,” I breathed out.
It seemed like forever ago that Ian had gotten a spell to detect anyone with traces of Dagon’s power in them. Ian had thought he’d felt the spell activate before, when the council arrested me weeks—no, months—ago, in this timeline. But Ian hadn’t been sure, because he’d barely been conscious after breaking us out of Dagon’s trap.
When we arrived here, that spell must have activated again, giving Ian his proof. Haldam coming back after being stabbed through the heart was proof for the rest of us.
“Demon brand,” Ian said, holding Haldam up and walking him around so that the council members in various frozen states of flight could all see him. “Haldam sold his soul to a demon for supernatural perks, all the while voting to kill any vampire who practiced magic, and while casting the deciding vote to kill a child merely for being a combination of races. Isn’t it always the most bigoted sods that are also the most hypocritical?”
“Can this be true?” Sanjay, one of the newer council members, whispered.
Ian flipped Haldam right side up and shoved his chest in front of Sanjay. “Stab him in the heart with silver yourself, if you don’t believe me. He’ll come back from it every time, because there’s only one way to kill someone who is demon-branded.”
“Demon bone through both eyes,” Hekima said in a flat tone. “Give me some of his blood to taste, young man.”
Haldam’s blood would certainly offer more proof. As soon as Dagon branded him, Haldam would have become infused with part of Dagon’s power, and demon blood was a narcotic to vampires. Even now, after Dagon’s brand was gone, Ian’s blood was still mildly intoxicating because it contained traces of the power that Ian had absorbed from Dagon.
Ian dropped Haldam to fetch the bloody knife he’d stabbed him with. Then, Ian held it next to Hekima’s mouth.
“Bottoms up,” he said lightly.
Hekima licked it, grimacing as soon as her tongue touched the blade. It would have burned since the knife wasn’t made from the lower-content silver that Ian used in his personal piercings. No, this was high-grade, vampire-killing silver, and if Hekima had doubted that before, she wouldn’t now.
“His blood is indeed tainted,” she said, spitting it out.
“Altered,” I corrected her. “No one’s blood is ‘tainted’ from merely being a combination of more than one species.”
The faintest smile creased the deep lines in her face. Hekima hadn’t been young when she was changed over, but she refused modern options to lessen her wrinkles, and she also didn’t dye her black hair to conceal the liberal amounts of white. She’d once told me both were reminders that life had battled against her at times, and that she had battled back.
“Altered, then,” she finally replied.
I inclined my head in appreciation of her amendment. Then, I looked at the rest of the council.
“As my husband has gone to extreme lengths to illustrate, I mean you no harm. I also didn’t kill Claudia and Pyotor. A lesser deity named Phanes did. He’s a powerful illusion master, and unfortunately, he has even more powerful friends.”
With that, I gritted my teeth, and unfroze all the Law Guardians from the neck up. It would’ve been easier to release my power over the amphitheater entirely, but then Ian and I would have over a dozen highly skilled guards trying to kill us before we could explain that we weren’t the bad guys here. This way was better, even if it did feel like lying down on the freeway to let rush hour traffic run over me.
Once everyone was able to listen, I brought them up to speed on Phanes, Morana, and Ruaumoko. Some of them already knew the lore about the three, which saved me a lot of questions. Others, however, were more scornful.
From Phoenix, our youngest council member: “This goddess Morana can cool the entire planet? That would fix our global warming problem,” he added with a derisive grunt.
“Oh, it will,” Ian said in a silky tone. “It’ll fix all the problems created by humans, because few of them will be left once Morana reaches full strength. Ice killed nearly all life on earth before. Fancy giving that another go? Morana likely does.”
“If these gods are as powerful as you say, what chance do we have against them?” Sanjay asked, to murmurs of agreement.
Ian swept his hand toward me. “Look at what one vampire from a mixed bloodline can do. She’s the only one brave enough to reveal herself to you, but decriminalize mixed bloodlines and magic, then sit back and watch even gods fall before you.”
“We will not change thousands of years of peace-sustaining law
s for one unproven threat!” Lucius snapped.
No shock that Lucius would be the council’s biggest objector. He’d been Haldam’s closest friend for centuries, and the “birds of a feather” saying was true for a reason.
“Then our continued infighting and criminalization of those we needlessly fear will propel our enemies to victory,” I said curtly. “Add the additional power struggles that are inevitable now that two council seats have opened up for the first time in centuries, and Morana, Ruaumoko, and Phanes can sit back and watch us destroy ourselves for them.”
“Not to mention your only other hope of victory is allying with the ghouls,” Ian said in a mild tone.
Lucius’s head jerked as if he’d been slapped. “An alliance with filthy flesh eaters? Never!”
“You’d rather risk the safety of the entire world than abandon your precious, prejudiced laws? Of course you would,” I answered my own question. “You’ve been comfortable letting others do the fighting and dying for you since your days as a rich, pampered aristocrat back in Julius Caesar’s Rome!”
Lucius’s cheeks puffed out in outrage. “How dare—”
The ground fell out from beneath me. Everyone else stayed suspended in their time-frozen state, but I dropped several meters before landing on the remains of the circular stage, which was now splitting like a smashed plate. Metal screeched as the scaffolding supporting the stands crumbled, sending the stands tumbling down around me.
I started to release my time-freezing hold on the amphitheater so that everyone could flee, then immediately snapped it back when scalding ash and gases rushed up to burn me and a deadly reddish-orange glow destroyed the floor.
Ian grabbed me and flew me above the amphitheater. Only then did I realize what had happened. Mount Lycabettus had somehow been instantly transformed into an erupting volcano.
That shouldn’t be possible, especially since Mount Lycabettus wasn’t a former volcano! Still, I knew a magmatic eruption when I saw one, even if I’d never before had a terrifying bird’s-eye view of it.