“I did. I am sorry for your ordeal, I am, but you are the means to an end, my dear. You should be grateful that I sent Sebastian to find you before Thrace arrived. I am not so sure you would have come out of that encounter quite as easily.”
I am absolutely horrified that someone could do this. To set up such an elaborate plan that would not only hurt me and my family so much, but also to set off a chain of events that leads to a civil war breaking out.
“Why did you pretend to help me?” I ask, close to tears. “If all you wanted to do was hurt me?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you, Aefre. I told you, it was the only way. Your mother is a proud creature and She loathes the Faerie. The Light Fae especially. There is no way She would allow such an act to be taken against you without repercussions. I misjudged Her though, in the beginning. I really thought that if She knew I was trying to kill you, She would step up. Quite insulting that She didn’t deem me threatening enough.” His haughty expression turns sour.
“So the question remains, what do you want from me?” I ask. “Really and truly this time, Remiel, I want to know the truth now. What are you?”
He regards me and gives me the answer. “When the Faerie split apart from the Dragons, eons ago, your mother decided She wanted to create new species to live under Her rule. She wanted an Empire and She set about finding ways to do so. She sent Dracul to Earth to breed a new type of creature and the Demons were born.”
I know that already, or at least a version of that story, so I stay quiet.
“She was pleased with the new additions to Her Kingdom and sent them to the Underworld to live out their lives and to make more Demons. But soon it wasn’t enough for Her, She wanted more beings to rule and so She started experimenting.”
I swallow loudly. She had said he was a failed experiment.
“I am one such experiment. She chose me, due to my special status and created the very first Vampire,” he declares and watches for my reaction.
“Uh, no, Ahmed was the first Vampire,” I say, fully aware of how lame that sounds, right now.
“No, he was the first human to be made. I was the very first,” he corrects me.
‘Stunned’ doesn’t quite cover it. Of all the things he could have said, this wasn’t even on my list.
“You were the first Vampire?” I need him to confirm it again because I don’t believe it.
“Yes, unfortunately I wasn’t quite what your mother had been going for,” he says wryly. “She wanted creatures She could control, and I was uncontrollable. She became conscious of the fact that Demons did not make good Primaries and turned Her attentions towards the humans instead.”
I sit heavily on the edge of my desk. Whoa! This is just insane. All this time, he was the original Vampire. CK will throw a shit fit when he finds out.
“So She killed you, but you were too powerful for even death to stop you,” I say, more to myself. The blood drains from my face as he steps closer to me and I stand up again as I know now what he wants from me.
“I see you have figured it out,” he says as he drops his fangs. His very, very, large fangs. They elongate as I watch, unable to think. He reaches for me, keeping his claws away from my skin as he drags me to him, and he leans down to bite me. I shove him away as his fangs, that are glistening with venom, graze my skin, causing a shock wave of pain to radiate through me. Holy motherfucker. I dread to think what would have happened had he actually pierced me with them. “You bastard,” I snarl at him, holding my hand up to my neck. “If you think I am going to let you drain me so you can live, you have another thing coming to you.”
He snaps his fangs back, which is no surprise as it doesn’t look like it would be very easy to talk around those things. His insulted look almost makes me laugh, out of sheer nervousness, not amusement.
“I do not need to drain you,” he says in a huff. “I just need to take enough to get myself back where I belong. Although,” he pauses, “I can’t say for sure if you will come out of the other side alive. You are Powerful, I can see that by the fact that you are still standing and not in fact lying dead on the floor already, but it is a risk I am going to have to take.”
Dead on the floor already? Shit! Shit! Shit! By just a graze? And I let this creature near my boys and Jess. I must be fucking insane, or worse, just a trusting fool with a death wish. I cannot allow him to do this. I cannot allow him to roam the Earth once more. If Tiamat knew this, why didn’t She tell me? Why did She let me think he was an average enemy? I hold my hand out to end him, and twirl the handy Hellfire orb at him, that I discovered I can create at Ponte.
“Now, don’t be hasty, Aefre,” he says, backing away. “I don’t mean harm. I told you I was not a monster. I was just the product of someone else’s power trip.”
“Harm? You just being out in the world is harm enough,” I say as I step forward, ready to banish us both back to the Spirit Realm. He sees my intent and as I plaster my hand with the orb in it, against his chest, he howls in pain and lashes out with his claws. My hand drops like a stone from him as it has gone completely numb. I can’t feel anything, and he vanishes from sight before I can get hold of him with my other hand. “You slippery dick!” I shriek to the empty room, pissed with myself that I let him get away. There is no way I will get that close to him again, unless I am at his mercy with those primeval fangs of his.
“Who’s slippery dick?” Cole asks me, making me spin around. He steps back from my searing rage, with a hand up. I can tell my eyes have Shifted to Dragon eyes and my talons have also made an appearance. “Okay, calm down, sweetie,” he says, in that placatory tone he reserves for when I have gone off the deep end. I ignore him and storm past him, along with Devon, Jess, Cade, and Lincoln, who are all waiting to head to the airport. I throw the front doors open with magick, knocking one of them clean off its hinges in the process. Grayson is waiting with the car and he hastily opens the door for me, lest I rip that one off too. I glide onto the back seat, still fuming. My temper is exacerbated by the fact that five minutes later, I am still sitting alone in the car. Clearly everyone thought better about joining me. Jerks.
I feel marginally better when Cole tentatively climbs in next to me and takes my hand in his. I am getting some of the feeling back and my talons retract, to his relief, but the eyes stay.
Devon climbs in and hands me his Ray-Bans. “Sorry, Lizzie. They freak me out.” I snatch them off him and shove them up my nose and turn back to stare out of the window. Lincoln and Jess follow and Cade, deciding to steer clear of the back seat, and me, gets in the front with Grayson, and then we are on our way in one of the most awkward silences I have ever come across, and I’ve had a few.
No dares speak for the first half of the journey, but Lincoln, brave soul that he is, eventually clears his throat. “So, I think we can all agree that the ‘dick’ in question is Remiel. Care to enlighten us on the mood you’ve got going on over there?”
“Later,” I growl, still pissed off.
“Okay, then,” he mutters.
I have the grace to offer him an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Linc. I am mad at him and mad at myself for letting him get away from me.”