by Izzy Shows
A shake of the head.
"Bother. Okay, answer me this, yes-or-no questions, obviously. Do you want to hunt and kill people, like the other hybrids I've found have been? You attacked me, so I have to assume you're at least moderately violent."
It shook its head.
"What, you're not violent?"
And then it actually shrugged, as if to say “well, sometimes.”
"Well, actually, that's not altogether abnormal. I'm violent sometimes, too, as you've seen. All right, I should be sticking to one question at a time. I'll repeat: do you want to hunt and kill people?"
It shook its head slowly.
I frowned. "Then why did you attack me?"
It gave me that level look again.
"Oh, duh, you can't say. Right. Okay, I'm going to ask your permission for something that's probably going to sound a little horrible to you, but I promise, I'm only doing it to help everyone. You say you don't want to hurt people, but you attacked me, so I need to know why. Will you let me look inside your mind? I can be very gentle. It won't hurt."
It gritted its teeth, eyes shifting to one side and then another.
"I know, I wouldn't want anyone in my head, either. But if you don't want to hurt people, then maybe if I know why you attacked me, I can help you not hurt people? Unless you attacked me for an actual personal reason, like you don't want to hurt people but you did want to hurt me. Is that it?"
It shook its head rather vigorously this time.
"All right, then I need you to open up."
A low growl built in its throat, and then it let out a snort and tilted its head toward me.
"Thank you! I really appreciate that," I said, beaming at the hybrid. "Maybe I can learn your name while I'm at it."
And then I had the thought that I should really stop thinking of the hybrid as “it.” He was clearly a sentient creature, and “it” was a cruel way to think of someone.
"Since you're trusting me, I'm going to put a little faith in you, and I'm going to drop my other spells. Please don't attack me or run away. I might understand, but the vampires around here won't, and you'll get hurt."
He grunted, which I took as an agreement.
I touched a finger to each of his temples, closed my eyes, and dropped the paralytic and control spells. I felt some of the tension in him melt away at that, and he shook out his arms but otherwise remained still. I felt bad then that I'd been confining him the way I had. But I hadn't known at the time. And besides, he'd come to kill me at first. I was lucky he wasn't trying again.
Pushing those thoughts away, I dove into his mind.
Pain, there's a lot of pain, I hurt, I hurt so much. Can you make it stop hurting, woman? Haven't talked to anyone in so long. He took us and changed us so that none of us were what we were. He broke us. He said he was going to make us stronger, but he never said we would stop being who we were. He never said we wouldn't have control.
Who? I sent the thought into his mind, excited that I could communicate with him like this.
You know him. If he finds out I told you, he'll kill me.
I'll keep you safe. He won't be able to touch you, trust me. Is he here, in the castle?
No, he hates the vampires. Funny, isn't it, that he hates them and yet he made us like them? Can't say who he is, though. It isn't safe.
Okay. Let's focus on other things first then. Why did you attack me?
I wasn't there for you. He sends us into the city to hunt for vampires, to make them pay, he says, but if we aren't fast enough, he drives us mad with the bloodlust. He thinks it'll speed us up, but it makes us kill anyone who's around.
I believe you. Why is it that you can still think, but others of your kind can't?
It's the bloodlust he drives in us. Sometimes we can ride it out, and then we're left having to live with what he made us do. But some of us can't handle it—either they snap during the bloodlust, or their minds break when they find out what they did. I've been strong, so far. He pushes me places still, but I've fought the bloodlust so far. I wasn't going to kill you, just the vampires.
Not all the vampires are deserving of death, you know.
I have no choice. If I don't kill the vampires, he'll keep pushing and pushing until I can't fight the bloodlust anymore. If I kill the vampires quick enough, he doesn't push at all.
Why hasn't he pushed now, since you didn't kill the vampires?
Sometimes I can block him from my mind. I learned from you.
What? I jerked back. How did you learn from me?
I watched you when you practiced your spells. I was curious, but the others wouldn't have wanted me to talk to you. You seemed lonely. So was I.
When? How do you know me? Who made you?
You said you can keep me safe.
I can. If you know who I am, you know I can do that.
You know him.
You said that already.
It was a spell that did it, isn't that funny? You learned all those spells, but I guess you didn't look in the right book. You would have seen the spell in the book, the spell that made the first vampire. But he didn't just want to make vampires, he wanted to make something stronger than vampires. He said they have to pay. I don't know what for. The spell was in the same books he gave you.
I rocked back from him, letting go of his temples, and stared at him with horror.
"Conall?"
Twenty-One
It couldn't be true. Conall couldn't be the one behind all of this, creating the hybrids and sending them into the city to kill everyone. He couldn't be doing what the hybrid said he was doing, and yet why would he lie?
He'd said that he learned to build mental barriers by watching me practice, and that actually made sense. When I was first learning, I used to talk myself through the spells I was doing, and mental barriers were an inherent part of every living creature, mage or no mage. He would have been able to practice building them up over time.
He was a wolf. He was one of the wolves I had lived with in the compound. It was the only way he would have known to mention watching me learn the spells. No one else would have known that I practiced like that.
And that…well, that meant that he was telling the truth, didn't it? Why would he point me at Conall otherwise?
I couldn't bring myself to accept it as truth, though. I had to have it from the source.
Maybe I should have told Gray what I had learned first, but I didn't want to worry him over something that could have been nothing if it turned out that the hybrid had been lying.
So it was that I found myself standing in front of the door to Conall's compound, trepidation filling me. I had stalked through here once before, challenged anyone to mess with me, and they had fallen back. I knew the wolves wouldn't block my path again, but still, I was afraid of what I might learn when I walked through the doors.
You didn't come this far to chicken out. Get on with it.
Right. Before I could lose my nerve, I thrust the doors open and stalked inside. The main entry hall was empty, which was odd—a lot of the wolves spent the last few minutes before a hunt in here, talking to one another. But I supposed it was nearing the end of the night, so they'd all be out on their hunts.
Everyone but Conall. He didn't hunt, he had everyone do that for him. He was the leader, and no one questioned or challenged him.
He's an alpha. That's not an easy thing to challenge; it's genetic. He's dangerous, Nina.
My abuelita's voice warned me, but I had to ignore it. He might be dangerous, but he might also be able to tell me that it wasn't true, that some of his wolves had gone rogue and were working for some mysterious enemy. I didn't know what I was hoping for, but I just…
Conall had saved me from the dungeons. He was the one who taught me how to live, who gave me a second chance at life. I didn't want to think that he was capable of this senseless violence.
I walked through the halls to his office, pushed open the door without ceremony, and stepped inside.
>
Conall was sitting at his desk, just like he always was, and his head snapped up as soon as I entered the room.
"Nina?" He sounded bewildered.
"One and the same. Long time no talk, Conall," I said, lifting my chin.
I'd always been rather meek around Conall before, always going out of my way not to offend him. Well, I wasn't that scared girl anymore. I'd lived through a lot, working for the vampires and then being on my own on the streets, and then finding Tita, Eva, and the other mages. I had changed, and he was going to have to accept that.
"What are you doing here? You disappeared."
"I had to run away from the vampires, and I made a judgment call about whether or not I'd be welcome here, based on how you treated me the last time."
He blinked, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. "You've survived on the streets?"
"I have. I'm not the girl you rescued from the dungeons, Conall. I have questions, and you're going to give me answers."
He leaned back in his chair. "I'm impressed, but I always did know I chose well. Ask your questions, then."
"Have you been creating hybrids?"
The look of absolute shock on his face and the way he froze and couldn't speak was all the answer I needed.
"You have. You didn't think that was what I was here for, so you didn't have a lie prepared. You've been making hybrids and setting them loose to kill in the city. My god, Conall, what were you thinking?"
"I was thinking that the ends justify the means to rid the world of those vermin," he said calmly.
"You can't be serious. I looked into one of those hybrids’ minds, Conall. You're torturing them, making them kill innocent people when they don't work at the speed you want them to. You're breaking their minds completely, and they aren't even capable of speaking anymore."
He waved a hand. "There are only a few left who are capable of thought. You must have found Evan. I wondered where he'd gotten to. Once they break, there's nothing left to worry about. They just do as I say."
"And kill innocent people," I said again. "Don't you care about that?"
"Casualties of war."
"But why, Conall?"
"Because they killed my family," he snarled, losing his cool for the first time since I'd met him. "Those vampires murdered my wife and children, and I want my revenge."
"There's more to life than revenge," I said softly. "You don't have to do this."
"You're right," he said, surprising me. He stood up and walked around to my side of the desk, leaning back against it with his arms crossed over his chest. "You showed me that, actually. Originally, I took you from the dungeons because I knew I would need a blood mage to keep control of the hybrids. Unfortunately, things got out of hand, and you left—"
"You kicked me out."
"I had no choice. You made things very difficult for me when you killed one of my wolves. After that, they were looking for any reason to be rid of you, and if it got out that you failed your job and I kept you around, there would have been anarchy." He sighed, rubbing a hand through his hair. "But I didn't want to do that. I hated having to send you out onto the streets. I missed you so much. See, I kept an eye on you all this time, while you were growing as a hunter, turning into the beautiful woman you are today."
I took a step back. "What are you saying?"
"I fell for you," he said, smiling at me. "You reminded me what it was like to have something in my life other than hatred and a desire for revenge. I'm prepared to walk away from all of that, to let it all go, if you'll return to me. Marry me, Nina. We can let all of this go and be happy together."
I stared at him in horror. "Have you lost your mind? No. Absolutely not. I could never marry someone like you. Even if you weren't…capable of the horrible things you've done with these hybrids, you still turned me out onto the streets, which you knew was basically a death sentence. You turned your back on me. How could you think I could want to be with you?"
His face went cold. "Be that way."
Twenty-Two
I didn't see the collar he was hiding behind his back. He had it around my throat in seconds—he was an alpha, he was faster than any other wolf could hope to be, and certainly faster than me. The second the collar closed around my throat, I felt my magic snap away from me.
It was as if someone had cut off one of my limbs. I choked, gasping for air. It felt like I was dying.
"Don't be dramatic, it's just a collar." He sneered at me, grabbing me by my hair and yanking me out of the room.
He dragged me through the compound like that, and though I called for help, no one came. There were no wolves in the compound tonight, it seemed, for surely even if they didn't want to help me, they would have come to see what the commotion was all about.
I tried to fight him, twisting in his grasp, using all the tricks I had learned here in his compound, but wasn't that the crux of it? They were all tricks I had learned from his wolves, tricks that he had taught them. I was no match for him. He was stronger, faster, and he knew all of my moves. He backhanded me across the face when I bit him in a bid of desperation.
"Be still. I have no patience for you now."
And then he kept going, dragging me on and on. I didn't know where he was taking me or what he was going to do with me. At some point, though, after we got to the back of the compound, he seemed to snap.
"Traitorous bitch," he snarled down at me as he came to a stop, reaching down to something I couldn't see from my vantage point. "You deserve death, and now you're going to get it. You're going to starve to death while I slaughter the man you've been cheating on me with. Are you fucking a fanger? I just bet you are. Well, they're all going to die, sweet cheeks. Say goodbye to your lover."
And then he threw me into a hole. I didn't have time to absorb the psychosis that came with him thinking I was somehow cheating on him when we'd never been dating, because the next thing I knew, a slab of stone was covering the circle of light up above me.
Oh god. He'd thrown me into a pit in the ground, and now he was locking me in the darkness.
No, no, I couldn't do this again. I couldn't, I couldn't, death would be better than another cage.
"Let me out!" I sobbed, clawing at the dirt. "Please, Conall, don't leave me down here! Oh, god, I can't breathe."
My chest heaved as I began to hyperventilate, my claustrophobia kicking in at just the right minute, but Conall didn't say anything. Likely as not he was already gone, having left me to die down here.
Oh god.
Twenty-Three
I curled up in a ball against one of the dirt walls, trying to stop myself from sobbing. I didn't want to die down here, like this. Dying in combat was one thing, a death that I could easily accept. But in the darkness, alone? No, I couldn't bear to live this nightmare again.
Why is it always a cage? Conall's the one who got me out of the dungeons. He knew what this would do to me.
But then, why did he have this pit in the first place? Had he made it for me, because he'd known how it would break me? I shuddered at the thought.
God, there was so much that I had thought I was going to do.
I never got to talk to Gray. He'd wanted to talk to me, after everything he did, and I'd shied away from him because I was fucking nervous.
Good job, Nina. And then you went and ran off half-cocked instead of telling anyone where you were going.
I felt miserable, and then I felt even worse when I realized that Gray was probably going to think I'd left him again. Why wouldn't he? I'd been so skittish after he'd made his big proclamation, and then I'd gone and disappeared. He would have every right to think that I'd run away.
I could only hope that would be the worst of his troubles, though. Conall had said he was going to kill all of them, which could only mean that he was going to bring his hybrid army against them again. He'd done it once before, but I'd intervened. Now that he had me all locked up, he wouldn't have to worry about that.
And hadn't I seen how the hybr
ids had torn through the vampires that first time? They wouldn't stand a chance.
No!
It was as if something inside of me snapped.
No, fuck this. I was not going to deal with this, this being-buried-alive bullshit again. I wasn't going to sit down here and feel sorry for myself while Conall murdered the man I loved and my people.
This had been my nightmare once before, but I wasn't going to let it control me this time.
I stood up, feeling as if my body was electrified with renewed energy. I didn't know where it came from, but I wasn't going to look the gift horse in the mouth.
Collar or no, I was getting out of here.
I reached inside myself, even though I knew the collar would block my power, and just pushed hard. For a moment it was as if I was straining against a heavy door, and then there was a loud bang, and the collar was at my feet.
"Damn straight," I said, kicking it to the side. Now that I had that sorted out, I could work on how to get out of this pit. My magic wasn't going to do me much good with that—I couldn't use blood magic to move the stone or levitate myself out of here—but there was no way I could do anything anyway with the collar on.
I had an idea, but I had to wait. I sent my magic up and out of the pit to spread across the compound, and waited. And waited.
Until at last, an hour later, the wolves came trickling back in. I seized on the first one I could, pushing past its mental wards.
"I'm in the pit. Conall went crazy and threw me in the pit. Come let me out."
I felt the shock and confusion inside the wolf's mind, but I also felt her hurrying across the compound to the pit. Good. I'd been hoping I wouldn't have to actually argue with someone to come and get me out or, even worse, have to take control of their mind and force them to let me out.
Either way, though, I wasn't about to stay down here if there was a way that I could get out.
Several agonizing minutes later, the stone slab above me slid to the side, and air rushed into the pit again.
"Thank god," I said, pleased to see that there was still time left in the night. I didn't want the vampires being caught in their beds. "Help me."