“Well, let’s hope not,” Isolde said, scowling at them. “If things go awry and there is a battle, then we’re screwed. We’re not prepared for a battle tonight.”
Kara scoffed at that, “I’m always prepared for battle.” She offered Isolde an understanding smile. “But you’re right. It would ruin the plan.” She shifted her gaze toward the other vampires in the room. “We’ll kill any Assassins of Light we come across, but we’re not attacking a full base. We need to remember, right now, they outnumber us, and they have weapons that can kill us. Without the numbers, a battle might not go in our favor. So, for now, our goal is to avoid actual battle.”
“Killing will come later,” Aaron said. “For now, focus on the mission.”
“You’re not actually going to do this, are you?” Kallias said suddenly. His low, slightly-accented voice had come so abruptly, after he had been so quiet for so long, that it startled nearly everyone in the room. It took Rose a few moments to realize that his dark gaze was on her, that he’d directed that question at her.
Rose straightened in her seat, her gaze darting around the room, as she realized with chagrin that every eye in the room was now on her. “Uh…well…”
Aaron turned toward Kallias. “I’d hoped you would help, too, actually.”
Kallias let out a short, mocking laugh. “You’re joking, right?” he snarled, his deep, brown eyes narrowing. “I’m not a soldier, Aaron. I don’t fight for people like you. Never have. Never will.” His gaze shifted around the room, toward the other vampires. “And I don’t know why any of you are, either. Do you really want to risk your lives in a war that you didn’t start? Just so he can keep his power?”
“This isn’t about power,” Aaron told Kallias. “It’s about survival.”
Kallias took a step toward him. “It’s always about power for you, Aaron.”
Aaron crossed his arms, narrowing his eyes at Kallias. “Believe what you will, but this war doesn’t just threaten my life. It threatens our entire species.”
“Does it, though?” Isaac interjected. A small, almost unnoticeable smile pulled at the corners of his lips, almost as if he were amused—or pleased—by the direction this conversation had gone. The former Assassin of Light leaned back, shrugging. “I mean, it’s not like humans are going to wipe us out. We’re stronger, faster, and more powerful than they are. The only species that needs to be worried about its survival is humans. Honestly, not fighting would work out in our favor.”
Rose felt a slight buzz of anxiety beneath her skin, and it took a moment for her to realize that it wasn’t her own anxiety that she was feeling. She glanced curiously at Kara, noticing how Kara watched the other vampires in the room, her brows creased, as if something about them bothered her. As Rose followed her gaze, she understood what it was. Something had changed after Kallias had spoken, after Isaac had agreed with him. There was restlessness in the room now.
Doubt crept over them like a dark shadow, smothering any certainty or bravery that had been present moments ago. Rose understood the anxiety that she sensed in Kara—if morale was down, their chances of succeeding were much lower. And an even worse case scenario: they might choose not to fight at all.
“That’s not true, and you know it,” Aaron reminded Isaac. “You, of all people, know what the Assassins of Light are capable of. Thanks to them, humans now have weapons that can kill us. They have armies and technology. And most importantly, they’re far more organized than we are. And against a species as powerful as ours—they would be unified. We don’t have that. We fight amongst ourselves, as Kallias has so clearly demonstrated.” He smiled bitterly at Kallias.
Kallias ignored him, addressing the rest of the vampires, instead. “The Assassins of Light want war. If you fight, you’re just giving them what they want.”
“They’ve already gotten what they want. Can’t you see that?” Aaron said. “They’re not going to back down if we hide.” He leaned against the table, crossing his arms. “If the war can be stopped at all, it won’t be stopped by ignoring them.”
“You wouldn’t know,” Kallias snarled. “You know nothing of peace.”
“And you do?” Aaron laughed. “You kill vampires for feeding! You’re no more peaceful than I am. The only difference in you and me is I fight for the survival of our species, and you’d rather us all die. Because you hate vampires.”
“How can I hate vampires, if I am one?” Kallias asked incredulously.
“Because you hate yourself,” Aaron snarled. “Do you think I’ve forgotten that night? When you begged me to kill you? I remember what you did to yourself, how insane you’d become. After all, I was the one who coaxed you back to sanity. I was the one who finally convinced you to leave that cave.” The anger faded from his eyes, and a taunting smile curved at his lips. “And take a much-needed bath.”
Rose stared at Kallias, noticing the tightness of his jaw, the whiteness of his knuckles. It was true, she realized. Kallias had really asked Aaron to kill him.
Aaron smiled smugly, clearly pleased with Kallias’s reaction. “As a matter of fact,” he laughed, “I bet that’s why you broke up with your girlfriend. You just can’t handle the fact that she’s a vampire now, can you? You fell in love with her as a human, but now, as a vampire, she just isn’t good enough for you anymore.”
“Whoa,” Rose said, jumping out of her seat. She quickly stepped between Kallias and Aaron before any punching could occur. She pointed a threatening finger at Aaron, nearly jabbing him in the chest. “You might think of me as your weapon, but you don’t get to use me on him,” she snarled. “My relationship with Kallias is none of your business, and it’s none of theirs either.” She twirled her finger around, gesturing vaguely toward the others in the room. “So, zip it, okay?”
Aaron stared blankly at her, as if he couldn’t decide how to react to being told to “zip it.” But then, his black eyes narrowed, as he did seem to decide, and he thrust out his hand in her direction. Rose stepped back instinctually, her back colliding with Kallias’s chest, as Aaron went for her throat, but his hand never reached her. Because Kara caught his wrist as she slid between Aaron and Rose.
“Don’t,” Kara said quietly, still holding his wrist. “You can’t hurt her.”
Pure, potent rage flashed in his dark eyes. “Kara,” he growled. There was so much power behind his voice that even the floor trembled. “You have eight seconds to let go of my wrist and step aside, or I’m ripping out your throat, too.”
“No,” Rose breathed, a spark of crimson-red light flashing in her eyes.
But Kara just stared back at him. “What will you do without her?” she asked calmly, as if she dealt with homicidal, four-thousand-year-old vampires every day. “You need her for what’s to come. We all do. So…don’t…hurt…her.”
Aaron’s nostrils flared, and he exhaled slowly and heavily. But then, he jerked his hand out of Kara’s grasp and took a step back. “She needs to learn to keep her mouth shut,” he said, glaring at Rose. “If you can’t teach her that, I will.”
The seriousness instantly vanished from Kara’s face, that mischievous smirk returning to take its place. “Why would I teach her that?” she said playfully. “I happen to like what happens when her mouth is open.” She winked at Rose.
Rose covered her face and groaned at the terribly ill-timed innuendo.
“Do you see what I mean?” Kallias said to Rose, suddenly—the first time he’d managed to say anything since Aaron’s remark. He still seemed pretty shaken by the memory. “He doesn’t care about you. Is this who you want to fight for?”
Rose turned to face him, her brows furrowing. “Of course not. That’s why I’m not fighting for him. I’m fighting for the people who will be hurt in this war. For vampires. For humans. And for every victim of the Assassins of Light.”
Aaron’s dark eyes shifted back toward her, watching her curiously.
“The war hasn’t started yet,” Kallias said. “Just…don’t play their game.�
�
“The game won’t cease to exist, if we choose not to play,” Rose told him. “I wasn’t playing when the Assassins of Light decided to go after my friends and my brother. The vampires in Japan weren’t playing when the Assassins of Light attacked them. This fight is going to happen whether we participate or not. I can’t just watch while people die, just because I wanted to take the moral high ground.”
“And…I know I’m the last person you want to listen to right now,” Kara added, wincing a little, as Kallias glared at her, “but the war has all but started. The Assassins of Light attacked the vampire colony in Japan two days ago, and they’ve already made several attempts to attack people who are connected to Rose. While war hasn’t officially been declared yet, it’s already happening behind the scenes.”
Kallias considered that, but ultimately, he decided that it didn’t change anything. “We should hide and wait,” he told Rose. “Eventually, they’ll give up.”
“You think so?” Rose said softly. “Because I can’t think of a time when ignoring the problem made it go away. These people are fueled by hatred, Kallias, and hatred doesn’t go away when it’s ignored. It grows. It’s the elephant in the room that everyone ignores until it kills someone. And sometimes, even then.”
“The Assassins of Light won’t win,” Kallias said, “not against vampires.”
“I’m not so sure they won’t. Hatred is powerful. We saw that with Alana, didn’t we?” Rose said softly. “There’s this thing that people say. ‘Everyone has a racist uncle.’ It’s not always an uncle. It’s just an expression that people say that means that everyone knows that one racist person—even now, when we’ve come so far as a society. People say, ‘Ignore him. He just wants attention. Ignore him, and he’ll shut up.’ But he doesn’t, does he? He never shuts up. He keeps spewing his hatred, unchallenged, and then, he raises a racist child who becomes someone else’s racist uncle. And the hatred grows and grows. Until you have hate groups.”
Kallias watched her with a curious frown. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” Rose said gently, “that hatred doesn’t win with numbers or weapons. It wins with silence. It wins when people sweep it under the rug or try to justify it. It wins when people defend the indefensible. It wins when we’re too scared or too apathetic to fight back. And I won’t let it win. Not today. Not ever.”
For a moment, no one spoke, the weight of her words heavy in the air.
Then, someone started clapping. Loudly and awkwardly. Rose frowned and glanced behind her, rolling her eyes as she found that it was, of course, Erik.
When Erik realized that everyone in the room was scowling at him, he shrugged. “What? It was a good speech,” he complained. “Well, I thought it was.”
Rose turned back toward Kallias, hoping for an understanding response.
But Kallias just sighed. “I would say that I’m surprised by how different we are,” he said bitterly, “but I never thought that we were compatible, anyway.”
Her brows creased. “Kallias,” she began, but she couldn’t even make an argument before he made it out the door, his footsteps retreating down the hall.
Tom stood, easily dwarfing Aaron in height. “We’re ready to go, then?”
Aaron glanced around the room. “Are we?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at the other vampires. “Because it looked like you were all having your doubts.”
Tom grasped his shoulder and offered him a friendly smile. “What can I say?” he chuckled, his brown eyes shifting toward Rose. “It was a good speech.”
“See?!” Erik said loudly, startling them. “I knew I wasn’t the only one.”
Aaron scowled at Erik. “What are you even doing in here?” he grumbled. “I thought you said you were staying here tonight…to protect Rose’s humans.”
“They’re not my humans,” Rose muttered. “They don’t belong to me.”
Erik stepped away from the wall. “I am,” he assured him. “I just didn’t want to miss all the drama.” He gave them a sarcastic salute as he left the room.
The other vampires left, as well, following Tom and Erik out of the living room and heading upstairs to gather their weapons for the mission. But there was a sense of boldness and eagerness in the air now that hadn’t been there before.
A renewed morale.
“I guess I should thank you for that,” Aaron said to Rose, “but I won’t.”
“Good,” Rose said dryly, “because I’d probably die of shock, if you did.”
Aaron cast one last glance at her on his way out of the living room. “In that case, maybe I should,” he mused with a slight smile. “Nah. Not worth it.”
When everyone else had left, Rose turned and froze, suddenly, as she caught sight of Kara. Kara leaned against the side of the sofa, her hands clasped around the arm of the sofa to hold her weight. She watched Rose, her head tilted to the side, her dark hair falling over the front of her leather jacket. She kept her lips pressed together, hiding that little hint of a smile that pulled at the corners of her lips. But what she couldn’t hide was the pride that glowed in her piercing, blue eyes. Kara gazed at Rose with a kind of pride that struck Rose speechless and caused a tingling warmth to unfurl inside her chest—a warmth that expanded her chest and floated lightly, like a hot air balloon. “What?” Rose mumbled, blushing.
Kara shook her head, her smile deepening. “I just see something in you.”
“Oh?” Rose said. Her eyebrows lifted curiously. “And what is that?”
Kara straightened and took a couple of long, lithe steps toward her. She gazed down at Rose with that heart-melting pride in her eyes, and then, she took Rose’s hand and lifted it up to her mouth so that she could place an affectionate kiss there—a kiss that left a pleasant tingling sensation on Rose’s skin. She smiled at Rose. “Something that makes me very proud to have sworn myself to you.”
Rose had never seen anyone look at her the way Kara was looking at her now, and she didn’t know how to respond to it. It stunned her. It pinned her in place. It made her feel like the center of the universe, even as she simultaneously felt insignificant and unworthy of such a gaze. “You mean…your oath,” she said, too caught up in that gaze to think of a better response. “Your oath of fealty.”
“Yes,” Kara said, her eyes sparkling. “I’m proud to be your warrior.”
“Rose?” Audrey called, her voice echoing from the hall. The sound of her voice seemed to move, as she continued down the hall, checking each room.
Rose turned toward the door. “In the living room, Audrey,” she replied.
As she listened to Audrey’s footsteps move down the hall, toward them, she glanced once again at Kara, wanting to ask her what she’d meant, what had brought this on, and why she would feel so proud to have sworn an oath to Rose.
But before she could, Audrey appeared in the doorway. “Hey,” she said to them as she stepped into the room. She wore a wrinkled oversized T-shirt and a pair of leggings, and in a rare occurrence, her face was actually clean of makeup. She’d even left off her beloved eyeliner, and Audrey never went anywhere without eyeliner—really, really dark eyeliner. “I know I look like shit,” she sighed, waving her hand. Rose tried to argue that she didn’t, but Audrey continued, “But I think I look good for someone who’s been puking her guts up all day. Decent, at least.”
Rose frowned worriedly. “Does that mean…” she trailed off. “Are you?”
Audrey’s gaze darted toward Kara. “You weren’t lying about being able to keep a secret, were you?” she said, impressed. When Rose glanced questionably at Kara, Audrey said, “She brought me the test earlier. I showed her the results.”
Kara smiled apologetically. “I figured she’d want to tell you herself.”
Rose nodded and shifted her gaze back toward Audrey. “Well?”
“Apparently,” Audrey sighed, “I’m going to be a…mom.” She grimaced. “God, that doesn’t even sound right. Me? A mom?” She looked at Rose, and her eyes w
idened with fear. “Rose, I’m not ready for this! I’m not responsible enough to raise a human being. I can’t even keep plants alive! You remember that flower Levi gave me?! I killed it, remember? And now, I’m supposed to have his baby?”
Rose walked toward Audrey. “Audrey,” she said calmly, resting her hands on Audrey’s arms. She watched the frantic hysteria dancing in Audrey’s golden-brown eyes. “It’s going to be fine. Just breathe, all right?” She waited until Audrey took a huge gulp of air before she continued, “Have you told Levi about it yet?”
“Oh, heck, no,” Audrey said. “He’d propose. On the spot. He probably already has the ring. Just waiting.” She whimpered. “I’m not ready for marriage.”
“You’re not obligated to say yes, you know,” Rose said with an amused smile. “Look, just think about telling him, okay? You know he’d want to know.”
“Okay. Okay,” Audrey said. “But I can’t talk to him right now, anyway.”
“She’s right,” Kara agreed, “the Assassins of Light are watching everyone connected to you. Any call to anyone outside of this house could be intercepted.”
Rose nodded. “Well, afterward, then,” she amended. Her voice was soft and full of soothing gentleness. “I doubt he’d want you to go through it alone.”
“Yes, Mother,” Audrey said irritably. But then, she smiled at Rose. “He was really nice that time when I had the flu, wasn’t he? He brought me soup.”
“He loves you,” Rose agreed. “The question is: do you love him?”
“I guess,” Audrey said. “It’s just…I’m an artist. I’m supposed to be wild and carefree. I’m supposed to paint nude models and have wild sexual escapades.”
“Ah, so that’s why I date so many artists,” Kara said under her breath.
“How am I supposed to do that with a husband and kids?” Audrey said.
“You can be wild and nurturing, you know,” Rose said. “It doesn’t have to be either-or. Your personality doesn’t have to change when your lifestyle does.”
Audrey sighed, “You’ll be here for me, right? I mean, if we survive…”
The Assassins of Light Page 42