Penance
For a second, Vlad stood frozen, still as a statue. Then the spell broke, and he strode forward, fire in his eyes. In the blink of an eye, he was standing before Thomas. Resistance Warriors reached for their weapons, but before anyone could react, the Prince grabbed Thomas by the throat and lifted him up in the air. The red-haired human yelped, his feet kicking helplessly high above the ground.
“Hey! Let him go!” Zack cried and lunged at the vampire, but with a single blow of his free hand, the Prince sent him flying in the air. Zack collided with the wall and slid down, half-sitting.
Thomas’s blood drained from his face, leaving it grey like ashes. He struggled to get some words past the barrier around his airways, but only pathetic whimpers escaped his blue lips. His eyes were wide as saucers and fixed on the vampire prince.
“You like to play with the whip, kid?” Vladimir said. His voice was so cold that Myra felt an icy tendril crawl down her spine and grab her heart. “You like toys for grown-ups that you shouldn’t have been permitted to touch? You think you can cause pain? You know nothing of pain, little boy. But if you wish, I can show you exactly what one can do with a whip. And I can teach you what true pain feels like.”
Myra’s heart clenched, and she fisted her hands. Please, please, let this be all. Let Thomas get away with a scary lecture. She closed her eyes, struggling to breathe past the lump in her throat.
Thomas screamed.
Myra’s eyes snapped open. A rivulet of red slid down Thomas’s throat, right where the vampire’s long teeth had sunk into the flesh.
“You freak!” Zack cried and sprang up from his sitting position, grabbing a discarded dagger from the floor. Warriors joined him, armed with crossbows and swords.
Vlad raised his face from Thomas’s neck, thick dark blood dripping down his chin. He twisted left and right, like a possessed dancer, letting bolts fly harmlessly around him. Myra walked towards him, shaking. He could have used Thomas as a shield but had chosen not to. That was a good sign, right?
The vampire dropped Thomas to the ground and placed his foot on top of him. He turned around just as Lidia lunged at him, sword in hand. He grabbed her arm midair and twisted it until she screamed in pain. He pulled the blade out of her fingers and raised it to parry a blow aimed at him. And another. And another. At least a dozen Warriors had surrounded the Prince, but he moved around fast as a cat, his blade blocking every sword, his right foot never leaving Thomas’s back. He grabbed one Warrior and threw him backwards, the flying body knocking two more on the way. Before the human had fallen down, Vlad turned around and grabbed another attacker. Myra winced at the sound of breaking bones.
A circle of humans lay on the ground, nursing wounds. Broken weapons littered the floor around them. And in the middle of it all stood Prince Vladimir, his clothes and hair clean and unruffled, his face serene, his dark amber eyes surveying the scene and his foot planted firmly on top of Thomas’s back.
He knelt down, his long fingers entwining into the human’s fiery curls. Thomas gasped.
“Vlad, don’t! Please, stop!” Myra cried. “If you kill him, we’ll never help you.” She ran to him and placed a hand on his arm. “I promise you this—if he dies, none of us will ever work with you, and you stand no chance without us. Tristan wouldn’t want you to give up your dream,” she added softly. “Not for him.”
The Prince’s eyes fixed on her. Fire burned deep inside them, intense and consuming. He looked like he was about to say something but stopped, his lips curling into a lopsided grin. He raised one eyebrow and gave Myra a barely perceptible nod.
Vlad raised his palms and stepped back. Several Resistance members rushed to Thomas, producing makeshift bandages from their clothes and trying to staunch the bleeding.
Zack rose from the ground, massaging a bruised knee. He stared at the Prince, his eyes bright. “We will destroy the Wizard,” he said, his voice shaking. “But we will do it without you. We will destroy it, and we will destroy you and every remaining shred of your world.”
“Zack, please, don’t be rash,” Myra said. “I know he acted like a beast, but to be fair, Thomas abused the prisoner. The Prince’s reaction was understandable, but now his desire for vengeance has been satisfied.” She looked at Vlad and shuddered at the sight of Thomas’s blood still smeared across the vampire’s mouth. “Right, Your Highness?”
“Oh, go ahead and call him ‘Vlad’ like you just did,” Zack cried. “You seem to be best buddies now.”
“Buddies or not,” the vampire said, licking the blood from his lips slowly and appreciatively, “we are all allies now.”
“Never,” Zack said through gritted teeth. “Even if I didn’t find you repulsive and beastly, how can you seriously expect us to trust you? None of your actions make sense.”
Vlad threw a glance at Thomas, who lay on the ground shaking, his wounds bandaged. The Prince looked back at Zack, and his lips stretched into a blood-chilling grin. “My dear boy. Each one of my actions makes perfect sense.”
“You said you freed our prisoner,” Zack said. “But why go through all the trouble? You claim you want to destroy the Wizard, and that is exactly what we demanded in exchange for his freedom. You could have simply struck a deal with us.”
Vlad raised an eyebrow. “I rescued Tristan because I could. And I am going to destroy the Wizard because it is what I want, not because I am giving in to some terrorists’ demands.”
“Terrorists?” Zack’s voice was icy. “You call us terrorists?”
Lidia stood up from the ground, cradling her arm in one hand. “You say you freed the pretty vamp because you could,” she said. “But how? We have powerful defenses, and you claim to have broken through them with no one seeing you.”
Vlad flashed a grin at her. “An excellent question. And I will be happy to discuss this with you, as I found many gaps in your so-called ‘powerful defenses’ that you might want to fix. But that can wait—I have other business I must attend to first. All I wanted from this first meeting was to give you my offer.”
“An offer we can’t blindly accept,” Myra said. Her head swam. She had spent so long lost in an insane dream where humans and vampires could exist in peace. She had finally accepted this would never be and had chosen a side. But now her dream was coming back, and it terrified her. It was too perfect. Too easy. Too wrong.
“You must understand, this sounds crazy to us,” she continued. “We’ve lived our entire lives believing that destroying you was the key to destroying the Wizard, and now you come out of nowhere and offer us some deus ex machina solution to all our problems.”
“I can imagine why my help may seem like a godly intervention to you,” Vlad said, “but I am not serving you the Wizard’s destruction on a platter. It will not be straightforward, and we will need to fight for it.” He swept the room with his eyes. “And now, if you all would excuse me, I wish to speak to Myra alone.”
Zack’s jaw dropped almost to the floor. “There is no way in hell I am allowing that.”
“I was not asking for your permission,” the Prince said. “I wish to discuss my book, and I wish to do it privately. If it will ease your mind, I will take a single witness to testify that we are not conspiring.” He pointed at Lidia. “I will take you.”
“You will not go anywhere near her,” Zack barked.
“Ah, yes, you would prefer me to take someone I have not yet tasted. Reasonable. I have drunk this one’s blood, and it calls to me strongly.” His eyes fixed at one spot. “I will take her, then.”
Myra followed his gaze and froze. Sissi stood there, white as a sheet and not breathing. She had forgotten about Sissi in all the excitement, but now realized she should have paid closer attention. The red-haired girl looked like someone who had seen the otherworld. Her eyes were wide and gleaming with thousands of emotions, so open and honest, with nothing left to hide. She looked as if her soul was about to fly out of her pupils and lay itself bare for all to see.
Zack bristled. “I said—”
“It’s all right, Zack,” Sissi said, and to Myra’s shock, her voice was calm and smooth, although it sounded as if it came from faraway lands. “I will go. The bloodsucker is right—if we wish to destroy the Wizard, we need to cooperate. I will do what I can on my part.”
Zack frowned. “Sissi, are you sure? You don’t have to do this.”
“I’m sure,” Sissi said. “I’m not afraid. Please, General, I want to help.”
Zack looked at the Prince. “Very well. But if anything happens to them, you’ll never leave this place alive.”
“Of course not,” Vlad said, eyes twinkling. “We already saw how efficient you are at stopping me.”