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  “Indeed. Burilgi vampires are rarely gifted with any cosmetic enhancements – if anything, they are cursed with deformities. The rest of us are slowly sculpted by the blood.”

  “I never thought I was pretty enough to be a vampire,” Two said.

  Stephen shrugged. “You have a beautiful face, and I think you’d be well-shaped if you weren’t so scrawny. You’re short, and you’re not going to win any wet t-shirt contests, but I don’t think Theroen cared about that.”

  As was common with Stephen, Two was unsure whether she wanted to laugh at him or hit him. She settled for rolling her eyes and said, “Thank you for the warm evaluation of my appearance, Stephen.”

  Thank you for the warm evaluation of my work, Melissa, Theroen’s voice said in her head, and Two had to turn away for a moment, blinking back tears. When she looked again at Stephen, he did her the favor of not asking what was wrong, instead moving toward a table in the back. There were wine glasses and various bottles there. Some were labeled, others – resting on warmers – were not, and when Stephen poured from one of these, Two understood why. The liquid in these bottles was not wine.

  “This doesn’t offend you, does it?” Stephen asked, sipping at his glass full of blood.

  Two shook her head. “Nope. Would it stop you, if it did?”

  “Nope.”

  “You can drink things other than blood, though, right?”

  “Yes, if I choose to. I think the only ones here who can’t are the two Eresh, and Lewis and Richard over there … the Burilgi.”

  “So why are you drinking blood?” Two asked. She poured herself a glass of merlot.

  “Because I like blood,” Stephen replied. “By the way, that bottle you’re holding is worth about seven hundred dollars. Try not to spill.”

  “Jesus,” Two hissed, setting it down hastily. “I don’t know enough about wine to appreciate it at a hundred bucks a glass!”

  “Don’t worry about it. To be honest, it’s one of the cheaper bottles on the table. The discerning palate would have chosen the burgundy.”

  “Well la-dee-da,” Two said. She sipped at the wine. It was very good, but what might have made it worth the price she couldn’t say.

  “It’s all just rotten grapes anyway,” Stephen said, “but if there’s anything vampires enjoy, it’s being pretentious, and it doesn’t get much more pretentious than oenology … that is, the science of wine snobbery.”

  “What … you just assume I don’t know the word?”

  Stephen raised an eyebrow. “Did you?”

  “Course not. That’s not the point.”

  Stephen gave her a sideways grin and drank from his glass of blood. A member of the council made his way to the podium. This seemed to be the signal that the meeting was starting, as the others began taking their seats.

  “Over here,” Stephen said, gesturing toward a bench on the right side of the cathedral. “We get to sit to one side and wait our turn, like good little children.”

  “I’ll try not to fidget too much, but church always did bore the shit out of me,” Two said.

  “And I as well, which is why I don’t often attend these meetings. Too much flowery bullshit. Tonight’s important though, for you and for Naomi.”

  “Why Naomi?”

  Stephen glanced down at Two and smiled.

  “I may be wrong,” he said. “It happens on rare occasions. But I do believe she has her eye on a potential fledgling.”

  * * *

  “If you would, please begin by telling us your name.”

  Two glanced around. She was standing at the podium next to an Ay’Araf vampire of Middle Eastern descent. His name was Malik, and at nine hundred years old, he was the eldest of the vampires assembled here, and also the current head of the council. The rest of the vampires were sitting in the plush chairs arranged around the podium, looking up at her. Stephen was leaning against the wall off to her left, looking disinterested. He caught her glance, gave her a sarcastic smile, and made a shooing gesture with his hand. Go on and get this done with.

  “My name is Two, like the number,” she told the members of the council. “Two Ashley Majors.”

  “Do you know why we’ve brought you before us today?” Malik asked her.

  Two glanced now at Naomi, unsure how best to respond. Naomi also smiled at her, the expression a good deal more reassuring than Stephen’s had been, and spread her hands as if telling Two she had no advice.

  “Yes, I know why I’m here. I think … I may have accidentally broken some of your laws.”

  “Several of them,” said a vampire in the crowd, and Two could hear distaste dripping from the woman’s voice.

  Two shrugged. “They’re not my laws.”

  “Not until you’re found guilty, anyway,” the woman snapped.

  “That’s quite enough, Leonore,” Naomi said, unperturbed. She threw a casual glance at the woman who had spoken. “It is not your turn to speak, particularly since, as is so often the case, you’ve little idea what you’re talking about.”

  There were murmurs and chuckles around the room. Leonore’s upper lip raised for a moment in an unconscious sneer and she glared at Naomi, who answered the look with a cool smile. After a moment, Leonore’s eyes dropped and she settled back into her chair, crossing her arms and turning her gaze back to Two.

  “If I’d known the law, I might have done things differently,” Two said. “Things happened the way they did because Abraham kept Theroen in the dark. He never learned your laws, so he never passed them on to me. I didn’t know there was a council, or a book of rules, or whatever it is you have. I just … I just want to be a vampire again.”

  There was more murmuring at this statement, and Malik, still standing beside her, tapped on the podium.

  “Perhaps we should let Two tell her story. Does anyone object?” he asked.

  It seemed that even those in the room who had already made up their minds regarding Two’s guilt, or lack thereof, were curious to hear the details of what had happened. There were no objections.

  “The floor is yours, then,” Malik said. He stepped away from the podium and made his way down to one of the chairs, sitting down and watching her intently.

  Two put her hands on the podium and took a deep breath. The things that were at stake this evening made her knees weak, made her feel like throwing up, but there was no choice before her but to press on.

  “I’m not a great public speaker,” she told them. “I can only tell you what I know. I can’t tell you why the people involved did the things they did, other than me. I don’t know. I didn’t have time to understand … not even Theroen, let alone the rest of the people in that house. I didn’t totally understand him, but I loved him. I loved him so much that when he was taken from me, I … there was nothing else I could do. I went back to the house expecting to die. I assumed that Abraham would kill me, because that’s how it should have happened. I never expected to wake up the next day, but I …”

  Two looked away for a moment, trying to decide how to go on, trying to decide how to start. As if reading these thoughts, Naomi spoke up.

  “Start at the beginning, Two. Tell us everything, without fear or shame.”

  Two nodded, paused a moment longer to gather her thoughts. Here she was in a situation not so different from that night in the forest, facing death at Abraham’s hands. Either she would win, or she would lose. It was too late now for fear. There was nothing to do but what Naomi had told her to do.

  “I’ve told this story before,” she said. “I hate telling it, and I’ll probably have to stop a few times to cry. I usually do. Here it is: when Theroen first started watching me, I was a heroin addict, living in a building owned by an awful man named Darren.”

  She looked out at the group and felt the last of her concern evaporating. Naomi had told her to tell the truth, and Two would be damned if she was going to sugar-coat it. Screw this group of rich, arrogant, out-of-touch immortals. Let them understand exactly what she had
been through.

  “Darren made me fuck strange men in exchange for my drugs, and I did what I was told. Sometimes two or three in a single night. Sometimes groups of them at a time. Sometimes the men would beat me, or kick me, or … or hurt me in other ways. Some of them wanted to call me by their mother’s name, or their sister’s, or their daughter’s. I came home every night wishing I was dead, and I’d shoot up half hoping to overdose, and once the rush hit I’d be happy. I’d still wish I was dead, but in the same way that people wish they would win the lottery; it was something nice that might happen eventually. I assumed death was one of two things: either it was unending, unfeeling blackness, or it was heaven.

  “And heaven … I thought heaven must be a lot like heroin.”

  * * *

  “The last time I saw Tori was at the airport in Ohio, right before I went through the security gate. We send emails sometimes, and we’ve called each other once or twice, but, to be honest, I’ve been … I’ve neglected all of my friends for months. All I cared about was finding vampires, and after a while I didn’t really even care about that anymore. I was just searching because it was what I’d trained myself to do. Go out. Walk. Look for vampires that I thought I’d never find. I was waiting to die again, but I didn’t even know it this time.”

  Two found that her hands were clamped to the sides of the podium, her knuckles white, and she forced herself to breathe deeply and relax. She looked up at the members of her audience, who were regarding her with a silence that might have been shocked, fascinated, or disgusted. It was impossible to tell.

  “Then I met Naomi and Stephen,” she said. “You know the rest.”

  The vampires were silent for what seemed to Two a long while – long enough, at any rate, for her to become tremendously uncomfortable standing at the podium, looking down at them all. At last, Malik stood. He looked composed, as most of these vampires did, but he took a moment to contemplate before speaking.

  “Two, I thank you for what I believe was an honest recount of what happened to you. There is unfortunately no way to prove that you are telling the truth, but between our heightened senses and long years of experience, most vampires are fairly sensitive to lies, and I do not believe you have told any. I believe we can absolve you immediately of at least one of the crimes you stand accused of committing. It is quite obvious that by ‘abducting’ Tori Perrault, you were acting in her best interests and probably saved her life.”

  “Thank you,” Two said.

  “I’m afraid there are still two matters which require further debate amongst the council, so we must keep you here a while longer.”

  “What are they?”

  “First, you’ve killed an elder vampire. Not just an elder, but an Eresh-Chen, the head of the American council, and one of the oldest vampires left on the planet. Whether or not this action should be punished is one of the topics up for debate.”

  “What’s the punishment?”

  “There is only one punishment for most of our laws, Two. Surely you can guess what it is,” Malik said.

  “Surely I can,” Two said, rolling her eyes. She was tired and unimpressed with all of this formality. If they meant to kill her, she thought about saying, then why not just fucking do it?

  “The second matter is your stated wish to return to vampirism. This is still your desire, is it not?”

  “Yes, definitely. I … think I might have a potential patron.”

  Two glanced at Naomi for a moment, feeling oddly nervous. A faint color rose in the vampire girl’s cheeks, but she smiled.

  “If it comes to that, I would be happy to stand as her patron,” Naomi said. “We have not known each other long, but I trust Theroen’s judgment and my own.”

  “You’ve gotten ahead of yourself,” the woman from earlier, Leonore, said. “There is much still to debate, and not all of us share the Ashayt line’s natural sympathies.”

  Malik nodded. “We must discuss this. Two is Eresh-Chen, and that makes an already delicate matter even more difficult. It would be easier if any previous Eresh-Chen survived and could give their permission, but to our knowledge there are none. Most of us had not yet been born when Abraham was turned, and his matron killed herself not long after. It will not be an easy choice to allow Naomi to make Two an Ashayt, and so end the Eresh-Chen bloodline.”

  Stephen stirred, muttering something under his breath.

  “What was that, Stephen?” Malik asked, not trying to hide his distaste.

  “The Eresh-Chen bloodline is dead already,” Stephen said. “Can you not see that? If you kill her, it’s dead. If she becomes fledgling to another vampire, even another Eresh, it’s dead. Even if you turn her away and force her to live out her life as a human, it’s still dead. Theroen’s blood was in her, yes, but not for long enough. She is not Eresh-Chen. Not anymore. Theroen was the last of that line.”

  “And he’s dead,” Two said. “Dead and buried. Was it … did the council burn the mansion? You did, didn’t you?”

  Malik nodded. “We left his body where it lay and burned the mansion. Whether the flames reached him or not, I cannot say. The land has not been redeveloped, and never will be. It will be owned by the council forever and never disturbed.”

  “Good,” Two said.

  Stephen stepped forward and looked at the council members. “There are some on this council who do not like me, and I certainly return the feeling. I make no secret of that, and to be honest, care very little. Yet there is no one here who can accuse me of disloyalty to the council, its laws, or my fellow vampires. I say this now: Two is guilty of no crime, and to convict her would be a travesty. She’s earned the right to become Naomi’s fledgling, if that is what she wishes. She’s done us a favor, eliminating one of the greatest evils our kind has ever seen. It seems to me the very least of repayment that we do her one back.”

  “You exaggerate, Stephen,” Leonore said. Her voice held an unimpressed, don’t-be-so-dramatic tone that made Two want to reach out and smack her.

  Stephen whirled to face her. “It will do you no good, you power-hungry bitch, to continue kissing Abraham’s arse. He’s dead and burned.”

  “How dare—” Leonore began. She was halfway to her feet when Naomi’s voice overrode her.

  “Kindly respect the council members, Stephen,” she said. “All of them.”

  “No, but I’ll not antagonize them further, at least,” Stephen replied. “You have my opinion, which is why you asked me to come here. Go and have your debate. Get it over with, so that I might salvage something of this night.”

  “Reasonable advice if, as always, poorly presented,” Malik said. “Two, we thank you for the information you have provided. We ask that you wait out here with Stephen while the council deliberates.”

  Two resisted the urge to make a sarcastic remark and instead nodded, smiled, turned, and made her way from the podium.

  “The rest of you,” Malik said, “should take a few minutes to freshen your drinks, and then make your way to the west meeting room.”

  The council left their seats and began to mill around the drink table near the rear of the cathedral. Naomi stopped for a moment by Two and Stephen before joining them.

  “You did well,” she said to Two. “It is a hard story to tell, and you gave as much detail as you could have. You handled yourself very well, and I have little doubt that a majority of the council will find you innocent. Abraham was not loved.”

  “Is a majority enough?” Two asked.

  “Oh, yes. The vote need not be unanimous.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  Naomi bit her lower lip, considering this.

  “There’s no way out now, right? Not even if you wanted to help me, and go against them.”

  Naomi shook her head, glanced at Stephen, and said, “No. But I … I would try. If they find you guilty, then they’re wrong. I knew Theroen. I know you’re not lying. I’ve spent all of these years believing that any evil the council may have performed was due
to Abraham’s influence. If they make the decision to kill you, then they have failed my trust. I will try to take you from here, and to stop me they … they will have to kill me, too.”

  “This could be an interesting night indeed,” said Stephen.

  “What about you?” Two asked him.

  “I’d fight just to fight, so I’ll certainly fight for Naomi. She knows that. We might even convince a few others to join us but likely not enough. If it comes to combat, we will die … but it will be entertaining, and I promise you I’ll take Leonore with me.”

  “You will not lose this trial,” Naomi said.

  “Good,” Two said. “Go make sure I don’t. I think we have a lot of things to talk about after you clear my name.”

  Naomi smiled, nodded, and left.

  * * *

  “Two Ashley Majors, you stand before this council accused of breaking one of our oldest laws. The punishment for this offense, should you be found guilty, is death.”

  Malik looked around the room, and Two had time to wonder whom all of this drama was supposed to benefit. If they thought it would impress her, they were wrong. She could barely summon the energy to be concerned. She was exhausted. Shellshocked. Weak and tired from months of malnutrition, days of hope, and hours of nervous waiting. The emotional pain from having to relive her experiences with Theroen had not helped.

  Two had tried to read Naomi’s expression when the council members had, after nearly two hours of deliberation, returned to the room. Naomi had given her a smile, but her eyes had been sad. Two didn’t know how to interpret that.

  She had spent the time during the debate talking with Stephen, learning as much as she could about the various council members. Malik had moved to North America centuries ago, only a short time after the Europeans had begun colonizing the continent. When Abraham had approached him about establishing an American council, he had been receptive, though Abraham’s reputation for cruelty and power-mongering had been known for more than a millennium. Malik had believed that the good of an organized vampire society would outweigh any evil that Abraham might perpetrate. For the most part, even Stephen had to admit, this had been true.