“Hey, asshole!” I shout.
With one arm across her shoulders, he keeps her pinned in place while he slowly turns his head to glare at me. He’s emaciated, too thin. His cheeks are hollow. Dark half-moons rest beneath his eyes. Hissing, he reveals his fangs. “I’m hungry. You’ll do for dessert.”
“Help me,” the girl pleads.
I glance quickly back. Victor’s not here. What happened to him? Crap! Terror slices through me. Was this some sort of trap?
“Please!” the girl cries out, bringing my attention back to her.
I need to find Victor, but I can’t leave the girl to this monster. I start running, gathering my energy and strength—
I take a flying leap and kick him hard, knocking him back, freeing her. “Run!”
She doesn’t have to be told twice. I hear her rapid footsteps as she escapes, leaving me to face the vampire. He quickly comes to his feet.
“I guess you just became the main course.”
He comes for me. I duck, shove him back. Hunger has made him weak, but also determined. We start circling each other.
He lunges. I swipe my stake across his chest. He leaps back to avoid it. Snarls.
“When was the last time you had blood?” I ask.
“What do you care?”
He rushes forward—
I leap to the side, then swing out a leg, knocking him off his feet. He lands hard, and I jump on top of him, pinning him, squeezing my knees against his arms, holding him down. I place the tip of my stake on his chest, above his beating heart. He roars.
Then surrenders. I feel him going lax. It could be a trick, but I think of the starving humans I saw in Los Angeles. I think about Crimson Sands. I think about the world I want to live in instead of the one that I do.
“You can have some of my blood,” I say, shoving up the sleeve on my jacket.
“Dawn, no,” Victor says.
I look back to see him standing there. I wonder where he was, but that’s a question to be answered later.
“I don’t have enough vampire in me to infect him with the Thirst. I have enough human blood in me to sate his hunger until he can find a legitimate blood source.” I glare at my defeated vampire. “He’ll kill you if you take too much.”
“I wasn’t expecting your generosity.” With a sudden powerful move, he shoves me off and is standing over me.
From out of the shadows emerge cloaked figures. I leap to my feet, my stake at the ready. I was right. It is a trap. I start easing back toward Victor.
“We’ve seen enough,” a voice I recognize from earlier in the night says. Lilith pushes back her hood.
I feel Victor at my back, his hand resting on my waist. “This was your test,” he whispers softly.
I jerk my attention up to him. “You knew about this?”
“No. When you rushed toward the alley, I found myself surrounded by the Council’s guards. Then I knew.”
I glare at Lilith. “You said the test would be tomorrow.”
“And you would have been expecting it. I believe you humans call something like this a pop quiz.”
“What a stupid test! What if I’d killed him?”
Lilith smiles. “Hardly likely. Warwick is our best warrior.”
Looking at him now, I can see that it was his loose clothing and makeup that made him appear emaciated. He’s standing tall and confident. Yeah, my killing him probably wasn’t going to happen.
“The girl?” I ask.
“One of my divas,” Lilith tells me. “She was never in jeopardy.”
“So it was all fake.”
“All except your reaction.”
“Well, did I pass?”
“We were testing your loyalty to vampires. The correct answer was to let the starving vampire have the girl. Your solution was unanticipated.”
“She failed,” Asher announces. “Her loyalty first was to the human. It will always be to the humans.”
“Yet she showed empathy for the vampire. Unusual, most unusual. The Council must discuss this matter further. We’ll give you our answer tomorrow night.”
“Shouldn’t I be involved in this decision?” Victor asks.
“You are recused because of your involvement with the human.”
With that they disperse like silent wraiths into the night.
Victor puts his arms around me, draws me near. I can feel the rapid thudding of his heart.
“What if I had managed to kill him?” I ask.
“They’d have killed you. Vampire tests always hinge on life and death.”
Lesson learned: Never agree to take a test without knowing the scoring system.
When Victor and I step out of the alleyway, Faith and Richard rush up to us.
“Sorry we couldn’t get to you sooner,” Richard says. “But guards swooped in on us.”
“Too many to overpower,” Faith adds. “Then they just let us go. What happened?”
“Dawn was given her test,” Victor says.
Richard gives me a look of admiration. “Since she still breathes, I assume she passed.”
“Did everyone know that not passing the test would have meant the end of my life?”
Richard shrugs.
“Someone could have said something,” I tell them, irritated.
“Then you would have worried and nothing would have changed the outcome,” Faith chimes in, a little too carefree.
“It’s all moot now,” Victor says, taking my hand and leading us away. “The Council is trying to decide if she passed.”
Victor explains what happened.
“And if they decide she didn’t?” Faith asks.
“I don’t know,” Victor admits.
“You mean they might still kill me?”
“Not without going through me,” Victor assures me.
“Us,” Richard clarifies.
“I’m deeply touched,” I begin, “but if all of us are gone, who’s going to fight Sin? We can’t let him win.”
“He’s not going to win,” Victor says adamantly. “And we’re not going to die.”
I take comfort in his words, then something else occurs to me, baffles me. “How did they manage to arrange a test so quickly?”
“They probably began discussing it when we were with Lilith,” Richard says. “The diva and Warwick would have been at the Council building.”
“Makeup can be quickly applied,” Faith says.
“They knew where we were staying,” Victor adds. “I sent my message to them from here.”
“And if we hadn’t gone walking?”
“They would have improvised. In some ways we are archaic and slow, but strategy and traps we’ve always excelled at.”
When we get to the hotel, we go straight to our suite. Exhaustion hits me. I’m chilled and trembling from the dampness of the night and the fight in the alley.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
Everyone looks at me with concern. Probably because I’m acting like a human.
I go into the room I’m sharing with Faith, grab my bag, and walk into the bathroom. Okay, so it’s not going to be a shower. Not sure why I didn’t notice before that the claw-footed bathtub doesn’t have a showerhead above it. Turning on the faucets, I let the sound drown out everything as I peel off the leather. It really protected my skin during the fight. Maybe I should look into getting another outfit.
Sinking into the warm water, I feel my muscles loosening, relaxing. I refuse to believe that the Council would kill me. I gave the human and the vamp a chance at life. How can they fault that? I want the vampires to be better than that. I want them to be our allies. I want them to have a spark of humanity. Because a part of them is in me.
“Daddy,” I whisper as tears sting my eyes.
How did he feel when he realized what he was, what we were? I wish he’d told me while he was alive. I wish I could have talked to him about it. I just wish I’d known.