“Why did you not say anything to me before now?” he demands.
“Blood magic is imbued with its caster’s intentions,” answers Minaro. “When he sacrificed himself, Grandsire regretted above all that he had never given you a true choice. As a result, your free will is inwoven with the spell’s conditions. Bound by this, I could only observe as you pieced everything together on your own. I had to wait for you to come to me, and only once you had proven yourself worthy could I explain your choices.”
“So, you judge me worthy then?” asks William.
“I am not the one judging you,” she says. “It isyour ownacceptance you have always sought.”
William never thought of himself as his own enemy. “If you have been watching over my coffin all this time, why let me awaken now?”
“Because the spell’s conditions have been met. Humans no longer believe in vampires. It is time for the enchantment to end and the others to come home.”
“How?” he asks, perching at the edge of the couch cushion.
“All fifty-four of you must make your way to the room where you first awoke and return to a state of death-sleep. If you do not all do this together, the others will never make it back.”
Death-sleep.
This was not even in the realm of possibilities for what he thought wouldhappen next. “For how long?” he asks, wondering how much of Lorena’s life he would miss. One year? Twenty-five? Her whole life?
“It is impossible to say. The spell could end in one minute or another two hundred and fifty years.”
William’s mind is reeling. How can these be his only options?
“Are you the one who told Nate and Cisco I was here? Is that how they found me in Hanover?”
“I planted a story in a tabloid about an empty coffin being found not far from here.” William cannot believe his luck that he came up with a similar enough excuse. That means Nate was not lying about how they found him.
“Why open a school at all?” asks William, growing angrier the more he thinks about it. “Why endanger so many young humans in this way?”
“These are not just any humans,” says Minaro, a sly smile on her lips. “Can you not tell?”
William thinks of Lenny for some reason, and the blood in the barrels.
“Lorena and Salma were admitted for business reasons,” says the director when William stays quiet, “yet the only real criteria for admission was—”
“Stoker blood,” William realizes suddenly.
That was why it was hard for him to pick up anything strange in Minaro’s blood—he has been surrounded by Stokers this whole time. Except for Lorena, whose blood had started to stand out to him from the others’.
“When the Legion began hunting Stoker humans,” Minaro explains, “many branches of that family changed their last name to avoid persecution. That is why they are hard to locate. Even Trevor’s family descends from Stokers, though they do not know it.”
“Why… why would you lure Stokers here?” asks William, struggling to figure out how all these puzzle pieces fit together.
“They were lured here by their blood because they form a part of your choice.” She looks at him grimly and rises to her feet, like they have arrived at the crux of their meeting.
William stands, too.
“You can lead the other survivors to death-sleep and bring back your brethren,” she says, “or you can stay with Lorena and turn your classmates into the first new generation of Stoker vampires.”
William feels like sitting down again. Like he has inherited the weight of the world.
“You are out of time,” says Minaro, her eyes like black holes that portend his future doom. “The others are close. You must make your choice.”
WILLIAM HASnever run so hard in his existence.
As he races to meet Fabiana by Nate and Cisco’s disinterred bodies, Director Minaro’s words loop through his mind.
She said Grandsire placed William in a death-sleep to protect him and the entire vampire species. But that does not explain why such a cautionary and pragmatic being would think it best to leave justoneStoker behind.
