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“Would you like a demonstration?” Theodore chirps. “Although I do believe you have already witnessed exactly what I am capable of. How is good old Howard by the way?” he asks, twisting the knife.
“We vampires will not submit to you Theodore,” says Antonia, anger and hate seething from her in waves. “There will be war before you ever control us again.”
“Let there be war then, and once you have perished I will take my territory. I have already made a deal with Siegfried Pamphrock. I will stay away from North Tribane, but the South, well, I believe there is a vacancy there for the position of Governor is there not?”
“I am to take over my late husband’s post,” says Antonia, her voice confident, despite Theodore’s obvious power.
Theodore laughs now, bitter and evil and completely devoid of any humour. “My dear Antonia, I could kill you now if I so wished. But I don’t want to turn my happy day into a blood bath. Now, be a good girl and submit, you are weak, and no amount of bodyguards can protect you from what I could do to you if pushed.”
Ethan speaks up then. “Are you so confident Sorcerer, that you think you can take on the entire vampire population in this city?”
“I’m sure my warlock friends will help me out on that one,” Theodore replies with a cruel grin.
“Is that true?” Ethan shouts over to our side. “Will you let this tyrant speak for you all? Declare war against your enemies on your behalf?”
“We will follow the orders of our Governor, and if he has made a deal with Theodore then we accept that,” replies a warlock with long grey hair.
“Blind obedience as usual,” says Ethan dismissively with a shake of his head.
“Spineless bastards,” says Rita under her breath, eyeing the warlock who’d spoken up.
“I thought everyone hated Theodore, why would Pamphrock make a deal with him?” I ask her, as Antonia continues her battle of wits with the Sorcerer.
Rita makes a “humph” noise through her nose. “Pamphrock would do anything to get one over on the vampires, even if it meant allying himself and his followers with an old adversary.”
I look around at the crowds upon crowds of people, each side seems to be hovering on the periphery of the divide, waiting for even the slightest opportunity to attack.
“Do you think maybe we should get out of here now?” I ask Rita. “It looks likely that there’s going to be trouble.”
“Yeah,” Alvie agrees. “Come on Reet, let’s make some tracks.”
Rita nods and the three of us make our way out of the crowd. We don’t get far because the place is even more packed than it had been when I’d arrived with Finn.
I hear someone shout. “Do you actually think we’d ever join forces with you parasites? We’d rather have Theodore on our side than fight with our sworn enemies.” This is an indication that things are going sour, my brain provides. Rita and Alvie notice it too, and the three of us quicken our pace, though it doesn’t do much good. We hardly get a couple of feet away from where we’d been standing when someone on the vampire side throws a petrol bomb into a group of dhamphirs a few feet away from us. Glass shatters when it hits the ground, and I see several people get hit in the face.
All hell breaks loose, and caution is thrown to the wind when it comes to sticking to particular sides. Punches are thrown, more petrol bombs are pitched across the space. I’d been holding onto Rita’s hand, but quickly we get split apart as more and more bodies cram into the area, fighting and struggling. I can’t see her anywhere as I peer around and a big muscular guy pushes past me, knocking me to the ground.
I fall on my own ankle and it hurts like a bitch. I hold onto it and try to rub away the pain when more people rush past me and somebody trips over and kicks me in the ribs as they’re running. I grab my stomach and struggle to breathe, feeling like I’ve cracked a bone.
Quickly I run my hands down my body to make sure I’m not bleeding anywhere. That would be unfortunate, since I’m injured in the middle of a riot where one side is made up entirely of vampires. No blood, thank God. I still can’t see Rita anywhere, and I wish she’d use that light trick of hers to find me again. However, it’s probably difficult to cast a spell amid this level of chaos. I hope she hasn’t been hurt, and Alvie too.
Beside me a dhamphir and a vampire fall to the ground, I’m getting good at telling one from the other. The dhamphirs are less pale and have more of a human aspect to them, the vampires look like they are built from solid marble and they seem too beautiful to be real. I have always been suspicious of perfection.
The dhamphir has his hands around the vampire’s throat, but the vampire rips out of the hold and scampers off. Strange, I’d thought the vampires would be a lot stronger than the dhamphirs, and yet this one runs away? The dhamphir rises to his feet and chases after his opponent, disappearing out of sight. I try to get up but the pain in the left side of my ribs is a killer, and I was never one to handle pain well. The slightest twinge and I’m out for the count.
I need help, even one of the vampires would do. Hell, I’d even accept Marcel at this point. I hadn’t realised it until this moment, but as I peer down at my hands I notice that they are shaking. A human riot is frightening enough, but a supernatural one? Well that’s just a little past my capability level.
Something dances past my vision, twisting and twirling in a swirl of black and white. The next thing I know Theodore’s face is right in front of mine, and I almost faint out of shock. At the head of the crowd earlier he had just about passed for human, but up this close, close enough that our noses could almost touch, he seems absolutely alien. His face is bizarre, like it’s been painted white even though you know that it hasn’t. He reminds me of the late King of Pop, completely chillingly surreal.
He tilts his head to the side, and a horrible grin forms on his sardonic lips. I can smell him now, like church incense and clove oil. It stings my nostrils. Theodore is scary the way a clown is scary, he looks absolutely ridiculous, and he shouldn’t be frightening, but he is. You can tell that his aesthetic is a cheap fraud. Beneath it he is a demon.
For some reason this is worse than if he simply looked like the monster that I know he is. Instead he looks like
a character from one of the old black and white cartoons. He is the pleasant, ordinary looking stranger you feared would kidnap you as a child and you’d never see your parents ever again.
“Well, well, well,” he sings. “I haven’t found one of your kind for quite a number of years, lucky, lucky me.”
“I’m just j-just a human,” I tell him through chattering teeth.
