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“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you both.”
Rivka’s eyes were bright but she didn’t respond, she just touched her throat, and then her lips.
“She might get her voice back,” Marcus said. “Right now she needs rest. We all do.”
I heard gunfire, and turned in the direction of the renewal center.
“Stay here,” I told the others. “Take turns guarding the entrance. The palace is the safest place for now, at least for today.”
I sprinted towards the renewal center, unsurprised to find Camina right behind me. The elixir was fading and I felt a dull ache, almost a painful desolation, but I couldn’t relax yet.
Jacob and Steve had set up a command post in front of the elevated cathedral. There were only a handful of rebels left, but the assault rifles made them seem impressive. A few dozen royal guards blocked the door, and there appeared to be some kind of standoff.
But then I heard the growls. Elite were squeezed into the shadows around the citadel, little dark pockets of fangs and claws. The humans were rounding them up, snaring them with ropes and dragging them into the sun to burn, or else just shooting them with arrows and bullets, until they gave up their precious elixir. Steve raised his rifle towards us as we approached but Jacob pushed it down.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“The elite need to be put to death, before sunset,” Jacob said. “Otherwise, this all starts again.”
“That’s not your call to make.”
“It is now. The city is ours.”
“No, it isn’t,” I frowned. “You didn’t earn this victory. I gave it to you. I killed Nigel. You think you’ll steal it from me now? I’ve already lost too much.”
“Damien is human,” Jacob said. “Do the elite guards even follow him? The covenant, the kingdom? Who is to say what rules or laws govern this place anymore. In the wilds, it’s not the victor who gets the spoils. It’s whoever is left standing.”
“Then let’s ask them,” I said, turning to the remaining guards, who appeared to still be loyally defending the kingdom that I’d just destroyed. “You’ve never had a real choice about who to serve, only been given drops of elite blood to chain you. You’re preventing the rebels from looting the renewal center, because elixir is the lifeblood of the covenant. But look around. The streets are red with elixir. Drink your fill and remember who gave it to you. The king is dead, and so is the usurper. But the covenant lives. It lives in me, and in the king’s son. I swear to you, the citadel will be rebuilt, but we’ve had enough fighting for one night.”
Looters were already sponging up the elixir, dragging away elite bodies, hacking them into pieces and draining the blood in buckets, hanging them up and removing the heads. I watched a man pull the fangs out of a charred vampire skull with a pair of pliers, and place the teeth in a leather satchel like a trophy. The guards looked skeptical as I freed them, but they seemed content to drift away from conflict.
“They killed my men,” Jacob said with a frown.
“Of course they did, and you killed theirs. But we aren’t on opposing sides. Not anymore. You’ve rounded up the elite in the renewal center. And I heard you have a bomb. Another surprise? Tell me the truth, you would have blown me up if you could have.”
“Without a doubt,” Jacob said. “But only as a contingency. As for the elite, the old ones will always be a danger. The new ones have skulked into the shadows to sleep or feed; if they survive until dark, they’ll be hungry. But you have the antidote. So they can take the antidote or burn, but it must happen today.”
“That’s no choice,” I said.
“We can’t allow them to retain their powers, regroup. There’s too many; they’re too strong. There will always be another Nigel, a new contender for the throne.”
“No, there won’t,” I said, crossing my arms.
“What do you mean?”
“I think… we’ve had enough of kings. Why don’t we—all of us—agree that our differences can be settled. Not by violence and power. By respect and trust.”
“I don’t trust them,” Steve grumbled. “I never will.”
“But you trust Emily,” Camina said. “All of you. At least enough to put away your weapons. A temporary truce until new terms are met; terms that serve everyone.”
“You’ve been useful,” Jacob said. “But we can’t just leave the details up to you, without assurances. And wasn’t this always the plan?”
I narrowed my eyes and studied him. He was looking to leverage the threat, to improve the terms of his deal. But I was in no mood for negotiations. All I saw, was another threat to destroy.
“Let me clarify the situation,” I said. “You’ve got to make a choice, about whether to kill the few dozen elite hiding out in there, or wait and hope to reclaim the kingdom’s stores of elixir after dark when they’ve cleared out. But then you’d have hungry vampires roaming the citadel. But here’s the thing, elixir is highly flammable. Most of us are drenched in it. A bomb, plus the crates of elixir in the renewal center; there’s no way to tell how large of an explosion you’ll end up with, or whether the flame will consume us all.”
“She’s bluffing,” Steve growled. I saw him raise his arm, his thumb massaging the red button on a transmitter device. From thirty feet away, I moved like lightning. It was like a flinch or a flex, but the world flashed and I felt my sword cut cleanly through his wrist. I was a dozen paces behind him when I heard him scream, but I was still fast enough to pick up the transmitter from his disconnected hand, pry the twitching fingers away, and turn off the device.
