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The two vampires stagger back, their bloodied mouths hanging open. They stare, just as dumbfounded as he is. Then the male one—Cyrus—rushes over to the collapsed girl.
“Kira!” he shouts. “Someone get help. Now!”
Apollo swallows his fury and pulls his phone from his pocket. Whatever the hell is going on right now, he doesn’t want Kira Belvedere to die. Not after what she just did for him. He isn’t sure what is going on, but his instincts tell him that the Belvedere girl is in no way evil. She could have let himdie, but she didn’t. If she’d been the one to murder Octavia, there’s no way she would have saved him.
Apollo calls the healer, quickly explains the situation, and hangs up.
Then Apollo turns to the male vampire. “You need to tell me what’s going on.” He recognises the boy from the portraits strewn around Dracul Castle. This is the youngest child in the Dracul family. A boy of around eighteen, he believes, if his knowledge of history is correct. “Is your father alive?”
“No.” Cyrus doesn’t look at him, instead focusing on stroking the girl’s hair.
“Why are you alive? You’ve been dead for over a hundred years.” Apollo doesn’t understand why this vampire seems to care so much about a student. Unless the student resurrected the Dracul vamp. After all, Kira Belvedere is a necromancer, albeit a very new one.
“Well, it’s been a long time since one of Alaric Belvedere’s ancestors set foot in the academy.” Cyrus stands, his cold eyes meeting Apollo’s. “And the king of the necromancers decided to put a loophole in his spell. He decided that his descendants could decide to resurrect us if they chose to.”
“And she chose this?” Apollo asks.
Cyrus shakes his head. “Kira brought me back by accident.” He juts out his chin and nods to Octavia’s lifeless body farther down the beach. “But your friend over there did the rest. She used Kira’s blood to bring back my sister and mother. Then she brought down the wards keeping us in our crypts. All because she wanted to be like us, because she couldn’t cope with being an empath anymore.” He points. “She’s the one to blame for all of this, and she’s the one whohas been taking the students, not us. She made a pact with my sister that we would turn her. Ana intended to keep that pact until… until she attacked Kira.”
Apollo turns from the brother to the sister, assessing them. They were willing to kill him a moment ago. He can’t fully trust them, but Cyrus Dracul is making some sense. For a while now, Apollo has had some doubts about Octavia. In faculty meetings, she has displayed a volatile temper. She sometimes misses her classes. And one thing he’s noticed but didn’t want to admit to himself… she was always conspicuously absent when a student disappeared.
“What’s your part in all this?” Apollo asks the sister.
“We are but poor and innocent creatures.” The female vampire bats her eyelashes as she steps towards him. “We were simply dragged into this academy drama.”
He can tell she’s trying to use glamour. He turns away from her gaze.
The girl’s voice changes from sickly sweet to matter-of-fact. “Cyrus is right, you know. Octavia wanted to turn her powers off, to never have to feel like an empath again. Her mind was unstable. She was drinking blood, trying to turn herself.”
Apollo closes his eyes for a moment, a heavy sadness settling on his shoulders. He’s known Octavia for close to seventy years, and he’s seen the empathic powers take a toll on her. He also knows that many empaths in history have eventually gone mad, but at least one stemmed the madness by becoming a vampire. The vampiric curse changes the body chemistry, but it takes time.
He glances over at his friend’s body. The two vampires could well be telling the truth.
“You need to go,” he says. “I’ll deal with this.”
“I’m not leaving Kira.” Cyrus meets Apollo’s gaze. The boy has his chin tucked down and steel in his eyes.
Apollo realises that the young vampire is in love with the necromancer, and he almost wants to laugh. He isn’t sure how it happened, but it’s as clear as day.
“If you both stay, this will rock the circles. And you know what happens next, don’t you?” Apollo looks from one to the other. “Someone plants targets on both your backs. Then you either die or start a war.”
The female vampire gnashes her teeth.
Cyrus lifts a hand. “We don’t want war,” he says. “I know my father committed heinous crimes. But the massacre of our kind was its own abomination. It can’t happen again. We have a right to exist.”
Apollo shakes his head. “There’s no time for a debate. You both need to leave.” He whispers a protection spell and directs it towards the boat at the harbour. “Take it. You must leave now.”
Cyrus grinds his teeth and stares down at Kira.
“She will be fine,” Apollo says. “She’s drained from using magic, that’s all. She’s still young. She didn’t know what would happen.”
“Come on, Cyrus,” says the sister. “We can’t stay here.”
Cyrus bends down, plants a kiss on top of Kira’s head, then rises to his feet. “The royal families will need to know about us eventually. We deserve to have a place in this world. You realise that you’re making us outcasts?”
“I’m doing no such thing,” Apollo argues. “You already are outcasts.”
Cyrus takes a step forward. “Can we count on you as anally in the future? When we eventually reveal ourselves to the circles?”
