Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
“Same reason all allies do,” Raza replied. It didn’t surprise me in the least that she didn’t get on him for not raising his hand. “There was something in it for us.”
“Which was?”
“Can anyone answer that?” Raza asked, sweeping the room.
The girl with the glasses shot her hand into the air. The studious geeky girl revealed herself quick. Every boarding school had to have one. Raza pointed at her and asked her name.
“Imani.” She sat up straight, clearing her throat. “We didn’t join until the Third Vampire-Demigod War. By then, it was clear that the demigods were becoming strong enough to hold their own. They were even doling out brutal attacks on the vampires, and thinning out their numbers.
“We lent our strength to the fight, but not only because we believed that together with the demigods we could wipe the vampires out for good, but also because they paid us. In gold.”
Orion’s brows shot up—along with his eyelids. “Damn. They left that out of my history book. They used to hand out gold for killing vamps, and all this time we’ve been doing it for free? Fuck it, sign me up. I was born for that gig.”
“Very funny, Orion,” Raza said. “But you know as well as I that the wars are long over. Demigods claimed their piece of land, erected their barriers around it, and the vampire threat against them all but vanished.
“Luame knows they tried, but vampires can’t cross the barrier to get to them, so they hardly need to pay us to help kill them. Besides, when the fae forced us into separate corners of the world, what other terms were we forced to accept under threat of death?”
Imani punched the air. Raza called on her again.
“The destruction the wars caused left devastating consequences for the mundanes in North America and South America that remain to this day. Then there were two more wars in Europe. Three in Africa, and then another two in Asia. If vampires could control their vile bloodlust, they would’ve given up the fight, but it just kept going and going, on and on.
“Werewolves and vampires are mostly evenly matched in terms of superhuman strength and sense. But werewolves and demigods had an edge. Our fight doesn’t stop when the sun comes up.
“We were bringing those bloodsuckers to the edge of extinction, so they turned on the mundanes. They weren’t just food anymore, they were brand-new, ravenous soldiers just waiting to be born. So they wiped out entire villages and turned them all. When they did, the fae couldn’t ignore the fight any longer.
“They blew in, joined the side of the mundanes, and ended the fighting in two weeks. They were strong,” Imani gritted, “stronger than anyone at the time had known was possible. We couldn’t fight the fae. We couldn’t even dream about fighting the fae, so the very first alpha council had no choice but to sign the treaty they forced on us, and swear to uphold it on Luame’s name.
“The law against turning mundanes—the fae. The law against attacking a vampire in anything other than self-defense—the fae,” Imani continued. “The law that forces us to hide our people in the middle of nowhere and never let the mundanes discover the truth about werewolves—all of that was the fae.”
“That is correct, Imani,” Raza said. “Well done.”
“Wolf’s teeth,” Orion cried. “The fae have a real fucking hard-on for the mundanes.”
“The fae think we’re disgusting,” Raza dropped, expression serious. “Werewolves, vampires, and demigods. We’re all twisted, filthy abominations that used to be human until spells, curses, magic, and gods changed us. So it’s not that they care about mundanes. They’ve certainly never stepped in when the mundanes were destroying and killing themselves.
“It’s simply that they see us as cockroaches, and the last thing you want is for one roach to turn into an infestation.”
I cringed at the comparison, but at least that explained a lot about the laws we were made to obey. During the full moon, a bite from our wolves could turn a regular, mundane human into one of us. But that was against the law. Werewolves were only allowed to be born, not made.
Same thing for vampires. They were only allowed to turn mundanes who were already dying, and only with their consent. I didn’t for a second believe the vampires were sticking to that rule, but we did.
I was ten years old when I watched my father execute a man and the wife he tried to hide. The guy had fallen in love with a mundane and turned her. Father bit both their heads off in front of me.
Then there was the only-in-self-defense law. We hadn’t gone to war with vampires since the treaty, but there was no question they were killing us, and we were killing them. We’d just gotten smarter about it. No vampire bites on us, no claw marks on them.