Кейти Макалистер: Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang

“Amen,” Magda said, nodding brusquely.

Janice’s spine stiffened. “Oh, there wouldn’t be any deaths? Those . . . monsters that you insist on defending attacked and killed several members of the Brotherhood in Iceland. Without cause they attacked them, so you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t believe what you’re saying.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” I crossed my arms, holding firm to my temper.

Janice cast another nervous glance toward her husband. I’m not normally the type of person who gets her jollies out of intimidating someone else, but I was beginning to see the attraction of doing so with someone so misguided, so intent on refusing to face the truth. If letting her see that I didn’t believe in what the Brotherhood stood for would help her understand the truth, then by heavens, I would become the scariest person around.

“No, I would never so insult a Zorya. I am certain that you have been misled-”

I took a step toward her, narrowing my eyes as I did so. “Good, because unlike you, I was present in Iceland, and I can assure you that the only reapers who were killed were a couple of guys who tried to slaughter a Dark One named Kristoff and me in cold blood. They attacked us without warning or cause and told him flat out they were going to kill us both. He simply defended us, and quite frankly, if Kristoff hadn’t been there to protect me, I wouldn’t be alive now.”

That stopped both of them for a moment.

“Are you sure it was members of the Brotherhood who attacked you?” Rick asked slowly after he and Janice exchanged a couple of doubtful looks. “Did the vampire tell you it was members of the Brotherhood? Perhaps he was mistaken, or you misunderstood.”

“No, they were members, all right. It was confirmed for me later.”

“I don’t understand,” Janice said, frowning. “Why would they attack a Zorya?”

I glanced at Magda, now really curious as to what Frederic had told them about the events in Iceland. He knew full well that I was a Beloved, but he didn’t appear to have mentioned it.

Magda gave a tiny little shake of her head, obviously just as baffled as I was.

“That doesn’t matter now. What does matter is the fact that you are blindly following the precepts of an organization without any justification.”

“We’re not mindless sheep, you know,” Janice replied quickly. “The Brotherhood has been cleansing evil from the mortal world for almost five hundred years. It could not have done so without a need for such acts. There is precedent.”

“Precedent,” I scoffed. “That’s the blind following the blind if I ever heard it. Tell me, do you even know why the Brotherhood started going after vampires?”

“Er . . . no,” Rick admitted. He looked a bit shamefaced. “I’ve done quite a bit of research on the Brotherhood, but haven’t gone that far back in the records yet. We only joined a few years ago, after Janice had a bad experience with an evil being.”

“Not a vampire, I assume?” Magda asked.

“No, it was a necromancer, a woman who was trying to raise an undead army,” he said in all seriousness.

Magda and I gawked at him.

“You’re kidding,” she said. “An undead army? Like of zombies?”

“Liches, from what I understand,” Rick answered.

I blinked at Magda. She blinked back, saying, “This is so . . . so . . .”

“Hollywood bizarre,” I finished for her.

“Like a B-movie scriptwriter gone insane,” she agreed.

“Regardless,” I said, giving myself a mental shake to remove the Night of the Living Dead images from my brain and focus on more important things. It was easier said than done. “Well, hell. I’ve forgotten my point.”

“Vampires are good; Brotherhood is crazy,” Magda said absently. “What exactly is a lich, do you know?”

I ignored her attempt to sidetrack me. “The point is that you have no real reason for believing that vampires are the evil undead deserving of merciless slaughter, and I for one refuse to be a part of any such organization.”

“But you are a part of it,” Janice pointed out.

“Only until I can find someone to give the Zorya stone to.”

“You were a part of the incidents in Iceland,” Rick said, frowning. “You were involved in all those deaths.”

“I told you, there were only a couple of people killed, and they attacked us-”

“The vampires wiped out the entire Icelandic branch!” Janice interrupted. “There were at least fourteen people altogether that your friends slaughtered.”

I stared in openmouthed surprise for a moment before saying, “They’re not all dead! Two were held by the Icelandic police, although the Zenith is now dead, and it wasn’t a vampire who shot her. The others are in the custody of the vamps, but they’re not dead, either.”

“How do you know?” she asked, and for a moment, I was speechless.

I looked at Magda. “Christian wouldn’t kill the reapers, would he?”

She looked somewhat doubtful. “I don’t think he would. Not without cause. Did he say anything to you about what would happen to them?”

“No,” I said, frowning as I cast my mind over the events of the last couple of months. “They don’t have fourteen people, though. They only caught a couple of them: Mattias and Kristjana, and those two people who Frederic brought.”

“Then it would seem that we aren’t the only ones who can be accused of falling victim to blind faith,” Janice retorted. “You don’t know that the vampires are treating the Brotherhood, your own people, well at all. You only assume they are, but you don’t know for a fact what has happened to them. For all you know, they could be dead.”

I wanted to protest that point, but I had an uncomfortable feeling that any explanation I made would sound just as feeble as their mindless attacks. “You’re right. I don’t know for certain that they’re not dead, but I highly doubt that it’s so.”

“They didn’t hesitate to kill others,” Janice said, her eyes calculating. “Why should they stop at doing so to those captives?”

“I’ve told you several times now, they’re not that way. They seek justice for the deaths of their fellow vampires, yes, but they did not start this war, nor do they want to continue it. Can you say as much about the Brotherhood?”

“If you truly mean what you say,” Janice said after she and her husband traded silent glances, “then you will not mind proving it.”

“How so?” I asked, wary about falling into any verbal traps.

Janice lifted her chin. “The director of the board of governors sent us to negotiate with you. Yes, that’s right, negotiate.”

“What, specifically?” I asked, leaning against the desk.

Magda moved to my side in a blatant show of support.

“The director told us that you would refuse to do your duty.”

“I’d have thought that was made clear by my replies to the letters and e-mails I’ve been pelted with from you guys demanding I go help out with one cleansing or another.”

She studied me for a second, her mouth tight and slightly pursed, as if she smelled something offensive. “The director authorized us to negotiate a way for you to end your career as a Zorya.”

“Excellent.” I started to take off the bracelet bearing the moonstone.

“No.” Janice held up her hand to stop me. “Removing a Zorya from the Brotherhood is not as easy as simply handing over the Midnight stone.”

“Is there some sort of formal court-martial she has to go through to be stripped of her rank?” Magda asked.

“As a matter of fact, there are only two methods of removing a Zorya from the Brotherhood. The first is, naturally, death,” Rick said.

“Pass,” I said with a wry little smile to myself.