Chapter Thirty-One

 

“What do you want?” I asked Felix. 

“You really don’t think we tried asking that already?” Adriel said to me. I ignored him and asked again.

“Felix--”

“LORD Felix!” Felix corrected. I bit my tongue and went along with it.

“Lord…Felix,” I began. “What do you want for Aura Ray’s life?”

He squeezed a bit and her neck began to bleed from his disgusting nails. She winced in pain but didn’t make a sound.

“I want you all to make good on the deal. I mean, I offer you shelter away from the madness and chaos you caused and here you are murdering my people. For what?” Felix questioned. 

“To be completely frank, we weren’t here for you in the first place,” Titon said. Felix tightened his grip around Aura’s neck. She winced harder, but still said nothing.

“We were looking for information on the previous leader’s whereabouts,” I said. “Information you refused to give us.”

“And that gives you reason to kill my guards?” he asked.

“They were going to report to you. And we’d be at a disadvantage now if I let them live,” I said, completely aware of what I was saying.

“You…think you’re at an advantage now?” Felix asked. “What does this woman’s life mean to you?”

“Nothing more than what your lap dog here means to you,” I said, referring to the right-hand that injured Vulcon. Felix smirked.

“Then you wouldn’t mind if I--”

He was going to kill her. I thought reverse psychology was something that could possibly work on an inferior mind. It was a gamble that didn’t pay off. I would have lost her here had it not been for Adriel stabbing himself in the stomach to distract Felix for a microsecond. This was enough time for me to toss an icicle through his eye. 

He let go of Aura and clutched at the icicle stuck in his face.

“Draven!” he shouted. The huge right-hand man leapt at Aura now, but I dashed in close and froze him midair. He was dense enough to not shatter on impact with the ground and I snatched Aura, bringing her to the door with the other three and Vulcon. 

“And what about them?” Rose asked. Before I answered Rose’s question, I walked up to Adriel, who had already healed from his self-inflicted wound.

“Are you okay?”

“Yep. Used to it,” he said.

“Thank you for that. I would have lost her otherwise.”

“No biggie.”

I turned to Rose. “I’ll get the information out of him.”

I walked up to the whining Felix who was attempting to remove the icicle from his eye. I placed a hand on his shoulder; the same side with the blinded eye. 

“You fucking bitch. There’s glass in it too from my sunglasses! I’ll fucking kill--”

I grabbed the end of the icicle and twisted it in place. I swear his shrieks could have shattered the glass in the building. His other eye was drenched from tears. 

“Tell me where Tristan is or you’ll earn another twisting and another icicle in the other eye,” I threatened.

“My wound…it isn’t healing,” he claimed. Something else new. I went along with it.

“The ice is preventing it. Along with that, it will continue to creep further in your head until you’re completely frozen over,” I said. “You’re lucky to not be feeling the excruciating pain that comes along with even touching the black ice.”

I wondered if it had to do with his physiology as a vampire or if my black ice had been completely depowered in that aspect. 

“He’s taken shelter in a church 6 blocks west of here. You’ll meet an older bald guy and a woman your age at the door,” he told me. 

I was curious about something, so I asked. “Why are you protecting him? We don’t wish to hurt him.”

He winced in pain before thinking of his answer. “I…wanted to be the face. I overthrew Tristan as leader because I felt he was too passive. And with you all knocking down my door just to tell me you’re looking for the person that should be of no relevance anymore got to me.”

“That’s petty.” I honestly don’t think I was one to talk.

“Not something I can help. Isn’t what you’re doing something you can’t help? Could you really live with yourself if you weren’t…being you?”

“Can’t imagine it any other way.” With this last thing I said, I was going to kill him, but something changed my mind for the moment. 

“Draven, don’t!” Felix shouted as his guard dethawed and immediately made a beeline for me. I was out of kindness to give and shot a beam of ice beneath him as he leapt at me. From it, I created something that can only be described as the world’s most dangerous ice sculpture as I pierced his body with as many spikes as I could form in that split second, skewering him in every possible direction; a different part of his body for each spike tip. 

I turned to Felix and did the same with the icicle in his head. Then his head--what was left of it--froze over rapidly and shattered into hundreds of pieces against the seat of the throne. 

The moment had passed. He was going to kill one of my most loyal comrades. 

 

We found the church and stood at the door. The other five gathered around me after the brisk walk over. 

“Well, that was a nice silent walk,” Adriel said. “But, is everyone…good?”

Not really. I wanted to address what I said about Aura, but now wasn’t the time. There were more pressing matters to attend to. Like living at the end of this journey to see the effect my work had on this city.

“Let’s just get this over with,” I said. I knocked and the woman supposedly my age opened the door. She had black hair, glasses, and a long sword in hand and was dressed in dark clothing: a navy blue blazer, and purple shirt that had a diamond cutout around her stomach. She also had ropes around her waist that matched the blazer in color and blue shingles that resembled the bottom half of a samurai’s outfit. Was Felix sure she wasn’t the weird one?

“Mr. Radcliffe,” she called out to the back of the church. She went back inside and swapped with the old bald man. 

“Ah! Visitors! Wait. Are you--? You’re…You’re the one who’s bringing about the evolution revolution! The one forcing the heroes to step up and become stronger in the face of you! Oh what a blessed night! Please, come in!”

So they were both strange. The six of us followed them through the church to a set of stairs. The spiral stairs led to a dingy basement hallway lit by torches.

“This church has a dungeon?” Adriel asked. Radcliffe gave a hearty laugh. 

“We need to keep them down here as the sun comes up,” he explained. 

The samurai girl opened a door to a dimly lit room. In the center, at a table, were three vampires: one male, two female. I could tell which were which out of his mother and lover easily and I was about to approach Tristan, but I felt a hand on my shoulder. Titon stepped forward for me.

“Ah, Titon,” Tristan said. He had shaggy, brown hair, pale skin, and a red cloak that resembled what Draven was wearing. His eyes looked brown in the darkness, but I was sure they were actually red. 

“Tristan.”

“What do you need?” The vampire’s voice was soft and whispery. He had resting-bitch-face but based on his tone, it just seemed like everything was uninteresting to him. 

“Here to call in that favor you owe me,” Titon said.

“Of course.” 

“But it’s not for me, per say,” Titon said. Somehow I could tell Tristan was puzzled by this question even though his face didn’t change. “Amaia here made a deal with your cousin. Wanted to see if we could have you renegotiate the terms of the deal.”

The ex-vampire leader stood and walked over to me until he was uncomfortably close to my face. His eyes locked with mine and it felt as if he was trying to hypnotize me. Or kiss me. With either option, his lover sitting at the table didn’t have a reaction with how close he was. She had short brown hair that barely reached her shoulders, a black choker, a black halter top, black yoga pants that slightly sagged with some kind of a chain that was resting on her waist just above her pants along with fishnet arm sleeves. Her eyes, with black eyeshadow, matched Tristan’s red ones, but hers were brighter. 

“Which cousin have you made your deal with, lost one?” Tristan asked me. I went to answer but couldn’t as I realized I never got a name. I didn’t think it would be like customer service where I needed a name. 

“He had gray skin, violet hair, black and yellow eyes, and a shit-eatting grin,” I said. Tristan smirked and took a step back so he was no longer sharing oxygen with me. 

“Athan,” he said. He turned around and went to sit back down. “Impossible to change the deal now.”

“Why?” 

He turned back around and looked back at us, rather dramatically. “You, my friend, made a deal with the son of the Devil.”

There was a pause as everyone was taking a second to process the information given. 

“I’ll just close the door behind us,” Radcliffe said, leaving with the samurai woman.