“What about the Daylight Coalition?” she demanded. “What about him?” She jerked her thumb at Danaus.
“I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but I don’t think it will be that bad either. We’ve been preparing these people for a few centuries. It’s not like it’s going to come as a complete shock.”
“Preparing? What’s this Great Awakening you mentioned?” Danaus interrupted.
My gaze jerked over to the hunter and it was all I could do to keep from saying something incredibly rude, but I held back. Frowning, I shoved one hand through my hair, pushing it back from where it had fallen about my face. “You can’t stay with them,” I said in a low voice. I knew the others could hear me, but the comment was directed solely at Danaus. “Ryan should have told you a long time ago.”
I wasn’t the only one being kept in the dark by those I trusted and needed to trust. Themis was supposed to be a great society that studied the various other races, but they remained bogged down by archaic ideas and old myths that had no basis in reality. To make matter worse, the group was led by Ryan, an extremely powerful warlock who refused to set his flock straight, even if it meant the lives of my kind and the lives of members of the other races.
Danaus refused to meet my gaze, his dark blue eyes focused on the fountain at the edge of the square. But he didn’t have to say anything. I could feel his frustration bubbling below his unmovable exterior of indifference. His time with me had proven on more than one occasion that he’d been operating under some false assumptions, and Ryan—the man he relied on for correct information—hadn’t done anything to see that Danaus knew the truth.
“A few centuries ago, the various groups got together—”
“What groups?” Danaus demanded.
“Warlocks, witches, nightwalkers, lycanthropes, and a few other heavy hitters,” Alex supplied, counting off each group on her fingers.
“The naturi?”
“No!” we both shouted. I held up my hand before Alex could continue to berate him for what I’m sure Danaus thought was a valid question. After what we saw at the main hall, it was actually a valid question, but Alex didn’t know that yet.
“No,” I repeated calmly. “The leaders of the various groups met and came to the agreement that mankind isn’t as stupid as we would hope. One day, people are going to figure out that this whole other world exists. So in an attempt to control the chaos, the various groups agreed that mankind would come to this realization on our terms. A timetable was designed, with a date set for what is being called the Great Awakening—the day mankind wakes up and realizes that it’s not alone on this planet.”
“Along the timetable there are several stages where we try to prepare man for the idea that vampires and lycans are real,” Nicolai interjected. “Things have picked up in the past hundred years with stories in the tabloids, major motion pictures, books, and now a large number of Web sites.”
“Propaganda?” Danaus asked, sounding absolutely horrified by the thought.
“Of course,” I laughed. I stretched out my legs and crossed them at the ankles as I relaxed in my seat. “Nightwalkers own three major publishing companies and half a dozen small press companies. We also own more than a dozen movie production firms around the world. We are constantly churning out positive propaganda for the cause.”
Frowning, he shifted in his chair, sitting on the edge of his seat. “Promoting vampires.” Such a thing would not make his job of hunting us any easier if we succeeded in winning the support of a large portion of humans when the Great Awakening finally arrived.
“Not just nightwalkers,” Alex quickly said, drawing his glare to her. “The various groups agreed that anything put out by one of our companies would not intentionally cast another race in a negative light. We’re in this together. If one goes down, we all fall.”
But then, even that lovely idea had fallen into question following the appearance of a lycan and a witch with a member of the Daylight Coalition.
Our conversation ground to an uneasy halt as the server arrived with several plates of food. Alexandra had ordered a medley of shrimp and linguine in red sauce, while Danaus settled on manicotti and an order of veal parmesan. Nicolai ordered some kind of seafood concoction that I couldn’t identify. But that wasn’t surprising. I hadn’t eaten real food in more than six hundred years. After that long, it all started to look the same. Sometimes the smells would tantalize, but the actual appearance of food had become unappealing. It frequently reminded me of the aftermath of some of my more gruesome and bloody battles.
As my companions dug into their meals, I stared across the plaza, which had begun to empty. The night grew darker and deeper, but much of the inky blackness was held at bay by the warm glow of lamplights scattered about the square. The pigeons had left to find a roost for the night, the air filled with the bubbling murmur of conversation and the faint hint of a melancholy tune plucked on an acoustic guitar somewhere nearby.
“When is the big day?” Danaus asked between bites.
“There’s no exact date,” Alex said, cutting her food into delicate little bites. It was almost amusing. She was such a lady in public, but I’d seen her hunt. Nothing ladylike about running down and tearing the throat out of a twelve-point buck.
“It’s tentatively set for sometime in 2055,” I said, twirling my glass again. “Every once in a while a few of the groups get together and reevaluate the timetable.” It had been a while since I’d sat this long out in the open with so many people. I was continually scanning the area for anything, but we were alone. “Sometimes science or technology jumps a little faster than we anticipated and stages have to be moved up. It’s always a very liquid process with room for change, but there’s no denying that it’s coming.”
Danaus went still beside me, drawing my gaze back to his solemn face. “Were you counting on Rowe?” he asked.
“No,” I softly said, looking down at the deep red liquid in my glass. I laid my hand flat on the table, suddenly fearful I would unintentionally shatter the stem. The dark naturi with the leather eye patch was determined to free his queen and the rest of the naturi horde waiting on the other side of the seal. He was also determined to accomplish this feat with my help.
“Why do I get this horrible chill whenever someone mentions that word?” Alex said, laying a forkful of linguine back on her plate. “What’s Rowe? Does it have something to do with the reappearance of the naturi?”
With a faint sigh my gaze drifted away from my friend and back out to the plaza as I mentally sorted through the events of the past several days, even the events that had taken place more than five hundred years ago. What to tell her? So much of it would horrify her, but I also knew that keeping secrets at this stage wouldn’t protect her.
Reluctantly, I launched into the tale of the naturi, sparing her of as many of the grizzly details as possible. I stretched back to what little I knew of that horrible night more than five centuries ago and mentioned tidbits of what had happened to us during the past several days. I told her of the sacrifice at Konark and the failed sacrifice at Stonehenge. I mentioned the symbols we had found in the trees as the naturi sought to break the seal that bound them. I described the attack in Aswan, Thorne’s pain-filled death, and holding Michael in my arms as his soul fought for freedom during the final seconds of his life.
Alex sat back in her chair and blinked a few times when I spoke of my lost angel. She had met Michael a couple of times and liked his easygoing manner. I appreciated her teary eyes…I had yet to shed my own tears for the young man. There was no time, as the naturi hounded us and I attempted to outmaneuver whatever plans Jabari and the Coven were apparently cooking up for the demise of my race.