I reached into one of the other garment bags and pulled out one of my older, more beaten-up jackets. The leather was soft like butter and fit like a second skin, which, given the amount of damage I had taken lately, was a welcome sensation. I slid my bat inside it and walked over to the gate, lifting it. The harsh fluorescents of the outer hallway poured in.

“Let’s go,” I said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually missing the artificial daylight back at the castle.”

30

When we arrived back at the castle, Aidan and Beatriz shoved the door to Brandon’s chamber open for me and I limped in as best I could. Many members of the vampire council were gathered around the room and so were Connor and Jane.

When my girlfriend saw me, one look at the shape I was in made her burst into tears. She ran over to me before I could reach the gathered crowd and wrapped her arms around me in a hug so tight that many of my recent injuries flared up. I wanted to scream in pain, but the way I hissed out an exhale of breath must have been enough for her to realize she was hurting me. She let go of me and wrapped her arms under mine to support me.

“My God,” she said. “I was so worried. When the Shadower team escorted you out of that Departmental witch trial, I was beside myself. I made Brandon send them after you.”

“Thanks for sending in the V-Team,” I said.

“Did I hurt you?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” I whispered before kissing her. The sweet taste of her lips mixed with the salt of her tears.

“My spine can heal later. I missed you.”

Jane put her arm around my waist and brought me over to the rest of the assembled crowd. Connor gave me a smile, albeit a pained one.

“Hey, kid,” Connor said. “Welcome back.”

“I see you made it out of the Gauntlet’s creepy catacombs all right,” I said to him.

“More or less,” he said. “Aidan and I ran into something down there, but I don’t really want to talk about it. It was… disturbing.”

Aidan tensed next to me and I felt his discomfort radiating from him. “I don’t want to talk about it, either,” he said.

“Good,” I said. “Then I don’t have to share my story about the awesome beating I took in prison before Team Undead came to my rescue.”

Brandon stepped forward, addressing Aidan. “I trust there were minimal casualties…?”

Aidan paused, no doubt not wanting to rat out Beatriz for getting a little enthusiastic with her fighting. I looked over at her, but she was already turning away.

I stepped forward. “Other than the large hole they tore in the side of the prison?” I said. “No. Although I kind of consider myself a kind of walking casualty, but that’s not their fault.”

Connor came over and grabbed my face in his hands, checking me over. Although I had cleaned up most of the blood back at the storage unit, I was still a mess of bruises and cuts. “You okay, kid?”

“It only hurts when I blink,” I said. “Or breathe. Although, truth be told, I think I was doing pretty well against Faisal and his crew for not having preternatural strength at my disposal. It took all five of them to take me down.”

“Impressive,” Connor said, slapping his brother on the arm. “Right?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Aidan said, rather flatly. “By the time I got there, Simon here was lying on the floor in the fetal position.”

“Yeah, well, it was a pretty ferocious fetal position, let me tell you.”

“Forgive me if I seem a bit solipsistic,” Brandon said, “but what now? It seems your attempts at negotiation using Aidan have met with failure.”

“Your concern is touching,” I said, feeling a swell of bitterness. “No, I’m fine, really.”

“I am of course concerned for your well-being,” Brandon said. “You are an important part of all this.”

I looked around the room at all the faces there. Some of them I knew and trusted; the rest were trusted by Brandon.

“I was doing a little thinking,” I said, “what with my time in the joint…”

Connor laughed. “All, what? Three hours of it?”

I glared at him. “Well, I didn’t know it was going to be that short, now, did I?”

Connor nodded. “Point to you, kid.”

“Thank you,” I continued. “So when I was getting my ass handed to my by one of my old nemeses, I got to thinking. Dude had a lot of anger in him toward me. Why was he so angry with me? Because he had a cause he believed in. He had a way of life he wanted to promote and I denied him that. Mostly because he was big on evil and human sacrifice, which I think we all can agree is a bad thing. So I wondered the same about this situation… Is someone among you feeling denied here? I put myself into the mind-set of someone who would go to all this trouble just to see a war between the humans and the vampires. Why would they go forward with sabotage? Because they were unhappy with the way things are. And who here is unhappy? After getting to know some of you, it sounds like it could be half the population of this place who aren’t thrilled about one thing or another.”

I walked through the sea of faces, addressing people as I passed them. “Aidan’s spent years wanting his memories back and I imagine there’s been a lot of anger built up over that loss, especially with Connor back in his life. And what about the members of your council? Sure, you can trust them, the way the gang at the Peach Pit trusted each other on 90210, but you see how that turned out every week. Not everyone sees eye to eye here.”

“Impossible,” the tall blond named Gerard said, stepping forward. “You know nothing of our kind. Brandon’s word is law.”

“But I do know your kind,” I said. “Despite what I hear you people claim over and over, you’re still human. You come from us. You can’t help it. It’s not a virus you can work out of your system, and even if you could, what do I see you people do with your downtime? You absorb human culture-with the movies you watch, the building you construct to hide yourselves. And you, Gerard, you’re as hotheaded as this human vampire hunter I know… Remember how you broke my bat?”

I moved on. When I came to Nicholas he couldn’t bear to make eye contact with me, looking away. “And Nicholas, well, let’s just say he’s got some relationship issues a century or two of analysis might cure…”

Aidan sighed. “Is there a point to all this?”

“The point is this,” I said. “Somewhere in your ranks, there has to be someone who is terribly unhappy with their lot in the vampiric life.”

Beatriz laughed and sidled over to Aidan, throwing her arm around him. “Did you come up with that all by yourself?”

I gave her a placating smile. “I did.”

“Forgive me,” Brandon said, “but I fail to see how that is supposed to help us. Other than taking my ego down a notch to hear about some of the unrest of my people.”

“You’re right,” I said. “That alone really doesn’t amount to anything. There’s been all the problems trying to help you out with achieving the peace you want, the right to be left alone. Hell, I’ve risked my entire career trying to do the right thing by you… by Connor and Aidan, by Jane… only to be constantly stumped by someone covering their tracks all too well.”

Jane walked over to me. “Brandon was filling me in on the prophecy,” she said. “I’ve had a little experience from reading up on them in my dealing with the Black Stacks at Tome, Sweet Tome. Like most prophecies, this one is as cryptic as the next, but to overcompensate for that, someone still tried to cover all the bases. They went out of their way to try and take care of anyone who might remotely be involved in it.”

“Like who?” Brandon asked.

“Me, for one,” Jane said. “Your building ate me. That wasn’t by accident. When I was trapped in there, I found traces of traps laid for me. Whoever did it covered it up well, but the building was waiting to contend with a technomancer.”