“Oh wow,” Ashlynn pointed as they winged over the rooftops and the view below was revealed.
The police barricades had fallen back an entire block to the next intersection. They were not having an easy time of it. Rioters pushed against the police cars and armoured and shielded officers. Some spray-painted graffiti on vehicles, buildings, and plastic shields alike, whilst others hurled bricks, bottles and any other projectiles they could find.
Amongst the rioters were many Others, the streetlights reflecting off un-glamoured eyes, their Other natures on full display, whether it be furred, scaled, winged, or otherwise. Many minor hexes and spells were amongst the objects thrown at the police officers and military forces that held them back.
The gargoyles began to circle overhead, dropping spell-bags. Ashlynn saw one spell bag explode, and where its components touched, a garden sprung forth, covering street, cars, army tanks, and the military forces who stood their ground against the angry civilians.
“Hair-hair everywhere,” Cael crowed as other officers grew an abundance of hair. “I like that one,” he said with his enjoyment evident in his tone.
Another spell bag exploded into oozing green foam, that expanded rapidly and then set, trapping anything it touched within its clutches. “I think Alatar was inspired by his renovations with that one,” Ashlynn observed. “But it sure looks uncomfortable.”
Elior’s investment purchase was a well-preserved older style building on the corner of its block. Its frontage was mostly obscured by scaffolding and its bottom level boarded up. She could see where the grime of centuries was being pressure-sprayed away from the stone, and the grout holding it solid was being repointed.
They landed on the roof and took a shaky fire escape down to the top floor, where a narrow balcony with fragile, sagging, half rotten floorboards gave access to six narrow windows and a door. Elior opened the door with a savage twist of the handle and a shove.
“It will be basic,” he said as they entered the interior dulled by lack of daylight access to the hallway. He flicked a light switch and nodded, satisfied, when the lights turned on revealing an austere hallway. “This property is being refitted as accommodation for lower-level employees, volunteer blood donors, and the like. We find creating a community atmosphere encourages loyalty.”
The walls had been painted in muted blue, which matched the industrial style carpeting. Lighting came from tasteful but dull wall sconces set between the doors. The art on the wall was a generic reproduction that could have hung in any hotel or office in the city. Landscapes and still-life’s with none of the vividness of those that hung in the gargoyles’ home.
Elior opened the first door into a generous sized room, with windows on two sides. It had been modestly and simply decorated, in grey tones, outfitted with cupboards, a small kitchenette, and a queen-sized bed. A small bathroom was behind a second door. It looked un-used but finished.
“It is not much, but at least it is not rigged with explosives,” the vampire said.
Cael walked over to the window and looked out at the chaos down the street. “I would prefer to be out there,” he complained pressing his face against the glass in an effort to improve the view. He tried to open the window, but the sash was stuck, as were the others he tried.
“Safety feature,” Elior observed watching his struggles. “The opening of these windows has been disabled.”
“They haven’t exploded the building yet,” Ashlynn tried to peer through the mesh that covered the scaffolding with advertising for the company in charge of the renovations – a werewolf company that her father had shares in, she noted. “That has to be a good sign, right?”
“Not really,” Elior joined Cael at the window. “I want them to explode – ah,” he sighed it out, as a dull boom caused the window glass to shake in the frames. “There we go.”
There was a second boom, and then echoes of the same sound in rapid fire. Ashlynn ran to join them at the window, but the scaffolding hid any view of the building’s collapse. She could, however, see the reaction of the rioters – they went still, many pointing, their faces appalled.
There was a roar of sound, and then a cloud of smoke and debris whipped the netting around the scaffolding and sweeping over the rioters, stealing them from sight as the cloud rose in a chest-choking thickness, and then fell as a heavy dust, frosting the street in its powder.
Ashlynn felt Elior put his hand on her waist, drawing her closer to him, offering comfort. “We can only hope that they believe they have killed our supporters,” he continued undisturbed by the destruction.
The smoke was settling on the street, and the military and rioters alike were white with dust particles, their panic evident as they scattered, seeking shelter in the surrounding buildings, out of the fall of that toxic powder, until the barricades remained unmanned, and the streets empty of enemies and supporters alike, both forces united in fear of what the white smoke held.
Elior released her waist and moved into the room. “I need to make another social media post. It might be a good image to have the two of you with me,” he positioned his mobile phone and stepped back into the frame. “That should do it. Even better,” he added as the door opened and his children entered.
Jacinta and Rebecca carried between them a great many bags, which they deposited on the bed, and Jacinta brushed white powder off her shoulders with dismay. “It is unpleasant, outside,” she observed mildly as if it were not the first time she had encountered the sort of dust cloud that resulted from the collapse of a skyscraper building.
Rebecca took up the phone. “Are you ready?” She asked Elior.
“One moment.” He positioned Cael and Ashlynn where he wanted them and stood back, eyeing them off. “Not right,” he observed.
Jacinta stepped froward ran her fingers through Cael’s hair, fixed Elior’s lapel, and rubbed a smear off of Ashlynn’s cheek before applying some lipstick, and then stood back behind Rebecca, who nodded to Elior. “It is right now,” she told him.
He took a moment to position and focus, before lifting his eyes to the camera and nodding his head.
“As many of you will be aware, tonight has seen an act of violence against the vampires of this city,” he said, his voice sorrowful. “We have tried to negotiate to reach a peaceful settlement with the humans. They have forced our hand and we now have no choice but to defend ourselves.
“We ask you, our friends and allies, to seek safety. To support and care for each other over the coming days. Help your neighbours. Aid your community. Share what resources you have. Check on your elderly and ensure their needs are met. Check on strangers. Reach out to the homeless and offer them shelter. Donate your blood and your time. Help your local hospitals to keep functioning.
“This war is far from lost. We are just beginning our fight. Each and every person is vital as to how this war progresses. We make the decision with our every act as to whether this war shows us at our worst, or our best. We have every confidence that together, we can show the humans who wage war against us, who fear us, that we are not their enemy.
“We will not let fear and intolerance best us. I thank those who have stood for us, who have shed their glamour and offered us their strength and bravery. Those who have helped vampires in need, offering shelter or blood. Those who have spoken out against what is being done to us on social media, adding their voice to the call for tolerance and equality.
“As you can see, my mates and myself are in a safe place. We will continue to fight. We will continue to fight for you all. Until next time, stay strong, be brave, and we are with you.” He waited until Rebecca lowered the phone. “All good?” He asked her.
She nodded, watching the playback on the screen. Jacinta leaned against her, her arm around her waist. “It is posting,” she announced, and watched the bar fill, before nodding. “And it is done. What next?”
“There is little we can do for now,” a muscle worked in the corner of Elior’s jaw as he returned to the window. “The riot is breaking up below. Our military forces will begin reporting in soon. Now we wait.”
“Very well,” Rebecca slid her phone into her pocket. “We will feed, and rest. You should do the same.”
Elior looked over his shoulder with a small smile. “Thank you, Rebecca. I will.”
Jacinta walked up to him and touched his hand, a small gesture of affection, before drifting back across the room and leaving with Rebecca. Nate remained behind, waiting for Elior’s attention to come to him.
Elior nodded.
The male vampire’s lip curled, and he left.
“What did he want?” Ashlynn began searching the bags on the bed. Elior’s children had brought them clothes, toiletries, food, and water. She sorted them into piles – Elior, Cael and herself. It was not hard to determine whose was whose. Elior’s clothing had a definite style, suits compared to the sweatpants that Cael preferred.
If either man chose to cross into each other’s wardrobe choices, they were of similar enough size to do so, and, she suspected, would not object to the other borrowing their clothing.
There was an element of kinkiness to her two men sharing wardrobes that det Ashlynn’s heart to racing. Her two men. Her two mates. Her vampire and her devil.
“He wants to hunt Caleb Roth,” Elior replied, and her thoughts had travelled so far from her question that she stared at him blankly for a moment before they caught up.
“Oh,” she said inanely.
“You have a telepathic connection with them,” Cael observed, setting his sword on top of the small table pushed against one wall before shoving the bags out of the way and throwing himself face down upon the bed, his wings stirring the air idly. “Your abomination of children.”
“Yes,” Elior watched Ashlynn put the clothing away in the cupboards and ignored the insult in Cael’s tone. “It is something some of us can do between parent and made children. Not all, by any means, but it does, occasionally, manifest.”
“Is that so?” Ashlynn paused, intrigued. “I have never heard of that.”
“It is not in the records about slaves,” Cael agreed.
“It appears that we have evolved, then,” Elior was amused. He moved over to the bed and began to sort through the items with Ashlynn, selecting items that she might have attributed to Cael otherwise, a singlet top, a loose-fitting pair of pants… Small secret insights to the intriguing man beneath the suits.
“Your message,” Ashlynn had been thinking furiously. “You are trying to place the blame for the vampire military on the human governments.”
“I am trying,” he replied gently. “To prevent Others from becoming slave owners. We need to believe that the humans will not rise against us again, and to do that, we need the humans to believe that our military action is justified. We need to be seen as victims of their violence defending ourselves.”
“That was why you wanted the building to blow up,” she met his eyes, a frown pulling her eyebrows together. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or scared of the depth of your political manoeuvrings, Elior.”
“I have been alive a very long time,” he said calmly. “And I have learnt to quickly turn a situation to my advantage.”
Elior had probably been alive when politics had been invented, she thought with amusement. He had probably nursed on it as a babe, studied it as a youth, practised it as an adult, working his way up the vampire hierarchy one scheme at a… Oh, shit, she realized.
“Did you let Lucian build power?” She asked him abruptly, straightening and turning to face him. “Did you let him build power and plot his overtaking of the vampire hierarchy, so that you could defeat him and take the power yourself?”
Elior’s lip curled slightly in the corner. “If I did, I would be a very devious man.”
“My mother threw a hurdle in your plans, didn’t she?” Ashlynn sat on the bed and pulled off her boots, feeling the realization sink into her bones like a chill. Her very clever mate had missed nothing, had been taken by surprise by nothing that had occurred. “When her blood gave Lucian greater strength and speed than you possessed. You almost lost, as a result.” She stopped horrified by how her thoughts had unravelled. “Oh, my god.”
Cael pushed himself up into a crouch. “Ashlynn?” He murmured picking up on her tone.
“Elior’s the bad guy,” her jaw dropped. “He has planned this, all along.”
“I resent being called a bad guy,” Elior shrugged out of his suit jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. “In politics there is no black and white, no angel and devil. There are just different game plans, and different outcomes.”
“Do you want to be a king, Elior?” She edged across the bed to Cael, seeking the winged man’s protection about the danger that the vampire suddenly presented to her.
“No,” the vampire sat in the chair and removed his shoes. “No, I don’t want to be a king, Ashlynn. And stop crawling across the bed to Cael as if you fear that I will suddenly turn violent against you. That is just insulting. I would never,” he lifted his eyes to hers. “Never harm you.
“Twenty-four years ago, the vampires were stagnating under a hierarchy reluctant to embrace change,” he loosened his tie. “It is a side effect of our long lives. Many hold on to the ways and attitudes of their youths. There were different movements forming within the vampire population, all aiming to overthrow the hierarchy.
“I assessed the potential of all and feared that many of the movements would do more harm than good. It became obvious that I needed to control the outcome. And so, I cleared the path for Lucian, a vampire I knew to be weaker than I, to build a following, amass power, and gain access to the hierarchy.
“My intention was to allow him to be the villain, focusing the vampire population on his crimes, and then step in and remove him, allowing the hierarchy to be replaced by younger and more flexible vampires without opposition.
“Your mother’s involvement caused a number of issues. It cost me my family, and an arm and a leg quite literally,” his expression was grim. “And, whilst I was disabled and unable to control him, Lucian’s greed and ambition took him beyond the hierarchy of vampires, into conquering the world.
“I take responsibility for the vampire’s exposure to the human world,” he began to unbutton his shirt. “Whilst I could not predict that the font would suddenly appear in my pawn’s harem, it was my machinations that placed that pawn in the position to do great harm. As a result, I have spent the last two decades trying to make amends and repair the harm caused.
“As you have said yourself, the time has come for the Other world to drop their glamours, to free the vampires from standing between them and the humans. I could see, early on, the humans plot to rise against us, as I could see Caleb Roth’s plans to rise against me.
“I did not intend for it to unfold in quite this way. That is the risk of these types of political movements. There is a saying – the devil fools with the best laid plans. I have had to adjust with the changing situation.
“My plan had been to create a situation where we had no apparent choice but to use the military, and too apparently reluctantly do so. Once I had control over the humans, and had eliminated Caleb Roth, I would encourage the Other world to reveal themselves, and then push for them to gradually forgive the humans their violence against vampires, creating an equal society.
“But this way, thanks to your social media appeal, works even better, with the Other world voluntarily revealing itself to the human beings and the human beings supporting both Other world and the vampires. Equality between the species will be attained much faster as a result.
“My aim has always been to repair the damage done by Lucian. We can’t go back, and we can’t hide vampires from the humans now that they know about us. But we can expose the Other world and shift the focus off of vampires, creating equality for all.
“If that makes you see me as a villain,” he stood and removed his shirt. “I am sorry for it. My motivation has always been for the greater good of my people, not my own personal gain. Some might see that as heroic.”
“How many have died because of this plan, Elior?” She challenged him.
“Far fewer than would have died had I not seen the plans of the humans and Caleb Roth and taken action,” he replied. “Sometimes there is no path which does not carry with it some death, Ashlynn. I see my job to be keeping those deaths to the minimal.”
“He is a very clever blood sucker,” Cael had relaxed and slid off the bed. He began to undress. “A very manipulative, scheming, but clever blood sucker,” his smile was predatory but indifferent to the complexities presented by Elior’s scheming. They did not matter to the devil.
Ashlynn pressed her fingertips into the corner of her eyes. “If my father ever knew,” she said. “He would kill you Elior. His sister died in the battle against Lucian and he carries that wound to this day.”
“As did my family,” Elior replied softly. “Die. All of them.”
“If this gets out Elior,” she met his eyes. “The whole world will tear you apart.”
“Everyone has to die sometime,” he smiled, the weariness shadowing his eyes. “I must admit, finding my mates during this process was not part of the plan. Perhaps when this began, I was a little suicidal. It has been a long and lonely life. Not everything I have done during it, have I been proud of.
“There was always a risk that I would be discovered and that discovery would result in my death. At the beginning, I was willing to risk it, because I had ceased to value my life. Now, I hope that only my clever mate works it out, so that I might live the rest of this suddenly very valuable life with my mates, watching our children grow.”
“Oh, Elior,” she sighed heavily, feeling the weight of his explanation and his fragile hope. “Who else knows? Your children? Is that all?”
“You and Cael. That is all. My children do not know. They suspect, perhaps, but they will be loyal.”
She nodded, feeling very tired and world weary. “This plan was why you were in the embassy. You were securing yourself a possible font.”
“As I have said before, I was preventing my enemies from doing so.” He smiled slightly but his eyes were grieving. “I did not know that you were my mate.”
“Would it have changed your plans?” She saw the answer on his face and nodded. “This puts me in a very uncomfortable situation, Elior. I don’t know what is the right thing to do. What will happen from this point on, according to your plans?”
“My military is positioned to take back control,” Elior removed his trousers and hung them on the chair.
Both her men were in their skin, and she couldn’t enjoy it, she thought as Cael walked by naked, into the bathroom. She heard the hiss of water in the shower as he started it.
“Nate will dispose of Caleb and his followers. By tomorrow morning, order will be restored. There will be elections to replace the deposed governments, and I will encourage Others to put themselves forward. The Other world and the human world will merge.” Elior held out his hand, the offering an olive branch, and a vulnerability. “Will you shower with us, Ashlynn?”
“You have lied, all along, even when it was just us,” her heart hurt. She was angry and sad, the two emotions at war within her. “You lied to me. It’s all been a big act. You played me. You used me. I haven’t even thought of all the ways I have been manipulated by you.”
“Your anger is justified,” his hand dropped to his side, its rejection loud between them. “I am so very sorry, Ashlynn.”
He turned and went into the bathroom, and she heard Cael greet him cheerfully, totally undisturbed by the conversation. She continued to put away the items from the bed, her motions jerky, and her mind whirling.
Both of her men were villains, she realized.
Cael had manipulated, kidnapped, and had tried both to rape and kill her mother, and yet Ashlynn had overlooked his actions, justified them in her head as being acts of grief, even, when she looked at the timing impartially, much of his crimes against her mother had predated his loss of his family.
Elior’s political machinations had caused the riots that many called Armageddon. No wonder he disliked the name. What a terrible thing, she thought, to have on his conscience. An unpredictable result of his actions, and he had worked tirelessly ever since for his people. But did that make it okay?
She pushed the tears that tracked down her cheeks away irritably. He hadn’t learnt from Armageddon. Yet again he had used politics to start a war. Was he right, that his actions saved more lives than they cost? How would she ever know the answer to that?
She remembered her conversation with Cael on the roof of the police station. Sometimes the lines of right and wrong were so close together, it was impossible to tell them apart.
She had forgiven Cael. Why did she find it so hard to forgive Elior? Because she answered herself, she had grown up with Elior as the heroic icon of goodness on TV. She held him to a different standard than she did the devil. With Cael, she expected his morals to be grey at the best, and she embraced the wickedness of him.
She blew out a breath and went to the bathroom door.