Page 54 of Blood Magic

Chapter Twenty-One

And then I met the council.

Abruptly, everyone around me fell silent and started filing from the vestibule. I followed them, slipping onto a bench at the back of the vast, echoing room, my stomach suddenly in knots.

When everyone was seated, the doors clanged shut, and the air grew thick and heavy, like all the oxygen was being sucked out by the magic of the ancient ones. I knew they were there, because even if I couldn’t see them, I could feel their overwhelming presence.

I pressed my palm against my stomach, filled with dread. Something was going to happen, and I couldn’t imagine it’d be anything good. “Come to the council meeting, they said,” I muttered. “It’ll be fun, they said.”

Five seconds later, the vampire council filed into the room from the doorway at the back, then sat behind the long tables on the wide, raised stage. I’d have expected them to be dressed in long robes with hoods hiding their hands and faces, maybe carrying a staff or two.

The fact that they were old people dressed in regular clothes didn’t relieve my anxiety at all. It wasn’t about what they were wearing—it was about how they felt and how they smelled. Like musty, dead things and centuries of doom. And like power. Immense power. I wondered if the others felt it.

I looked for my alpha. He didn’t rule me, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t have been calmed by his company. I didn’t see him. And maybe I’d need to stop thinking of him as my alpha.

Maybe.

One of the elders stood slowly and carefully, and I could almost hear his old bones creaking. “Kait Silver,” he said. “You will join us.”

My breath whooshed from my lungs and my heart stuttered, and when I sat frozen as the others turned to gawk, he gestured impatiently without taking his stare from me. I couldn’t see his eyes, really, but I knew he was looking directly at me. An aide who stood behind them shoved himself away from the wall and hurried to the back of the room to fetch me. When he took my arm and urged me to the short stairs at the end of the platform, I felt every eye in the place drilling into my back.

I was an outsider—a wolf cast into the world of humans who was now being given some sort of strange preferential treatment by the actual vampire council. I understood little. Like, why were there wolf alphas present at a vampire council meeting? And where was the wolf council? I suspected there were council reps planted in the audience, but I couldn’t be sure about anything.

The aide stood me firmly behind the row of council members seated at the long table. “Watch and listen,” he murmured. “Don’t interfere.”

I nodded wordlessly and he pressed his back against the wall and stood silently beside me as the council began the meeting.

I felt as though I were on display as I stood behind the council, my entire body tight with nerves. I concentrated on the elders and the audience, hoping to calm my mind. Everyone was dressed like they were at a fancy event, with the women in gowns and the men in suits. My sensitive nose picked up a hundred different colognes and perfumes and subtle soaps mixing with hair care products and nail polishes, all of them less powerful than the smells of the crisp October night. It was all strangely melancholic, and for a second, a wave of sadness crashed over me, there and gone.

The vampires, of course, were all dressed in black, and I didn’t see Bastien until he deliberately drew my attention. He lifted a hand and when I looked at him, he gave me a nod. I wasn’t sure what that was about, but I ignored him.

I saw the wolf seers sitting beside their alphas. Lennon, Jared’s seer, who I rather liked, and Greta, Adam Thorne’s seer, who I did not know very well. I’d been young when my mother and I had left the pack, and I hadn’t had much contact with Greta before I’d left. The alphas’ betas sat on the other side of them, and as Bastien had done, Jared’s beta, Eli, gave me a nod. I returned it.

The twelve council members were all old, all bent and gnarled with thinning white hair and wrinkled, delicate skin. Six females, six males. I couldn’t think of them as women and men because that seemed too common a term for them. They were like…gods, really, little human-shaped beings bursting with power. I couldn’t imagine a vampire not being afraid of them, and I wondered how Frederick Axton had dared risk their ire.

Then a door at the side of the stage opened and he was dragged before us by two large, female vampires. His naked body was wrapped in silver chains and decorated with intricate, almost pretty wounds, as though his torturer had been an artist using the vampire master’s body as his morbid canvas.

When he passed me, he spotted me behind the elders. He grabbed my stare and I couldn’t look away from him as he narrowed his black eyes, catching me in a net of power that was so unexpected that I could not fight against it.

Then he smiled.

I swayed drunkenly, and it was only the huge fear of fainting and embarrassing myself in front of him and everyone else present that made me clench my fists, straighten my spine, and find my courage.

I understood how the humans fell beneath his power. They wouldn’t have a chance. I barely did. I gave him a wink and returned his cold smile and had the satisfaction of seeing rage light his eyes before his escorts shoved him to the center of the stage and forced him to his knees.

Even though I was back against the wall with a panel of elders sitting between us, I could see everything that was happening. The council wanted me to see. They wanted me—and all the wolves—to know they could deal with their own people. At least that was how it seemed to me.

The old guy who’d summoned me began to speak. “This master vampire,” he told the audience, “has broken our laws and abused his power. Not only has he discovered a piece of dark magic to twist and bend, he has also used it to control humans. To murder humans. We have asked you here, nonhumans of the territory and those surrounding, to witness not only our fair and swift punishment—”

I nearly snorted at his use of the word swift but my fear of the ancient powers of the council helped me control myself, thank goodness.

“—but to reacquaint you with our power. For those of you who have quite forgotten that we are here and why we were established so long ago, we will remind you tonight. For those of you who have lost your fear and caution and believe you are above our laws, we will once again put that knowledge into your hearts. For those who have ceased to believe that your council commands you, we will hold this county master as an example of why you must adhere to the laws of your groups and protect your humans so that we all might survive.” He paused, then leaned forward and put his palms on the table, as though he were suddenly weakened by his speech.

Someone in the audience tittered, and I understood suddenly that the elder was right. The groups had begun to believe the councils were full of weak old people who had no power. That was why Axton had dared flaunt himself. He hadn’t believed he’d face any consequences.

I could understand that, really, because the council was rarely seen and slow to act. Once upon a time, the mere mention of them had struck fear into the hearts of all nonhumans. They were respected and honored. Now, though, they sat before an audience of specifically invited nonhumans who laughed behind their hands.

I made up my mind at that moment to work for the council. And I wasn’t standing for any of the supernaturals disrespecting them.