Chapter 10. William
william
William is starting to regret that he did not kill the girl yesterday.
He will not be making the same mistake tonight.
“Like I said, I need search terms—”
“The Great Fires of the 1700s,” he says, and she takes a seat in front of a machine, then clicks a button. Heat begins to emanate from it, and the screen illuminates. When images load, the word guest appears.
She clicks again, and more words and images come up. She keeps clicking, then she taps different letters to spell out his search request.
No entries found.
She looks back at him so he can read it for himself and says, “No results for that in our records.”
“Search Legion of Fire.”
She turns around and types the new search words.
No entries found.
“Search—”
He cuts himself off. This is pointless. The Legion has rewritten history. They have erased vampires from recorded time—but not reality.
They cannot change what has actually happened.
“Maybe if you told me more about you, I could be more helpful,” she says. “If you’re going to kill me, what do you have to lose?”
He ignores her and turns away from the computer in frustration, thinking out loud. “Only the Legion of Fire would have the kind of societal power and global presence to alter the historical record.”
“That’s impossible,” she says, stating her opinion as fact. What an obnoxious habit.
“Think about it,” she goes on. “If there were vampires around, we would know. We have surveillance cameras everywhere, and they would’ve captured one of you by now. Isn’t it more likely that you’re from the 1700s in some other reality—?”
“Then explain to me how we are speaking the same language. Or how I recognize some of the authors in this library, like Miguel de Cervantes and Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare. The only classics missing from my time are the ones by vampire authors. Shakespeare had a great rival in his day—”
“Christopher Marlowe,” she says arrogantly.
“No,” he says, and it feels oddly rewarding to shut her up. “She was a vampire author named Chanterelle Harrington who was just as talented and prolific. Only she used dactylic hexameter instead of iambic pentameter, and she only wrote about immortals.”
The girl’s eyes grow rounder with every word, and he wishes he had not said any of that. Yet he never could hold his tongue when it came to literature—it is the only passion he has ever known.
“You seriously know Shakespeare,” she says in disbelief, and he identifies something else he detests about her: how she phrases her questions as statements.
“But how could humans be a threat to vampires?” she presses him. “Why didn’t you just turn more of us to make more of you?”
This is pointless. She cannot help him. All she is doing is profoundly irritating him.
He needs to get rid of her and go search for his family. He has already wasted too much time here.
He seizes her too swiftly to give her a chance to speak. All he hears is a gasp as his fangs plunge into the delicate skin of her neck.
He feels her pulse galloping in his mouth, and her warm blood tastes so good on his cold tongue that he takes his time savoring it. Her throat bobs against his lips, her relentless voice still fighting to be heard—
“They’re … watching.”
He grudgingly pulls back, her blood dripping down his lip.
“Who is watching?”
“I took … measures,” she says, breathing heavily.
William casts a wide net with his hearing. She deceived him? How is that possible? Is the Legion here?
“What have you done?” he asks with a snarl, shaking her.
“I’ll show you,” she says, her eyes heavy lidded, like she is halfway asleep.
He lets go of her, and she stumbles. Leaning on the table, she reaches for the hand-sized device that she set down when she first entered the space. Then she holds it up to show William.
Their entire encounter unfolds on the small screen, his face and figure in full view—including when he sinks his fangs into her neck. The images only cut out when she picks up the device.
“Do you think me too weak to crush that tiny machine?” he asks her.
“The recording isn’t on this device,” she says, sounding less afraid now.
“It’s saved to something called the cloud, and it’s accessible from anywhere.
If something happens to me, or if I go missing, an investigation will give detectives access to my files, and this is what they will find.
Once the press spreads your image all over the world, you won’t have anywhere to hide from your Legion. ”
William feels a volcanic rage rising up in his chest.
The insolent little mortal dares to blackmail him!
“And now it’s my turn to make demands,” she goes on, having the gall to take a step toward him with blood dribbling down her throat. “Starting with: If you hurt anyone here, this recording goes public.”
His hands are balled into fists at his sides, nearly shaking with rage, yet he is speechless. He cannot believe the human outplayed him.
“I want you to leave this school,” she says, coming even closer.
He keeps utterly still.
If he loosens his control in the slightest, he will snap her neck—and the last thing he needs right now is to do something rash. Being impulsive is what landed him in this situation in the first place, stuck with an uncompellable human whom he cannot trust.
“If you ever come back here,” she warns him, “the whole world will meet William Pride.”