30 | Zeph
As soon as Silver steps out of the judiciary building, I drag her into my arms and hold her tight against my chest. I don’t know exactly how much time passed between Ro and the others heading inside the building, and Silver appearing on the street outside, but it felt like days not minutes.
The sprinting figures heading out of the front door sent my eyebrows sky-high. And now the streets are going to be filled with escaped convicts. I’m sure a bunch of them are there so the Archarcans can keep control over the city, like Silver was. But I bet most were actual criminals guilty of actual crimes.
Not that I’m one to talk, but it makes me leery of hanging around here any longer than we have to.
Silver’s buzzing with energy that’s slightly manic. Her eyes are kind of glassy and she looks exhausted. Her lips are dry and cracked, but she’s practically bouncing on the balls of her feet.
She’s a damn mess, essentially.
I recognize the energy that’s coming off her in waves. It’s wild, untamable. A storm brewing inside of her.
“Have you eaten since you’ve been in there? Or slept?” I bark out the questions before trying to soothe away the harsh bite in my tone by carefully tucking her hair behind one ear.
“What?” She looks at me with a distracted gaze. “Oh, no. Too bright in there to sleep. Too busy too. They fed me that first night, but it was drugged, so I didn’t eat anything after that.”
“We need to get some food in you.”
She shakes her head. “Not hungry.”
I grumble under my breath. “Silver. Little Witch, you need to keep up your strength.”
She barely glances my way, instead looking at something I can’t see a little further along the street.
“We don’t have time. Not for food or sleep or distractions. Simpson’s going to try something soon, I don’t know exactly what, but he was planning on picking me up later. He’s already got the ear of the Archarcans and once he realizes I’m not where he wants me to be, things will get messy.”
“All right then.”
“Yeah?” She turns to me and meets my eyes properly for the first time and I recognize the itch beneath her skin, the need to do something or risk getting eaten up by the thing that’s currently going wild inside her.
I won’t stand in her way. No. I’ll stand by her side, just like I swore to her I would.
“He came to my cell. Taunted me. Told me his stupid, nefarious scheme for taking over the city.”
“He did what?” The words are barely more than a growl as I struggle to stay in control of myself. A gust of wind blasts us from the side, like my magic is cuffing me around the back of the head and telling me to get a grip.
The memory of holding Silver in my arms like she was a rag-doll after Simpson made her bleed is something that still haunts my nightmares. I want to tear his face off. I might not get far, especially if he’s suped-up from that pile of bodies we found, but I’d like to try.
“I want to tear his spine out through his throat,” I grumble under my breath.
Silver doesn’t seem to hear me, but Dante squeezes my shoulder. Risky move, considering I’m in a destructive mood right now.
Maybe I should shoot a lightning bolt up Simpson’s ass and see how he likes that.
“Don’t worry,” Dante says in a low voice that’s just for my ears. “We’ll tear his throat out later.” His smile is nothing more than a baring of his teeth, showing off his creepy fucking sharp canines, and I shake my head against a wave of revulsion.
Maybe he’s not so calm after all. He always seems so cool and collected, detached, almost. But maybe he’s a crazy fucker underneath that, just like the rest of us.
“First, we need to top up the Pretty Princess jewelry,” Silver says. “Then I... well, I’m not too sure what we should do, after that.”
“I have an idea,” Ro says. “While you were in there, I heard from the techno mage that works for your mom, Silver. She’s agreed to help us and she keeps messaging me to say she’s come up with a way of showing everyone what the vamps are really capable of.”
Silver cocks her head to one side and then nods. “I guess the more people on our side, the better.”
He steps closer and wraps his arm around her shoulders, hugging her tight. “I’ll send her a message then. Tell her to do her thing.”
We head back to The Spire and Silver sets to work topping up our jewelry against whichever vamp has the coercive magic that left us all standing helpless as she got arrested and dragged away.
Ro stares down at his phone as he receives a response from the techno mage. “I really hope this works out the way Anna is expecting it to. She didn’t exactly tell me what she was planning, but she promised it’ll be a spectacle.”
I don’t think any of us are expecting what happens next. There’s silence for a few beats and then all at once, all the nearest screens light up. The TV, my cell phone, Fabian’s laptop, they all glow with bright white light.
“I guess this is her work?” I ask and Ro just shrugs.
“Pretty weird coincidence, if not, eh? She’s fucking fast, though, I’ll give her that.”
A moment later and the screen goes dark before it fills with an image that we’ve all seen before. The zombie leaping in through the windows of city hall, glass shattering everywhere.
The room of Archarcans stands by in their ball gowns and tuxedos, doing nothing.
Then the camera shows something I didn’t see when I last watched the video, before all the copies of it were destroyed. There in the background is Simpson. He’s grinning. Watching the entire thing unfold with dead-eyed malice.
“Blood slaves.” His voice echoes through the speakers. “The entire city will be our willing blood slaves and we’ll be at the top of the food chain.”
“Oh shit. She’s got them on recording, admitting that they’re ruthless bastards,” Ro mutters. “I guess she must be really pissed about her sister.”
The picture shifts to a nightmarish scene of dull-eyed witches trudging along while vamps snatch at them and roughly latch onto their necks. My skin feels too tight for my body and I shudder, cursing under my breath.
“We control them,” Simpson says. “Handy to have a vamp with enough power to coerce the entire fucking city. Then the mages and the witches will be ours to control. We’ll suck them dry and they’ll bow down to us and the power structure will be restored with us at the top.”
It’s like he’s one of those evil geniuses from a movie, laying out his entire nefarious scheme for everyone to hear.
“Did he actually say all of this shit out loud?” I mutter.
Silver shrugs. “He said similar stuff to me at one point or another. I bet he’s spent the past month mouthing off about his stupid plan to take over the city.”
“Seb told me there are enough bugs and security cameras across the city that you can never know when someone’s listening,” Fabian murmurs in reply. “I wonder if the techno mage found a way of tapping into them.”
Dante runs his hand through his hair. “This is certainly one way of getting people’s attention.”
Silver grins. The first smile I think I’ve seen since she got out of that place. There’s still a slightly manic edge to it, but it’s better than the alternative.
“How the hell did she manage this?” I grunt.
“Magic,” Silver deadpans.
The footage continues on with even more threats of what the vamps will do. It barely mentions the Archarcans. Nothing to say that they’ve sat on their asses, even though they were told about the vamp threat over a month ago.
“Every person in the city is going to have seen this?” I ask.
Ro checks his phone again before responding. “Anna said she was going to cast it to every screen she could.”
Wow. There are gonna be some pissed off vamps thanks to this little stunt.
The TV goes black along with every other screen and I scowl at it. “That’s it?”
“Huh. Isn’t there meant to be a call to action or something?” Ro asks. “Join our army against the Bad Vamps? Or... something?”
Silver opens her mouth to reply, but before she has the chance, Ro’s phone chimes with an incoming phone call.
“That’s... Anna.”
“I guess we answer it?” Silver shrugs before tapping a button on the keypad and answering the call.
I get a bad feeling in my gut right as the call connects.
“Hey, uh, Anna, what’s going on?” Roscoe asks.
“Did you see it?” It’s the first time I’ve heard the techno mage’s voice, and she sounds slightly breathless. She’s also almost shouting over the sound of a disturbed cacophony of voices around her. “Cosmo?”
Roscoe shifts uncomfortably as Silver snorts under her breath. He then summons the old man”s voice he must use when he’s attending those fucking Archarcan council meetings. He sounds damn ridiculous and Silver avoids meeting my eye, biting her lip as she fights a giggle.
“It went well, though, right? People are certainly reacting down here. I wanted to watch it on one of the big screens.” The phone shows a slightly wobbly image of a crowd of people gathered together. There’s clear tension in the air as the jostle and there’s background noise of panicked murmuring.
“Hey, Anna, where are you?” Ro asks as Silver’s face pales and she peers at the screen.
“People are shitting themselves,” the techno mage crows. “It’s—”
Her voice cuts off with a strangled yelp and the screen fills with the image of a skinhead with a long scar down his neck.
“Tsk tsk, I should have known you would have something to do with this, pet. I thought you were supposed to be behaving. Nevermind.” His mouth morphs into a sharp-toothed smile. “Now tell me, have you lost something of yours? Or should I say someone?” Simpson’s voice makes my skin crawl as he lets out a chuckle. “Scratch that, how about someones?”
And then there’s the sound of Anna’s scream, right as the screen goes black.