much.”
“I wasn’t expecting your generosity.” With a sudden powerful move, he shoves me off and is standing over me.
From out of the shadows emerge cloaked figures. I leap to my feet, my stake at the ready. I was right. It is a trap. I start easing back toward Victor.
“We’ve seen enough,” a voice I recognize from earlier in the night says. Lilith pushes back her hood.
I feel Victor at my back, his hand resting on my waist. “This was your test,” he whispers softly.
I jerk my attention up to him. “You knew about this?”
“No. When you rushed toward the alley, I found myself surrounded by the Council’s guards. Then I knew.”
I glare at Lilith. “You said the test would be tomorrow.”
“And you would have been expecting it. I believe you humans call something like this a pop quiz.”
“What a stupid test! What if I’d killed him?”
Lilith smiles. “Hardly likely. Warwick is our best warrior.”
Looking at him now, I can see that it was his loose clothing and makeup that made him appear emaciated. He’s standing tall and confident. Yeah, my killing him probably wasn’t going to happen.
“The girl?” I ask.
“One of my divas,” Lilith tells me. “She was never in jeopardy.”
“So it was all fake.”
“All except your reaction.”
“Well, did I pass?”
“We were testing your loyalty to vampires. The correct answer was to let the starving vampire have the girl. Your solution was
“She failed,” Asher announces. “Her loyalty first was to the human. It will always be to the humans.”
“Yet she showed empathy for the vampire. Unusual, most unusual. The Council must discuss this matter further. We’ll give you our answer tomorrow night.”
“Shouldn’t I be involved in this decision?” Victor asks.
“You are recused because of your involvement with the human.”
With that they disperse like silent wraiths into the night.
Victor puts his arms around me, draws me near. I can feel the rapid thudding of his heart.
“What if I had managed to kill him?” I ask.
“They’d have killed you. Vampire tests always hinge on life and death.”
Lesson learned: Never agree to take a test without knowing the scoring system.
When Victor and I step out of the alleyway, Faith and Richard rush up to us.
“Sorry we couldn’t get to you sooner,” Richard says. “But guards swooped in on us.”
“Too many to overpower,” Faith adds. “Then they just let us go. What happened?”
“Dawn was given her test,” Victor says.
Richard gives me a look of admiration. “Since she still breathes, I assume she passed.”
“Did everyone know that not passing the test would have meant the end of my life?”
Richard shrugs.
“Someone could have said something,” I tell them, irritated.
“Then you would have worried and nothing would have changed the outcome,” Faith chimes in, a little too carefree.
“It’s all moot now,” Victor says, taking my hand and leading us away. “The Council is trying to decide if she passed.”
Victor explains what happened.
“And if they decide she didn’t?” Faith asks.
“I don’t know,” Victor admits.
“You mean they might still kill me?”
“Not without going through me,” Victor assures me.
“Us,” Richard clarifies.
“I’m deeply touched,” I begin, “but if all of us are gone, who’s going to fight Sin? We can’t let him win.”
“He’s not going to win,” Victor says adamantly. “And we’re not going to die.”
I take comfort in his words, then something else occurs to me, baffles me. “How did they manage to arrange a test so quickly?”
“They probably began discussing it when we were with Lilith,” Richard says. “The diva and Warwick would have been at the Council building.”
“Makeup can be quickly applied,” Faith says.
“They knew where we were staying,” Victor adds. “I sent my message to them from here.”
“And if we hadn’t gone walking?”
“They would have improvised. In some ways we are archaic and slow, but strategy and traps we’ve always excelled at.”
When we get to the hotel, we go straight to our suite. Exhaustion hits me. I’m chilled and trembling from the dampness of the night and the fight in the alley.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
Everyone looks at me with concern. Probably because I’m acting like a human.
I go into the room I’m sharing with Faith, grab my bag, and walk into the bathroom. Okay, so it’s not going to be a shower. Not sure why I didn’t notice before that the claw-footed bathtub doesn’t have a showerhead above it. Turning on the faucets, I let the sound drown out everything as I peel off the leather. It really protected my skin during the fight. Maybe I should look into getting another outfit.
Sinking into the warm water, I feel my muscles loosening, relaxing. I refuse to believe that the Council would kill me. I gave the human and the vamp a chance at life. How can they fault that? I want the vampires to be better than that. I want them to be our allies. I want them to have a spark of humanity. Because a part of them is in me.
“Daddy,” I whisper as tears sting my eyes.
How did he feel when he realized what he was, what we were? I wish he’d told me while he was alive. I wish I could have talked to him about it. I just wish I’d
I see a small pool of red, widening and fading. Lifting my hand, I notice a tiny scrape. It must have happened during the fight. I watch the blood drip into the water. Just a couple of drops. Not human. Not vampire. Dhampir.
In anger, I press my thumb to the wound until it stops bleeding. It’s blood. Just blood. It doesn’t define who I am. I’m Dawn because of the things my parents taught me. They taught me compassion, they taught me to fight for the underdog. They taught me to believe in a world where everyone could live together. Where humans didn’t fear the night and vampires didn’t fear the day.
The Council needs to understand that my blood gives me a right to sit at the Council table. And if they’re too boneheaded to understand that, I can still fight for a better world.
Getting out of the bathtub, I dry off and slip into my flannel.
When I step into the bedroom, a guy dressed all in black is standing before me holding two stakes. The room has no windows, but it does have a fireplace. And his face is covered in soot. I sigh deeply.
“What is this? Another test?”
He slowly shakes his head. “I’m here to fulfill the death warrant.”
Chapter 14
Crap!
The good news is that someone obviously believes I’m a descendant of the Old Family Montgomerys. The bad news—someone believes I’m a descendant of the Old Family Montgomerys and the death warrant is still in
