“What?”
“Robin, you belong to Magnus. Magnus sent me to bring you to him, directly. As soon as I told Cain about the situation, he should have treated you with the utmost respect and courtesy.”
“I thought humans didn’t have any status in your world.”
“Normally, no. But it’s not really that simple. Magnus is like our king, so a human that he claimed is in effect, his….” Reykon faltered.
“What? Mistress?” Robin said with a grimace.
“Sort of, yes. Even though you’re a human and he’s a vampire, you’re protected under Magnus. An attack on you would be seen as a direct sign of disrespect to Magnus’s authority.”
“Then why did Cain attack me?”
“That’s what I’m saying – I don’t know. Cain is many things, many bad things, but he’s not a fool.”
Robin scowled and brought her hand up to her neck, feeling the spot where Cain had moved towards. There were no marks, and nothing felt sore, but she still kept her hand there, a reassuring reminder.
“He didn’t bite you,” Reykon said. “I stopped him.”
“You?”
He gave her a wry smile. “Yes, ouch.”
“I thought vampires were super powerful,” Robin said with a scowl.
“Strongbloods were made with magic that gives us strength when we move to attack supernatural creatures. It’s a burst of power that allows us to at least hold our own.”
“That’s why your arms were glowing,” she murmured, leaning forward and trailing her fingertips up his muscled forearm. The skin was now smooth, olive toned, and showed none of the strange red marks that she’d thought she’d hallucinated.
“Yes, they’re magical symbols. When we draw on our power, they glow and give us a boost.”
She drew her hand back and looked at her own arms. The lightning strikes looked jagged and rough, not smooth and calligraphic like they’d been on Reykon. “That’s why you asked me about the glowing,” she murmured, tracing her birthmarks.
“Yes.”
“And this isn’t normal? For a…. what did you call it?”
“Weakblood,” he said softly.
She wrinkled her nose. “For a weakblood.”
“No,” he said with a sigh. “It’s not normal. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Robbin nodded, chewing on the information and looking outside to the landscape now whipping past them. The desert of New Mexico had a reddish tinge to it, and dust seemed to cling on the horizon. It was about six p.m., and the sun was now dipping lower and lower.
“Where are we going?” Robin asked after a few moments.
“We’re going all over the board. There are five you’s out in the world right now.”
She smirked at him. “I know that, but where are we going?”
“Right now, it looks like we’re going to hook through Texas and go for a straight shot.”
“Is that safe?” she asked.
“It depends,” Reykon said with a shrug. “If they start to take out the decoys, then we might switch gears. If the decoys aren’t taken out, or if only one of them is, then we’ll press forward and deal with any attacks that may happen.” Reykon tossed a map over to her. “Here. That shows all the different known house locations. Purple X’s are Darian and Lucidia.”
Robin looked at it, tracing her fingers over the map of the United States. There were symbols scattered across the states, clustered in colors and shapes. Some of the letters were large, and others were small. Others, it seemed, were just dots. Her eyes trailed first to Louisiana. A bit above Lafayette stood a large, scrolling letter ‘D’ in blood red ink. All along the south and east coast, smaller Demonte houses were scattered, fanning out from the main one.
The purple X’s – Lucidia’s House, he’d said – had taken to the top corner of the east. The largest X stood in Pennsylvania, with smaller ones fanning out all along the top border of the united states, and clustering on the east coast.
Each house seemed to stick around a large city while also staying a substantial distance away from the center of the populous. Reykon had said that they liked their privacy.
Her eyes wandered over to the west coast, where there was a series of royal blue P’s. She traced her fingertips over them. They seemed to be closer to each other, and they were by far the most dominant letter in the area.
“Who are they?” she asked, tapping her finger on the largest symbol.
“House Prior,” Reykon said. “They’re the third largest House.”
“Are they as bad as the other two?”
“It depends on your definition of bad,” Reykon said.
“What do you mean?”
“House Prior is more laid back than Demonte and Xander.”
“Laid back?”
“As in humans and strongbloods have more power, and there are fewer structured, absolute rules. They mainly do what they feel like, and let their vampires have more free reign.”
“That doesn’t sound bad.”
“Rules and order aren’t always bad. I’ve seen how Prior vampires act. They don’t really care about customs or respect, and it shows in their subordinates. They have the highest amount of human attacks and disappearances, and they’re also the most reckless. Magnus rules with an iron hand, but our House is a tight ship, so everybody does what they’re supposed to do for the good of the House. There are clear boundaries, and we all know our places.”
“Wait - you like being a slave?” she pressed.
He shook his head. “It’s not that simple. I was born into this world, so it’s different than you.”
“But still…”
“Where would I go in the human world?”
“You seem to know your way around it pretty well,” Robin remarked.
“I go on short missions,” he said. “I’m good at infiltration. But then I go back to my home, where I have a place, and respect. I have friends.”
“And Lucidia…”
“She had that too,” Reykon said. “Not anymore.”
“Why did she tell Darian?” Robin asked with a grimace.
Reykon sighed. “I might have done the same in her position.”
“What? Why?”
“She can’t escape from Cain’s prison, no matter how hard she tries. But she can probably get free from one of her own people’s transport.”
“So she was trying
