She’d heard of the fae stones, but as far as she knew, it had been a while since they’d showed up anywhere. And yet, here they were sitting in her room. “Yep,” she muttered, “definitely going to be a cluster.”
Chapter 11
“I’ve learned that the best things in life are often the things you never see coming. One second you’re just walking along, minding your own business, and then bam, it hits you.” ~Tenia
“I thought those other buildings were empty,” Myanin said as she and Tenia stared at the Order’s compound. They were hiding about a hundred yards away, watching as men and women marched in single file lines into said buildings.
“They were,” Tenia said. She flashed them into the main building. Myanin’s eyes widened. The last time they’d been there, a mere two days ago, the room had been used as a place for training and sparring. Now, it was filled with human beings, standing in perfect rows, unmoving, staring straight ahead. And at the front of the group stood Ludcarab, Alston, and Cain. All three looked like preening peacocks.
“Flash us to the other buildings, before they see us” Myanin said as she grabbed Tenia’s wrist. Tenia didn’t question the djinn. They flashed from one building to the next until they’d been in four of the large warehouses that had been completely empty only a few days ago. Now, each one was full with rows of freshly turned vampires.
“Did Cain just line them up and pass out bites like candy to children?” Tenia whispered so softly that Myanin had to strain, even with supernatural senses, to hear the fae.
“Where did they get them?” Myanin asked through gritted teeth. “That’s what I want to know. This is a hell of a lot more than we brought in.”
“Unfortunately, there’s only one way to find out,” Tenia said and then flashed them again. When they reappeared, they were standing right next to the elf king, high fae, and vampire king.
Myanin forced herself to keep a blank, bored expression on her face. She could not show weakness, or at least what they would perceive as weakness. She no longer had the constant hum of Lyra’s magic running in her veins. It had made her irritable, but since it had been gone, Myanin felt lighter. She was going to have to make sure that she appeared unchanged. If she wanted to be of any help to Lilly and her allies, then she was going to have to be able to actually gather information, and that wouldn’t happen if the three Order leaders stopped trusting her. She felt her blood heat, but interestingly enough, it didn’t feel like a threat but more like a reassurance. A reminder that someone was on her side. Queen Lilly had taken her own blood oath to act in Myanin’s best interest. It gave her a moment's pause at the true realization that the female sprite had essentially bet her life on Myanin. Lilly, queen of the warlocks, had sworn to protect Myanin. Had she not already braced herself for the emotions, she might have stumbled, but instead, Myanin let her smile—one born of joy—turn into a smirk as she became who she needed to be in order to pull off the farce.
“Looks like you boys have been busy,” Myanin said, making sure she sounded slightly impressed. A little ego stroking never hurt.
Alston smiled, and he looked eerily like a wolf who’d just found a field full of wounded bunnies. In other words, easy pickings.
“Turns out you two had a brilliant idea.” Alston indicated the motionless humans that stood in orderly lines. All of them stared straight ahead, the same blank look on each of their faces. “Getting humans from the prisons proved to be quite easy and abundant. As you can see.”
Myanin had to force her heartbeat to stay steady so that Cain and his vamp senses wouldn’t pick up on any of the emotions flooding her system. She glanced at Tenia and was impressed by the blank expression on the woman’s face. “I thought you were concerned about the attention it might bring,” Myanin pointed out.
“Tenia may be the only being who can change a person’s free will completely,” Ludcarab said, taking his eyes off his new soldiers and turning his gaze on Myanin. “But she’s not the only one who can make others do her bidding.”
“You used blood magic for this?” Tenia asked. Her question, Myanin noticed, was directed at Alston.
“I did what was necessary to rebuild our numbers. It was quite simple. A few ideas planted into the heads of certain key humans convinced them a deadly virus was running amok in the prisons, killing the prisoners in droves.”
“And what happens when they start asking about the missing bodies of all these dead prisoners?” Myanin asked, again keeping any inflection out of her voice. She just wanted information.
“They believe the bodies have been incinerated for safety purposes. They don't want the virus to get out into the general population, obviously,” Alston said.
Myanin could think of a million things that could go wrong with his plan.
“Besides,” Ludcarab added, “we’ve taken them all from lesser developed countries where they don’t take quite as much care with keeping tabs on inmates.”
“What do you mean?” Myanin asked.
Alston chuckled. “Believe it or not, there are places in the human realm where they treat their criminals little better than livestock. And since the prisons were overpopulated anyway, only the most vile are kept incarcerated. We did them a favor, really.”
The words “most vile” made Myanin’s
