“As if I’d tell you,” I glare, and he laughs good-naturedly.
I turn away before he can read anything else on my face and almost run straight into Phoenix.
We both pull back before colliding. For a second, we’re close enough that I can smell her shampoo again. I can see the flecks of darker blue in her eyes. Her lips part slightly in surprise.
Then she composes her face into its usual mask. “Come on. If we don’t hurry, I’ll be late.”
“Right.” I blink, still processing our nearness. “Your lecture.”
We just witnessed the sort of complete control Vlad exercises over his family. I’ve never seen him willing to sacrifice any members of it before, but then, they’re unkillable. All that nonsense about stakes and beheadings is just lore to make humans feel more in control in the face of the unthinkable. Vlad and his sons are immortal in the true sense of the word, like my brothers and me. Slice us and dice us, and still, we continue on.
I learned this the hard way when I climbed out of my grave after I’d painfully regenerated.
Vlad has learned more creative means of controlling his family over the centuries. Phoenix told me he locked one son in a pit for three hundred years for disrespecting him. Mostly, his methods involve breaking them from childhood while they were still human, a process he got to repeat every twenty-five years.
He experimented with making blood slaves of his own progeny until they became vampires themselves. Apparently, it made them dullards when they came of age and turned into vampires instead of the killing machines he was looking for.
I can’t imagine how Phoenix possibly “came to an understanding” with him. He’s intractable and ruthless in ways that defy comprehension.
After learning the lengths he’s willing to go, it’s nearly impossible to imagine the strength it took Phoenix to become the woman she is today. She survived him with not just a scrap of humanity but an ocean of it. She’s the kind of person who sees a suffering creature in the woods and stops to help it even though she has plenty of her own problems to worry about. Who does that?
She helped me believe that goodness was possible anywhere in this or any other plane. She grew up with an evil to rival my father.
As she strides confidently down the hallway in front of me, I have to fight the surge of emotion in my chest. The way her ponytail swings as she walks catches my attention. The determined set of her shoulders tells me she’s built a life for herself here apart from his control.
I vow silently to not allow myself to be a means of his manipulation. He’s trying to tighten his leash on her and bring her back in. That’s obvious to anyone with eyes. But unlike ten years ago, maybe the solution isn’t leaving. Maybe it’s staying and fighting at her side.
Or is that my hunger talking? Look how strong she became without me.
Phoenix isquiet as she drives us into the city. I follow her lead and keep to myself. I hate this awkwardness between us when I once felt closer to her than I ever did to any being in the universe.
There’s also the fact that I’m busy gripping the handle on the door with white knuckles.
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to these motorized vehicles, even though we used them all the time when I first lived at Vlad’s compound with Phoenix. I have more of an affinity with human transportation devices like planes and helicopters, probably because flying comes naturally to me. I spent the first two thousand years of my life in the air. The dip and sway of the metal beast in different air pockets felt familiar since I navigated it with my bare body for so long. It felt like second nature.
But this is different. Wheeled vehicles fly down the road with so many other vehicles jostling for space. The lines on the road are treated as mere suggestions in this country. A three-lane highway can be choked four cars abreast. Occasionally, cars even jump on the sidewalks when it gets a little too tight. Honking is the music of the highway.
Phoenix is adept at it. She leans on the horn as she slips into a pocket that opens up between two other cars. Her hands are confident on the wheel. She doesn’t hesitate or flinch.
I find myself watching her instead of the road. The way she bites her lower lip when she’s concentrating catches my attention. Her shoulders relax slightly once we’re past the worst of the traffic.
She catches me looking and raises an eyebrow. “You okay over there?”
“Fine,” I lie. “Just not used to the driving here yet.”
A small smile tugs at her mouth. “You’ll survive.”
She zooms into a parking lot and hauls the car up onto the sidewalk in the usual way of parking here.
“Come on, we’ve got to hurry.”
“Right behind you,” I say as she all but leaps out of the car.
She jogs across campus with a backpack over her shoulder. I keep at her heels. The morning is bright. Students are scattered across the lawn between buildings. Some sit under trees with books open. Others walk in clusters and talk animatedly.
We don’t slow down after sprinting up a mountain of steps to one of the bigger buildings. Phoenix shoves through the double entrance doors into a soaring rotunda. The entire building is designed around a massive circular atrium that rises five stories high.
At ground level, a wide ring of polished marble floor encircles a central glass-enclosed display area. The display sits like an island in the middle of the rotunda, maybe fifteen feet in diameter, showcasing a scale model of an early religious temple about the size of a car. The glass walls reach from floor to ceiling, turning the exhibit into a transparent cylinder that you can walk completely around.
