“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.
