Page 52

Hopefully, you’ll answer that with: hallucination! Except for the body parts and the blood everywhere.

“His eyes are glowing red!” Another cried.

Yep, yep, they definitely are.

“He ripped their limbs off! Oh, my God!” Another gasped and there was a retching sound.

Another terrible smell to add to the plethora of awful smells!

“He has fangs,” someone whispered.

Great, so I might be revealing that Vampires exist after all…

“He’s a--”

“Vampire, yes, but you won’t remember that,” Rajani’s voice, sweet and mellow like warm butter, washed over the officers. “You won’t remember any of this at all.”

Julian watched as their faces went blank. The other officers that had been rushing towards these ones, were suddenly approached by robe-wearing House Wynter Vampires and they stopped moving. Rajani walked out of the copse with Arcius. Immediately, the Confessor came over to Julian.

“Julian! Are you all right? By the Immortals! Did they hurt you?” Arcius asked as his hands skimmed a few inches over Julian’s body.

“I’m fine! This isn’t my blood.” Julian became even more aware that he was covered in slowly drying, dead blood. It was becoming thick and tacky. “I look like a crazy serial killer, don’t I?”

“You look like… you have been in a battle. But I can smell… Julian, you were injured!” Arcius’ silver eyes flashed with anger and alarm.

“My wounds healed as soon as they happened. They don’t hurt,” Julian said.

Rajani and Arcius exchanged a look.

“What? I’m okay!” Julian protested.

“That we let the prince be injured at all will not sit well with our king,” Arcius murmured.

“Daemon will understand. I could have brought him back here, I could have called at any moment,” Julian said. “Anything that happened here tonight,” he looked at the three dead officers, “is all on me.”

“You killed these three because… they were dead before you did this,” Rajani said as she surveyed the corpses and the boy that had gone still in his arms.

“Yeah. But wait, you thought I would just--just kill people?” Julian stared at her. “Like normal people? Police officers?”

“Most fledglings when exposed to stress are…” Rajani’s gaze switched from Julian to Arcius to Julian again. “Well, you were found, you were attacked, you were hungry… things could have quite understandably happened.”

Killing three people--tearing off their heads and limbs--is understandable?

“Julian is quite controlled. He has a very solid moral core and the fact that he is our prince, of course, adds to his ability to stave off any such blood madness,” Arcius explained, looking almost like a proud Sire himself.

“I would have thought he would be more uncontrolled because of his strength,” Rajani said with an interested nod.

“As he is one of a kind, it is hard to say. None of us have known any of the direct fledglings of an Immortal… well, other than Elgar and he… he is unique,” Arcius said weakly.

Elgar was definitely unique. Among many other things.

“Still, for one so very young, he is amazingly calm, especially covered in blood like that.” Rajani gestured to the gore that was slowly drying on his body.

Julian really needed a shower. With Daemon, preferably. And he actually was hungry now that he thought about it though the smell of death rising from the boy quelled that.

“And you were able to get out of the museum and use martial skills as well!” Arcius continued on with pride. “You must have used quite a few gifts!”

“It was weird. I just sort of… could. I fought against some of the spies for Caemorn before. It was the same now, but more,” Julian answered with a shrug.