Page 30 of Keeper of Death (Ouroboros Academy #1)

I didn’t particularly want to out Lucian as the reincarnation of Vlad the Impaler before he was ready, but Liam was pretty volatile and had already attacked him twice. We saw Headmaster Mykene have him frisked and their argument when she confiscated his weapon. He didn’t strike me as the type to let anyone take his knife unless he had another one hidden somewhere.

We needed everything out in the open, especially since these vampires knew a lot more than the fairy who kidnapped Sage. I didn’t blame Saffron. It was just a lot more obvious with Lucian and I understood now why he was getting his magic faster than the rest of us.

I also needed Liam to listen that just because Vlad hadn’t been that great of a person didn’t mean Lucian would be like that. And I needed him to hear that even if Sage offered her blood, the only way he could take enough to kill her would be if he drained her blood into containers so he could drink it later.

And I could just tell Lucian wouldn’t do that. Definitely not to Sage, but not anyone else, either. Maybe I was coming into more of my magic, but I could sense a lot more from these people than just their scent. None of these vampires had killed anyone before. Lucian hadn’t, either.

In fact, the only person in our group who had actually killed anyone was Liam. I didn’t blame him for the man who tried to rape Sage, but I could just feel he wasn’t the only one. I could also sense that the death surrounding him was generally justified except for the case of one of them and that was the only one he regretted.

“Listen, about the bite,” one of the vampires said. “You’re going to be doing it often. We’ve got venom in our fangs. It will immobilize most of your victims, but if it’s a god, it won’t work and they can fight you off. The bite can also be painful or pleasurable.”

Liam shrugged.

“It hurt, but it was also a little kinky. I’m not mad at it.”

Liam was poking at Lucian again, but I didn’t think he realized the vampires had also given him a hint that narrowed it down a little more after Saffron’s hint. He could have been a god similar to Pan or everything we’d seen and heard so far could have been some original shifter power.

Except the vampires just answered that and Liam was too busy poking at Lucian to notice.

“That means you aren’t an original,” I pointed out. “You shoved him off of you when you didn’t want him biting you anymore. You could only do that if you were a reincarnated god.”

“I know my Irish gods and you’re the God of Shite Hawks,” a vampire woman said.

Liam just beamed at her.

“I thought this place was going to be devoid of verbal sparring but look at you!”

She pointed to Lucian and glared at Liam.

“He’s the origin of my species. From what we’ve been told Vlad was awful and met the final death from the children of vampires he sired because he was bringing too much attention to us. All of us probably would have done the same thing. I’ve never met one of Vlad’s reincarnations, but they teach us about them.

“As much trouble as Vlad caused in his original life, he’s only reincarnated when trouble is coming and he always brings the supernatural community to victory with less heinous means. I’ve got no idea who you are. I don’t care that you’re also Irish. My loyalty is to him.”

“Right on. I just missed walking down the street and getting insulted because someone didn’t like my jumper. I wasn’t asking you to kiss my arse.”

I had about a million questions because like demons and fairies, most cultures had a concept of a creature that drank blood and some of them were older than Vlad the Impaler. In Ancient Egypt, Sekhmet was famous for drinking blood and that’s were we got ours.

“Is there a difference between European vampires who were sired by Vlad and what we would call vampires in other countries that predate Vlad?” I asked.

They all looked at me like I was insane, but I was honestly dying to know. This was fascinating.

“Uh, no offense, but you need to be worrying about your crystals, and this is technically the practical portion of our senior thesis. We’re being graded on the cunning ways we use our magic to prevent gods and originals from completing their task, but also where we help when needed.

“None of you are supposed to die during these trials, but it happens. Most of the time, it’s the other teams, but the Master either would have died or gone feral without blood. We can’t drink all your blood during a feed, but if we’re feral, we can rip your jugular, and you’ll bleed out. We were helping the Master, but we were also helping all of you.”

“Call me Lucian, please. The Master thing is a little weird.”

The vampires were all preening that they got to call Lucian by his first name instead of Master. I didn’t think Lucian was doing them a favor or being kind. The Master thing just really made him uncomfortable, and I honestly got it.

The vampires zipped off with super speed and we all turned to Lucian. I personally thought we just solved a major problem. Lucian knew what he needed, and he didn’t need enough to weaken us for the trials. I regularly gave blood, and I had no problem with him biting me.

Liam probably had issues with Lucian biting Sage, but that was completely up to her. I had a feeling if Liam tried to control her, all the emotions she repressed while being controlled by the man she thought was her father were going to get all over Liam.

Honestly, he might need that.