once again I cut her off.
"Oh, they are not any such thing. They may defend themselves, but they don't go out of their way to harm people. You guys have given them such a bad rap over the years that I don't think any of you really knows what they're like. Yes, it's regrettable that they've had to defend themselves, and that may result in some deaths, but if you people wouldn't attack them, there wouldn't be any deaths!"
"Amen," Magda said, nodding brusquely.
Janice's spine stiffened. "Oh, there wouldn't be any deaths? Those... monsters that you insist on defending attacked and killed several members of the Brotherhood in Iceland. Without cause they attacked them, so you'll have to forgive me if I don't believe what you're saying."
"Are you calling me a liar?" I crossed my arms, holding firm to my temper.
Janice cast another nervous glance toward her husband. I'm not normally the type of person who gets her jollies out of intimidating someone else, but I was beginning to see the attraction of doing so with someone so misguided, so intent on refusing to face the truth. If letting her see that I didn't believe in what the Brotherhood stood for would help her understand the truth, then by heavens, I would become the scariest person around.
"No, I would never so insult a Zorya. I am certain that you have been misled-"
I took a step toward her, narrowing my eyes as I did so. "Good, because unlike you, I was present in Iceland, and I can assure you that the only reapers who were killed were a couple of guys who tried to slaughter a Dark One named Kristoff and me in cold blood. They attacked us without warning or cause and told him flat out they were going to kill us both. He simply defended us, and quite frankly, if Kristoff hadn't been there to protect me, I wouldn't be alive now."
That stopped both of them for a moment.
"Are you sure it was members of the Brotherhood who attacked you?" Rick asked slowly after he and Janice exchanged a couple of doubtful looks. "Did the vampire tell you it was members of the Brotherhood? Perhaps he was mistaken, or you misunderstood."
"No, they were members, all right. It was confirmed for me later."
"I don't understand," Janice said, frowning. "Why would they attack a Zorya?"
I glanced at Magda, now really curious as to what Frederic had told them about the events in Iceland. He knew full well that I was a Beloved, but he didn't appear to have mentioned it.
Magda gave a tiny little shake of her head, obviously just as baffled as I was.
"That doesn't matter now. What does matter is the fact that you are blindly following the precepts of an organization without any justification."
"We're not mindless sheep, you know," Janice replied quickly. "The Brotherhood has been cleansing evil from the mortal world for almost five hundred years. It could not have done so without a need for such acts. There is precedent."
"Precedent," I scoffed. "That's the blind following the blind if I ever heard it. Tell me, do you even know why the Brotherhood started going after vampires?"
"Er... no," Rick admitted. He looked a bit shamefaced. "I've done quite a bit of research on the Brotherhood, but haven't gone that far back in the records yet. We only joined a few years ago, after Janice had a bad experience with an evil being."
"Not a vampire, I assume?" Magda asked.
"No, it was a necromancer, a woman who was trying to raise an undead army," he said in all seriousness.
Magda and I gawked at him.
"You're kidding," she said. "An undead army? Like of zombies?"
"Liches, from what I understand," Rick answered.
I blinked at Magda. She blinked back, saying, "This is so... so..."
"Hollywood bizarre," I finished for her.
"Like a B-movie scriptwriter gone insane," she agreed.
"Regardless," I said, giving myself a mental shake to remove the Night of the Living Dead images from my brain and focus on more important things. It was easier said than done. "Well, hell. I've forgotten my point."
"Vampires are good; Brotherhood is crazy," Magda said absently. "What exactly is a lich, do you know?"
I ignored her attempt to sidetrack me. "The point is that you have no real reason for believing that vampires are the evil undead deserving of merciless slaughter, and I for one refuse to be a part of any such organization."
"But you are a part of it," Janice pointed out.
"Only until I can find someone to