Silence - By Kailin Gow Page 0,28
asked. “If you truly intend to become human again, then you don’t need to antagonize them or their king. Why steal me away like this? Why sneak into their castle?”
“Why not just ask for it?” Barron finished for her.
“Would you stop doing that?” Briony nodded though. “Yes. Why not just ask?”
Barron smiled once more. “If it helps, I am asking you, Briony. Help us.”
Briony thought about it for several seconds.
Her first instinct was not to trust this man. This vampire. For al that Barron had said, he had stil kidnapped her. Yet, if al he wanted was to be human…
Briony nodded. “Al right. I can find the scepter for you and perform this transformation There’s a price for it, though.”
“Name it,” Barron said.
“You don’t harm anyone else. I’m doing this to curtail a war.”
Barron’s smile became bril iant. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear you say, Briony. I can accept your terms.”
“You stil haven’t told me why you didn’t just ask King Waltham, though,” Briony pointed out.
“Surely he would have helped? I mean, why wouldn’t he and his people want to turn the vampires back into mortals?”
Barron’s eyes narrowed, and Briony knew that she had said the wrong thing. “Because we are evil, and you do not help evil things. That is what they cal us, anyway. We are the ‘evil ones’, our corner of their world is the Dark Kingdom. They need to feel that they are good, and for that, they need someone to label as evil. It is the same in your world, though at least there, humans have a reason to fear those of us who have not shifted to more civilized means of feeding.”
“You sound like you hate King Waltham.”
“Hate?” Barron’s voice grew lower. “Hate can barely begin to describe what I feel for him. He hunts us down, cal ing us monsters. He has denied us our right to the scepter’s power. He has kept us from being… human again. To me, h e is the monster.”
Barron seemed to make an effort then, composing his features. “And yet I wil do what you asked, because I am not.”
ed t Barron looked like he might say more, but he found himself interrupted by a sudden explosion of voices beyond the room. Barron winced.
“Someone you know?” Briony asked.
Vampires sauntered into the room. They
were not as wel -dressed as Barron, favoring leather and furs, studs and spikes that made them seem somewhere between the goths back at school and the real life barbarians of that name. They were joking among themselves, laughing raucously as one of them with shoulder length white hair told a story of some kind.
“And then I’l probably start on the Hugtandalfer women and children. You know how delicious fear tastes in that last moment.”
“So you wouldn’t just rip out their throats, Marcus? Take the blood?”
“Why? If being here has shown us one thing, it’s that there are better things than blood. Oh, we’l probably have to kil a few quickly, but its better if we take our time. Especial y if we want to do it publical y, so that the other things that live here learn their place.”
“Marcus.” Barron managed to fil that one word with more disgust than he’d managed even when speaking about King Waltham. The white-haired vampire looked around, fal ing silent.
He was tal , over six feet, which would probably have made him a giant of a man when he was alive, and every bit as handsome as Barron. In fact, the two looked so similar in their features that Briony knew they had to be brothers. When the newcomer’s gaze slid from Barron to her, Briony felt a shudder go through her. Briony could see in that moment al the things that this vampire wanted to do to her, and it made the charm of Barron in the past few moments melt away like mist. These vampires were every bit as bad as Pietre, if not worse.
“Wel , wel ,” the tal , white-haired vampire said, stepping out of the group. “You’ve been holding out on us, brother mine. A human? And one so lovely…we haven’t seen a human for a long time.”
Barron glared back at the newcomer, his fangs extended. They were long, almost like a saber-tooth tiger’s. “Hold off, Marcus. Al of you. She is Waltham’s daughter, heir to the throne of Palisor.”
“But she’s human,” Marcus pointed out.
One of his cronies appeared next to Briony with the speed of one of the old vampires,