You’re my Exhibit A.”
Haldam struggled with a surprising display of strength. I refroze him without even pausing to think about it. His latest lunge at Ian ended with him flat on his face.
Ian swung around to face me. “Really?” he said with exasperated amusement.
“I know, you could’ve handled it,” I replied, sheepish. “What can I say? It just slipped out.”
He rolled his eyes and then grabbed Haldam by his long, white beard. He dragged him by that beard over to the center of the stage. Once there, he began to strip him.
“What are you doing now?” Hekima asked.
I was wondering the same thing.
“We’re at court,” Ian replied, yanking Haldam’s shirt off to reveal his parchment-pale skin. “Courts require proof, so I’m getting it for you. Bet it’s in his trousers. Few would want to venture near his hairy old arse.”
With that, Ian ripped Haldam’s trousers up the back, revealing that Haldam’s ass was, indeed, hairy. That wasn’t what made me stare. It was the small, tight cluster of smoke-colored swirls under his left buttock.
“Haldam has Dagon’s brand,” I breathed out.
It seemed like forever ago that Ian had gotten a spell to detect anyone with traces of Dagon’s power in them. Ian had thought he’d felt the spell activate before, when the council arrested me weeks—no, months—ago, in this timeline. But Ian hadn’t been sure, because he’d barely been conscious after breaking us out of Dagon’s trap.
When we arrived here, that spell must have activated again, giving Ian his proof. Haldam coming back after being stabbed through the heart was proof for the rest of us.
“Demon brand,” Ian said, holding Haldam up and walking him around so that the council members in various frozen states of flight could all see him. “Haldam sold his soul to a demon for supernatural perks, all the while voting to kill any vampire who practiced magic, and while casting the deciding vote to kill a child merely for being a combination of races. Isn’t it always the most bigoted sods that are also the most hypocritical?”
“Can this be true?” Sanjay, one of the newer council members, whispered.
Ian flipped Haldam right side up and shoved his chest in front of Sanjay. “Stab him in the heart with silver yourself, if you don’t believe me. He’ll come back from it every time, because there’s only one way to kill someone who is demon-branded.”
“Demon bone through both eyes,” Hekima said in a flat tone. “Give me some of his blood to taste, young man.”
Haldam’s blood would certainly offer more proof. As soon as Dagon branded him, Haldam would have become infused with part of Dagon’s power, and demon blood was a narcotic to vampires. Even now, after Dagon’s brand was gone, Ian’s blood was still mildly intoxicating because it contained traces of the power that Ian had absorbed from Dagon.
Ian dropped Haldam to fetch the bloody knife he’d stabbed him with. Then, Ian held it next to Hekima’s mouth.
“Bottoms up,” he said lightly.
Hekima licked it, grimacing as soon as her tongue touched the blade. It would have burned since the knife wasn’t made from the lower-content silver that Ian used in his personal piercings. No, this was high-grade, vampire-killing silver, and if Hekima had doubted that before, she wouldn’t now.
“His blood is indeed tainted,” she said, spitting it out.
“Altered,” I corrected her. “No one’s blood is ‘tainted’ from merely being a combination of more than one species.”
The faintest smile creased the deep lines in her face. Hekima hadn’t been young when she was changed over, but she refused modern options to lessen her wrinkles, and she also didn’t dye her black hair to conceal the liberal amounts of white. She’d once told me both were reminders that life had battled against her at times, and that she had battled back.
“Altered, then,” she finally replied.
I inclined my head in appreciation of her amendment. Then, I looked at the rest of the council.
“As my husband has gone to extreme lengths to illustrate, I mean you no harm. I also didn’t kill Claudia and Pyotor. A lesser deity named Phanes did. He’s a powerful illusion master, and unfortunately, he has even more powerful friends.”
With that, I gritted my teeth, and unfroze all the Law Guardians from the neck up. It would’ve been easier to release my power over the amphitheater entirely, but then Ian and I would have over a dozen highly skilled guards trying to kill us before we could explain that we weren’t the bad guys here. This way