Page 51 of Blood So Brutal

What a load of shit. There were very few times in my life that I was hungry enough to lose control, and I never needed to drainsomeone completely of blood. Just a few mouthfuls would be enough to fuel me entirely.

Vampyres weren’t monsters. Vampyres weren’t a danger to society. But The Golden City started that frenzy, started the narrative that the vampyres had to go.

There was so much fucking irony in that. My father was behind so much of the misinformation, yet he turned me into one of them years later, after he placed the fear of the bloodsuckers in everyone’s mind.

Vampyres were very similar to fae. They even had magic like the fae and angels did, though it was rare.

The hungry ones, though…

The hungry ones were still a mystery to me. In Moira, we were taught that the hungry ones were created when a vampyre lost control of their thirst, but I had a very, very hard time believing that, especially when all of the vampyres I met were in total control.

Even the vampyres here, living in hiding—they seemed just as afraid of the hungry ones as we were.

But I was only half vampyre, and I wasn’t even born one. The truth existed somewhere, I just had to find it. There were whispers about a cure to the hungry ones. After what I saw today with Abigail, I was questioning everything. They had enough sense to try not to kill Abigail. I had never met a hungry one with any ounce of restraint, but those ones? What if Abigail was right? What if it was a sickness, a disease?

And what if there was a cure?

I needed to find it before my father did. He would make sure the cure to the hungry ones—if it existed—was never found. He wanted more hungry ones, more chaos, more destruction. He wanted to keep everyone else weak and afraid so he could stand on top.

“You’re scowling,” Jessiah interrupted, taking another loud bite from his apple.

I took a breath and shook those thoughts away. “Just thinking about what we saw in the woods.” I tilted my head toward Abigail’s bedroom.

Jessiah nodded. “Shestoppedthem. I thought Father was insane when he thought Huntyr would give him the power he desired, but this? This changes everything.”

The pit in my stomach—the same one that had been there since I saw Huntyr in that dungeon—grew. “He can’t know.Nobodycan know, Jes.”

“I won’t say a thing,” Jessiah replied, and I believed him. It wasn’t the only secret he had been keeping, and I was certain it wouldn’t be the last. “But I really hope you have a plan here, brother. One that doesn’t end with all of us getting royally fucked over.”

I let my head fall back on the chair. I had a plan, yes, but Jessiah didn’t know about it. Nobody did, nobody except the very few trusted individuals who would die for this cause.

I had been planning for weeks. The fewer people who knew about it, the better.

“I don’t ask questions about what you do when we come here, brother, never have. But are you sure Abigail will be safe? Are you sure we can trust them?”

I appreciated that about Jessiah. The first few years we came here, we were on the same side as my father. We killed the survivors. We reported back what we saw. We scavenged the land, ensuring nobody was rebuilding this place.

We ensured Scarlata was still fallen.

But that was before my father sacrificed me, before he turned me into one of them and turned my wings black.

Fallen angels in The Golden City didn’t exist. Once you fell—which was rare enough—you were cast out, unable to live with the elites.

It made me fucking sick. Why wasIfallen, when power-hungry monsters like my father were still living with their pure white wings?

Why me? Why fucking me?

I guess it didn’t matter anymore. My wings were long gone, along with any proof that I was a fallen.

Now, I was nothing. A vampyre with some extra magic. Magic I tried my best to keep secret.

Huntyr knew I could heal, but I learned at a very young age my father was not someone I could trust. I saw him use and throw away angels with far less magic.

When I woke up as a vampyre, I felt it. It was a spark inside of me that grew over time. Nobody knew. Nobody suspected, even when the lightning in my eyes grew. They all attributed it to my temper, to my wild lack of control when it came to my emotions. I let them think that. I felt it, though. I felt that I was given this extra power for a reason.

It was almost as if the goddess wanted to compromise for turning me into this, for taking my white wings away from me.

And the day I met Huntyr in Midgrave, it sang in my chest, buzzing to life like a hibernating animal coming out to play.

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