Page 79 of By the Orchid and the Owl
Because that’s exactly what Fabian would be considered to everyone else—a traitor. Someone who’d fallen in love with a threat to the entire island.A lady of the sea. I couldn’t help the shudder that went through me, as if my body were trying to shake away the numbness and the truth of my birth all in one.
Jagaros tacked his narrowed pupils onto my face.
“You didn’t happen to find a map, did you?”
Something about his tone—it made me think he had a personal interest in such a thing, so I felt like I’d somehow failed him when I had to shake my head.
“No.”
His whiskers twitched in distaste. But… what had he said earlier? That birds had an annoying knack to pass stories down from generation to generation? Obviously, these bats were as far from birds as they could get, but perhaps their ability to fly, to see the world from above, meant they held a unique view of the world.
I straightened my spine and shot upward, “Do you know what’s beyond this island? If there are other islands or land masses out there? Other people?”
Lord Arad only paused for a sliver of a second.
“No. We don’t care to see beyond the horizon.”
Okay. So perhaps I had to narrow my questions. My mother had to have come fromsomewhere, so I asked, “Did she have any magic, this woman? Maybe Shifting or Manipulating?”
“No, no magic as definable as that,” Lord Arad said, and his tone told me he was tiring of this conversation. “Something else. Are we done, now?”
Coen, still loitering in my mind and observing everything through my eyes, actually growled in my head at the same time that Jagaros did. But I ignored them.
“Yes,” I said. “We’re done.”
“Good,” Lord Arad said, “because you have woken us from a very, very long sleep with your tedious questions, and we are rather hungry when we wake.”
I hadn’t realized the bats dropping to the floor one by one until now, when Jagaros backed his hind quarters into Emelle and me and unleashed his most vicious snarl yet. But there they were, sixty or seventy black, leathery figures stretching their fingers and lengthening their spines, until they faced us in distorted, vaguely humanoid forms. The last descendants of the ancient vampires…
Who hadn’t quite devolved back into pure bats. Who were still half-vampires, mutant bloodsuckers that limped closer to the three of us, their eyes flashing red, their fangs suddenly bared.
Rayna? Coen asked urgently.You’re going blank on me. What’s happening?
I could barely feel the shape of my own mouth, let alone properly process what was happening for Coen’s sake. When Emelle gave a whimper and Jagaros raised his hackles, it was all I could do to take control of my own tongue again.
“Stop.” I stumbled back, but one of the mutants had flipped the door shut with a claw-tipped wing. “You didn’t eat the lady of the sea or the boy all those years ago.” I tried to keep my voice steady. “Why develop a taste for humans now?”
“The lady of the sea brought us offerings every day,”Lord Arad said, unruffled. “You have brought nothing but yourselves.”
Apparently, his fear of Jagaros had been feigned, a mere attempt to keep us distracted while his children slowly morphed into their other forms in preparation. They had limped so close now, I could see the gleam of their tongues in all those crooked, gaping mouths, could feel the heat of their decaying breaths.
Jagaros crouched. In the lowest chuff, he whispered to Emelle and me, “Stay down. Cover your eyes. This might get messy.”
I couldn’t close my eyes, though, even as Emelle pressed her face into my shoulder, her entire frame trembling against mine. I couldn’t close my eyes as I felt Coen’s presence snap from my head back to his own, as I heard his pounding footsteps barge through the rot-cloaked door behind us and—
The vampire mutants pounced…
Then froze.
Coen jolted to a halt next to me, panting but otherwise so, so still as he extended his hands in concentration, forcing the bats to freeze. Even Lord Arad had gone utterly immobile, still hanging upside-down like a cocoon made of tar.
Jagaros didn’t hesitate. While Coen kept them locked in place, commanding them not to move, the tiger began tearing into their necks, ripping those mutant heads from their hulking bodies as if they were nothing but mud.
One by one, he made his rounds, his muscles rippling beneath that black and white coat, black blood dribbling down his maw.
Finally, Jagaros raised himself on his hind legs and…
“No!” I cried. “Not her!” But too late.
