Page 66 of Reclaiming Quinn
Zach gave a soft smile. “Too late. As soon as you confirmed the Omega was alive, I contacted the caste.” He gave a sheepish grin. “Rather much like an Alpha, I have a connection with all the members of my caste.”
That earned him a scowl. “So all this time you could have contacted someone to come save us?”
That made Zach chuckle. “Probably, but I haven’t seen any of them in… wow, eighty years? We tend to keep to ourselves, and that’s by choice. That’s going to change, though. They’ll all be arriving soon.”
“So they dropped everything and are running here?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
That was insane. “You’d all give up your lives to protect someone you don’t know?”
Even in the dimness, Deke could see Zach quirk a brow. “The moment you confirmed there was an Omega, I was no longer a cop. I am now once again leader of the Vampyri, and we will fulfill our duty to the Mother and to the Omega.”
“So the Alpha Supreme and the Omega don’t have a say in it?”
That drew a scowl from Zach. “Why wouldn’t they want us? We were the deadliest warriors ever known. Had the Alphas not played us, we could have fought back and likely won. But without the Omegas, all our powers dwindled.”
“What can you tell me about your people?”
Zach got a faraway look in his eyes as he gazed into the dark. “Mother sensed danger to the Omegas and decided they needed someone to watch over them. I was the first of the Vampyri Mother created. I woke in the dark, which she told me would be my time to shine, as it was hers. She imbued me with strength, but also the wisdom to know when to use it. I was to be the leader of the Vampyri. In order to create us, she took a tiny bit of the Omegas’ essence and combined it with, she said, the best parts of the Alphas. It wasn’t until later we found out there weren’t any good parts.”
“So you’re part of the Omegas? I mean…. Goddess, I don’t even know what I mean.”
“We guarded them for years. We watched as they bore children, and we stood over them from the start of their lives until the end. It was a good life, because we were important to the Omegas, who were in turn loved by Mother. We were a proud race, knowing that we were the guardians of the future of wolves.” Zach ducked his head. “It turned out we were the harbingers of their destruction.”
Wow. Talk about a pity party. Not that Deke couldn’t understand. He’d done the same thing after his injuries. “No, you weren’t. You were betrayed, like the Omegas. You served them to the best of your ability, right? Your people sacrificed their lives for them. There was no greater honor. The wolves survived, admittedly not the best representation, but they did live, and thanks to you and your people, we wolves now have the opportunity to rebuild and make a better life for all of us. Instead of being ashamed or angry, be proud of what you helped to accomplish.”
When Zach peered up, Deke thought he detected a bit of hope there.
“Thank you.”
“Anytime. You are my friend, right?”
A sharp nod was his reply.
“All right…. Since now we both know you were mostly faking it, maybe it’s time we plan on getting out of here.”
A low, throaty chuckle. “I can definitely get with that. The question is, how to do it without the humans getting hurt.”
It would help if Deke knew more about the Vampyri.
“So, what are your abilities? Do you suck blood? I mean, in the movies—”
“Yeah, no. Well, yes on the blood. We never had to when we had Omegas. They sustained us without us needing to feed. When they died, we had to adapt. It’s not like we eat it every day. We can go months without it, but eventually we have to. The thing is, we don’t want to drink from humans.” He ducked his head. “I wish we could say we steal it from blood banks, but it has to be fresh in order to give us what we need to survive.”
“So where do you get it?” Deke asked, dreading the answer.
“We used to take it from animals, but with more and more cameras and things around, it’s harder to do that and not get caught. The others know enough to not risk exposing themselves, so I don’t worry about them. As for me, I’ll admit, I’ve gone longer than I should have without feeding. That was part of my reason for letting myself be captured. I honestly was too weak to do much.”
Too weak?“You killed a wolf. That’s hardly what I’d call ‘weak.’”
“In my prime, I would have fought three or four Alphas at once. It’s why we were so feared. Now, imagine there being hundreds of us. I think you’ll agree the Alphas were scared.”
In his life, Deke had done a minor in psychology, wanting to know why people set fires. He could imagine the panic of the Alphas, but that didn’t excuse the slaughter of innocent, gentle people.
“Scared or not, you were there to protect, nothing more.”
“We tried to explain that to them, but it didn’t matter. They cut us down quickly, though there were heavy casualties for them as well. Weakened though we were, we weren’t going down without a fight.”
