Page 81 of Flock This

“So why am I even talking to you?” I crossed my arms and leaned more against the wall. “If you don’t make the decisions here, why am I wasting my time with you?”

“You’re far more fun than you should be,” Iglesia said with a chuckle. “But are you really going to waste this time? For all you know, this might be the last conversation you ever have.”

“Isn’t that a depressing thought? Should have gotten a reckless quickie in and done far more drugs before this point.”

“Well, I don’t have any drugs, but the other I can help with.”

“Pass.” I didn’t bother to hide the disgust at the idea. “Vasquez, huh? Can’t say I recognize that name.”

“That’s because I don’t belong to one of the main families.”

“You don’t have a family?”

“Not exactly. What the big five don’t like to talk about are all the other lines that exist. They get swept under the rug and ignored. You should understand how it feels to not have a place in the world.”

I thought back to my own life, to how similar we were.

Well, other than I didn’t get homicidal about it.

“That doesn’t make this okay.”

“Doesn’t it? Do you know how many vampire young are killed simply because they don’t fit neatly into one of the main families? They either die because of a lack of a sire—even though any vampire could take them in—or they are actually killed because they are seen as useless. There are so many more of us than those in power want to admit to. We live in this perfect little system that makes us weak. We bow down to the council, to the other clans, and all for what?”

“To avoid everyone killing one another?”

“That’s an old story—nothing more. The old always like to keep the young stupid and docile by telling them tales, threatening them with boogeymen that don’t exist.”

“The last great war—”

“Is just a story they like to tell. War is bloody but the best rise to the top. The strongest survive. When we took that away, when we chose weak safety over dangerous conflict, we lessened all of us.”

His words mirrored ones I’d heard so many times before, usually whispered in the shadows. A craving for the old days, for the glory of the past, for the time when people were great.

Every society had such tales. It was the nostalgia bred from not living through those things oneself.

It was easy to yearn for things when the person didn’t have to suffer the negative, when they got to pretend they would come out on top. It was a foolish hope from a foolish man.

“So you are with the fringe group that wanted to remove William?”

“You’re better informed than I expected. I knew you were digging around, but I really hadn’t thought you’d figured anything else.” He nodded and moved one of his legs, so his knee was bent, and he rested his other arm on it. It made him look more casual, as though settling in for a long conversation. “Yes. William was just a relic of an old age. He was a scared old man who was so afraid of his own shadow he forgot his own strength.”

“By which you mean he wasn’t a homicidal maniac?”

“Oh, he did his share of killing. He just decided that comfort was more important than anything else. He treated his thralls like some lovers instead of the pets they are meant to be. He saw humans as something to be valued and protected just because he was afraid of some old stories that claimed this world had protection over them.”

I hated that I didn’t fully disagree with him.

I’d heard those stories as well, the tales of a power that rested in this world, the one that had bred the Justices, that had created the illness said to end the last great war, the one that had driven all Spirits to near destruction. When I looked between the humans and the Spirits, it was too hard to believe any of it.

How could anything from this world be strong enough to do that? When humans appeared so weak compared to the Spirits, the idea of some protector made no sense.

However, I hoped I didn’t sound nearly as mad as this fucker did.

“So you wanted to remove William to put someone else in power? Someone who shares your beliefs?” I shook my head when my brain couldn’t quite make that leap. “But the person who takes over is going to be another family head. If not from William’s line, it’ll be from one of the other four families.”

“Are you sure?”

I furrowed my brows at the certainty in his voice. It was the tone of a person already sure of his own victory. Still, I humored him by answering. “Pretty sure, yeah. That’s how this works. Why do you think the next is going to be any better than the last? Or is this going to be your new full-time hobby? Removing one council seat after another?”

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