Page 71 of The Vampire King's War

“The last episode was deleted,” Balthazar admitted.

Christian’s head snapped towards him. “What do you mean?”

He grimaced, but explained, “I wasn’t just watching the show to catch glimpses of you being manly and beautiful, dear heart, but also to keep track of your investigations into us. If you were to get too close… Well, I have access to your private server. I deleted that last video.”

Christian blinked. Balthazar naturally wanted to read his fledgling’s mind, but he knew that this was one of the times where, ironically, he should not, even as he desperately wanted to.

“I understand why you did and I’m glad you did,” Christian said, passing a hand through his hair. “I’m sure some enterprising hacker would probably have found that and… well, I think that Julian has a very different way that he wants people to learn of the existence of Vampires now.”

In fact, they were now showing Daemon and Julian embracing. There was a closeup of Julian’s face.

“And here we see, Amy, that Julian Harrow along with Christian Thorn were there last night. Right in the thick of things,” Eve said rather breathlessly.

“So does this mean that the two Vampire hunters found what they were looking for and then became that which they sought?” Amy asked the audience. She added, “Or does this mean that some trickery of a massive scale by one of the new media has been wrought?”

“Oh, you must be kidding,” Christian breathed. “They would put that in there!”

“Christian!” It was Elizabeth Thorn followed closely after by her husband, Henry.

Henry was spending every moment he could interviewing the Vampires, especially Arcius, about all they had seen, heard, and experienced. He was a scholar in heaven. But both Thorns looked worried and were carrying their phones before them as if they were contaminated.

“Mom! Dad!” Christian leaped up from the couch and kissed his mother while being embraced by his father. “What’s wrong?”

“Our phones are blowing up!” Elizabeth said, even as at that moment, her phone began to buzz. “The media! The head of the school! Friends! Relatives! Neighbors!”

“You and Julian are the talk of the town, son,” Henry said with a rueful smile.

“Rajani has asked us to hold off on communicating with anyone, but things are getting so out of hand,” Elizabeth said. “People are genuinely worried. They’re afraid about what’s happening and they think we’re in danger, injured or even dead!”

“We need to be able to tell them something,” Henry stated. “Otherwise, they’ll start--or more like continue--making up things. Everyone we know has been contacted by the media and the police!”

“Someone from the FBI and another person from the CIA, not to mention representatives from Homeland Security have reached out and are interviewing everyone who knows us,” Elizabeth said.

Christian gave a helpless look at Balthazar. “I should have thought of this. We can’t just leave everyone without any information.”

Balthazar realized then that while he had been obsessing over his failure with Kaly and watching the news, he hadn’t been leading and making that news. He wasn’t just the head of House Ravenscroft. He was Eyros. And Eyros was King Daemon’s mouthpiece. Rajani shouldn’t be coordinating everything. He should be. He rubbed his face and straightened his shoulders.

“No, we can’t.” Balthazar put his hands on his hips. “I need to start acting like the king’s representative. I need to talk to Daemon and start figuring out what’s the next step.”

Meffy gave a mew of agreement before falling asleep against his chest. And that, along with Christian’s relieved expression, was all he needed to know he was finally doing the right thing.

---