Page 23 of The Vampire King's Victory

“Aren’t Julian’s parents dead?” O’Connor asked with a frown.

“PrinceJulian,” Arcius crisply reprimanded.

As always, Julian wanted to wave away the lack of title, but he did not. These people were impressed by rank. So by having to call himPrinceJulianit would just reinforce the idea that they were dealing with the top Vampires. Besides, despite most Americans’ happiness to have thrown off the yoke of being ruled by a king or queen, they still had some reverence for noble titles for some reasons. Further when Arcius said it in that steely tonewith those furrowed brows, even Julian did not want to gainsay him.

“PrinceJulian,” O’Connor corrected. “Aren’t they dead?”

“Surely, you understand that your concept of dead and alive are not the real ones, don’t you?” Rajani asked with a lilting laugh. “After all you’ve seen tonight, I would recommend you keep an open mind.”

“Here are the cat treats and water,” Fiona said as she teleported back into the room right by the CIA operative.

O’Connor nearly toppled his chair over, but Fiona managed to grab the back of it and set it upright while only spilling a little bit of Meffy’s water on the table. The CIA operative went from moving to sitting incredibly still in half a second. Fiona put the dish of water next to Meffy, who stopped playing with his ribbon, to lap some of it up. She put a few treats beside it before tossing the bag over to Balthazar who caught it one-handedly with Vampiric reflexes. Meffy devoured the treats, licked his whiskers and then curled up in a ball to sleep.

“Now that thecatis fed and watered, why don’t we get down to brass tacks here,” the colonel said, threading his fingers together before stretching them out before him until they cracked.

“Uhm, you were the ones that attackedus,” Balthazar pointed out. “So maybe you should start and explain yourselves?”

“You’re Vampires,” Katherine reminded him.

“I’m actually an Immortal as are Daemon, Seeyr and Fiona, but there are Vampires here too,” Balthazar explained, which had the woman from the FBI blinking in confusion.

“Immortalsaren’tVampires?” Katherine asked.

“The Immortals are the ten original beings who came to Earth and created Vampires from humans,” Heny explained, adjusting his glasses.

“Are you some kind of Vampire scholar?” Katherine asked Christian’s father.

“I certainly hope to be!” Henry said with a smile. “I answered on their behalf, because, like you, I had to understand the structure. I think if you hear it from me, it might be more… palatable.”

“Because you’re human?” O’Connor asked.

Henry nodded. “And because I’m a teacher. If I can get history into the heads of my students, I surely can get this into yours. There are ten Vampire Bloodlines, each ruled by an Immortal, and every person in that Bloodline has the same or similar gifts. Eyros can read and control minds while Wyvern can teleport and so on and so forth. King Daemon has all of those gifts and more.”

There was a lot of blinking going on.

“Think of them likeHarry Potterhouses and that will help,” Julian said.

Henry continued, “Within Bloodlines, you have Houses that are ruled by a Lord or Lady. Normally, the Houses are of one Bloodline, but Balthazar’s may be expanding.”

“They are clamoring to get in when, before, I wasn’t on their dance cards at all,” Balthazar muttered.

Christian patted his hand. Balthazar kissed his cheek. Then they both fed Meffy treats, which seemed to cheer up people quite a bit.

“I’ve been authorized to explain to you by King Daemon that there are rebellious elements that have caused…” Here Henry looked at Daemon and carefully said, “unrest. They upset the order of things where humans are unaware of Vampires’ existence. Clearly, that has changed now. The rabbit cannot be put into the hat.”

“So you decided to just reveal yourselves?” Katherine looked disbelieving.

“We could hardlynotdo so. But let’s get back toyou,” Balthazar said languidly, “why didyoucome in here guns blazing? We broke no laws.”

“You raised the dead! You killed all those people in the museum!” the colonel barked.

“Actually, wesavedyou,” Christian said with a deep frown. “We stopped more people from getting hurt. We were not the ones that did the rest.”

“So Vampires or Immortals or whatever you are, weren't responsible for several cemeteries’ worth of corpses rising up? Or the deaths of all the people in the museum?” Katherine demanded.

Balthazar opened his mouth, tilted his head to the side, shut his mouth and opened it again before saying, “Technically,yes, there’s an Immortal and a bunch of Vampires responsible for that, which Henry mentioned. But they’ll be crushed soon enough. Yet as a point of contention, areyou, personally, responsible for what every other human being does? No? So why is it so hard to believe that we aren’t responsible for everything every Vampire or Immortal does?”

“So there aregoodVampires andbadVampires, you’re saying?” the colonel asked with a grunt.

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