Page 46 of Death Deals

“What is this?” Imani asked, voice rising in fear. The two men grabbed her and pulled her behind them for safety.

As the power surrounded me, it covered me in its glow and staticky feeling. It whipped through my hair, warming me to my core.

Searching the room to find everyone cowering, I closed my eyes and commanded my gift to recede. On command, the light faded, absorbing back into my skin. To my astonishment, no pain followed, either.

All that just from admitting to myself that I was an Archangel? That I deserved it?

Wow.

Well, now the cat was out of the bag. The Omaris would surely try to capture me after that display, but I wasn’t going to go anywhere without a fight. I put up my fists, readying for the vampires to jump into action.

To my surprise, no one moved except Imani, who pushed past her men and dropped to a knee in the center of the stage, head bowed low.

One by one, every Omari fell into the same position. Weapons dropped.

“Uh…” I scrambled for something to say but couldn’t find anything.

Andre copied the others but peeked up at me with an impressed smirk.

When Queen Imani rose again, the others followed. She gestured toward the stairs leading to the stage. Now that she was seeing me as an equal—or a threat, not sure which—she wanted me to join her at the top.

I hesitated. Did I trust her?

“The Frenchman, too,” she said. “Come.”

Together, Andre and I walked up the steps and met her front and center.

“You are welcomed here,” she said. Then she waved toward the wings again, summoning a young teen with a laminated piece of brown paper in his hands to us. The last remaining part of the letter. He held it out to me as if presenting me with an offering. “Will you please read this and tell us what secrets our history holds.”

Leaning closer, my eyes skimmed over the faded squiggles and like before, the symbols readjusted, forming words I understood. I sucked in a sharp breath, excitement bubbling.

“What does it say?” Andre’s eager whisper tickled my ear.

“Give me a minute.” I wished I had the other pieces to fully connect the sentences, but even without it, the story was pretty self-explanatory. I started to read aloud. “’Dearest, I hope this letter finds you well. I have been most grief-stricken these days with you gone, but I must urge you to come to us as soon as you can manage. After saying my prayers in the evening, I heard a commotion in the children’s chambers. You won’t believe what I’d come to see…’” This is where Hector’s part of the letter would pick up, I was assuming. The bit about their son rising again, the fever gone but still sick-looking.

I repeated all that to Imani, making sure to explain the same things I had to the Perezes and DeMontes about there being no names on the letter besides the author’s—a woman named Lilith.

When I finished, I still couldn’t see how this new information could be enough to change anything between the families. Queen Imani didn’t seem swayed, either.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would this letter be the thing our elders saved from the fires? And why did each of us get a piece? This reveals nothing.” With a disgusted grunt she shooed the teen away. “Are you sure that’s all it said?”

I nodded. “Yes, that’s it.”

She spun, trudged back to her throne, and sat. “All our history turned to ash, yet this was kept.”

Andre looked a bit annoyed, too. But what did he expect? This letter to tell them exactly what they wanted to hear? At least all three families had one thing in common. They each had put all their hopes into one ancient piece of paper.

Wait. That’s right. All three families shared this letter. And Hector had mentioned that this could be the first recorded instance of the vampirism gene emerging. This child, waking again after death. If he was really the first of them, then that would mean…

There weren’t three vampire families. There was only one.

Just like the Adam and Eve analogy Andre had made before. They all shared a common ancestor.

How could they’ve not seen it before? Centuries of unquestioned hatred must have made them blind to the possibility. That was the only explanation I could think of.

“Don’t you see?” I said, pointing to the vampires spread throughout the theater. “The DeMontes, the Omaris, the Perezes… You are just branches merging from one singular tree. You’re all family.”

As expected, there were a variety of different reactions to such news. Some vampires cried out in protest, cursing the notion of sharing blood with their enemies. Some were stunned into silence, not sure how to process the information. There was disbelief, push back, but above all, there was relief. I could see it on the faces of many, including Queen Imani herself. An explanation to the mystery and finally a way to end the bloodshed, which was clear all three families wanted.

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