Page 54 of Last Hope
There it was, that flash again. “Shut up!” The heel of his shoe crushed the bones in her fingers. She heard each individual one crack out of place. She cried out and her hand slipped. Isis looked down below at the lights and screaming people. Blowing out a breath, she looked up at her younger brother with tears falling down the curves of her cheeks.
Azizi was looking at her without mercy again and it made her sob. She had been reunited with her brother again only to have him kill her.
She supposed it was a fitting death. What better way to die than by the same hands that she had killed? An eye for an eye. She took away his life all of those years ago; it only made sense that he ended her right then and there.
Even if he did break the rest of her bones and cause her to fall to her death, she couldn’t look at him as he did it. She closed her eyes. “Please,Sn.” The Egyptian word for brother rolled from her tongue easily, ‘son’ as was the pronunciation of the word she hadn’t used in decades. A word she hadn’t spoken since she had killed her brother.
And she waited for the blow. When it didn’t come, she opened her eyes again and looked at her brother. He had taken a step back and was looking down on her, not with wrath but as if recognition was dawning on him. Red eyes died down like a lightbulb blowing out. And he stared at her with dark chocolate eyes.
“Isis?” His voice shook. “Is it really you?”
Isis smiled through her tears. “Yes,Sn.It’s me.”
And in that moment, it appeared to Isis that Azizi had made his decision. He bent down with his hand extended and with joy dancing beneath her heart. Isis placed her hand in his, closing the space and bond between them that had long been forgotten but now, reunited.
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“It’s really you.”
Azizi kept a foot of distance between them but kept his gaze on her as if he were afraid she would vanish before his eyes at any moment. And for the first time Isis didn’t see him as a vampire. She saw him as her younger brother, herSn,and for a moment she was taken back to Ancient Egypt, the sand squishing through her bare feet and sandals.
“But, how are you alive?” Azizi asked. “I thought you were dead. Gone forever.” Isis’s gaze loomed over his shoulder at the machine. He had saved her from the fall but he hadn’t turned off his killing machine. He noticed where her gaze traveled. “Caesareon told me for years that humans were weak creatures; he wanted our race to rule over them but first he needed an army.”
Isis shook her head. “No,Sn.He lied to you. Humans aren’t weak, how could they be?”
“How could theynot be,since you died so easily?”
“But I’m not dead, Azizi. Caesareon forced me to drink from you. I thought I had killedyou.”
“But he told me thatIkilledyou.”
“He’s a liar!” Isis screamed, causing him to flinch. “He lied to us both to get you to make his blasted machine and me to fight in his stupid army. But humans are not weak. I can assure you.”
She thought of Esmeralda and all she had endured throughout her life. The deaths of her parents, being locked away but still she dared to dream. She still dared to move on with her life and to not be affected by the fact she had been kidnapped, beaten and nearly turned against her will. She had killed Demetria, Caesareon’s possible Soul Mate, while pregnant. No, she was anything but weak. Azizi just hadn’t been around humans to witness their greatness as Isis had.
“You just need to meet some of them. They could surprise you,” Isis whispered. “But I can assure you that this isn’t the way. You don’t need to rule anyone.”
He just stared, the look in his eyes so confused, so lost. And how could he not be? The truth he knew had changed in front of him, so unreal. And the decade’s worth of belief had shattered and everything his sister was telling him was difficult to grasp; he didn’t understand, couldn’t grasp anything. It was all a foreign language to him.
“Everything has changed for you,” Isis said. “You don’t know what to believe, and that’s okay.” She stepped to him and put her hands on his shoulders. “The world is new to you but I promise you, you won’t have to kill anyone. We can explore this new world together. I can show you the goodness I’ve witnessed. You’ll see the world in a whole new light, trust me. You’ll love it. But first you need to stop Caesareon’s madness.”
The battle was clear in his eyes. To stay with the old or embrace the new? Isis hoped he would come through, hoped he would turn off his machine and go with her. Choose family over Caesareon. She bore her eyes into his but he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were dancing everywhere for a long minute. A long minute in which Isis didn’t dare to breathe, yet her heart pounded in her chest; it was a drum in the silence around them.
When the minute was over, Azizi took a deep breath and turned from her, walked over to his machine. He was surrounded by a white cloud of vapor that he disappeared into. There was a click and the fog cleared. The relief crashed over her in a wave. He turned to look at his sister and smiled. It was tentative but it was enough to have her running towards him and pulling him into her embrace.
His body was small and delicate but cold. His thin arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her close. “I’m sorry, Isis.” Azizi sniffled into the material of her clothes. “I will try to do better. I promise. I will cast away Caesareon and I will make you proud.”
Isis breathed in his scent. He smelt of cold Washington air and beneath that, the undertone of it was fresh blood. She swallowed the lump in her throat.
The first thing, she thought, the first thing she would teach him would be where to get his blood from. There were laws against taking blood from unwilling victims and even if they used hypnosis on them, the police still had ways of finding out the truth. She would teach him how best to interact with people, introduce him to the beauty of the world he had missed out on while he was in Caesareon’s clutches. She wanted to smile at that knowledge, at the knowledge that they would be together, that they would be a family but it was interrupted by a sudden growl of words.
“I knew you would betray us to her!”
Isis went on immediate defense. The vampire that had yelled was a thin, pale thing with crazed eyes. Azizi stood defensively next to her and glowered. “Stand down!” Azizi yelled. “That’s an order!”
The vampire sneered. “You have sided with the enemy therefore you give the orders no longer!” With a terrible yowl, the vampire rushed forward straight towards Isis. She could hear him muttering in his craze. “Master kept you hidden for a reason. Master did not want you to realize that you were kin. Master was right to lock you up but you have betrayed him toher!”
Isis went to sidestep the lunatic but Azizi had already jumped to defend her. He was in front of her in seconds and was almost something of a blur when he reached for the vampire by the neck and in one swift, clean move, twisted his head all the way around.
