Page 24 of Mortal Shift
She swept the room with her fierce gaze, and half a dozen hands crept into the air. She selected a petite blonde girl with startlingly green eyes and a pretty face.
“A dhampir,” she said, her voice low. “But it’s forbidden, ma’am.”
“Yes, they are. Someone tell me why.”
The remaining standers, about thirty of them, shared confused looks.
“A hundred shifters in this room, and not one of you can tell me why the dhampir are forbidden? Anyone.”
One tentative hand crept up.
“Yes, Miss…?”
“Foley, ma’am. They’re forbidden because their blood is highly addictive to vampires. Wars were started over them before they were outlawed.”
“And the punishment for creating one?” she asked, as Foley slid gratefully into her seat. A couple of hands went up this time, and she chose her victim.
“Final death.”
A shiver ran through me. So good to know that my new world came with the death sentence for breaking the rules I knew nothing about. At least I wasn’t in danger of breaking that one. Not unless next time Thaden pinned me against a wall, things took an entirely different direction.
“If degreed by the council, yes. There is one notable case where an exception was made. Name it.”
“Ravenna Torin, a female vampire, was locked up by a group of humans when she was weakened, and impregnated against her will,” her chosen student said, earning himself a nod.
“Why?” she demanded of the rest of us.
“The council degreed that the vampire shouldn’t be punished for something a human male did to her body against her will.”
“Against her will,” Nyra echoed. “It almost divided the council of the time, of course. Give me the four ways to deliver final death to a vampire.”
“Stake through the heart.”
“Beheading.”
“Fire.”
“Direct sunlight.”
Sunlight? My brow wrinkled in confusion. But there had been plenty of sunlight in the corridor when Thaden had cornered me. No-one else seemed confused by that. I tentatively raised my hand.
“I have not asked a question, Ms. Ellis,” Nyra said, eyeing me coldly.
“I was just wondering,” I started, suddenly acutely aware of every eye in the room on me, “how vampires can survive here, if sunlight kills them?”
The room erupted in laughter, and I flushed bright red. Had Ling lied to me? Maybe the red-clad figures weren’t vampires. Maybe…
Nyra waved an irritable hand, and the laughter died down.
“Now, now,” she said, her voice saccharine sweet. “If the human wishes to learn, far be it for us to stand in her way. Someone answer her.”
“The academy is protected from the wandering eyes of…uninvitedhumans by an enchanted dome. The dome blocks natural light and generates its own facsimile.”
“Excellent answer. And Ms. Ellis,” she added, her voice snapping back to that same dry coldness, “We do have a library here at Darkveil. Perhaps it would be a good idea for you to visit it.”
Chapter Nine
She had intended it as a joke to belittle me, I was sure—but if there was a library here, then I sure as hell wanted to check it out. Being a hundred steps behind in this whole new world I’d never even known existed was getting old, and fast. And knowledge was power, right? Which was great, because I was sorely lacking in any other sort of power.
