Page 329 of Halfblood Deceived

“Is?” Zeydan asked.

Aroth nodded. “I healed Felix as much as I could and then left him in the capable hands of Nurse Jasmine before interrogating the Doctor here.”

Hudson sneered. “Jasmine’s capable hands won’t fix his mind.” She smirked, tilting her head as she examined them as if they were lab rats. “You strut around looking so confident, so superior because of the genetic abnormalities that grant you what you call immortality. But you are not better than us. You eventually beg and cry just like anyone else. You’d do anything to survive.” She sat back in her chair, looking smugly pleased with herself. “Subject 8’s mind is the feeblest I’ve encountered. There is nothing your blood and your magic can do to fix what I broke.”

Zeydan’s empty stomach twisted with disgust.

“You have no idea what magic can do to the mind, Doctor,” Aroth said, his unearthly voice and invisible corona of power sending a prickle down Zeydan’s spine. “It can heal the damage you caused. And it can create havoc beyond your feeble human imagination. Would you like to experience it yourself?”

The metallic, sour scent of Hudson’s fear permeated the cold air. But the woman smiled, and there was a genuine, disturbing thrill in her eyes. “Go ahead, demon.”

Aroth growled low.

Kerian placed a hand on Aroth’s shoulder, holding him back. “As much as I’d love to see her scream, you’d corrupt her blood memories.”

“Which is no doubt what she wants,” Zeydan said, going to stand right beside the woman. “Isn’t that right, Doctor Hudson?”

She clenched her fists, pulling uselessly at the cuffs. “You are unnatural. I’ve seen inside most of your species. You are all abnormal. Impure. Nature should have gotten rid of you long ago.”

“But it hasn’t, and it won’t,” Zeydan said. “Because we are part of the natural world. But you know that. Your disdain for us is nothing but jealousy in disguise, is it not? That is why you’ve been helping the gargoyles ‘purify’ the world from us.”

Hudson gritted her teeth but flashed him a bloodless smile. “You can drain me, but you won’t have all the answers.” She turned to look at Kerian. “You and your slut sister will watch this filthy den of corruption burn to the ground, Your Highness.”

“Promises, promises,” Kerian drawled. “Please make her permanently quiet ASAP, cousin. Or I will.”

Hudson opened her mouth to no doubt gloat some more.

Zeydan gripped her neck, forcing her chin up, and sank his fangs in her vein. She let out a startled cry. He didn’t take away a single drop of her pain.

Bloodlust and revulsion battled for dominance in his tired body. Neither won out. But Zeydan forced himself to drink the human’s unsurprisingly sour blood and to focus.

Flashes of conversations and blurry images reached his mind.

He saw that rotten bastard, Eli, toss Aella’s prone body over his shoulder and then smile at Hudson. “Thank you for your help, Doctor.”

“Servimus lucem,”5 Hudson had answered.

The image blurred further, but Zeydan saw something in the background that sent a cold wave through his body—a portal. A circle of stone with waving red energy.

That explains how they moved Aella so fast; he thought, forcing himself to drink more, see more.

He saw himself and Aella through Hudson’s blurry eyes and felt her disdain for them both. He saw Hudson inject Aella with something so strong it knocked her to the floor in a second and felt the woman’s dark satisfaction.

The visions and sounds swirled in his mind and then faded into nothing as Hudson finally died.

He released the woman at once and stepped away from her, shaking his head and coughing once. He willed his stomach to settle through decades of practice. There was a reason most vampires preferred to seduce normal humans and feed on them without killing them. Psychopaths were simply fucking disgusting.

Zeydan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and faced Kerian and Aroth, who examined him calmly.

“There’s a portal in Darkwood, or close,” he said, sifting through the muddled images in his mind. “That’s how they moved Aella. Doctor Hudson was working with The Order of the Light. And they’re planning something big. Something bad for all of us.”

Kerian cursed, running a hand through his blond hair. “No wonder Hudson sounded so smug.”

“I have some additional information,” Aroth told them. “Namely, the faces and names of other associates of Doctor Hudson. But the big plans of the Order and the location of the portal are unfortunately a mystery I haven’t solved yet.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Kerian said, the confidence in his voice undermined by the dread in his eyes. “We have no choice but to figure it out. We can’t let the fucking order take Darkwood from us.”

“We won’t,” Zeydan agreed. “We will find every fucking traitor and make them pay for betraying our city and people.”

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