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“Oh, but they were. And so are these.” He indicated the surrounding hybrids with a wave. “I won’t even stoop to killing you myself. I’ll let one of them do the deed while Darrow here watches. Then, I’ll kill him.”
A few hybrids snickered at that. “That was him insulting you, you fools,” Nadia said.
“Oh, I’m not insulting them. They are my dearest creations. My proudest achievement.”
“He’s lying!” Darrow croaked. He was rewarded with a painful yank of the chain, but he persisted. “I was a test subject. He only did it because none of the vamps would follow him as a leader. You were too weak—aah!”
Nadia didn’t know what to think of this treatment of Darrow. The chain was causing his neck to bleed now, the silver burning his skin, tormenting him.
“They chose that no-brains Naeris. And now they have seen what I can do. I saved them from a fate of servitude to ahumanqueen. I made a new world here in Agartha for vampires. They never understood how powerful the other species are. Or maybe they did. We had to follow thesehumanerules. But it is our birth … huh,” he chuckled and shook his head with a smile. “Ourcreation-rightto rule those lesser than us. Those who are food. We, vampires, needed allies to do that, but those pesky werewolves would never agree. Except for the angered young ones, of course. Those who long to be powerful.”
“So you created your private army of hybrids,” Nadia said. Her mind was getting clearer. She trusted Harmiston and the Ghosts to be in the upper gallery by now and did not look that way. She also knew they would be looking down on this unexpected scene, but she trusted the Ghosts to keep Harmiston working on getting the bomb operational. All she could do was keep Kassemyr talking. To keep him on the track of setting his hybrids straight.
“That’s why he turned me,” Darrow rasped. He rolled over on his back, staring up at the ceiling while the bouts of pain rolled through him. “I was an experiment.”
“And you worked out so well,” Kassemyr said. “At first. But you remained in the Earthside Realm for too long. I didn’t make the same mistake with all of you,” he told the hybrids who all puffed themselves up at this. “You remained here, hidden on the surface, becoming stronger, faster, hungrier.” They cheered him, pounding their chests. The humans in the grand hall tried making themselves as small as possible.
“I tried giving you a second chance, Darrow.” Kassemyr, looked down at his first creation with disgust in his eyes. “When you killed Kamra, I thought you had come to your senses.”
Darrow made a choked sound, and it took Nadia a moment to realize it was laughter. Laughter pressed through a damaged throat. “You just wanted to see which of us would survive. You didn’t care which.”
Kassemyr tsked at him. “Always so smug, my dear protégé. But you forget yourself in all your haughty attitude, looking down on your sisters and brothers here. You claim you don’t need blood, but that’s a lie. You were a true monster once. That’s why the whole city fears you,Trecandís. You were perfect. Now, you are nothing but a failure. Tainted with your werewolf heritage. That filthy mongrel blood.”
Nadia could see the confused looks on some of the hybrids at this. They had all started as werewolves. Agarthan werewolves were born, not created by blood consumption and bites. Still, not one of them spoke up. It would take so much more than that. But Nadia stared past Kassemyr’s perfectly cut suit pants at Darrow. He was, speaking in hybrid terms, much older than the others. From what she and the Ghosts understood, they’d been created in the last couple of years, when many young werewolves had either disappeared or lessened contact with their families in Cahlmont Hollow. No one had understood the consequences until now.
“I wish Kamra had killed you and your mother both that day. She was a perfect killing machine, slaying every single person I told her to, with no snarky questions.” He kicked Darrow in the stomach for good measure. Kassemyr might not be a hybrid, but he was a strong vampire and Darrow looked like he fought nausea.
“It wasn’t Trecandís who killed all those people?” Nadia asked, not taking her eyes off Darrow.
“No, my dear,” Kassemyr said. “It was the true terror of Agartha—Kamra, my beautiful Kamra. I miss her,” he said and sighed. “Oh well.” He shrugged like it didn’t matter, which it likely didn’t to him. Nadia doubted anyone mattered more to him than at the level of a pet. Not even that. Most people treated their pets with love and kindness.
Kassemyr swooped down and grabbed her hair, pulling her up so fast she stumbled before she found her balance. This annoyed her. Wraiths didn’t stumble. Or Ghosts. She was in too much trouble to care about which.
“I don’t know how you managed to move from the Wraiths to the Ghosts,” Kassemyr said, making her wonder if he’d read her mind. “But I’m done with your meddling now. Whatever secret you kept from him that was so important goes with you to your death today.”
Nadia didn’t struggle against his grip. Instead, she stood still, enduring the pain. She looked down then and met Darrow’s eyes. He knew that secret now. And she knew, upon meeting his dark eyes, that this was not the look of either the werewolf or the vampire within him. He didn’t want that secret out either. Kassemyr would use it against him.
“Are you ready, my beautiful, tormented souls?” Kassemyr shouted at his hybrids.
Cheers rose in anticipation, echoing back and forth among the high walls.
Nadia knew what was coming. All she could hope for was that this had created enough of a diversion for the Ghosts. That they were succeeding. All of them.
Kassemyr reached for her leg, but she wouldn’t just take it. She grabbed the wrist of the hand that held on to her hair and feigned a strike against his throat. He backed up, dragging her with him, and she rammed her knee into his gut. She heard him huff, but he also grabbed that leg before she could lower it and shifted into his hideous vampiric form. His fanged mouth close to her face smiled a deadly smile. “I told you I’d feed you to them,” he rasped, and then lifted her and threw her like she weighed nothing. She tumbled through the air and crashed into a group of nearby hybrids.
Hands and claws grasped at her, but she fell between them. The smell of blood and sweat was everywhere. Someone far away shouted something, but she couldn’t hear. The hybrids were hooting and laughing. One of them got hold of her and lifted her. That allowed her to regain her balance, and she kicked and hit in all directions, fighting like an animal, determined to hurt as many of them as possible before they drained her and killed her.
More shouting followed.
“Stop it! Hold it! Let me hear!” Kassemyr bellowed.
The hybrids turned toward him in confusion and Nadia dropped to the floor, squeezed between two of them, and ran to the wall, where she took a position with her back to it. She drew her sword and then looked around in confusion when no one came after her.
“What did you say?” Kassemyr shouted toward the door.
A man, Nadia couldn’t tell what creature he truly was, stood by the open doors, fighting heavy breaths. “Ghosts, Kass. Lots of them. In the north wing.”
“Well, how did they get in there?”
