The Blood-Book III

Chapter 25: No, It's Vodka

"Do you truly believe that?"

"I do," I breathed out, meeting his gaze before Ethan pulled me from over the bond. "Excuse me," I said, stepping away from him and walking over to where Ethan was sitting.

He pulled me down next to him and nuzzled my neck. "You look nice sunshine."

I smiled and smoothed out his heather gray buttoned down tucked into his dark jeans. "You don't look so bad either white hot."

Levi sat next to Lander, giving his shoulder a light squeeze, while Remi and Lucas sat behind him. He looked around the room as an award quiet set in, drinking his black coffee while his beast paced slowly behind his eyes. "Well, this is a real fucking mess."

Deryl breathed out a sharp laugh. "No shit Levi."

Ethan pulled me a little closer and cleared his throat. "It's a mess but we need to move. Right now we estimate that we have a small gap in time to make some moves. Aurelia was hurt badly during the fight– so she will need to heel, she is going to need more time to make more bloodstones, build up the rogues that she lost, and rally more witches since we killed plenty. We think we may have a few weeks, so we need to move."

Ethan paused and pointed to the whiteboard where 'Kill Aurelia,' 'Kill rogues,' 'Destroy doors,' and 'Stop a Goddamn War with Alex,' were written in blue ink. "Evan and I made a make shift list. I think it's a good start unless anyone has anything else to add?"

"Nope," Ajax said with Aiden nodding in agreement. "How the hell do we kill that woman?"

"Well, preferably slowly," Derek said solemnly. "We need to stop her and ensure that she does not open any more doors. We all saw what was on the other side of that portal, we cannot afford for the shadows of the other side to come into our world."

"And remind me why she wants to open this damn door again?" Deryl added. "Levi explained a little."

"She wants to bring her father back, Hale King," I said. "Along with Hagan, the first of us, although from what we have gathered they are both in realms on the other side that no one really knows about."

Deryl stared at me wide eyed. "Why the hell? That's insane!"

"Well, yes," I breathed out. "Long story short, way back when Hagan tried to somewhat end the fighting, with the exception that he could still kill all the vampires–so definitely not really ending the violence.

"She wants to bring them back, the first among us to 'return things to how they should be.' It's like we talked about before, she could use hard power to come in and invade, but it would be easier for her to flip us. We all talked about what that would be, and now it seems pretty obvious."

"Which is?" Ajax asked.

"My family," I sighed out. "Vampires and some wolves have hunted them since the beginning of time. My father ran his whole life–Alex still has his pelt and fangs, her family I am sure did as well. It's a perfect example of vampires coming after wolves–breaking the treaty, and now with Alex out–well, he's certainly not helping anyone.

"He's trying to build up a hard power to take out the rebels–most likely me as well. I don't know if this is what she intended, but if it is then she did a hell of a job."

"Well she couldn't do it without help," Deryl sighed out. "Alright so we know the rock is useless, and so is the tree at Tikanni. What of the others?"

"Well," Bernard breathed out. "We know there were seven. We've been able to make a lot of progress with the books that Aurelia left behind. Originally, there was Jaxon's rock, Levi's tree–or 'The Brown Tree,' the river at Ajax's, the Clawfoot Cave, the Quickfoot Willow, and 'The White Tree,' or the tree here. Those were the original markers–doors. Two are gone, one is useless–"