A Vampire's Life Book 3

Chapter Thirty-eight - Scarlett

"This was an effort to try and stop the wedding." Terrance muses. "He must know of the prophecy."

"There was one in our room." Lucas gestures to the body being dragged out of the room.

"And where are we at?" Terrance looks at me.

"Oh, I uh." Shit, I wished that I had told Lucas now. Would have been nice to tell him before declaring it to the world.

Lucas grins.

"Did I hit the target?"

I nod.

"Excellent." Terrace says as he walks off.

Lucas wraps his arms around me.

"Sorry, I was going to tell you but I kind of got distracted with the slayer trying to kill you."

"Yes, well I am grateful that you saved me rather than telling me that you are pregnant." he frowns and then smirks. "You took a life Scarlett."

"What?" I frown at him.

"You said you didn't want to take a life, that you valued humanity, yet you just took the life of a slayer."

"He was going to kill you. I did what I thought was necessary. Your life is more valuable to me than his."

A grin curls into his mouth as he looks down at me, leaning in to kiss me on the cheek.

"Ok, I think we are going to have to smoke him out." Miranda says appearing out of nowhere.

"Get your cloak on girl, we are going."

"Cloak?" I frown.

Charles appears beside me, clearing his throat. Lucas takes it from him, putting it over me. A long velvet hooded cloak, black on the outside, red on the inside. So soft and so very heavy. I wince when I pull it into my body, Miranda takes my hand and looks at it.

"What happened?"

"She touched the stake."

Miranda turns and calls for Alina. She takes my blistered hand, placing hers over mine, not touching me but hovering just over it. It tickles as she closes her eyes, her long brown hair falls over her face as she lowers it. I try to not laugh as the sensations in my hand get worse, making me want to scratch it.

"There you go."

I look at my hand, normal again.

"Next time, don't touch the stakes, poisonous."

"Oh ok."

There was no battle plan, it was just a case of finding the man and removing him. The hope was, once he was dead the rest would have no interest in continuing with the battle and if they did, they would find their own demise. The kings guard stayed with my family and band members, now very shocked at what had just happened. Reality had finally hit them; they now knew they were stuck in the middle of an unholy war. I would have liked for them to be very, very far away from here, but I knew that they would be safe, the kings guard would watch them, the beasts would stop any slayers from getting into the property, the whole castle had been checked. There was only one issue, the secret entrance. We were going to move to it, sweeping the property as we moved, ensuring there were no hidden slayers. We had only gotten as far as the small field beside the castle, they waited for us in their hundreds, in the centre was Dietrich. The men stood firm, stakes in their hands, their brows creased deep.

"Scarlett." Miranda whispers to me. "You know what you need to do right?"

Something strange rattles through my mind, for some reason I do know what I need to do, just as the verse said, she will be the one to show the mortals not to fear.

"Go forth and speak from your heart." she whispers.

I step forward, moving away from Lilly, Miranda and Alina. Everyone else that had been with us had stepped back, this was it, this was our time. The moonlight gently caressed the soft velvet cloak draped around my shoulders, the grass below shimmered in its light. I pulled back the hood of the cape, my skin was so pale it was like it was translucent, perfect powder white skin.

"You do not need to fear us, I am living proof that a vampire can feed and not kill."

The men around Dietrich look at me very confused.

"I will prove it to you if one of you are brave enough to venture here to me, I will not kill you."

I look at the men, some of them look of stout heart, determined in their minds. Some of them look scared, like they have been forced into this. I wonder if any of them are fans.

"Do any of you know who I am?"

There is one that raises his hand slightly.

"You, would you like to prove your bravery to your peers?"

I had expected him to slink into the crowd of men, cowering behind them but he did not. The stake was dropped to the ground as he stepped out and ventured to me. He took his cap from his head and scrunched it in his hand nervously. The panic was set in his face, even though he was brave enough to step out, he was still scared.

"You need not fear me, I do not want to take your life, I only want to show you and your colleagues that it is possible to live after a vampire has fed. Are you prepared to show them?"

He nods at me.

"Yes." he stammers. "Yes ma'am."

"It will hurt for a little bit, but it is bearable." I take his forearm. "Don't jerk it away or you will make the wound worse."

He watches me as I sink my fangs in and take a tiny drink. He wasn't very tasty, which made it easier to stop feeding.

"There you go. Still alive?"

He nods with a little grin.

"Off you go, back to your friends."

The young man looks at the tiny marks on his wrist and walks back.

"You see? Still human, still alive..." I turn to Miranda. "He wasn't very tasty, is there a reason for that?"

She nods. "Something will be wrong with him."

"You." I point at the young man. "When you leave here, you should go to the doctor, you weren't very tasty, something is wrong with you."

The whole group turns and looks at him, he looks a little worried. Again he steps from the crowd and moves to me.

"Thank you vampire, I shall not be staying here any longer."

He turned and walked across the field, leaving the group.

"You see? He survived. No one need die, give your blood freely and a vampire need not kill you. All we require is our sustenance, the same as you. You are told to eat meat, are you not? Yet there are some of you that do not, there are some that are vegetarians. Just like there are some vampires that do not want to kill humans. There are those like me, who value human life."

I can hear the men murmuring among themselves.

"You now face a choice, you can leave just as that man did and live to see another day or you can stay and fight us, I can promise you that you will not survive."

It was quite a shock when they started to follow the young man's path, leaving Dietrich alone in the field. He began to shake his head, shouting no. I hadn't seen him move, so fluid in his movements that it was like a blur. From behind he pulled what resembled a machine gun, preparing to fire it at us. Of course, he hadn't realised what was sneaking up behind him, invisible to humans. A king's guard took him down with a snap of his neck, but in that very second Dietrich fired the gun. Most of the stakes that were fired out were driven into the ground, sadly there were two that found their marks. A wooden stake had skimmed the edge of Lilly's hip, a metal stake found me.