Bleeder [Blood Magic, Book 1]

Chapter 24: All's Fair in Love and War

I reached out and gently placed my palm on his left cheek, allowing my thumb to drift across his swollen lower lip. He flinched, the edges of his eyes creasing, but he didn't retreat from my touch. "You know, I never wanted this to happen, right?" I asked. "I wanted you to transition, even if it meant I'd lose you – this you."

Keel reached up and retrieved my hand, clasping it in his. "Mills, I knew what I was doing and what the risks were. Of course, I also never thought he'd go this far, even if he found out, but I don't blame you."

"Are you sure?" I said. "Earlier, you..."

"Stated the truth? Yes, I did. You are bad for my people, but that doesn't change us. I want to protect you, but whether I transition or not, I want to protect them too." It was easy for me to forget about Keel's lineage, because at some point I'd stopped seeing him as the prince. He wasn't royalty to me; he was just a guy I had a great, big, still mostly unrequited thing for. But when he talked like that, it slammed it all back home. He'd spent his life training for his role, so the lives and needs of his own kind would always factor in. He was honour-bound to that.

"Then why were you coaching me to kill them?" I asked.

"Because if you won't, they'll kill us. If you want to escape, you have to be prepared to do whatever it takes. Because they'll be doing whatever it takes to stop that from happening."

"Oh." After all these months and after what the king had done to Keel, the absolute ruthlessness of the Nosferatu should have sunk in and taken root in my mind, but I always underestimated their capacity for savagery. If I didn't stop doing that, it'd be the death of both of us. "So they're going to be armed?"

"Some of them, but it won't be with anything you've haven't faced already." Now I was certain almost everything Keel and I had gotten up to over the past month – from the endless magical experiments to the industrial spelunking – was in fact specialized training, cleverly dressed up as fun.

"So, no guns then?" I said, relieved. Keel had smashed and bashed all sorts of instruments of war into my magical shield, and it had withstood all of them. It could probably make short work of bullets too, but something about their speed, size and penetrative design worried me, as did the likelihood of a barrage.

"No, no guns."

"Why not?"

"Same reason you didn't hear alarms blaring when they found out we escaped," Keel said. He never seemed to tire of explaining things to me, no matter how basic. "Nothing is more important than keeping our existence secret from the prying eyes of humans, particularly human law enforcement. So no matter how bad my father wants to stop us, he's not going to order them to do anything that's going to bring attention to this place. Even if he's mad like some of them say, he's not that mad."

"But guns can have silencers," I pointed out.

"There won't be any guns," Keel insisted. "It's not the Nosferatu way. Haven't you figured it out? We prefer our fights up close and personal."

"Okay," I said, finally. "But if not guns, what will we be facing out there?"

"The tactical team, the security force and the reserves. Good thing none of those units are used to working with one another. And while they've trained for situations like this, they've never actually faced one, and definitely not one involving magic. If we're smart and quick, we do have a chance."

"So what do we do?"

"We work together," Keel said, making it sound deceptively simple. "I'll guide you to the van, but you'll need to do exactly what I say. You'll need to trust me."