Fangs of Fate (Untish #1)

Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

TATE

The assembly was a bleak affair. The seating was colosseum style in the shape of a bowl; we found ourselves near the top. The outer members of the council filled the nearest three rings while the inner members sat in twelve chairs facing the podium. The place where the newest convict would be tried. Fletch’s golden head was barely visible to me from up top—he sat in the row closest to the bowl. Thankfully, my face had healed enough where there was just the faintest visible swelling; I just had some discoloration splotching my face. Two more hours and I should look like new. Yay for me. Not . This whole thing should never have happened, but then again, shit that shouldn’t happen surrounded me.

I sat there trying to focus on something else other than my nerves. I hated assemblies. Hated that I kept waiting for my damn notification of the Disciplinary Hearing. After Meed, the council chairman, went through the debriefing of new rules, broken rules, fines, penalties, and upcoming events, the president took the stage. His sharp chin was noticeable from even where I stood.It seemed to grow pointier with every meeting. It was at odds with his puggy nose and round glasses.

“Councilmen. It is with great heaviness that I approach you with sobering news. Wayne Mets, an outer Councilman—” one I’d never heard of “—disappeared early Saturday morning. We’ve recently recovered his remains and believe it had been a hostile event performed by one of our own .” He paused and nodded to Hoseff, head of cabinet security, who walked to the atrium door and reappeared a moment later with a bound man, head covered with a black sack. Hoseff escorted the individual to the seat directly in front of the podium.

“As you know, feeding from another vampire is strictly forbidden. It upsets nature’s balance and is barbaric. It is and always has been met with a zero-tolerance policy,” the president continued. “The guara have apprehended who we believe to be responsible. It is, at this time, to be determined if our perp did indeed feed and murder Mr. Mets. His trial starts now.”

Hoseff pulled the hood off the vampire, revealing a young, sickly-looking male. His scrawny arms looked like he’d barely worked a day in his life, hardly strong enough to lift a bag of blood. But to overpower an old vampire? President Dale had to be kidding, he looked barely able to lift a coffee cup let alone attack a vampire long enough to feed from him.

Something felt off. His color didn’t seem right, either. Even from way up here, I noted a purple tint to his skin and his eyes…they only glanced up once, but I could have sworn they held a hint of red—that wasn’t natural. Goosebumps began to coat my skin; the young male had been dabbling in something he shouldn’t have been.

“Luina, if you please.” Chairman Meed motioned for the Truth Seeker to approach.

Luina was a spindly female who resembled a spider closer than anything else; she’d always creeped me out. She was one of the few who held power without a rank. Even now, she stalked as she approached the stage. Her black coat was crisp, not a single wrinkle, and flowed from her neck down to her knees, just above her perfectly crisp black trousers. Her black hair was pulled up into a tight bun and her black eyes began to focus on the young vampire. She creeped me out more than any other vampire in the Glenn, and it wasn’t just her looks. Her particular skill set always put me on edge.

“In proceeding with the Glenn rules,” Chairman Meed spoke as Hoseff secured the vampire in question to the chair on the platform, “we will begin with some questions to which Luina will confirm the honesty of the answers.”

Luina outstretched her hands toward the young vampire and took a deep breath. Even from here, I could see her pupils dilating to almost the entire size of the iris.

“Lucas Metsh, you are accused of breaking one of the most sacred rules of the Glenn—feeding from another vampire and murdering them. How do you reply?” Chairman Meed spoke loudly and firmly—surprisingly so, given how frail he appeared. At two-hundred and ten, he was by far the oldest councilman. “Answer the question.”

“This house will soon learn what the president did and—” Lucas’s voice was cut off suddenly and he began to convulse.

The kid was just out of puberty, he couldn’t be older than eighteen. He stopped shaking and his head hung. Surely, I wasn’t the only one who saw this and thought it was odd. The purple tint to his skin darkened and even from way up in the stands, it was clear that something was wrong with Lucas physiologically.

President Dale nodded to Luina who cleared her throat and then waved her hands. A golden hologram appeared hovering over Lucas’s head. It flashed red in the corner; Luina pinched the corner and pulled it up, it was a memory.

“I warn you, this may not be pretty,” she spoke, her voice like shards of glass. She released the memory and gruesome couldn’t describe it. Blood everywhere, Wayne’s screams in the background. The image focused in on a bloody heap in the middle of a cement room—Wayne’s body. His face came into focus, it was heavily bruised and looked oddly pale at the same time. “Please, stop. No! You can’t! This isn’t right, it’s not natural!” The image cut.

“Is there anymore to the memory?” Chairman Meed asked Luina as she pinched her head in concentration.

“There…appears to be more but it’s…blocked. I cannot access anymore. It would appear Lucas has been practicing his mental wall skills and I’m afraid he’s very adept at it. I can only see the portion of the memory I just played,” she spoke every word as if it pained her that she couldn’t dissect Lucas’s mind further. Her brows furrowed. “Perhaps, if I were to get in contact with his blood, I could form a stronger connection.” What she was suggesting was forbidden. Vampire blood was supposed to be sacred, not even used for interrogation unless it was approved by the council—something that hasn’t been approved in over two hundred years.

“Luina, you know what you propose cannot be done,” President Dale answered. His tone indicated what she suggested was the whim of a naughty child, not that of a hardened war anax who proposed breaking one of the Glenn’s sacred laws. “However,” he continued, “I believe your intel has proved more than enough that Lucas is responsible for Wayne’s death. Council, I now turn to you for your judgment.”

One by one, each of the twelve inner council members voted guilty. Half of the inner council was newer, they’ve only served for the past twenty years or less, with two of them having just been instated this past year. The older council members hesitated before condemning the boy—looking as if they regretted their decision but couldn’t see a way around it. The memory was damning.

I found myself simmering with rage—this was wrong, I felt it in my bones. Wayne deserved justice and the memory was evidence, and yet I felt something off. It felt corrupt.

I scoffed, then coughed in my arm to cover up the action. My mother wasn’t even given a trial. She was interrogated and condemned within the private bounds of the inner council’s authority at President Dale’s direction. No trial, no public evidence. Espionage. That was what she was convicted of and killed over—what they came home and told a nineteen-year-old girl. I was told her memories betrayed her and that the council chairman and President Dale didn’t bat an eye before issuing her execution. I was too young then to witness any of it. Instead, Fletch held me when I fell apart as the guara delivered the news. I had been with Chance, in the most intimate way, while my mother was being slaughtered.

“Given the unanimous vote, I now sentence you, Lucas, to death by enthrawment,” President Dale’s voice cut through my thoughts. The room audibly gasped. Normally, death sentences were carried out by the prison anax the following day via a poison vial. But enthrawment was a death of magic followed by the death of the individual. It was said to be incredibly painful and as such was reserved for rare circumstances.

“If I may,” Fletch’s voice cut through the auditorium’s murmurs, “the boy is young, I believe he’s barely eighteen. Perhaps we could simply offer him the death of a vial instead?”

“Ahh, Fletcher. Always the romantic. I’m afraid we take killing one of our own very personally and will hand out justice in the strongest sense. Or have you no morality?” The president’s glare intensified as his eyes narrowed on Fletch. “Do you not care that he slayed one of our own, a councilman such as yourself? Do we need to replay the clip?” Each one of Collin’s questions got more and more severe.

Fletch sat back down in his seat, silent.

“Perhaps we should question your loyalty to your own? Do we need to be concerned at your obvious ignorance of the law?” No one moved or said a word as the president stared down Fletch—his eyes had increased in their blackness with dark veins stretching out from each eye, swallowing his face whole. The enthrawment was about to begin.

“No, I thought not. Now, if there are no other misguided thoughts, we shall begin,” President Dale’s final words died off as the room went black.

Lucas’s screams began a moment later as wind whipped through the room. It felt wrong, like magic was screaming through the air as it was pulled from Lucas. His screams heightened at the same time I felt a tug at my own senses. I felt pressure everywhere, the magic within me rearing back, begging for this pull to stop. Lucas’s screams escalated with each second, my ears hallowed out, until his screams suddenly stopped.

With a burst of blinding light, the room returned to its normal shade and Lucas lay on the stage in a heap—he looked more like a husk than a person. His entire small body was shriveled up and unnaturally purple. Suddenly it wasn’t a young man with blond hair shriveled up, but a female with honey brown hair and piercing green eyes. My mother. Her body, a dried-out husk before President Dale’s feet.

I shook my head. No, this was not her. This could not have happened to her. Her fate must’ve been better. But hadn’t the unsealed portion of her records shown she was executed via the highest level of punishment, such as enthrawment?

President Dale dabbed his head with a handkerchief and waved to Hoseff and the guara to come remove the body. As they carried out the husk, a certain wrongness lingered. The image of my mother as a husk assaulted me. My dinner threatened to expel. I needed air.

As the corpse was taken from the room, I looked away; I couldn’t see my mother like that, I refused to. The assembly was dismissed, and everyone quietly began to make their way outside. I’d never experienced an enthrawment before, and from the shocked look on so many faces around me, neither had most of the Glenn. It was unsettling at best and had my own magic clawing at my skin. I needed to get out of here and stretch my limbs. A bob of blue hair was cutting through the crowd. Shae. I couldn’t handle this, not now. I turned abruptly and made my way to a back alley that led to a path out of city limits—far from the blue-haired pixie and the grey husk just inside the building.