Zen and the Art of Vampires

I flared my nostrils at her. "Look, I don't know what sort of relationship you think that Kristoff and I have, but we're not dating, much less in love," I told her as I stumbled on the last step. "And I'm certainly not immortal."

"Not him, the other one," she answered.

"Alec? Is he here? Is he all right?" I stopped, refusing to go any farther. "If you've hurt him—"

"Stop treating us as if we are fools," Kristjana interrupted. "Yes, your Dark One is here." A slow smile crept across her face. It wasn't particularly nice. "He has not been cleansed… yet. But I very much look forward to watching him embrace the light."

"If you strike us down, you will simply bring more of the council upon your heads," Kristoff said, breaking his silence. "We do not act alone. Nor will we tolerate your persecution."

Kristjana spat at him, literally spat at him, moving around him but being careful, I was interested to note, to stay just out of his reach. "We will purge the earth of your kind just as the light was purged of darkness."

"Rhetorical gibberish," Kristoff said, and probably would have continued if Mattias hadn't slammed his head into the wall.

"Stop that!" I yelled, starting toward them, but Kristjana jerked me back.

A moment of sadness gripped me as her face lit with a pleasure bordering on the fanatical. I wondered if she was mentally stable, or if her belief in the Brotherhood had consumed her past the point of reason. "You will watch when the light cleanses your Dark One. You will see as I have seen how the darkness can be stripped from them."

That pretty much answered the question. I kept my voice calm and soothing as I said, "I understand why you think they are evil, but I assure you, Alec and Kristoff are not. You might have good intentions, but where they concern these two men, you're way off base. If you would untie us, I'd be happy to sit down and explain everything to you."

"The time for talk is past," Kristjana said with dismissive self-righteousness. "Now is the time for action. We will be conducting three cleansings tonight?"

The question was asked of Frederic.

"Who do you expect will conduct the ceremony?" Frederic asked in his soft, French-accented voice. "You just declared the Zorya tainted."

"And you cannot deny that!" Kristjana cried. "You can't deny that she was unsuitable for the job from the very beginning. Look at how she's deceived us! By the light, Frederic, she's a Beloved!"

Frederic said nothing as he strolled down the last of the stairs, merely nodding toward a door. Mattias shoved Kristoff up against the wall, whipping out a set of keys to unlock the door.

"I told you that I'm not dating anyone—" I started to correct Kristjana.

She spun around. "Oh, shut up, you ignorant fool. A Beloved is not a girlfriend, it is a so-called savior of Dark Ones, not that they can be saved by anything but the purity of the light."

I decided the best defense was a good offense, and whirled away from her, taking an assertive stance in the middle of the room. "You will not talk to me that way! I am the Zorya, not you, and you will treat me with the respect and honor due someone in my position!"

Kristjana slapped me. She just reached right out and smacked me smartly across the left cheek. "How dare you! You pollute the very air we breathe, and you expect us to treat you with respect? You, who have betrayed everything we stand for. You, who have aided the Dark One we hold by promising him salvation. Well, we shall see that he has it—but it will be true salvation, not the farce you call redemption."

Kristoff made a low, growling noise. "Hypocritical diatribe. You murder my people, then claim to save them, hiding your true intentions behind a cloak of righteousness, but not even your precious light can hide the truth about your actions. You deal in death, not divinity; torture, not salvation."

"I will enjoy watching you cleansed, too," Kristjana said, her face as rigid as a mask. "But I think you should be given the chance to see the truth when your friend receives the light first."

I stared at her in horror, the zeal in her voice raising goose bumps on my back as I had a mental image of the sort of light Alec would be forced to endure. "Please, listen to me. I swore to Anniki that I would right the injustices done her, and I am trying to do that. But she was wrong—you're wrong—about Alec and Kristoff. If they were what you say they are, I'd do everything in my power to help you, but you're damning them without reason."

She straightened up, clearly about to launch another physical attack, but Frederic's soft voice stopped her. "That will be enough, sister. You will not strike Zorya Pia again."

"She is not worthy of the name Zorya," Kristjana spat.

"That has yet to be determined," Frederic said, eyeing me. "We will leave that to the Zenith to decide."

I turned to him as a bastion of sanity. "May I see Alec, please? I'd like to make sure he's all right, then I would like to explain to you what's been going on."