12. DONE

DONE

J ulian had never killed anyone. He had never thought he would have to. Even when he had imagined revealing the existence of Vampires to the world, he had only once when meeting Caemorn for the first time, wanted to kill anyone. But mostly since he had become a Vampire, he had shied away from the violent, predatory aspect of himself.

Until now.

When Kaly had used Officer Robbins to shoot his co-workers between the eyes, animated them and tried to use them to kill others for this little undead army, Julian just acted .

Without thought.

Without worry.

With certainty that what he was doing was right.

These undead things needed to be eradicated, not just because of the threat they posed, but because they took the people that these officers had been and that innocent boy had been--cut down so cruelly--and used their bodies against others that they would never have wanted to hurt. Kaly had turned them into things . No longer people, but weapons to be used to destroy what they had cared for. And after seeing all the innocent lives that had been snuffed out that night, Julian was simply done standing by.

The animated corpse that had been Officer Robbins was the first to go. Time seemed to slow down while Julian sped up. He had no weapons, besides, what good were a knife or a gun against the undead? No, he had to take them apart. And Officer Robbins' head sounded like a good place to start.

Julian sliced through the air like a speeding missile while everything else moved like it was stuck in molasses. He grasped Officer Robbins' head with both hands and almost gently ripped it off his body with one violent turn of 360 degrees. The skin tore. Blood just gushed out, though it was no longer being pumped by a heart so it didn't spray. It more like waterfalled down his front. Julian imagined that if Officer Robbins had stayed dead longer that the blood would have settled in his legs and feet. But, for now, there was still plenty of the red stuff. But it held no interest for his Vampire senses. It smelled dead and already rotten . He would never feed off a corpse.

He then smashed the head between his hands. He felt the skull crush like a porcelain plate hitting the ground and then the jellied brain squished through his fingers. If the head could have still been animated somehow after that, it couldn't do anything to anyone except ooze at them.

Officer Robbins' body was still standing upright. It wasn't moving any longer. The gun was still in the right hand. Julian didn't know if it hadn't fallen because he was simply moving faster than gravity could work. But he took no chances. He wrenched off Officer Robbins' right arm and then his left for good measure. He tossed these into the long grass as if they were dead branches. Just in case the corpse could still walk even without a head and arms, he pulled off the legs as well. They joined the arms in the grass. He dropped the torso to the ground.

The other two officers were aiming their guns at their colleagues--who, having heard the shots were moving towards them--and were firing, but Kaly's aim, thankfully, was not as good this far away. Julian grabbed the right arm of the female officer and spun her around while he did the same to her fellow male officer. They were facing him now instead of the police.

The female officer's brown eyes looked gray as they were already covered with death cataracts though that seemed awfully quick to have happened in Julian's layman's estimate. She focused on him though with an evil intensity that was all Kaly. The woman whose body this had been was no longer in it and, for that, Julian was grateful. He didn't want to cause her any pain. However, he wished to give oceans of it to Kaly.

He grabbed her gun arm and twisted it . He heard the snap and pop of her bones and joints separating as he pulled that arm--rather like a chicken drumstick--off her body. The arm fell to the ground and blood, sticky and foul, poured out of her.

To the final officer, he snapped the dead man's gun arm violently backwards. It hung uselessly at the man's side. But he ripped it off anyway. More blood rained down. It pooled at his feet. It soaked into his shoes and stained his pant legs. He was wading through it. But it didn't slow him down.

He slammed his right hand against the male officer's throat. The officer was smashed against the ground and his hand went through the flesh and bone and impacted the soil below it. He kneeled on the officer's chest as he then ripped off the rest of the corpse's limbs.

The female officer was reaching for her firearm. Kaly was still intent on gunning more people down. Julian shot to his feet when something jumped onto his back.

The boy!

There was a searing pain as Kaly had the boy stab him in the side of the neck. Julian had turned his head at the exact right moment so that it was only a surface cut. He felt his own blood flow down his skin and soak the top of his shirt before he reached around and fastened his hand around the boy's slender wrist. The boy hissed, his foul breath washing over Julian, almost causing him to gag. This close to the boy there was no doubt he was a corpse.

In that moment's hesitation, Kaly wrenched the boy's hand back and the sharp object-- a knife? Dagger? Piece of glass? --sliced across his palm. He let out a gasp of pain, which had him gulping in more of that foul rotten scent. Julian growled as Kaly tried stabbing him again . While both wounds had already healed and there was no pain from them, he was finished being a pincushion for the Immortal.

He seized the boy's wrist again even as Kaly went all stabby once more. With a simple yank, he pulled the boy's arm off by the socket. Kaly hissed, not in pain, but in anger. Julian tossed the arm. No blood came from this corpse. He had likely been embalmed for burial and all his blood had been removed. The smell of decay became more pronounced and that, mixed with the blood, had Julian's stomach churning.

Julian gritted his teeth as he whipped forward, sending the boy flying from his back and impacting a tree. That was when there was the deafening sound of a shot. Julian tensed involuntarily, waiting for the impact, but there was only a whoosh of air along his side. He smelled the bitter scent of cordite. Kaly had missed.

He dashed towards the female officer's corpse. She had the gun in her left hand. He flipped over her and landed behind her as Kaly fired another shot. Julian wrested her left arm off and then snapped the long bones in her legs. She fell forward and didn't move.

Julian didn't need to hear the hiss before he stretched out his arm--without looking--and caught the boy's throat in his hand as the vile creature rushed him. He held the boy at arm's length as he hissed, spat, kicked and reached for him with the one remaining arm.

"F-FREEZE!" A male voice shook as he shouted it. "Police! Put the child down!"

Julian's head snapped towards the voice. What he saw had his heart sinking into his feet. To his right there were half a dozen cops and more were coming. They all had their weapons drawn. They were pointed at him .

And that was when he realized what they were seeing. He was drenched in blood, surrounded by corpses of their colleagues that he had plucked the limbs off, and was holding a boy by the neck two feet off the ground by the throat with one hand. And he was pretty sure he was all vamped out. He hadn't felt his fangs before, but he did now. They were bared. And the red wash to everything told him that his eyes were like red coals.

Oh, no...

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! What is he?" Another male voice rose up into a whine.

Hopefully, you'll answer that with: hallucination! Except for the body parts and the blood everywhere.

"His eyes are glowing red!" Another cried.

Yep, yep, they definitely are.

"He ripped their limbs off! Oh, my God!" Another gasped and there was a retching sound.

Another terrible smell to add to the plethora of awful smells!

"He has fangs," someone whispered.

Great, so I might be revealing that Vampires exist after all…

"He's a--"

"Vampire, yes, but you won't remember that," Rajani's voice, sweet and mellow like warm butter, washed over the officers. "You won't remember any of this at all."

Julian watched as their faces went blank. The other officers that had been rushing towards these ones, were suddenly approached by robe-wearing House Wynter Vampires and they stopped moving. Rajani walked out of the copse with Arcius. Immediately, the Confessor came over to Julian.

"Julian! Are you all right? By the Immortals! Did they hurt you?" Arcius asked as his hands skimmed a few inches over Julian's body.

"I'm fine! This isn't my blood." Julian became even more aware that he was covered in slowly drying, dead blood. It was becoming thick and tacky. "I look like a crazy serial killer, don't I?"

"You look like… you have been in a battle. But I can smell… Julian, you were injured!" Arcius' silver eyes flashed with anger and alarm.

"My wounds healed as soon as they happened. They don't hurt," Julian said.

Rajani and Arcius exchanged a look.

"What? I'm okay!" Julian protested.

"That we let the prince be injured at all will not sit well with our king," Arcius murmured.

"Daemon will understand. I could have brought him back here, I could have called at any moment," Julian said. "Anything that happened here tonight," he looked at the three dead officers, "is all on me."

"You killed these three because… they were dead before you did this," Rajani said as she surveyed the corpses and the boy that had gone still in his arms.

"Yeah. But wait, you thought I would just--just kill people?" Julian stared at her. "Like normal people? Police officers?"

"Most fledglings when exposed to stress are…" Rajani's gaze switched from Julian to Arcius to Julian again. "Well, you were found, you were attacked, you were hungry… things could have quite understandably happened."

Killing three people--tearing off their heads and limbs--is understandable?

"Julian is quite controlled. He has a very solid moral core and the fact that he is our prince, of course, adds to his ability to stave off any such blood madness," Arcius explained, looking almost like a proud Sire himself.

"I would have thought he would be more uncontrolled because of his strength," Rajani said with an interested nod.

"As he is one of a kind, it is hard to say. None of us have known any of the direct fledglings of an Immortal… well, other than Elgar and he… he is unique," Arcius said weakly.

Elgar was definitely unique. Among many other things.

"Still, for one so very young, he is amazingly calm, especially covered in blood like that." Rajani gestured to the gore that was slowly drying on his body.

Julian really needed a shower. With Daemon, preferably. And he actually was hungry now that he thought about it though the smell of death rising from the boy quelled that.

"And you were able to get out of the museum and use martial skills as well!" Arcius continued on with pride. "You must have used quite a few gifts!"

"It was weird. I just sort of… could. I fought against some of the spies for Caemorn before. It was the same now, but more, " Julian answered with a shrug.

"Our prince is controlled and skilled. One wonders what he will be able to do as he grows," Rajani mused.

"Uhm, guys, I'm here. Hello!" Julian reminded them and then he shook the boy corpse. "And so is Kaly."

Arcius and Rajani regarded the dead child with Vampiric interest. Their silver eyes were glowing softly. They didn't blink. He saw Arcius' nostrils flare. Julian guessed that they knew more about this boy than he did. The boy's eyes flickered between them, though he was not struggling any longer.

"Kaly…" Rajani finally said. She spoke the Immortal's name as if it had an acidic twist.

"This cannot be one of the bodies that Kaly inhabits!" Arcius stated.

"This isn't one of Kaly's forms. Just… just a poor dead boy that Kaly unearthed from his grave after his parents, his family, his friends put him into the ground not that long ago for the long sleep," Julian spat out. "Until you had him crawl out again, you bastard."

Kaly regarded him silently. He could not read the thoughts behind those cataract-colored eyes.

"Kaly then had this boy kill one of the officers who then killed the other and then Kaly took them over as well," Julian explained. "They were building a little army."

"Clever. Your enemies' bodies become your soldiers meaning every person they lose, you gain one," Arcius murmured, stroking his beard.

"Yeah, clever is one way to look at it." Julian glared at the corpse.

Kaly smiled blackly at him.

"And you took out these three officers with your bare hands, Julian?" Rajani asked as she toed one of the officer's limbs.

"Yeah. It was… really natural." Julian grimaced. Was natural the word he wanted to use? Maybe not, but it was true.

"He fights well," Kaly finally spoke.

"And you fight dirty," Julian stated flatly.

"You are so very new," Kaly stated. "You actually care for these mortals. That will change, you know. As the years pass, you will see less of yourself in them and won't be able to understand them at all."

"So you're saying that I will become like you ?" Julian asked with his right eyebrow lifted.

"Not exactly like me. No, but this will happen."

"I don't think you ever felt anything for anyone so you can't possibly understand why I care for others, mortals or immortals," Julian told Kaly. "That's why you are only able to attract those to you through fear or insanity."

"Kara was not insane," Kaly said.

"Yes, she was." Julian's hands tightened on the boy's throat. He felt the skin begin to give and he backed off. "Her soul was sick."

Kaly's eyes widened. "Soul sickness? I have never heard of such a thing. It sounds like romantic nonsense."

"No, again, it's just something you could never understand. You spread it," Julian said with disgust.

"Do not speak with him, Julian," Arcius stated with a frown on his lips. "Kaly is a disease."

"You are Confessor! To speak to an Immortal so disrespectfully! You'll have to be excommunicated," Kaly hissed.

"A new Order is rising, Kaly. You will not even be mentioned," Arcius said.

"Not even as its Devil?" Kaly mocked.

"No, you are not so important," Arcius said and those words seemed to actually cut Kaly.

Kaly went silent.

"Perhaps you should just… end this thing like you did the others, Julian?" Rajani suggested. "Speaking of the others, all of this will have to be cleaned up."

"Can you clean this up?" Julian asked. "There's so many dead… and…"

Rajani touched his arm. "We can handle this. Do not distress yourself. We will only be revealed when King Daemon wishes it. See?"

She gestured back towards the grounds. The cops were back in position, watching the museum as if there was nothing else of any interest going on, including the pool of blood and body parts he was surrounded by.

"Will they really remember none of this?" Julian asked.

"They really won't," Rajani stated. "It is human technology that is more problematic."

"Yeah, a zombie invasion on the 10 o'clock news would be hard to explain away," Julian said with a faint laugh.

"But people don't really believe what they see these days, do they?" Rajani winked at him. "Most people would think it was some kind of joke or special effects. Not real zombies."

"And not real Vampires?" Julian's lips quirked into a half smile.

"I'm afraid your expose, my prince, would not have worked," Arcius stated.

"Yeah, you never would have let it get out anyway, would you?"

Julian realized how foolish he had been thinking that the Vampires would have just allowed him to send out the broadcast. And even if it had gotten out, only a few people would have believed it, but most wouldn't have.

"We would have done what we had to. But death would not have been necessary," Rajani stated and gave Kaly a deadly look. "Those deaths fueled far more belief in what the Harrows said and did than letting them continue on in their fruitless search."

"He wasn't trying to stop them from exposing the Vampires to the world but Daemon's city to the Vampires," Julian explained even as Kaly remained silent. "Their deaths weren't to keep Vampires safe, but to keep them in the dark where Daemon was." He stared hard at those glazed eyes. "You do realize that what you did insured that Daemon and I met, don't you? Without my parents' deaths, I would never have searched for the Vampire cities. You could have simply had their minds wiped. Instead, you made sure I never stopped looking."

"You think I regret you existing?" Kaly asked.

"You just tried to kill me," Julian pointed out.

"I tested you," Kaly corrected. "You were never in any real danger."

"You stabbed me in the neck," Julian stated.

"You healed." Kaly smiled. "You might be the one good thing that has come out of all of this."

"What? Why?" Julian asked.

"Because of those things you say I cannot understand," Kaly answered. "You will keep Daemon focused on being a gentle tyrant."

"He's not a tyrant!" Julian growled.

"But he could be. You see how he is. Single-minded. He will be king, because he is king. You don't fully understand what that means yet," Kaly said. "But all will regret it if he is not reigned in by some kind of moral conscience."

"I know that Daemon thinks differently than most of us, because he is different from most of us. But he cares. He's not like you, Kaly," Julian said without any hesitation. "And if you care so much for morals, then give me back my parents' souls."

Kaly smirked. "No. They are my insurance policy."

Julian gritted his teeth. "You will not get away with this."

Kaly laughed. "I have. I will continue to do so."

"Our prince is powerful, he will find his parents," Elgar's voice wafted over as he and Christian jogged towards them.

"Julian?! Did you kill all the zombies?" Christian asked. His best friend's eyes were huge as he took in the devastation around him

"Except for this one." Julian shook Kaly. The boy's head rattled back and forth on his slender neck.

Before Christian could respond, Elgar pointed out towards the sloping lawns. "And those."

"Those? No, there aren't any…" Julian's mouth fell open as he saw the hundreds of figures dotting the landscape. His mind's eye showed they all had the purple glow of Kaly. He turned to look at the boy's face.

Kaly smiled. "Let's see if House Wynter can explain this ."