And it’ssafe. We’re safe here.
For now, anyway.
I sit up. “This is a problem.”
“What is this… ancient ones, thing?” Cain asks. “I’ll be honest, we’ve bumped up against something that I don’t know a ton about.”
“It would make sense,” North growls, pacing. “A lot of our history was lost because of those fucking vampires. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some shit we don’t know about or isn’t generally well known because we’re all so fucking scattered.”
I’ve never seen him this worked up. Sure, North has gotten angry or frustrated at times. But he wanted to rip Roanac’s throat out, or as good as, and he couldn’t.
“He’s already so powerful,” I point out. “That room, how he had it set up, I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it. He knew what he was doing.”
“Just the idea of being able to separate a creature from their magic?” Cain shakes his head. “That’s huge. I don’t think that’s possible. Or it wasn’t, anyway. I’ve never heard of anyone doing it before. That takes precision and skill, not just power.”
I shudder to think of how many poor people gave their lives as Roanac tested out his contraption and fixed the ‘kinks’ to get it working the way that he wanted to. It’s enough to make someone sick.
Raven’s sitting down at the table, looking down at his wrist. He’s still not saying anything and again I know he’s not the most talkative person but this is different, this is new.
I get up and walk over to him, and as I do so, I notice that he’s looking at his wrist because it’s cut. The shade’s sword when he used it to cut the chains binding his cuffs together, he must’ve gotten the tip of the sword caught against his skin.
“You need a bandage.” I take Raven’s hand in mine.
Raven tries to take his hand away from me. It’s the first time since we met that he’s tried to avoid physical contact with me. It stings, more than I would’ve expected. I haven’t known the men all that long, but I’ve already gotten used to Raven touching me and letting me touch him. To have that taken away hurts.
“You need healing,” I insist. I clamp down on his hand so that he can’t take it away from me and Raven glares at me like a child that’s being told he needs to eat his broccoli.
“We have some healing potions stocked up,” North says.
It’s not an order, it’s just information, and I can tell that he’s not making it an order on purpose. Cain and Raven follow North’s orders without question. He’s trying to give Raven room to make his own choices.
“I don’t need one,” Raven replies.
“Yes, you do.” I look over at North and Cain. “Could one of you get him a healing potion, please?”
Cain looks at North, who shrugs as if to say,what, you want to get on her bad side?
Cain gets up and heads into the kitchen, opening a cupboard and then reaching into the back. I can hear the click of something opening, and I realize there’s another cupboard hidden behind the first. That must be where they hide the potions.
Damn. These guys really have thought of everything. Their attention to detail and their level of knowledge intimidates me a little. I can’t help but feel a bit like an amateur compared to them. I thought I was all that and a bag of chips but these guys are the real deal.
At least they’re on my side. It’s good to know I have powerful allies.
“If Roanac’s already that powerful,” North says, dragging us back to the original subject as Cain walks back over and hands me a potion, “then if he really was able to get the magic from your blood, he would possibly become unstoppable.”
I shudder at the thought. “He’d be a threat to the entire supernatural world.”
“And the mundane world too,” Cain points out. “I mean, a guy like that isn’t going to stop at just the supernatural world. He’ll want the humans as well.”
Occasionally, some people get it into their heads that since they’re supernatural, they’re better than humans and should act accordingly. Whether that means hunting humans or ruling over them, or some variation.
But I don’t know of anyone who’s potentially gotten enough power to actually do that on such a large scale.
“We’ll have to contact people,” North says, sounding reluctant.
“Are we sure we want to get others involved?” I point out. Just because I care about these men doesn’t mean I’m suddenly a people-person.
“If there’s someone like Roanac out there,” North replies, “then yes. The people in charge need to know so they can stop him.”