“I’m trying to fix what I can,” he tells me. “I swear, Grace, the last thing I want to do right now is hurt you—or anyone. You just have to trust me. And if you try to kill the beast before the Trial, you’re going to die. If not by it, then by the Trial when you drag your broken ass into the arena.”
I can feel his despair, feel his agitation, and despite everything, I believe him. More, I realize, I’ve believed him for a while now.
“That’s not true,” I tell the group. “We have the four items. We could let Hudson out right now. That would give us two days to recover all our strength and train really hard, so we’ll actually have a chance of not dying.” I nod. “It’s the best option.”
“Over my dead fucking body,” Jaxon replies, ice dripping from every word he bites out.
93
Betrayal Is a
Four-Letter
Word
“Best option for whom exactly?” Flint demands, jaw tight and eyes blazing. “Not for the rest of us, that’s for damn sure.”
“I’m with Flint,” Eden says. “We can’t do that. We can’t let Hudson, with his power of persuasion, out in the world again. We just can’t.”
“I understand that you’re scared—” I start.
“We’re not scared,” Macy says. “We’re practical. We lived through Hudson once, until Jaxon and the rest of the Order finally found a way to bring him down. There’s no way we can risk letting him loose again. No way we can justify risking so many people’s lives just because it’s expedient for us.”
“What about risking our lives?” I ask. “Going against the Unkillable Beast won’t be easy. One of us could die—”
“It’s worth it,” Xavier says quietly, his voice and eyes as serious as I’ve ever seen them.
“Dying is worth it?” I repeat flatly. “Seriously?”
“Do you know how many people he killed?” Mekhi asks. “How many wolves and made vampires died because of Hudson? Because he thought born vampires were the most important species on the planet? His gift of persuasion is just too powerful.”
“That’s not what happened,” Hudson tells me, and there’s an underlying urgency in his voice. “I told you that, Grace.”
A memory of the scene with his father scratches at my mind. Why does everyone keep mentioning your gift of persuasion but not the fact that you can literally destroy matter with your mind? What about the memory with your dad? No offense, the fact that you can disintegrate things with a mere thought seems even scarier than the persuasion thing.
“Because they don’t know about it. No one does.” He sighs. “Well, except my parents. But my father believes the gift is unusable. That his attempts to force it to grow unfettered didn’t make it stronger, it made it go dormant.”
Why?
His impenetrable blue eyes hold mine, not a flicker of emotion moving in them. “Because he ran out of things to threaten that I love.”
The fact that he says it so simply, so emotionlessly, only makes it worse. Every word slams into me like a bullet, and I sink down on the couch, slowly bleeding out.
Finally, I whisper, connecting all the dots, “So he thinks when he couldn’t make you use it anymore, it just slowly atrophied?”
Hudson nods. “Why do you think he eventually let me leave the Vampire Court and attend Katmere? I was no longer of use to him.”
My heart breaks wide open for the little boy in that memory. And for the guy standing in front of me, too. But I don’t have time to analyze my feelings right now. I need to convince everyone that the devil they fear doesn’t exist.
I don’t bother to answer Mekhi. Instead, I plead with the group, “Are you really sure that you’ve got the full story? I know what you believe, but have you ever stopped to ask why he did what he did? Have you ever stopped to wonder if there was a justifiable reason?”
“For murder?” Jaxon narrows his gaze on me. “You’re starting to believe whatever lies he’s been feeding you. Grace, you know he can’t be trusted.”
“I don’t know that,” I answer with a shake of my head.
“What if we bring him back and it turns out he’s been planning to start his evil crusade all over again?” Gwen asks. “How do we live with ourselves?”
“Yes, because that’s what I’ve been doing. Plotting for months on how to destroy the world.” He shakes his head. “Who do they think I am? Dr. Evil?”
I ignore him because I know I have only a couple of minutes to make my case or they’re going to move on, whether I want them to or not. So I look from person to person and try to explain. “Cyrus was organizing an army of made vampires, and others, to start another war. Hudson was only trying to prevent an even bigger catastrophe. I’m not saying I agree with his methods, but I believe him when he says he was doing the right thing. He only turned Cyrus’s allies against one another.”
Flint looks like I hit him with a truck. “Are you blaming my brother for what Hudson did?” I have never seen Flint really mad before, and as he raises up to his full dragon height, I have to say, I hope I never see it again. He’s not threatening me in any way, but yeah. He is pissed. “Is he telling you my family was aligned with that fucking power-hungry monster?”
“Your brother most certainly was,” Hudson replies, but I ignore him. “Had a nasty temper and hated being boxed in by humans.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Flint.” I try to calm him down. “But I am saying there may be more to this story than you know. I believe him. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jaxon finally chimes in.
“Excuse me?” I stare at him. “What exactly does that mean?”
“You have Hudson whispering in your head, trying to trick you—”
“You really think I’m that silly? That I don’t know my own mind?” I ask.
“I think you’re human—”
“But I’m not only human,” I shoot back. “Am I? At least, not any more than the rest of you. So why does my opinion matter less?”
“Because you weren’t there,” Jaxon tells me, and he sounds exasperated. Which is fine with me, because I’m way beyond exasperated at this point. Not that that seems to matter to him. Either because he doesn’t know that he’s offended me or he doesn’t care—neither of which is particularly okay in my opinion. “You didn’t see what we saw.”