▪︎ Chapter 144 ▪︎ “In my opinion, I’m worth more.”

Lavinia stepped toward the officers, a pleasant smile resting upon her lips as she regarded the men and women who had arrived outside the hotel. 

Their hearts were racing, some considerably faster than others, and the mingled scents of apprehension and nervous perspiration were unmistakable beneath the night air. 

She chose to ignore them, clasping her hands loosely before herself as she tilted her head.

"Good evening. Is there something you need?"

The officer standing nearest to her swallowed heavily. 

His gaze wandered past Lavinia toward the vampires gathered along the street, then upward toward the surrounding buildings. 

Even the rooftops were occupied, with some vampires sitting along their edges and others peering curiously over the sides. 

Several newcomers hovered above the street with their enormous wings spread behind them, watching the newcomers with expressions ranging from amusement to mild curiosity.

Everywhere the officer looked, he encountered crimson eyes.

There were no pupils or irises within them, nothing to distinguish one part of the eye from another. 

Just an uninterrupted expanse of red, framed by the extraordinarily beautiful faces of women who could have torn him apart without much effort.

He cleared his throat.

"There's been a murder," he said, attempting to maintain a professional tone. "And you're a suspect."

Lavinia's smile didn't change, but several vampires immediately began protesting.

"A suspect? Everyone saw what happened!"

"That Ethan guy was a waste of space!"

"Honestly, I thought she did everyone a favor."

A vampire with lavender streaks running through her cyan hair stepped forward, her expression distinctly unfriendly as she looked between the officers. 

"You're not taking her anywhere. We only just got here, and now you want to drag our Princess away?"

Several others voiced their agreement, and the officer's hand shifted uneasily beside his belt.

Before anyone could approach him, Lavinia moved between the vampires and the police. 

She raised one hand, encouraging the gathering to settle down, then turned toward the women who had stepped forward.

"Now, now. There's no need for that." Her voice remained light, although she could feel their agitation through the Blood Sea. 

"Police officers are supposed to be people who swear to keep everyone safe. When we were human, we relied on them too, didn't we?"

A vampire whose dark hair looked as though she'd only just climbed out of bed scowled. 

Her untidy appearance did remarkably little to diminish the effortless beauty shared by her species.

"But we're not human anymore," she complained.

Lavinia smiled at her. "We were human, though. That hasn't changed."

A few vampires grumbled, and one folded her arms with an expression suggesting she found the distinction rather unimportant. 

Lavinia didn't press the matter. She briefly glanced toward Valerie, who was watching the exchange with a faintly amused expression, before turning back toward the officers.

"That said, I'm afraid I won't be going with you."

The officer nearest her stiffened.

"Ma'am, you don't get to decide that."

"I understand why you'd say that."

One of the officers lowered his hand toward his firearm, and Lavinia raised a finger before he could do anything further.

"It's not because I don't want to cooperate," she explained. "There's something else happening right now. A vampire was taken against her will, restrained, and subjected to experiments. Put simply, she was tortured by humans, and there are records suggesting that other supernatural people have been treated similarly."

A female officer standing behind the first man scoffed.

"Millions of people can go online right now and watch you murder Ethan Vale. They can hear him die, and you're standing here talking about something else as though that changes what you did?"

Lavinia looked toward her.

"Of course not. I killed him."

The admission was so casual that several officers visibly stiffened. Lavinia tilted her head, allowing her golden hair to fall across one shoulder like a shimmering curtain.

"I'm not pretending otherwise," she continued. "But I can't promise I'll obey everything you tell me to do. Not with the current state of things, and certainly not when vampires are being held somewhere and experimented upon."

Another officer drew his firearm.

The movement immediately attracted attention from the surrounding vampires, although the response was rather different from what he might have expected. 

Instead of retreating, several leaned forward curiously, while one laughed aloud.

"Oh, come on!" a vampire called from near the hotel entrance. "You should know how useless that thing is against us by now. Just go home!"

A few others began laughing, their voices carrying easily across the street. The officer holding the pistol tightened his grip, his face reddening as he looked toward the gathering.

"Is this funny to you?" he demanded. "A man was murdered, and now you're laughing when justice needs to be served! Is any of this supposed to be funny?"

A vampire wearing an enormous pair of dark sunglasses sighed as though she'd been interrupted during a pleasant nap. 

She pushed the glasses down slightly, revealing her crimson eyes before answering.

"Well, it is a little funny, because it was Ethan." She shrugged lazily. "Most of us didn't like him very much."

The officer stared at her.

She tilted her head one way, then the other, apparently considering something.

"Personally, I don't think the Princess did anything wrong. Although maybe she should've dragged it out a little more?"

That suggestion caused an immediate argument among the vampires.

"No, that would've been cruel!"

"He deserved it!"

"She shouldn't have killed him at all. Now people think he's important!"

"He was already making everyone hate us!"

"Well, I don't particularly want to get along with humans anymore, thanks to people like him."

The conversation spread through the gathering with remarkable speed. 

Some vampires insisted that Ethan should have died immediately, while others argued that killing him had only made him more significant than he deserved to be. 

A few expressed genuine discomfort with what had happened, although even those women seemed far more concerned about the consequences for vampires than about Ethan himself.

Lavinia watched them bicker, her expression becoming faintly exasperated.

She understood their feelings, even when she disagreed with their conclusions. 

Ethan had spent considerable effort encouraging people to fear and despise vampires, and now the vampires he'd spoken about were standing together, openly discussing his death.

She glanced toward Violetta.

The purple-haired vampire was watching the officers carefully, her expression serious.

Lavinia turned back toward the police.

"I think you should go," she said gently. "Pointing a gun at me isn't going to accomplish anything, and it certainly won't discourage a vampire from acting if she decides she wants to."

One of the officers gritted his teeth.

"How are you not monsters when you act like this?"

The question drew several indignant reactions, but Gwendolyn spoke before the others could begin arguing again.

"Ethan wasn't innocent," she said, her bright voice carrying clearly through the gathering. "He spent a lot of time making people hate us, even when we were trying to help. That doesn't mean everything that happened tonight was good, but you can't pretend he never did anything wrong."

Another vampire spread her arms dramatically.

"If you think I'm a monster, then fine! I don't care. I don't need humans anyway!"

"Oh, I like humans," someone else replied.

"Me too!"

"Some of them are lovely!"

"Most of them smell nice, at least."

That last remark earned a few giggles, although several vampires immediately began arguing about whether humans were worth the trouble they caused.

Lavinia shook her head, smiling faintly despite herself. She could feel the affection passing between the women around her, even as they disagreed. 

Their arguments lacked the bitterness she remembered from human disagreements, and none seemed particularly inclined to hold a grudge against another vampire simply for having a different opinion.

She looked toward the officers again.

"I'll make sure nobody here acts out of line," Lavinia promised. "You don't need to worry about the vampires gathering here."

The officer who had questioned whether they were monsters stepped forward, his expression hardening.

"Place your hands on your head," he ordered. "You're under arrest."

The gathering became noticeably quieter.

Lavinia regarded him for a moment, then sighed.

Before she could answer, Violetta stepped forward.

"Officer, I think you should reconsider."

The man turned toward her, clearly recognizing the military uniform she wore.

"Brigadier General?"

Violetta nodded.

"Even if you managed to arrest Lavinia, there are more than a hundred vampires gathered here, and considerably more are still arriving. Most of them came specifically because they wanted to meet her."

She glanced toward the crowd.

"They're already upset about what happened at the Institute. Taking their Princess away in front of them is going to make the situation considerably more volatile."

The officer's expression tightened.

"Are you threatening us?"

"No. I'm explaining the situation." Violetta crossed her arms. "You have a legal responsibility to investigate a death. I understand that. But you also have a responsibility to consider whether your actions are likely to endanger the public."

The man glanced toward the vampires, several of whom were now watching him with expressions that had lost their earlier amusement.

Violetta continued.

"Do you really want to see what happens if you attempt to arrest her by force?"

Before he could answer, another sound reached Lavinia's ears.

Engines.

Heavier than those of the police cars.

She turned her head toward the far end of the street, where a large military truck was approaching. 

Its headlights swept across the gathered vampires as it slowed, eventually stopping behind the police vehicles.

Soldiers began climbing out.

They carried assault rifles, and several immediately raised their weapons toward the gathering.

The vampires reacted with a mixture of surprise, irritation, and curiosity. A few began discussing the rifles, while others looked toward Violetta, apparently wondering whether the soldiers belonged to her.

The officer who had ordered Lavinia's arrest turned back toward the Brigadier General.

"She's a murder suspect," he said sharply. "Instead of doing the natural thing and helping us take her into custody, you're arguing against it."

Violetta frowned.

"That's not what I'm doing."

"Then whose side are you on?"

The question had barely left his mouth when a vampire blurred forward.

One moment, she had been standing among the gathering. The next, she was several yards ahead of the other vampires, almost directly between the soldiers and the women they were aiming at.

She stomped her foot angrily.

"Why are you humans so stupid?!"

Several officers flinched at her sudden appearance, while the vampire continued without waiting for an answer.

"It's always about sides! Your side, our side, humans against vampires, vampires against humans! Why does everything have to be like that?"

Her voice carried an anger that felt different from the irritation of the other vampires.

Lavinia tilted her head, studying her.

The woman had long hair that fell loosely around her shoulders, and her beautiful face was twisted with frustration. 

Beneath her anger, Lavinia could feel something heavier, a grief that seemed to have settled so deeply within her that it had become difficult to distinguish from the rest of her emotions.

"I had a husband," the vampire continued. "He loved me even after I became a vampire. He didn't care that I looked different, or that I couldn't get full when we ate the same things anymore, or that I wasn't human."

Her expression tightened.

"He still loved me."

The soldiers remained motionless, their weapons trained upon her.

"But other people decided I was a monster. They listened to people like Ethan, and they believed every horrible thing they heard. My husband kept defending me, and eventually..."

She stopped, pressing her lips together.

For several seconds, she seemed unable to continue.

Then she laughed bitterly.

"He died."

The gathering fell quiet.

The vampire looked toward the officers, her crimson eyes trembling slightly.

"I didn't want to wake up in a world without him. I still don't. But because humans are so stupid, here I am, standing in a world where he's gone."

She laughed again, although there was no amusement in it.

Then her expression changed, becoming strangely thoughtful.

"Actually, I don't want to die either. I should've just turned him into a vampire right away. Then he wouldn't have died."

Lavinia's expression softened.

She didn't know what had happened to the woman's husband, or whether his death had directly involved the people who'd hated his wife. 

But the grief beneath her words was unmistakable, and the regret she felt was painfully familiar.

The leading officer, however, seemed to have reached the limit of his patience.

"Get back!" he shouted, raising his firearm.

The vampire looked toward him.

She didn't move.

A gunshot cracked through the night.

The bullet struck her midriff, tearing through the fabric of her dress and drawing a brief spray of dark red blood.

Several vampires immediately growled.

"OPEN FIRE!" the officer shouted.

Before the soldiers could obey, Violetta appeared between them and the injured vampire.

Her movement was almost impossible for the humans to follow. One moment she had been standing beside Lavinia; the next, she had seized the other vampire and pulled her behind herself.

"Don't," Violetta said.

Her voice was quiet.

It was also frighteningly serious.

"If you open fire, every one of you will die."

The soldiers hesitated.

Violetta stood perfectly still, her crimson eyes fixed upon the officer who had fired.

"I'm not threatening you," she continued. "I'm telling you what will happen. You are aiming weapons at more than a hundred vampires, most of whom are already furious. If you begin shooting, I cannot guarantee that anyone here will be able to stop them before you're killed."

Behind her, the injured vampire snickered.

"Oh, that stings."

She reached into the small wound in her midriff, pinching the bullet between two fingers before pulling it free. 

The injury was already closing, and the fabric of her dress began repairing itself around the damaged area.

She examined the bloodied projectile with mild irritation before tossing it onto the pavement.

"I'm not letting another one slide, though."

Several vampires voiced their agreement, while others began murmuring about the officer's stupidity.

Lavinia stepped forward, exhaling heavily.

"What exactly were you hoping to accomplish by shooting her?" she asked.

The officer looked toward her, his expression strained.

Lavinia gestured toward the gathering.

"Even if every soldier here opened fire, you wouldn't manage to kill a single vampire. But if we decided to retaliate, how many of you do you think would survive?"

She wasn't exaggerating.

Vampires possessed extraordinary control over their physical strength, allowing them to handle fragile objects and interact with humans without causing accidental injuries. 

But that control was a choice. If a vampire stopped restraining herself, even an ordinary punch could inflict immense injury upon a human body.

And there were more than a hundred of them.

Lavinia looked toward the soldiers, several of whom were beginning to lower their weapons.

"Please don't make this worse than it already is."

The officer gritted his teeth.

"If you come with us without making a fuss, I'll order my men to stand down."

Lavinia opened her mouth.

Then the air split overhead.

A dark silhouette descended from the night sky with such speed that even Lavinia only had a moment to register the movement before it reached the street.

The vampire landed directly in front of the officer.

Her wings folded behind her, and one slender hand shot upward.

There was a sharp crack.

The officer's head was wrenched backward at an unnatural angle, his neck breaking beneath the force of the movement. 

His body collapsed before anyone around him could react, striking the pavement with a heavy thud.

For a moment, the entire street went silent.

The newly arrived vampire looked down at the body, then toward the soldiers and remaining officers.

"Leave," she said pleasantly. "Or you can die like him."

Several soldiers recoiled, their weapons shifting toward her.

She smiled.

"You couldn't even react to me. How do you expect to fight more than a hundred vampires?"

Her wings settled against her back as she looked around at the gathering, apparently quite pleased with herself.

"Honestly, I don't understand why you keep pretending you can—"

She stopped speaking.

Lavinia had appeared behind her.

One hand closed around the back of the vampire's neck, and with an exasperated expression, Lavinia lifted her several inches off the pavement.

The vampire blinked.

Then she pouted.

"Princess!"

Lavinia sighed.

"Really?"

The woman swayed slightly in her grip, showing no particular concern about being held aloft.

"What? I didn't like all the back and forth. They kept talking and talking, and then one of them shot someone. It was getting annoying."

"So you broke his neck?"

"Yes."

Lavinia closed her eyes briefly.

The vampire continued, apparently interpreting the question as an invitation to explain herself.

"It's better to show them. Otherwise, humans will keep believing we're things they can control. They think they can point guns at us and make us do whatever they want."

She gestured toward the officer's body.

"Well, now they know."

Lavinia opened her eyes and looked at her.

"That doesn't mean you had to kill him."

The vampire shrugged as best she could while dangling from Lavinia's hand.

"If they want to put you in jail, what would that even accomplish? Twenty years wouldn't mean anything to you. You could live forever."

She paused thoughtfully.

"And the death penalty wouldn't be equal, either. You're worth more than a human."

Several vampires murmured in agreement.

The woman smiled, seemingly encouraged.

"Actually, any vampire is worth more than a human."

Lavinia's expression became even more exasperated.

The vampire clicked her tongue and looked toward the angry officers and soldiers.

"Think about it. We can live forever, and humans can't. Our blood can cure almost anything, we're much stronger, and we're beautiful. Why would my life be worth the same as someone who'll die in a few decades anyway?"

She tilted her head.

"In my opinion, I'm worth more."

Lavinia huffed.

"That's enough."

She swung her arm backward and threw the vampire toward the gathering.

The woman sailed through the air for almost seventy feet, her dress fluttering as she passed over the heads of several startled vampires. 

She twisted gracefully before landing lightly among them, apparently none the worse for having been thrown.

Several vampires immediately surrounded her.

"That was too much!"

"You didn't have to kill him!"

"He shot someone first!"

"That doesn't mean you can just break his neck!"

The woman folded her arms, looking distinctly unimpressed by their objections.

"Oh, please. You were all thinking about it."

A few vampires protested, while others laughed or admitted that they hadn't particularly minded what she'd done.

Lavinia shook her head.

She could feel the argument spreading through the Blood Sea, although the emotions involved were surprisingly mild compared with the anger directed toward the humans. 

Even the vampires who strongly disagreed with the woman's actions didn't seem inclined to treat her as an enemy.

That was something Lavinia was still getting used to.

Vampires were extraordinarily protective of one another, but their tolerance for injuries among their own kind was also considerably higher than what humans might expect. 

A blow that would kill a human might merely inconvenience a vampire, and even severe injuries could heal with remarkable speed.

It made their interactions rather strange at times.

She could throw another vampire almost seventy feet through the air without worrying that she'd seriously hurt her, but a fraction of that force directed toward a human could be fatal.

Lavinia looked down at the officer lying on the pavement.

His neck hung at an unnatural angle, and she could no longer hear his heartbeat.

There was nothing she could do for him.

She couldn't resurrect humans.

Even if she could, she wasn't certain what she would have done.

That uncertainty troubled her more than she wanted to admit.

She'd killed Ethan earlier that evening, and although she understood the consequences of what she'd done, she still couldn't bring herself to feel particularly sorrowful about his death.

Now another human had died in front of her.

She hadn't wanted it to happen, but the anger she felt toward the vampire responsible was surprisingly limited. 

Mostly, she was exasperated that the woman had acted so quickly, without giving anyone else a chance to resolve the situation.

Lavinia sighed.

Perhaps that was simply what she'd become.

She looked toward the officers and soldiers, who were staring at the body with expressions ranging from horror to barely restrained fury.

Then she bowed slightly at the waist.

"I'm sorry about that."

The gesture seemed to surprise several of them.

Lavinia straightened, her golden hair settling against her shoulders.

"And thank you for not opening fire. I know you're angry, but I really think you should leave now."

One of the soldiers tightened his grip on his rifle.

Lavinia continued before he could speak.

"More vampires are still arriving. The longer this continues, the more volatile the situation is going to become, and I don't think anyone wants another person to die tonight."

Her expression remained gentle, although there was something unmistakably firm beneath her words.

She wasn't asking the vampires to surrender.

Nor was she offering herself for arrest.

She was simply telling the humans that remaining here would accomplish nothing except increasing the likelihood of further violence.

Violetta stood beside her, watching the soldiers carefully.

For a moment, nobody moved.

Then Valerie appeared at Lavinia's side.

Or rather, behind her.

Two slender arms wrapped around Lavinia's waist, and Valerie pressed herself against her girlfriend's back, burying her face against the curve of Lavinia's neck.

Lavinia blinked.

"Valerie?"

The orange-haired vampire inhaled deeply, enjoying the familiar scent of berries and pine.

"Mmm. I've never seen you behave so formally before."

Lavinia laughed softly.

"Really? Now?"

Valerie tightened her embrace.

"You were bowing and everything. Very dignified, Princess."

"Stop that."

"It's cute."

Lavinia reached back and gently pushed Valerie's head away from her neck.

"Don't be so clingy in front of everyone!"

Valerie laughed, refusing to release her.

A vampire somewhere behind them immediately called out, "Then they should go get all hot and steamy in a room instead!"

Bright laughter erupted throughout the gathering.

Lavinia's ears twitched.

"Oh, come on!"

Another vampire giggled.

"She's right! Let them have some privacy!"

"Privacy? There are more than a hundred of us here!"

"Then we can all pretend we didn't notice!"

Valerie laughed harder, while Lavinia looked as though she was seriously considering hiding her face in her hands.

A vampire with long silver hair leaned against one of her companions, smiling dreamily.

"I love how cool and soft vampires feel," she remarked. "It's such a shame humans can't experience it the same way."

Her companion laughed.

"Some humans can appreciate it!"

"Not properly!"

That earned a mixture of cheers and boos, with several vampires immediately arguing about whether humans could truly appreciate the beauty of vampires.

One insisted that humans were perfectly capable of recognizing beauty, while another complained that they always seemed to ruin it by becoming frightened.

A third declared that she didn't particularly care what humans thought, because she preferred other vampires anyway.

The conversation spread through the gathering, and within moments, the earlier tension had given way to a mixture of laughter, teasing, and affectionate arguments.

Lavinia looked over her shoulder.

The vampire she'd thrown was now standing among several others, apparently defending her actions with great enthusiasm. 

Some agreed with her, while others continued insisting that she'd gone too far.

Yet none of them seemed to dislike her.

Even the ones who were angry with her spoke as though they were arguing with someone dear to them.

Lavinia smiled faintly.

They weren't always reasonable.

They weren't always particularly restrained, either.

And some of their opinions would undoubtedly horrify the humans standing nearby.

But they were special.

Every single one of them felt familiar to her, as though she'd known them for far longer than the few minutes they'd actually spent together.

The Blood Sea connected them in ways she still didn't fully understand. 

Their emotions reached her, and hers reached them, creating an intimacy that ordinary human relationships could rarely approach.

She could feel their affection.

Their happiness. Their concern for one another. Even their anger carried an unmistakable sense of belonging.

Lavinia glanced toward the officers again. The humans were still frightened, and she couldn't entirely blame them. 

They'd arrived expecting to arrest a murder suspect, only to encounter more than a hundred supernatural creatures who could barely be threatened with conventional weapons.

One of their own had just been killed.

And now the vampires were laughing.

From the officers' perspective, it must have seemed monstrous.

But Lavinia could also understand the vampires.

They hadn't come here intending to fight the police. They'd come because she'd called them, because the Blood Sea had drawn them toward someone who could offer companionship and protection.

And when humans arrived with weapons, threatening to take that person away, the vampires had responded as though someone were threatening their family.

Lavinia looked toward the gathering once more.

Most of them agreed with the woman who'd claimed vampires were worth more than humans, at least in some respect. 

They might disagree about whether that justified killing, but few seemed willing to place a stranger's life above the life of another vampire.

Lavinia couldn't honestly say she was different.

She would always prioritize the life of a vampire over that of a human.

That didn't mean she wanted humans to suffer, or that she considered their lives meaningless. 

But if she were forced to choose between saving one of her own and saving a stranger, she already knew which choice she'd make.

And so did the vampires around her.

They all wanted to exist.

They wanted to be safe, to be loved, and to live without fearing that someone would decide they were dangerous simply because they were different.

Humans wanted much the same things.

The difficulty was that neither side seemed particularly willing to accept the possibility that the other might threaten those desires.

Lavinia sighed softly.

A utopia was an illusory idea for humans. 

There were too many competing interests, too many disagreements, and too many ways for people to hurt one another, even when they believed they were doing the right thing.

But vampires were different.

Their affection for one another wasn't something they had to cultivate through shared experiences or mutual understanding. It was already there, woven into their very existence.

They could disagree, argue, and occasionally behave in ways that would be unforgivable among humans, yet the connection between them remained.

If only vampires existed, Lavinia thought, perhaps a utopia wouldn't be such an unreachable ideal.

Perhaps it would be something they could actually create.

She looked toward Valerie, who was still clinging affectionately to her waist, then toward the countless crimson-eyed women laughing and talking beneath the night sky.

A small smile settled upon her lips.

Of course, the world didn't belong to vampires alone.

And that was where things became complicated.