What have I done...?

Chapter 20

Isaiah stopped for a moment and shook his head. "Anyway, halfway between the car and the elevator in the parking garage, we were set upon by at least a dozen strigoi. Zeklos was so cheap that he wouldn't even pay for valet parking. Ohhhh no, one of his guardians had to drop him and the rest of us off at the front door of the casino and at 'The witching hour'. And then go park in the underground, almost pitch black parking garage to save him five or ten bucks. Fucking cheapskate asshole. Anyway, Zeklos cowered between the front end of his car and the cement outer wall of the garage. He was a fire user so he could have helped us by using his magic, but he was too much of a fucking coward. Just like all those other spoiled royals, only ever thinking of themselves, never anyone else. And he could have even stayed hidden and still helped us. But instead, he just waited for us to kill the strigoi or die at their hands ourselves, the fucking cowardly bastard. I don't know how he thought that he was going to survive if or when we were all killed or turned."

"MOST of the royals, especially the Zeklos's, are all the things that you accused them of being. Especially cowards." I had just, unintentionally, agreed with a strigoi. And thankfully he didn't really seem to notice, he just absentmindedly nodded in agreement with me.

"Anyway, it came down to me and the last three strigoi. I was fighting two of them and the third got around behind me. Long story short, because of my prowess at fighting, the head of that particular group of strigoi. Decided that instead of just killing me and wasting my potential as a would be strigoi that he would instead awaken me. And as I lay there dying, I watched as the others were taunting Zeklos. Telling him just how differently that the fight could have gone down. If only he hadn't been such a fucking coward and had used his magic to help us fight. Even as they taunted him, he still didn't use his magic to protect himself, he just kept looking over at me instead waiting for me to save his weak pathetic sorry ass. And then they drained him dry, he was such a coward that they didn't even try to awaken him. Most strigoi that used to be moroi were awakened one of two ways, they either awakened themselves, which is what usually happens. Or they pay or offer something, or someone, of value to some other strigoi to get them to turn them in return. Anyway, I woke up the next night in a deserted nasty and rodent infested alleyway as a new strigoi." He shrugged as if being a blood thirsty mass murdering monster was no big deal. And as far as the strigoi are concerned, I guess it really isn't. Not like it would be to a dhampir, or like it would be to moroi such as Adrian, Christian, Mia, hopefully even my father, and several others. But unfortunately, it isn't that way to ALL of them.

"Do you REALLY and TRULLY think that if the moroi were to help us fight, or if the way that the guardians are allocated were different, that the fight would be any different? Any easier? Less one sided I mean."

He thought about my questions for several moments before he answered me. "Yes, I honestly do. Some of the highest ranked among the strigoi clans fear the moroi ever coming to their senses or growing a pair of balls or a fucking spine and start fighting with the guardians again. Or even allocating the guardians differently or possibly even living differently. Because they all think that if either of those three things were to ever happen, then in the beginning our numbers would start to decline slowly. And eventually, with magical back up from the moroi, the guardians WOULD bring an end to all of the strigoi. They... we, agree that it would most likely signal the death knell of the strigoi and our whole way of life. But I personally know that we have absolutely nothing whatsoever to fear because I know that it will never happen. Because the moroi, especially the royals, are all much to selfish and cowardly to fight. Because they would all rather see thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of dhampir die and be awakened each and every year than to put even one royal moroi in harm's way, even slightly. Because they know that if just ONE royal moroi is willing to fight for themselves and their loved ones. Then that will just PROVE that the moroi are ALL capable of fighting and defending. Just as much as the dhampir are, even more so than some of the dhampir are thanks to the moroi's magic, but that they are just too cowardly to do so. Which could possibly cause the dhampir to come to their senses and leave the moroi to defend themselves after the way that the royals have treated the dhampir for the last several thousand years. The royals either don't realize or just don't care that in possibly their children's lifetimes, if not at the very least their grandchildren's lifetimes. That there will be no more royal moroi for the dhampir to guard. My people are concerning themselves less and less with awakening or killing the dhampir and more and more about just killing the moroi. Again, especially the royals. We have thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands, well over three hundred thousand as a matter of a fact, of former guardians that are now strigoi. Some that have even been strigoi for hundreds of years. Now don't get me wrong, if the opportunity to awaken more GUARDIANS presents itself especially the well-known and well trained, we will take full advantage of it. Or even a well-known and well trained novice such as yourself Hathaway. But the main goal for all of us now is KILLING off all of the royal moroi. If it is too much trouble to kill or awaken the guardians, then we will simply knock them out instead and leave them laying there alongside their dead royal. Or a few of us will fight the guardians while the rest of us kill the royal. Either way, the royals WILL all die."