From his back he pulled a flask. I backed up so fast I was twenty feet away between one breath and the next.

Tad got in front of me and snarled. “You bastard.”

Lee held up his hands, his eyes wide. “No, no. We did a switch. We took the fennel oil from them. What they have in there is diluted honey. It was the closest we could get to the right consistency of the oil.”

I slowly regained my composure. “Why not just use olive oil?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t have any on hand.”

Tad beckoned him forward. “Let me see it.” He took the flask from Lee and spun the cap open. I could smell it even as far away as I was.

“Ernie, take it to Smithy. Tell him to get rid of it.”

Ernie saluted and scooped up the flask and was gone in a flash of wings and feathers.

There were maybe fifteen vampires who stood waiting for some sort of instruction from me.

“I want you to stay here. You’ll hear me if I need help.” Confidence flooded me. Not the cocky, I’m-going-to-win-and-everyone-hear-me-roar type. More the I’ve-been-through-enough-crap-to-last-a-lifetime-and-I’m-going-to-make-sure-said-crap-happens-no-more kind.

Not one argument slipped out of their mouths, or Tad’s. I walked up to the front of my parents’ house alone and let myself in.

Dahlia and Remo were laid out on the table, side by side, blood all around them. Their eyes were closed and their chests still. That didn’t mean they weren’t going to be alright again eventually, though; they were vampires after all.

A hand shot out from my left to grab my neck. I reacted faster than even I knew I could move. I grabbed the hand, twisting it around until the arm snapped, and I kept on pulling until it came off. I held the vampire’s arm in one hand and his neck in the other. I didn’t look at him, couldn’t.

Vampires shot from every direction, and I broke bones, snapped backs, and removed limbs as though I’d been doing it my whole life. All I could see was Remo and Dahlia, hurt, dying, at the hands of these monsters.

In a matter of minutes, they were all incapacitated, groaning, injured badly enough that they wouldn’t get back up.

I called out into the house. “You really do not want to upset me today.”

“I see, then how about we do things the hard way?” slid a voice from down the hall as a vampire dragged my father’s limp form in his hands.

“Alena, go,” my father whispered. That was the last straw, the final grain of sugar that tipped the scales.

I tossed the vampire in my hands behind me, feeling the Drakaina’s power pulse through me, stronger than ever before. No, that wasn’t true. The power had always been there. I was just finally ready to fully embrace it as my own.

The command in my voice was thick and heavy as mud-pie pudding. “Let him go.”

My dad was dropped like a hot potato, and the vampire in front of him trembled. I lifted an eyebrow as he took a step. “Freeze.”

His limbs seemed to turn to stone, and he shook even harder. “Impossible.”

I strode toward him. “Rules are going to change, or I will do to you what I did to the rest of them, only I won’t be so kind with you.” I tipped my head toward the vampires I’d dropped.

Whatever hold I had on him slipped. He snarled and flung an open flask at me. I didn’t stop moving, trusting that Lee had been telling the truth and he had truly swapped all the oil for honey. The sticky sweet scent of the thinned-out honey spread over my face and slid down my neck. I licked my lips. “Nice, but it isn’t going to save you.”

He moved as if to run, and I was on him with a single leap. We crashed to the floor, and I pinned his arms down. “Oh no, you aren’t going anywhere. You hurt the ones I love the best.”

“They aren’t dead,” he said.

“You hurt them,” I repeated, tightening my grip on his wrists. “New rules, you understand?”

He stared at me, his eyes filled with a mixture of hatred and fear. “What do you want?”

“You will allow vampires to cross-species date, marry, or cohabitate as they please.”

He grimaced. “It won’t work.”

“It will work for those who want it bad enough.” My voice was silken smooth, deadly even to my ears, and I drew his face close. “You will not interfere in Remo’s life ever again, and you will not return to his territory. Ever.”

“We are the council, it is our job—”

“Ever.” The word rumbled with a hiss that started deep in my chest.

He was silent. My fangs dropped, and I leaned in close to his neck. “Do you agree?”

“Fuck you.”

I felt the movement behind me. I rolled to the side, bringing his body with me. A long wooden stake was jammed between his ribs, right through his heart. I stared past him at a vampire I did know. Max, Remo’s second-in-command. He nodded at me.

“What are you doing?” I yelled.

“About time you showed up,” Max said. “They won’t negotiate. There is only one way to deal with them.” He pulled the wooden stake out of the vampire and drove it into another’s chest.

I pushed the now truly dead vampire off me and stood as the house flooded with Remo’s gang. They scooped up the council members one by one and carried them out of the house. I’d killed two, and the rest were easily taken because of the injuries I’d inflicted. I heard the screams, I saw the wooden stakes. I ignored it as best I could, knowing I was going to have nightmares about this night. I went to Remo and Dahlia. I lowered a fang and sliced it through my wrist. I held it over Dahlia’s mouth first, as she seemed further gone. Her face twisted after the first few drops, and then she groaned and sat up.