Spell Bound - Kelley Armstrong [58]
As the crowd roared, the sarcasm bled from my thoughts. I stared out at that room and I saw the exhilaration and the anger, the pride and the resentment. I looked out there and I saw myself.
This was a force that could grow into something beyond our worst nightmares because it didn’t matter how illogical the plan was. What these people felt was not logical. It was a hunger and hatred that boiled in their veins. I’d grown up with that hunger and that hatred—that desire to make my power felt—and even now, I felt the pull of it.
I heard that voice inside me that said I was special. I was superior. That voice that had screamed every time a teacher tried to tell me what to do. Every time any human tried to tell me what to do. A voice that had begged me strike them down, blast them with a spell, and show them exactly who they were dealing with.
Growing up meant coming to terms with that voice. Recognizing it for what it really was. Misplaced pride. I’d done nothing to earn my magic. I was born to it, like a princess is born to her crown. In a land without princesses, that didn’t earn me jack-shit. I could rail against my fate or I could say that it was only right, that deed, not birth, should earn privilege.
That egalitarian view didn’t come from inside me. It was learned from the examples of those I saw around me, mainly from Paige and Lucas. Had I continued to grow up in my mother’s world of dark magic, I could be sitting in that audience, believing that humans were weaklings to be manipulated, conned, fleeced, then mocked over rounds at the pub.
Yet my mother’s crowd wouldn’t join this movement. These were the next generation, the ones still naïve enough to think they could expose their secrets without consequence, fight humans without selfannihilation. All it might take was some mystical crap about the planets being aligned or signs coming to pass.
Speaking of signs, that’s what Giles was emoting about now.
“—born of two werewolves, male and female. Not just any two werewolves, but bitten wolves. One infected as a mere child and somehow surviving where adults could not. Then he bites his lover, and she survives. The strength of these two individuals alone must be incredible, but to come together, their blood already joined, and bear children? Twins, a boy and a girl. As it is written in our prophecy.”
Prophecy? Like hell. If this guy was telling these kids that Elena and Clay’s twins fulfilled some kind of fucking prophecy—
“Those children are the genesis of a new breed of werewolves. Part of the next step in our evolution. But they are only one part of that step. We have seen more. One stands before you now. A hybrid of the two spellcasting races, equally adept at both kinds of magic. And she is not the last. There is another, born of witch and sorcerer, a child just coming into her powers now.”
Another witch-sorcerer? No way. I would have heard of it. Just like I would have heard of this goddamned prophecy.
Rage boiled up in me as I looked out over those stupid, gullible faces. I wanted to scream at them, knock some sense into their empty heads.
I shifted and glowered, and fought to keep my mouth shut. Faces turned toward me. Only they didn’t look up with the dawning realization that they were falling for the blather of a crazy man. When they saw my anger, they saw proof that Giles was right. I was furious because he’d discovered the truth.
I reined in the anger, forced myself to stand still and listen.
“Clairvoyants have attained the next step of evolution, too,” he continued. “Locked away, deep in the recesses of the Nast Cabal, there is a child, born of two clairvoyants, one of such incredible power his own people kept him hidden from the world. Now the Nasts hide this child because they know the truth—he is but the first of a new breed of clairvoyants that the Cabals are hell-bent on controlling, as they control everything else in our world.”
A grumble quaked across the room. A few people shouted things I didn’t quite catch, but I’m sure it wasn’t “Long Live the Cabals!”
“Even the half-demons