I nodded in response, swallowing down over the bile rising in my throat from the knot in my stomach. I played with a curl of my hair, but catching myself dropped my hands only to find them fiddling with the hem of my shirt.
“To our count,” Nira went on after getting a nod from me, “he’s got at least twenty new wolves. This fight is going to be about manpower for us, not skill, He’s yet to come up with even so much as a good, sound plan. He’s reacting only, making rash decisions, though under attack, he has the group well organized. They have just been unpredictable in their attacks to say the least. They seem to toss a coin to decide when to attack, and play something like pin the tail on the donkey with a map to decide where to. This shall be as much his downfall as it is our burden in trying to form a plan to catch him.”
“It really is unprecedented, his attacks.” another vampire, one I recognized from before with his blond-hair-and-blue-eyed All-American good looks. “That’s why we asked for your help. Rather than picking up the pieces each time, we need to get proactive and end this once and for all before we no longer even have a city to call home.”
“So, you are down to six vampires?” Lex asked, “or are others out?”
“No, this is it. It’s been a massacre. So, we are already outnumbered. We can’t get enough new vampires trained in time to win this. We will win this due to training and heart, overpowering their wild strength.”
A round of cheers went up quietly around the room in an attempt not to alert the neighbors, though with someone playing music with the bass up way too high outside in a car, and screams heard in nearby houses both from misbehaving adults and children, along with the commotion of people just hanging out on the street, I doubted anyone paid us much attention.
“So, we need a plan. Not knowing yet where they are holing up, the best we could come up with is to wait until the next attack, and then use a few of us to cause a distraction, to separate the pack. We don’t like doing it, using our own as bait, but we need to form a group that will take out Daniel. Luckily, his mistake this time will be getting his hands dirty. He no longer stays back and directs in his suit. He goes in like a wild animal too, and causes as much destruction as two of his pack put together.”
“He’s changed so much,” I said, not realizing I’d spoken my thoughts out loud until I’d started at hearing my own voice.
This started a chain reaction in my body that began with some subtle shaking and then migrated into a few deep breaths in a frail attempt to remedy the situation that only ended with fighting my fatigue from battling my emotions. The result, my body was now more heavily weighted down by everything hanging out there in the near future.
“He has, Christina. He’s on some sort of deranged warpath. We have to stop him and hope that after that happens his band of angry wolves will either disband, or be easier to conquer without his constant direction,” Nira stated with her own sigh lingering after her words were done.
“We’ve agreed it is the best course of action given what we’ve seen, been up against,” another vampire spoke up. “We are hoping that you will be with us, or if any of you can think of a better way, you know we are all ears. Anything would be better than this sitting and waiting for his next attack and then using our own as bait, but again, we haven’t thought of it.”
A chorus of murmurings went up around the room, each Royal more than willing to comply with our experience, our knowledge of the situation, willing to follow them into battle doing whatever they asked of us. I liked that position best anyway, being a follower. Even if I’d been trained now to use my powers, I wanted someone to give me direction, and I would do my part to the best of my new abilities to see the plan through. I didn’t yet trust my gut instinct, as I was still meshing my human and my wolf. Besides, I’d never been a leader, and I was okay with that knowledge. Not everyone needed to be.
“Thank you,” Nira finally said, addressing the group, gaining back the primary attention. “We appreciate you coming and being so willing to help.”
“As you have always been for us,” one of the Royals spoke up.
Nira nodded with a small smile before continuing. “So, now that night has fallen, food is in the kitchen if anyone needs anything, but all we can do now is wait for the latest commotion as our call to move out. Just let me assign you to groups first.”