Fear and Blood

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

“Cassian?” Rome questioned, disbelieving. She remembered the cheerful vampire from the university car park and found it hard to believe that he could be involved in everything that was going on. “I thought he was working with Tristan. Wasn't he part of the peaceful coexistence movement?”

“Yes, he was,” Tricia answered, her voice now steady and emotionless. It was if she shut herself away so she could talk about Cassian without her feelings getting in the way. “He was one of Tristan's most loyal followers, but I expect he never really believed that humans and vampires could live as equals.”

“If he didn't believe in the cause then why did he join Tristan in the first place?” Rome said. What could Cassian gain out of joining an organisation he never believed in? Why would he pretend? Why would he fight for something he never cared about?

Tricia just shook her head. “I can only speculate that he was using the movement to get as close as he could to Tristan. He has been working with Tristan for quite some time and always followed orders to the letter, which is why his betrayal is so unbelievable.”

“What did he actually do?” the red-head asked, only just realising she didn't actually know Cassian's role in the peaceful coexistence movement. “What was his job exactly?”

The young vampire waved her hand in a gesture of dismissal, as if Cassian's job wasn't really important. “After Ly and myself he was next in command. Tristan picked him over all the aristocrats, which showed how much trust there was between them. Tristan would send him out to smooth over rough situations in places where vampires had attacked humans and, for the most part, he did a good job. He always seemed eager for his next assignment, but after his last mission I overheard him talking to someone about making Tristan see what was right in front of him and doing things correctly.”

“Correctly? He didn't think Tristan was doing the right thing?”

“It is possible,” Tricia said, though she seemed a little uncomfortable. “There were quite a few vampires who disagreed with the way Tristan was dealing with humans. Many thought he let them get away with too much and it was making the humans believe we would no longer fight back if they sought to control us.”

“So you think Cassian believed Tristan should have been tougher on humans?” Just like Ly, Rome added internally.

“Now I cannot think what else he could have been talking about, but it is impossible to say what I was thinking at the time,” Tricia was shaking her head and looking down at her hands. It was obvious that she believed she had a large role to play in what happened to Tristan. “I really had no reason to be suspicious then, but I had a feeling Cassian was not all he said he was. Ly had always felt there was something not quite right about him from the moment they first met, but if Tristan did not see anything wrong with him then that made him trustworthy in my mind. But... I was unable to shake the feeling he was up to something. I began following Cassian when he went out, watching where he was going and who he was meeting with. After a while some of the things he did or said failed match up with what he was meant to be doing. He was meeting with fugitive vampires and important political figures, all of which were anti-vampire campaigners. Eventually I confronted him, but he denied he was doing anything wrong.”

“You confronted him?” Rome said, shocked. The last thing she would have done would be confront a suspected criminal. Tricia was obviously a lot braver than she was. “What did he do? What did he say?”

“Not much, in truth,” Tricia shrugged, “but it was then that he made his first threat against me. He told me to back off because it would be regretful if anything untoward happened to me. I went to Tristan after that, but he disregarded my accusation. He only said I must have been mistaken, Cassian had been his friend for many years and he knew he would never do anything to endanger the cause or the Aleron family.”