20 Without Fear (1/2)
After Ruby went to bed, Ash thought about his revenge the way he did every night. Even with weeks to think about it he had yet to come to a conclusion.
He was one vampire against the largest and undeniably strongest coven in North America. The Cromwells had at least sixty vampires in their ranks so they had been able to slaughter his comrades easily.
He wasn't terribly gifted at blood magic either. He couldn't make others do his bidding by controlling their blood and his barriers were never complete domes.
The one aspect of magic Ash was good at involved detecting whether or not there was something wrong with someone else's blood. Before the days of blood pills, he had been talented at sniffing out weak prey that would go down easily.
That was completely useless to him now. That skill only ever worked on humans anyway and they were no longer treated as prey but beings to be feared and respected.
Undeniably one of the most powerful and dangerous subspecies of fae, the vampires had resisted going under human rule the longest. It was why to this day they never fully integrated the way other races did.
And he was probably the weakest one of the lot. It was horribly ironic that he of all the people in his coven had ended up with everyone's lives in his hands. All because his last name was Mayhew.
Ash sighed and drummed his fingers against the cool stone of a bench in the garden. He had wanted to exact his revenge alone but there was no way he would be able to pull that off within the next thousand years.
He—and more importantly, his fallen brethren—couldn't wait that long for vengeance. Unfortunately, he would need allies. Ruby seemed like a good place to start given her strange ability to make money appear practically out of thin air.
But everything he had seen of her so far indicated she was a free spirit who would be tied down by nothing and no one. He had nothing that could persuade her to stay.
Maybe if he watched her carefully over the next few days he might figure out what would seem like a fair deal to her. Ash didn't have much to offer but there had to be something. He didn't want to have to resort to blackmail. An unwilling ally could easily become an enemy.
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Ruby proved herself to be resourceful the next several days. Ash noticed that the pile of glass in the dungeon was slowly working its way into holes where the broken windows had been. She actually created windows!
The kitchen and one of the empty rooms not far from the only functioning bedroom became full of useful items she had brought from human society. The furniture was completely ordered but would take a few weeks to all get here.
If she wasn't working on her window project she was out in the garden pruning or planting all the dark flowers she had told him about. Progress was fairly slow but she was doing everything by herself and the garden was huge.
Ruby kept her guard up, not saying a word about her powers or dropping her glamour at all, but she did chat with him pleasantly about a variety of topics when they were both awake. They spent a lot of time comparing things between their races and talking about human advancement since Ash was so behind the times.