Chapter 72
The Council Can Kiss Our Collective Ass
They arrived at high noon, because vampires love drama and bad timing.
Twelve ancient bloodlords in crimson robes descended on a storm of screaming ravens, landing in the academy's ruined courtyard like they'd rehearsed it in a mirror.
The leader (Councilor Vespera, Thorne's great-aunt a few centuries removed) stepped forward, petrified-dragon-bone staff tapping the cracked marble like a judge's gavel.
"Thorne Alexander Blackwood. Riley Kane."
Her voice cut through the midday heat like iced steel.
"You are charged with unauthorized activation of the Sanguis Draconis, catastrophic property damage, and the unsanctioned execution of a Class-Omega Void entity."
She waved a pale hand at the smoldering skyline of New Orleans.
"Also, noise violations."
Remy, leaning against his Chevy with a piece of beef jerky hanging out of his mouth, started laughing so hard he had to brace himself on the hood.
Celeste rolled up beside him on her hoverboard, twin tails flicking, ruby eyes glittering with delight.
"Ma'am," she called, sweet as poisoned honey, "you can take those charges and fold them until they're all corners, then sit on 'em."
Vespera's ravens screeched.
Thorne stepped forward, shadows pooling at his feet like oil.
"Try to take us," he said, calm and arctic, "and we'll add 'Council extinction event' to the list."
Vespera raised her staff.
Every raven dove.
And stopped mid-air.
Celeste lifted one lazy finger.
Every bird turned to solid ruby crystal and dropped like stones.
Remy spun his bat once.
"Rams don't kneel," he said, voice pure Hot Springs gravel. "We ram."
Lucian cracked his neck, copper scales rippling across bare shoulders.
Seras let flames crawl up her arms like friendly cats.
Jax (shirtless, soot-streaked, grinning) unfolded a lawn chair someone had looted from a wrecked patio and sat front-row with a warm beer.
Li appeared beside him with a bowl of popcorn that smelled suspiciously like brimstone.
"Ten bucks says the Council lasts thirty seconds," Jax announced.
"Twenty says fifteen," Li countered.
Elowen just sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.
Vespera's eyes narrowed on the glowing Sanguis Draconis marks blazing on my hip and Thorne's chest.
"That mark is an abomination," she spat.
I lifted our joined hands.
The mark answered (white-gold fire and midnight shadow spiraling upward into a perfect eclipsed sun that hung above the courtyard like a second, angrier noon).
Every vampire on the Council dropped to their knees, hissing in pain.
The eclipsed sun pulsed once.
Every ward they'd brought shattered like cheap glass.
Vespera's staff cracked clean in half.
Silence.
Then Remy started slow-clapping.
"Damn, y'all," he said, "that was faster than a Friday-night fight behind the Sonic."
Celeste kicked her board up into her hand.
"New rule," she declared, voice ringing clear across the courtyard. "The Veil protects everyone, or it answers to the kids who just killed your goddess with school spirit and spite."
Vespera looked up at us (really looked) and saw what we'd become.
Not students.
Not rebels.
The new law.
She bowed (slow, stiff, furious).
"The Council… recognizes the authority of the Sanguis Draconis," she forced out through clenched fangs.
Translation: we won.
Thorne's smile could have frozen hell.
"Good," he said. "Now get off our lawn."
The ravens (the ones that could still fly) took off screaming.
The Council vanished in a swirl of red robes and wounded ego.
Jax raised his beer.
"To the dumbest, luckiest, hottest apocalypse squad south of the Mason-Dixon!"
We cheered (all of us, even Elowen).
Remy slung an arm around Celeste's waist and kissed her temple.
"Crawfish?" he asked the group.
"Crawfish," everyone answered.
Because when you've just made the Vampire Council kneel in broad daylight, you celebrate with cayenne, cold beer, and people who'd burn the world down to keep you safe.
The South: 2
The Council: 0
Crawfish, Coyote, and a Black Envelope
The victory boil was held in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, because nothing says "we just murdered a goddess" like paper lanterns strung between above-ground tombs, a brass band made of ghost musicians, and five hundred pounds of crawfish dumped straight onto newspaper-covered crypts.
Remy had commandeered Marie Laveau's tomb as the bar.
Celeste floated above it on her hoverboard, twin tails glowing in the lantern light, ruby eyes bright as brake lights while she poured moonshine into mason jars with blood-red runes.
Lucian (shirtless, copper scales glinting) wrestled the giant cast-iron pots like they weighed nothing.
Seras kept the flames under-fire going with one lazy hand, flames dancing to the trumpet solo.
Jax and Li ran a betting pool on who could eat the most crawfish without crying.
(Current leader: Lucian. Current crier: Jax.)
Thorne and I sat on top of the tallest crypt, legs dangling, sharing a jar of something that tasted like gasoline and forgiveness.
The Sanguis Draconis glowed soft between us every time our shoulders brushed.
Remy climbed up beside us, three jars in hand.
"To the dumbest, bravest, hottest pack of idiots the South ever spit out," he toasted.
We clinked and drank.
The burn was perfect.
Halfway through the second jar, the temperature dropped twenty degrees.
The ghost band missed a note.
Every lantern flame turned coyote-gold.
A soft knock echoed through the cemetery (three polite taps, like someone asking to borrow sugar).
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Remy's jar slipped from his fingers and shattered on the tomb roof.
"Well, shit," he muttered.
The air in front of Marie Laveau's tomb rippled like heat over asphalt.
A man stepped through.
Tall, bronze-skinned, wearing a sharp 1940s zoot suit the color of midnight, fedora tilted just right.
Eyes like dying stars and a grin that could steal fire from the sun.
Chulëkonsis.
Coyote himself.
He tipped his hat to Remy.
"Howdy, grandson. Still owe me twenty bucks from '34."
Remy flipped him off with both hands.
Coyote laughed (the sound made the lanterns swing and the dead smile in their graves).
He turned to me and Thorne.
"Y'all did good," he said, voice warm as campfire and twice as dangerous.
"Killed a goddess, made the Council kneel, didn't even burn down the whole city. Proud of you."
Then he flicked his wrist.
A black envelope sealed with a wax coyote paw appeared in my hand.
The paper smelled like cedar smoke and the end of the world.
Coyote winked.
"Invitation," he said. "Parley at the place the Veil was born.
Bring the whole pack. Bring your truth.
Come before the next new moon, or the Veil finishes unraveling on its own schedule."
He looked around at all of us (dragon, vampire, coyote, blood wizard, fire sorceress, wolf, witch, and one very tired headmistress).
"Dress code: come as you are when the world ends."
Remy found his voice.
"And if we tell you to shove it?"
Coyote's grin widened.
The broken pieces of Remy's jar rearranged themselves into one burning word on the tomb roof:
BOOM.
Then they went out.
Message received.
Coyote tipped his hat again.
"See y'all soon. Try the crawfish (they're divine)."
He stepped backward into nothing and was gone.
The temperature climbed back to normal.
The ghost band struck up a slow, mournful zydeco tune.
Remy stared at the empty air where his ancestor had been.
"Well," he said finally, "family reunions just got interesting."
Celeste rolled up, ruby eyes narrowed at the envelope in my hand.
"Open it," she said.
I did.
The words unfolded in fire and smoke, hanging in the air for everyone to read:
Come to the Crossroads.
Bring the key, the lock, and the ones who laugh at both.
We have tea.
We have truth.
We have a deck of cards older than your gods.
Fail to show and the house wins.
With love and mischief,
— Coyote & Company
The letters dissolved into laughing sparks that spelled one last line before vanishing:
P.S. Tell Remy his tab's now forty bucks. Interest is a bitch.
Remy groaned.
Thorne squeezed my hand.
"Road trip?" he asked.
I looked at our pack (covered in cayenne and graveyard dirt, grinning like lunatics).
"Road trip," I said.
The new moon was nine days away.
Coyote was waiting.
And the South (bless its reckless, beautiful heart) was about to play the biggest game of its life.
Road Trip to the End of Everything
We left at 3:33 a.m. because Remy said any earlier was "rude to the moon" and any later was "rude to Coyote."
The matte-black '70 Chevy pickup (now affectionately nicknamed The Ram) had been magicked into something bigger on the inside than physics allowed. Back seat folded out into a full couch. Lucian's dragon form could fit in the bed if he curled tight. Celeste's hoverboard charged off a blood-crystal in the glovebox.
We packed like we were running from the law (because technically we were):
- Remy: baseball bat, three changes of Lakeside Rams gear, a cooler of sweet tea strong enough to wake the dead, and a photo of his grandmother flipping off a "No Indians" sign in 1952.
- Celeste: skateboard, platinum twin tails tied with crimson ribbons, a duffel full of spell-etched vinyl records, and one (1) wedding ring that could level cities.
- Seras: cheer pom-poms that were secretly flamethrowers, a mixtape labeled "Apocalypse Bangers Vol. 3," and enough hot sauce to commit war crimes.
- Lucian: zero shirts, one pair of sweatpants he'd probably lose by Arkansas, and a dragon-sized bag of beef jerky.
- Thorne: black duffel, older-than-dirt leather jacket, and the quiet kind of calm that meant he was ready to burn kingdoms.
- Me: Mom's lighter, Dad's old hunter journal (now annotated with dragon doodles), and the black envelope burning a hole in my pocket.
- Jax & Li: stolen academy van (for "backup"), a drone, three laptops, and enough snacks to survive nuclear winter.
- Elowen: one credit card with no limit, one bottle of 300-year-old dragonfire whiskey, and the expression of someone who had already filed the paperwork for "interdimensional incident" in triplicate.
We rolled out of New Orleans with the windows down, Seras's mixtape blasting "Sweet Home Alabama" at volumes that counted as noise warfare.
Remy drove, one hand on the wheel, the other drumming on Celeste's thigh where she sat shotgun, feet on the dash, ruby eyes reflecting the dashboard lights like twin warning beacons.
Thorne and I took the back seat, my head on his shoulder, his fingers tracing lazy circles over the Sanguis Draconis mark through my shirt.
Every mile we put between us and the city, the bond hummed louder (like it knew we were driving toward the place it was born).
Somewhere around Baton Rouge, the envelope in my pocket started glowing.
Celeste noticed first.
"It's talking," she said, pulling it out with two fingers like it might bite.
The wax seal melted on its own.
Words appeared on the dashboard in floating coyote-gold fire:
Turn left in exactly 6.66 miles.
You'll know the road when you see it.
(You won't see it until you believe it.)
Remy read it, snorted, and took the next exit anyway (onto a dirt road that definitely hadn't existed five seconds ago).
The Chevy's headlights cut through pine trees older than language.
The radio dissolved into static, then Coyote's voice, warm and crackling:
"Atta boy, grandson. Keep the shiny side up and the rubber side down."
Remy flipped the radio off with one finger.
Celeste laughed, low and delighted.
The road narrowed until the trees scraped paint.
Then it opened into a clearing that shouldn't fit between two pines.
A single streetlamp flickered in the center.
Under it stood a crossroads sign made of bone and rusted iron.
Four directions:
NORTH: Where the Veil was born
SOUTH: Where the dead still vote
EAST: Where the sun lost a bet
WEST: Where Coyote keeps his best lies
A chalkboard leaned against the post:
PARK HERE.
WALK THE REST.
NO PHONES. NO WEAPONS. NO BULLSHIT.
Li whimpered and powered down her drone.
Remy cut the engine.
The Chevy died with a satisfied sigh.
We climbed out into air that tasted like the first day of the world and the last day of everything at the same time.
The bond in my chest went perfectly still.
Thorne took my hand.
Remy took Celeste's.
Seras took Lucian's.
Jax took Li's.
Elowen took a long pull from the whiskey bottle and offered it to the night.
Somewhere in the dark between the trees, a coyote howled once (long, slow, laughing).
The crossroads waited.
We walked.
Nine days were up.
The game was about to begin.