The Queen's Shadow

The Imposter

~~~Apollos July 5, 1951

"I know it's crazy, I'm saying to Orm and she's just listening to me talk about this plan. I think we can do something with it, though. Orm nods her head and has her hair tied in a bun. She looks like she's stressed but smiles at the maddening idea. She then says, 'What you're telling me Apollos is that you know who all 15 of the traitors are, "the major traitors" she says with quotation marks, 'And you don't want me to arrest them?' I nod my head, hoping she understands.

She then says, 'I'm humoring you because you were able to take out groups of vampires by yourself but what makes you think I'm going to let you do this?' That was an incredibly good question, one grounded in complete logic so I had to respond in the most honest way I could, lying to my big sister would be stupid. "I've been an only child for close to my entire living life and the fact that I have siblings that care about me has always been surprising, to say the least."

She nods and says, 'Fine. I'll let you do what you want but the second I think they're going to kill you, the second I think something's going to happen to you, I kill them all and I kill Hans for you,' I then say, "Orm, could you be reasonable?" She says, 'I am being reasonable. I'm entertaining the notion of you letting active traitors run around the kingdom,' I said to her, "They've killed so many, so many innocent people have died, so many innocent vampires put down. If we can drag out justice as much as possible, shouldn't we do it, sister?" Trying to appeal to her better nature was hard for me, Orm could see through me.

She then says, 'Brother, I know you want to drag this out. I know you're still being stubborn and you want your own brand of justice so how about this? I'll be a little bit more reasonable with you. I have a plan to help get in their good graces, Hans thinks you're dead. Hans hasn't seen you with a full beard and he hasn't seen you change in a lot of areas.' It's then that Orm whispers a plan in my ear, something I was surprised to hear. If my face could change colors, it would change from black as the night to pale as a ghost.

I then said to her, "I wanted revenge but what you're about to do is not just justice it is diabolical," She smiled and said, 'Revenge is beautiful but you have to remember, revenge is justifying the ends and the means.' She then drinks the rest of her blood cocktail, she says 'We can get started anytime you want, brother.' I say, "The sooner, the better." She smiles and says, 'Excellent, little brother. You're not as indecisive as you once were. You're becoming more and more like the vampire you're supposed to be.'

I then looked at her and said, "I thought I was already a vampire," 'You are,' she said with a smile, 'But you are still a kind-hearted man. You can't hope to be kind-hearted in a lot of situations. You can hope for a good outcome, though.' I heard her words and part of me was skeptical, but I've always been a skeptic.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" I ask. She then puts her hand on her cheek and smiles, 'Why wouldn't I want to do this?' She was giving me a chance to prove myself, they've been giving me chances to prove myself ever since I've been here. The last time I had to prove myself was to Lucian though it gave me help for the future. This time, it was from someone I didn't expect, this time it was from Orm. I've heard her being called a lot of names among the other men, a name that struck me as different was Orm the Lightning Queen. Some have even gone as far as to call her Orm the Lightning Goddess. I've never seen electricity in full focus before.

~~~Apollos July 7th, 1951

I take my time, getting comfortable with my bunkmates. I was pretending to be someone I'm not, it was easy. Some men had communication with each other, some didn't and the best way this worked was that Hans didn't trust all of his men. He trusted them with bits and pieces of information but it was never enough, important locations were distributed among the 15. The good thing about that was that he lost all of his important locations because we had them discreetly destroyed with Kaoru at the helm.