Chapter 156 - A Holy Cause

I nodded. Whatever good mood I had going until now didn't leave a trace under a stream of annoyance these people pulled out of me. "Yes, yes, but could someone actually tell me what is this all about? I'm not telepathic here!"

"We want to make a public statement for the common people. In Internet, on news!" Prom Queen's eyes shone with a gleam of a someone swept away by a powerful idea. A fanatic, in other words. "Like LGBTQ community, the supernatural community will come out! We will fight to be accepted, we will carve our place in the society and both will be better for it. We won't have to hide our abilities anymore, lie to people about who we are. They are ready. It's time to open everyone's eyes!"

Prom Queen's group cheered in support of the pitch. I wondered where I heard it before.

"Idiocy!" Stick retorted. "People never will be ready for magic. Vampires are right to keep it secret. We will be hunted again, except this time it won't be pitchforks in peoples' hands, it would be assault rifles! You think governments won't send their people after us, especially with vampires whispering in their ears? You think people themselves won't fear and hate us just because we are able to do things they could never hope to? The time for open eyes was over millenniums ago!"

Stick's side cheered too, but in a calmer way. They were somewhat older overall, I noticed. I also remembered where I heard Prom Queen's pitch… It was something Alexandra and other witches from Orion Coven said, wasn't it? That the First Commandment was something outdated. Alexandra didn't plan on actually going to break, though, and good for her.

"Diana, you have to be to support our cause! You must agree that it's impossible to keep magic secret anymore, not with the demon on the loose! And you've seen its victims, didn't you? Imagine if people knew what magic was, were prepared for it. It would've been easier for them to guard themselves from dangerous elements of it." Prom Queen stepped towards me, holding my gaze like she tried to pass her ideas over me through eye contact.

"Dragonslayer, you are an esteemed member of your kind. Please, help me convince them that this idea would bring nothing but harm not just to them, but to our entire society. You must've seen the witch hunts yourself—can't you describe these morons what they will be up against?"

I gave Prom Queen's side a long stare, then turned to look at Stick's side, too. My eyes met JJ's, and I read in them a full agreement with my thoughts.

My thoughts were: this conflict was stupid, and these people had no business going over it in a cafeteria where people came to eat. And since everyone else was, apparently, too busy to pull these people apart by now, it was our job.

"Listen, this is an amazing idea, but if you keep shouting everywhere about your plans like this, some vamp will end up silencing you before you can get any public attention the way you wanted," I said to Prom Queen, doing my best to sound calming. I didn't have a lot of practice in calming. "Hell, there's a vamp right here. Why won't you go and… plan… somewhere where these, uh, people who don't appreciate your ideas as much as I do, won't be interfering?"

At the same time, JJ placated Stick with quiet, soothing words and a friendly, almost intimately so, body language. "You are a wise man, but not everyone is. Some people can't be convinced with simple words, and it's a waste of air to try. It's below your position. The thing is, and it's something my kind realised long ago, when the Commandments were created, is that there will always be deviants trying to go against the current. The only way to deal with them is strict, unyielding discipline. It's the same way here. Don't waste powers on these people. Instead, why won't you report to your Elder about them? She will apply proper discipline, as is her duty…"

I wished I had better position to watch the way Stick lapped JJ's words up. It was awfully impressive and decisively sexy… but then again, what wasn't with JJ? Instead, I had to keep talking with Prom Queen, who wasn't either impressive or sexy. She was just young and eager, way too eager for her own good.

"We have to be heard! It won't work if we aren't heard! We have to shout so loud that vampires won't be able to silence everyone, so they won't even try to!" I wasn't sure at this point if Prom Queen even listened to a word of what I was saying. Her eyes went unfocused and her gaze moved somewhere above me. "Thousands of voices will unite as one and the truth won't be hidden anymore!"

"It won't." I smiled and nodded to her. They said you never should argue with psychos. "You have to tell Elder Elena about it, too. Convince her first, so she would help you with being heard."

Prom Queen's eyes focused on me again and blazed even brighter, if this was even possible. A terrible blaze of purpose. Not obsession like I've seen on Christina, but a cause… a holy one, even. "Of course. Of course! We can't let these conservators do that first! But we—"

"What's going on in here?" I was saved from listening on further by an appearance of one of Elena's aides, accompanied by four witches, two of which were the same ones who were in Captain's team yesterday. It was good to see them up and about, and bad to see them giving JJ and me nasty looks.

While the arguing crowd repeated their pitches to the fresh pairs of ears, I and JJ quietly extracted themselves and moved aside. I had a feeling that it would be even harder to carve some time together with JJ than I thought.

Stick and his bunch could be settled down. Prom Queen… the only way she'd settle down was if someone shot a tranquilliser dart at her.