Chapter 1125 - 1125 Chapter 110- Various - Super Natural Appreciation Convention Part 5 (VOLUME 6)
There was a lot happening at the moment, and Rowan didn’t know how best to react to it. He had come here with the sole intention of just blowing off a little steam, having a good time, and seeing what it was that all the humans seemed to idolize about them. He hadn’t understood why it was that they had felt the need to hold a convention in their honor.
It wasn’t like these humans had actually invited actual supernatural beings to attend this party of theirs, at least not to his knowledge. Then again, they might have invited them and just got no response back from any of them. How upsetting would that have been for the humans that were hosting the event?
Rowan imagined that he could see the humans sending an invite to Aunt Trinity and Uncle Reece and expecting that they would jump at the opportunity to be worshiped or whatever. That seemed like something that at least a handful of these humans would have been thinking. Not all of them though. Some of them were a little more reasonable.
When the commotion started and Rowan, along with his sister, had insisted on staying to help Darius and the others, he had not expected that there would be so many DOE members here. So far, there had been thirteen of them found and captured, and that last one had been really tricky.
While Kiernan, in his tiger form, had ran directly toward the bomb, only to get hurt in the process, Darius and Rowan had chased after the bomber. Finally, Darius had shifted into his wolf form as well, and the two of them chased down the man as he tried to outrun the super naturals that were much stronger and faster than him.
Rowan’s wolf form was tawny colored with gray green eyes. His hair was dark, like his dad’s, but his wolf took after his mom. He had always thought that this was strange, but he never questioned it. Darius’s wolf was a rich dark chocolate color. It suited the man perfectly. However, it was hard to tell as the two were running just which wolf was larger. Even though Rowan was young, he was powerful.
In fact, it was Rowan that had actually stopped the man that was running away. He had leapt forward and tackled him to the floor of the stadium, causing the human to sprawl beneath the giant wolfish paws.
“How many of you are there in total? How many more do we need to capture?” Rowan growled in his deep, rumbling wolfish voice.
.....
“GET THE FUCK OFF OF ME, YOU MONSTER!” The man was struggling beneath Rowan, sobbing like a child that had just had a toy or cookie taken away from him. “GET OFF OF ME!” His bawling voice was grating on the nerves.
“You are not getting away.” Darius told the man as he skidded to a halt next to Rowan and the bomber. “You will be sentenced to the fullest extent of the law for your terrorist and hate crimes.”
“YOU HAVE NO AUTHORITY OVER ME!” The man shrieked and thrashed with his cheek pressed against the hard floor. “GET OFF OF ME, YOU DISGUSTING MONSTER!”
“It is not polite to call us monsters.” Ilana strolled over, still in her human form. “We are not the ones that are trying to kill innocent people. We are not the ones that are bombing buildings and spreading fear. You are the monsters. You are the evil ones. We are just people that are trying to live our lives.”
Ilana had started to talk without thinking, but she meant every word that she was saying. She also had started without taking into account that there were still people in the area, human people. She noticed them from the corner of her eye now, and she knew that they were filming her. She knew that she should stop talking, stop saying these things, but she couldn’t help it. She felt compelled to do this, and she didn’t care who saw it.
“YOU ARE HURTING ME! I AM INNOCENT! YOU CANNOT GET IN TROUBLE FOR KILLING MONSTERS OR MONSTER LOVERS! THESE PEOPLE HERE, AND YOU DISGUSTING INHUMAN CREATURES, YOU ARE NOT PEOPLE! YOU ALL DESERVE TO DIE! IF YOU ARE ALLOWED TO LIVE, THEN THE WORLD WILL BE DESTROYED!” The bomber’s words sounded like delusional propaganda, and none of those that were nearby even understood why they would think those things.
“Why?” Ilana asked before expanding on the single word question. “Why do you think that we would destroy the world? We have been here, living among you all along. We don’t want to hurt anyone. We don’t want to destroy the world. All we want is to have a peaceful life without having to hide who and what we are. And, you know something, the only reason that we needed to tell you all about us now, was because someone was threatening to tell the world about us. They wanted to tell the world that we were monsters, just like you are trying to do. If we were monsters, wouldn’t it be better not to tell you about us? Wouldn’t it have been a lot easier to take over the world without you all knowing the truth? What you are saying makes no sense to me, sir. It’s just not adding up in my mind.”
“THEN WHY ARE YOU ALL HERE!?” The bomber screamed in response to Ilana’s question. “WHY COME TO THIS CONVENTION IF YOU ARE NOT BEASTS THAT ARE INTENT ON KILLING INNOCENT HUMANS?”
“Because we knew that people like you would use this convention as an excuse to kill people that do not hate us. I don’t know why you have so much hate in your heart, but it saddens me. It breaks my heart when I see people that are so lacking in love that they feel the need to drag others down.” Ilana crouched then, looking a little more directly into the bomber’s eyes. “I don’t know if you were raised to hate or if someone hurt you and broke the part of you that is capable of loving others, but I truly do wish that you knew what love felt like. Love heals and hate kills. That is the simplest way that I can put it. A world cannot thrive and survive on hate. People, all types of people, need to set aside their differences and learn to understand each other. This goes for setting aside race, species, color, religion, all the things that make us different.”
There were murmurs in the crowd as they listened to what Ilana had to say. The humans were enthralled by her words, and so were the super naturals that were watching on. Still, Ilana knew that she couldn’t stop. She was being guided by something that was beyond her, something that knew more than she did.
“It doesn’t matter what species we are, what color we are, where we come from, we all feel, we all love. If we all hurt, we all bleed. And when we bleed,” she paused and looked at her hand, claws extending, “that blood is always the same color.” Ilana drew her claw across her palm and let the blood flow down to the ground. “We feel pain. We bleed. We heal. None of that is any different for us than it is for humans. We fall in love. We get married. We have families. All of that is the same no matter where our ancestry comes from.”
The bomber, the human that had caused so much pain and despair, was looking at Ilana’s hand, and the blood dripping from it, with wide eyes. He looked as if he couldn’t understand what was happening. She knew then that the man had not thought that her blood looked anything like his, that they were that closely related.
“Do you know what makes us all different? Why are we the way that we are? Thousands of years ago, the Gods walked the Earth and mingled with the humans. They had followers and worshipers that were utterly devoted to them. Those that were the most devoted were given abilities that the other humans didn’t have. The Gods altered those people, and when they had children, the gifts passed along to them. Generation after generation, our people continued to thrive in the shadows of the world. But do you see the one thing that binds us all?”
“What?” A random voice called from the crowd, causing Ilana to look up in search of the speaker.
“We were all human at one point in time. The root of us all, it is the same. We were all human, every shifter, every vampire, even the Fae and the magic users, they all have a base element in humanity. Can we not just focus on what makes us the same and not what makes us different?”
There were tears streaming down Ilana’s cheeks at that moment. She didn’t want them to be seen, but there was nothing that she could do about it now. She was crying and all of these people were watching her.
Even as Ilana fought the urge to blush at her tears, there was something that surprised her more than anything else could have. The humans that were watching all started to applaud and cheer her. They were all saying similar things as they called out in affirmation to her words.
“WE ARE ALL BROTHERS AND SISTERS!”
“WE MAY BE DIFFERENT, BUT WE ARE ALL THE SAME!”
“LOVE HEALS, HATE KILLS! THE SUPER NATURALS ARE JUST LIKE US!”
“UNITY NOT SEPARATION!”
All of the super naturals that were gathered had been shocked by this outburst. However, they were standing in a group of supporters, so it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise to them all. Ilana understood that the people that were here, the ones that had heard her speech, would do their best to spread this message to the others that weren’t here. They would help to spread the love, and that was what they needed. More understanding, more awareness.
Things started to settle not long after the speech that Ilana had given. The man that Rowan was sitting on told them that there were eighteen total DOE members that had come that day, but they had only captured thirteen. The rest of those that were in attendance were checked and searched, but none of them had a bomb in their possession, nor did they smell like the bombs either. The other five that had come to the convention had to have escaped when the attendees had started to panic. Either they lost their nerve, or they knew that they would be captured. Either way, they weren’t here at the moment.
The police had also arrived during the time that Ilana had been giving her speech. The entire situation inside of the stadium had taken less than ten minutes from start to finish, but it had felt like it had been hours since the commotion had started. Barricades had been set up surrounding the stadium as the authorities arrived. The local police and FBI were once again working together to deal with the situation that had started so suddenly. They had been prepared in advance, because of the warning from Carter.
The police had stopped as many witnesses from leaving as they were able to. With any luck, they would have been able to capture the other bombers that had fled the building. If they had ditched their bombs and tried to hide among the other attendees, they might think that they were able to get out of the situation without being detected.
Rawlynne and Jackson were in charge of the situation though, and they were going to make sure that the search and interrogations were thorough. And that meant that the first sense that the officers and agents went in with, almost all of which were super natural, was smell. The bombs had distinct odors that even alert humans could smell when they knew what to look for. None of these people were going to escape if they had anything to do with the attack.
Darius, who had not been sure if he had done the right thing by letting the twins stay, had started to feel much better about his decision after the speech that Ilana had made. Yes, he was likely to get in trouble, because he just knew that the videos the humans had taken of her speech were going to make it online in a matter of minutes, if they weren’t already there, but he thought that the words that she had said needed to be heard. She had said what they all needed to hear. She had spoken from the heart.