Chapter One
Vladislov
All thrones, all palaces, all places in this world where creatures of the night lingered—every corner of every continent where hunting grounds might exist—all of it bored me. I couldn’t even recall what state the world had been in, the borders of countries, the wars fought, when I last sat as king. Others were placed to carry out that work in my stead. To lord over the night’s denizens and keep our kind in line.
Keep my children thriving, learning, adapting, bringing pride to our race.
Darius had been my favorite son, hand-plucked from the Persian court. So much potential… and the ultimate disappointment. Thousands of years were no excuse to forget one’s duty and where one came from. Namely from me, who’d chosen him, raised him, taught him, granted him power far beyond what others of our kind possessed.
Power that was abused.
How soon they forget.
So there I sat, on my dismembered son’s throne, aghast to be reorganizing a disrupted hive full of Darius’ more evil creations. Their minds were… fascinating. Their inability to answer my questions, clever. My son truly believed his gifts set him on equal footing with his creator. Yet all he did was make a mess. What I was seeing was little more than extreme selfishness, even for our kind.
There were secrets buried here, in tunnels that spanned the entirety of this city. Thousands of humans trafficked and kenneled, disposed of with none the wiser.
That, I would give my boy, was clever.
Vampires weren’t even a myth in the new world. They were fodder for television shows and movies. Yet thousands lived in this city, hunting, breeding, bickering, and surviving right under the noses of millions of humans.
The evolution of my kind had been curious to observe. From vicious predators who’d ransack entire towns in one moonlit night, to subtle and stealthy, wiser, monsters.
Yet, still a bother. Even with all their new rules and new technology and endless opportunities, some just didn’t deserve the gifts they were given. And some were not given enough.
Such as my descendent, Jade. Daughter of my dismembered son Darius with so many remarkable talents for our kind, all stripped from her by dear old dad until she was weaker than the lowliest servant. Until her mind was broken, scarred, and required more blood from my veins than—in my long, long history—I had ever given another.
A soft spot I had for my grandchild, though I imagined in ten thousand years, I’d be dismembering her too.
The beautiful imp looked every bit her father’s daughter, no denying the resemblance. But only the fates could say what time and power would make of her. Darius was not the first of my creations I’d been forced to handle.
He would not be the last.
A flutter. A single unusual heartbeat at that thought.
I’d rather not see Jade fragmented physically. Not after she’d already been so fragmented mentally. I’d see her rise.
Yet now she played house with her strict lover. Now she recovered, her people recovered, the throne recovered, because I sat the throne for the first time since humans traveled over oceans.
Listening to petty squabbles, culling an overripe herd. Being gracious to my grandchild while simultaneously contemplating war—a mass extinction across all vampire civilizations. The rapture.
Kings and queens all over the world were failing in their rule, chasing pleasure and forgetting to parent. Tithes became poorer, greed on the rise.
Which could be partially blamed on modern times and the infection of selfishness that reigned in all society, human and vampire.
Perhaps a World War was just the thing? Set back this mania, remind all life that death hovered and whispered in their ear.
Without great loss and suffering, what was there to remember to treasure?
Shiny objects? Bitcoin? Art?
The only art I admired these days was the portrait of my granddaughter. Painted myself, and perfect. Life-size, dominating the throne room. A testament of millennia of practice with a brush and the old style of mixing oil paints.
A reminder to the few I had let live of just where their allegiance best rest. The first who had scoffed at it, I ripped in half. Careful that none of their blood might mark the canvas. Purposefully drenching all in the room with bits of dead vampire juice.
Baptized in the blood of a fool. Their one and only warning that she was held in my esteem.
I would have preferred to start fresh with this entire court. Donate some of my own dear flock, augment it with new blood. Find young prodigies with modern tendencies and acumen. But darling Jade had been given the option to choose the fate of this collection of errant idiots. So, I left her a few hundred. Though, to be true, in a year or two, I might return and kill them all if I found myself displeased with how things progressed. Once I deemed her recovery sufficient and forced her to take the throne, that is.
And I would come back. I always came back to this Cathedral, and had every year for near a century. I thought it was my son who drew me, that his inevitable end whispered in my ear. But now he was gone from this place in all the ways that mattered.
Yet still I heard the call.
Which made sitting a throne a bit more bearable.
“My lord.”
Ah yes, the one who loved my grandchild. Shining head bowed, manners impeccable, I found I liked Malcom… a very little. “What has she done now?”
These tales were always amusing, his weekly reports while she slept something I looked forward to in this endless slog on the chair.
“She is… perfect.” Rushing through his speech on her recent accomplishments, shaking his head, the man changed topics. Clearly nervous. “I didn’t come here to discuss Jade. There is something… I remembered.”
It was unlike this one to trip on his words. Which widened my eyes in anticipation and left me leaning forward, fingers steepled, a smirk on my mouth.
“Something”—glowing eyes met mine, concern, a touch of fear as if he might not leave this conversation with the borrowed heart in his chest—“that I must show you.”
I smiled broadly, standing from the throne, amused by something different. Anything different. “By all means. Lead the way.”
***
Long ago blocked off and forgotten, this area of the Cathedral should not have existed. Not on any schematics, not in the memories of those left alive here or stumbled upon in their excavations. But there it was, hidden behind so many layers of random, unused rooms, barred doors, spiraling ancient stairways so tight one had to bend in half just to navigate the descent.
Any recollection of this place had been ripped as violently as Darius might from every last mind who had ever known of it. There weren’t even rats, so tightly it had been sealed. Only damp, and cobwebs, and an utter lack of light.
Even eyes like mine could hardly see in this type of dark.
And I found I loved it. The vibration of the walls, the desolation.
It was a prison, once the burial chambers of the clergy this ground had been stolen from. Cells with iron bars where the dead inside had long ago gone to bone, or desiccated to the point a strong wind would blow them apart like paper.
Other cells had been fully bricked over, whoever was left inside trapped for eternity. And I had a strong suspicion I might’ve known a few missing vampires of a certain age who, by chance, might grace a cell or two.