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“Seamus was insistent.”
“I said I’m coming. Iulian is my blood. I have no choice. I want to find him and free him as much as everyone else.” Perhaps more, I didn’t say.
“He’s our rightful leader.”
“I know.”
“If not him—”
“Don’t.”
“It’s a fact, Mordecai.”
No one knew that more than me.
Taking in the Riverside Walk, the Thames, and the tall buildings lining its shore, I met Cristofer’s piercing gaze, resigned to my fate. “We should go if we’re to be on time.”
“Can you change, or are you too weak?”
“I can change.”
Cristofer jutted his chin and narrowed his eyes.
“I can.” I hoped I could. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d allowed myself to get too weak.
Heaving a sigh drenched in doubt, Cristofer led the way to a secluded shadow. As I followed, I taxed my ears, seeking Fletcher’s familiar tenor, thirsting for a final taste of normality, but he and his lover were gone.
I tried to ignore the activity—the humanity—we left behind. It was not my world. It hadn’t been for a long, long time.
Constructed in the height of the Middle Ages, Fairfax held all the markers of a once-illustrious castle. Time had weathered her limestone façade and crumbled many of her crenelated battlements. Moss sank deep into her moldering pores, while thick vines suffocated her more with each passing year. Her high walls and turrets, once meant to keep trespassers wary, had fallen to ruin. No longer manned. No longer threatening. Dark windows, like sightless eyes, left the interior exposed to weather and damage.
Fairfax had been abandoned and left to rot for centuries.
Her history was forgotten. Her ancestors long dead. What remained had been claimed by my nocturnal family. Any human who dared venture into our domain left with fearful tales of devils and monsters that ruled the night.
If they left at all.
She was one of dozens of castles spread across Europe. In the late fifteenth century, our first king—may he find eternal peace in his final death—struck a deal with the devil and our species was born. Although, contextually, the word born is inaccurate. The adjective implies that someone or something has been brought to life or into existence. We are neither alive nor living.
Some might call us a disease since we’d spread across the continent, multiplying in numbers with each passing century. We were the immortal undead. Sons and daughters of the devil himself. Ageless and immune to natural death. A blight on the earth. A curse. But not indestructible.
It was the noon of night when Cristofer led us through the empty halls of Fairfax. Our superior vision made light unnecessary. Sure-footed and silent, we maneuvered over fallen beams and the ashy remains of destruction.
Fairfax itself was not the location of Seamus’s gathering. The crumbling castle was meant to deceive our curious human counterparts. It was what lay beneath Fairfax that interested us creatures of the night. The ancient and winding catacombs, forsaken for eons, led to a chamber that had been constructed into one of hundreds of lairs we occupied across Europe.
Unlit sconces lined the walls as we descended stone stairs leading underground. The melted wax within their iron frames was thick with dust, grime, and insect carcasses. The damp air carried the scent of earth and ruin.
My enhanced hearing caught the chatter of dozens of conversations long before we reached the meeting room.
“How many people did he invite?”
Cristofer continued ahead as though I hadn’t spoken.
The narrow tunnel made it impossible for us to walk abreast, so I trailed behind, absorbing the rising tension of those present. Their unease emitted seismic tremors I couldn’t ignore. No one would be pleased to see me, but they had no choice but to accept my presence.
Accessing the lair meant traversing several dank passageways and crossing through countless burial chambers with loculi along the walls containing skeletons and sarcophagi. The barely discernible ancient symbols and art carved into the stones told stories of a time long forgotten.
Out of respect for the true dead, the subterranean roads had been unaltered. Their maze-like configuration made our nest difficult to find. Cristofer took us there on instinct, through what would have been impenetrable darkness had we been human.
