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“I haveeverything,” the Drakhyn hissed. It raised a taloned hand to Tegan, almost like it was trying to caress her. “I will see you soon, tiger.” The Drakhyn in front of them began to smoke and burn, much like the one in the interrogation room had. The other Drakhyn tried to get away from its companion, but all too soon, it too was smoking. Cord snatched Tegan away from them as they cleared the burning Drakhyn.
The Akrhyn on the grounds of the Headquarters looked at each other worriedly. The Drakhyn’s words were unsettling. The promise that there was more to come and that the Drakhyn somehow had magic? The fear of the unknown rippled through the Akrhyn.
Cord pulled Tegan to him, and Lucas saw the two of them lean into each other for support. Tegan suddenly shoved away from him. “You!” she started as she glared at the Castor angrily.
“Not now, little tiger,” Cord muttered, he sounded exhausted.
However, Lucas rushed forward when Cord froze completely as a blade was put to his throat.
“Tell me, murderer, when is the best time for you?” Tove asked from behind as she held Cord by the hair, her hand steady at his throat.
Leonid felt around in the dark once again. He had already scoured every inch of where he was, but sometimes in the darkness, he liked to pass the time by searching. He had been in darkness for many weeks now. The dark was usually nothing to his kind, as Vampyres had exceptional senses. When they “lost” their life, their hearing, sight and smell improved dramatically. Other Akrhyn, usually children, always asked a Vampyre about taste, expecting because they did not need to eat, their sense of taste vanished along with their heartbeat. But a Vampyre could and did enjoy the difference in blood from one species to another.
Touch was also amplified; a Vampyre was incredibly sensitive to touch. A youngling or newly Made was kept in the barest of rooms for the first year, or two in some cases, after transformation. In the beginning, a speck of dust on the skin was akin to a punch to any other Akrhyn. As a result of touch being amplified, other Akrhyn would make crude references to the lifestyle of the Vampyres. They could be a demonstrative race of Akrhyn, their capacity for love and affection well known. Too often their seductive and decadent ways led to a hedonistic lifestyle that was judged by other Akrhyn.
Leonid lay staring into the darkness around him. Usually, to put a Vampyre in a dark cell would not have much effect. Their ability to use their heightened senses to almost night vision capabilities meant that normally, a dark room to a Vampyre was a cloudy day to anyone standing outside in daylight.
But Leonid could not see. He had been in this room for weeks, and the darkness was never lessening. The depth of black was impenetrable even to his eyes. Leonid had existed for a very long time, and he had never heard of any of the Made being blinded like this. He had checked for his eyes several times when they first put him in here to ensure they had not been removed from their sockets.
The room was also bare. Stone floor, walls and ceiling. Leonid was old and from the old country. A stone cage reminded him of his home from when he was merely an Akrhyn servant to the Sentinels in a nearby castle to his small village. Rural Russia had been beautiful but harsh, and many perished. The age-old story: those who had plenty flourished whilst those who had nothing starved. In those days, the days of his youth, the Ancients had been more like family retellings, not the fables and myths they were now. Leonid was not sure if it was because of his and his village’s poor education at the time or because as the years passed, with no sightings of the Ancients, they became god-like. Sentient beings that were more than Akrhyn that had walked amongst their own kind.
Leonid’s head swam with the same theories, suppositions and fanciful wonderings he had been internally debating for weeks, as his hand traced over the cold floor. Sometimes, he would stand in a corner and watch the darkness as it watched him back. Other times, he would sit in the middle of the room and meditate. The room was not all bad—he had peace, he had quiet. Still, if he had the option to leave, Leonid would not be recommending the room as possible relaxation therapy.
However, nothing centred a being more than complete seclusion. His mind had slowly been emptied of his frustrations and his needs. As he had not been fed since he was imprisoned, he was aware of his thirst, but it was not bothering him. Leonid lay with his eyes open as he looked up to the ceiling. He knew the ceiling was not far out of reach. If he stretched while standing, his fingertips could brush the ceiling. He had measured the room when he finally calmed down from being taken. Eight paces by six paces. It couldn’t be said to be “roomy,” that was for sure.
His hand continued to trace the stone floor lazily. He considered his mistakes again. He had travelled on foot to get to Siberia. For some reason best known to the Vampyre Council, they insisted on their Court being held in Siberia, it did not roam the world like the Great Council did. Leonid was not averse to snow, or Siberia itself, but there were so many beautiful cities, like St Petersburg, why couldn’t the Vampyre Council host a Court in civilisation, even if it was human civilisation?
Much like the thirteen expeditioners that carried out the Polar Bridge Expedition in the late 1980s, Leonid travelled on foot from Canada, to the North Pole and then into Siberia, albeit he was doing the journey in reverse. His accelerated speed was a blessing, all of his Vampyre traits and abilities were a gift, he reminded himself in the darkness. He had made the journey a handful of times since he was “Made.” The fanfare and the wonder of the expedition in 1988 had amused him, but then, he made the journey as a Vampyre, while these expeditioners were human. The humans took three months; Leonid had taken a few weeks.
His delay had been due to the fact he stopped and fed. He didn’t feed often, his time as a Made had been long, and the need to feed lessened with time. However, to deal with the Council and more importantly his wife, Leonid had fed.
Should he have travelled another way? Should he have stopped to feed? Had they been watching him the whole time? Who were they? Did Kateryna know he had been taken? Or worse, did she think he had ignored her call?
Leonid had made a relatively easy journey to Siberia, but with three days’ travel ahead of him before he entered Vampyre Court territory, he had been attacked. The attack had been swift, efficient, and even as he lay on the floor, he still was unclear as to how he had been captured.
There had been no sound. His hearing would have picked up on it, especially in the depth of winter in northern Siberia. There had been no scent. He would have sensed them on the wind. There had been no awareness that they were there. Which meant they had portalled? Yet, his skin had not been sensitive to the change in the air.
All his heightened Vampyre senses and he had sensed nothing.
Much as he sensed nothing now. The room was in the darkness but may as well have been a cage in daylight in the snow. They had taken him, imprisoned him and left him. His senses picked up no other being anywhere near him. He was alone.
When he first tried to decipher where he was, he had waited for an inordinate amount of time, trying to sense if he was on water. He was fairly confident that he was not. As the dark was immune to his eyes, the stone was impenetrable to his strength.
He was beginning to think he was in a stone cube floating mid-air. Leonid closed his eyes. Where had he made the mistake? His internal musings voiced his suspicion.
When he left Tegan.
The answer was coming more and more frequently in his quiet reflections. He had left his daughter to answer a call from a Court that did not care for him. He was only still a member of Court because Kateryna was his wife. Leonid was born of a farmer, and as an adult, he himself was merely a servant. He should have died in the sixteenth century when his village was raided and burned by humans.
Instead, in the small hours of the morning, on a nameless day, a cast-out Vampyre took pity on the once farmer’s son begging for death. One bite. He had been Made fromone bite. The transformation was sensitive, the percentages of success low, but Leonid had flowed from Akrhyn servant to Made in one night,from one bite. His Master had not been expecting such a swift and remarkable transformation and, as a result, was not prepared for it. As Leonid was not prepared for the bone-rattling hunger. To his eternal shame, he fled his Master and was only found days later, having fed off an entire village. Leonid was found among the dead, again begging his Master for death.
Despite this, his remarkableness in his transformation intrigued the Elders of the Vampyre Court, so his Master and he were summoned to Court. Amongst the sheer opulence of a Court that Leonid never thought he would see, he noticed a shining star within it. The centre of their legendary Court, Kateryna Abramov was the jewel of the Court, and her family treated like royalty. Her beauty was the inspiration for songs and very, very bad poetry. Leonid himself had not been immune to putting pen to parchment and spouting absolute nonsense to the female of his dreams and desires.
To everyone in the Court’s astonishment, Kateryna did not deflect his advances, and within a week of Leonid being presented to Court, he was betrothed. Revered Elders arrived, older Akrhyn who were known for their wisdom and their leadership throughout the races of Akrhyn. They and those like them would later come to form the Great Council.
The Elders were bemused by his Vampyre form and Leonid’s ability to seemingly charm and woo the darling of the Russian Court. Suddenly, Leonid was being trained to be a Sentinel. Growing up, the Akrhyn in his village told him that he would never be a Sentinel, too thin, too weak, too poor. Now? Now he was gifted. It seemed that his Master’s bite had magical powers. His Master was forced to try turning another Akrhyn, willing or not, Leonid never knew.
The Akrhyn did not survive. Five more times, his Master was told to turn an Akrhyn. All perished. When they turned their attention onto Leonid for experimentation, Kateryna voiced her objection. Her command ran through the Court: her betrothed was not to be touched. Even the Elders of the Court adhered to her request.
