“And when Sylva’s safe, I’ll link up with you again and we’ll go after Randel Chayne.” Gavner nodded fiercely.
“No,” Larten said. “I must string out the game with the Nazis for as long as I can. It will be months, maybe years before I finish with them. We have to forget about the vampaneze for now.” Gavner’s face darkened again, but Larten chuckled bitterly. “Do not misunderstand me. We will find Randel Chayne. There is nowhere he can hide from us. When time is our ally, we will track him down and kill him.
“Aye,” he growled. “And we might have a little sport with him before we tear his head from his neck. I never had much of a taste for torture, but there is a time and a place for everything.
“But not now,” he said firmly. “Our obligation to the clan comes first. We will not be reckless in this matter. We are better than Randel Chayne. We will honor those who have placed their faith in us. Then, when we have our freedom, we will find the bloodthirsty cur and exact a most terrible and fitting revenge.
“Do not return to me when you part company with Sylva,” Larten said, gripping Gavner’s arms. “Find another master. Learn new ways to kill. Push yourself hard. Become the finest vampire you can. When it is time, I will summon you and we will take the battle to Randel Chayne and any vampaneze who sides with him. We will kill a hundred to get to him if that is what it takes.”
“You won’t try to find him without me?” Gavner asked lowly.
“On Alicia’s blood, I swear I will not.”
And on that bleak, savage note they had parted.
Larten drained the mug of ale and called for another. He hadn’t drunk so much since his nights as a Cub. Back then he had enjoyed alcohol. Now he drank solely to numb his nerves and ready himself for what was to come.
A guard added a new name to the list. Larten studied the letters, but they didn’t spell Gavner Purl. He returned to the middle of the list—he was less than halfway through—and let his eyes scroll down again. He had gone through all of these names the night before, but he planned to recheck the whole list in case he’d missed Gavner’s the first time around. Of course he hadn’t—Gavner would have sought him out if he’d arrived—but he played along with the game. Anything to delay the moment when he must face a wave of Generals and address them like a prophet.
As he scanned the names, his thoughts wandered once more. He hadn’t seen Gavner for three years after Paris. He’d spent most of that time leading the Nazis on a merry dance. Then he’d been asked to rescue a few vampires who had been caught by them. Not all of the vampires in Europe had heard or heeded Mika’s warning to evacuate, and the Germans had managed to ensnare some strays.
The clashes with the Nazis might have continued if not for Vancha March. The Prince kept his nose out of the messy business for a long time. Like everybody else, he figured the likes of Mika Ver Leth and Paris Skyle were best suited to this delicate business. He thought he’d only stir things up if he got involved.
But eventually the scraggly Prince lost his temper. It was clear that the Nazis were going to carry on trapping unsuspecting vampires. They hoped to use the blood of the clan to build a regiment of superpowered soldiers. Vancha decided that the time for diplomacy had passed. Without discussing it with anyone, he took matters into his own hands.
Vancha flitted to Berlin and found the base of the Nazi leader. In the dead of night, he slipped through the arrogant Führer’s defenses and cornered him in his bedroom. With his nails pressed to the flesh of the trembling man’s throat, Vancha told him that if even one more vampire was targeted, he would return and finish the job.
A Vampire Prince would always put the needs of the clan before his own life. If self-sacrifice was required, no Prince would hesitate to offer his life for a cause he believed in. But Vancha thought the pompous Hitler was fonder of his neck than a Prince would have been, and that proved to be the case. Having been threatened, he called off his troops, and no vampire had been bothered since.
Mika seethed when he heard of Vancha’s heavy-handed approach. When the Prince returned to Vampire Mountain, Mika confronted him and accused him of acting without regard for the consequences of his actions. The green-haired Sire March only sniffed and said, “You can’t argue with success.”
Once Larten was free to focus on his own affairs, he met up with Gavner and the pair set off in pursuit of Randel Chayne. They scoured the cities of Europe, asking after him, searching for other vampaneze who might know where he was. They came across five of the purple-skinned bloodsuckers over the next few years. Each denied knowledge of Randel’s whereabouts, and Larten believed them—when they were blooded, every vampaneze swore an oath never to lie. They would be driven out in disgrace by their colleagues if they broke that vow, even if it was to a vampire.
He knew it was irrational, but Larten hated every vampaneze now. He blamed them for Randel’s existence. If they hadn’t broken away from the clan, there would never have been a Randel Chayne, or any inhuman monster like him. Alicia would be alive. Wester’s family wouldn’t have been killed. Tanish Eul might have never cut himself off from the clan. Larten came to believe that Wester had been right all along—the world would be better off without the purple scum, and Larten hoped to rid the planet of more than just a few of them.
But Randel was the one Larten hated most. If he fought with every vampaneze he met, he would be killed sooner rather than later—you couldn’t cheat the odds indefinitely. Since he didn’t want to die without avenging Alicia’s murder, he held his tongue when in the presence of those he despised. He treated them with respect and asked politely about Randel Chayne. He said that he wished to challenge Randel because he had heard noble things about him. He gave no hint of his real reason for wanting to face the killer.
Four of the vampaneze responded with cool respect to his inquiries and let him go about his business without interfering. Only one objected and told him he had no right to answers. That vampaneze had been young and headstrong. He was eager to kill a vampire and thought Larten was the perfect place to start.
He misjudged horribly. Their duel was a one-sided contest and Larten killed the vampaneze, barely having to stretch himself. He didn’t celebrate the killing, but he did sleep with a sneering smile for a few nights afterwards.
As the years turned, Larten realized he might as well be a blind man casting stones into the sea in the hope of hitting a fish. If Randel Chayne didn’t want to be found, there was no way of finding him. Like those of the clan, the vampaneze could dwell in the darkest shadows of the night for centuries on end, hidden from the eyes of even the most keenly sighted.
He had hoped that other vampaneze would lead him to Randel, but the vagabonds had no spiritual homeland. They didn’t gather for Council. There were no leaders keeping track of their movements. It was possible for one of them to go decades without bumping into another of his kind.
“We have to draw him out,” Larten said to Gavner one dark and frosty night as they huddled over a fragile fire in a graveyard. They’d been discussing the matter in depth, both having reached the conclusion that they were on a fool’s errand.
“How?” Gavner asked.
“War,” Larten said heavily, and when their eyes met, Gavner saw that Larten hated more strongly than he ever could. In that moment he knew he didn’t want to follow where Larten intended to lead. He also understood that Larten didn’t want to go in that direction either. But he would. Because, unlike Gavner, he was willing to let himself become one of the truly damned if that was what it took.
Larten set off in search of Wester that night. Gavner didn’t travel with him. There had been no argument. He told Larten that he’d team up with him again if either of them got a sniff of Randel Chayne, but he didn’t want to be part of the General’s new, tyrannical quest. Larten had accepted his assistant’s decision with a curt nod. He might even have been relieved, though he gave no indication either way. With a short handshake, he turned his back on the man who had once longed to call hi
m father and set off through the snowy recesses of the night, alone.
“So often alone,” Larten muttered, staring into the dregs of his mug. He was surprised to see that he’d drained it while reminiscing.
He gazed at the remains of the ale, recalling the many lonely years, wondering if solitude and unhappiness were always to be his lot. Then, conscious that Wester would be waiting for him, he downed the last drop, cast his eye over the most recent additions to the list to make sure Gavner’s name hadn’t been added, then stood and staggered from the Hall of Osca Velm, readying himself for the ignoble business of warmongering.
Chapter
Nine
Wester had welcomed Larten into the fold without any reservations. Larten thought his old friend might try to dissuade him when he said that he wanted to help lead the clan into war, that Wester would tell him to take more time and only make a decision when his head was clear. But Wester knew what it was like to lose loved ones to the vampaneze. He didn’t question Larten’s reasons for joining him. Instead he simply told the General how he planned to win back supporters who had deserted them in recent years, and persuade others to unite behind them.
Larten’s stock had continued to rise since they’d last spoken. Many vampires had heard about Alicia and they admired the way he’d put duty before his thirst for revenge. The pair found an attentive audience wherever they traveled. It didn’t matter that Larten was a poor speaker, or that he only repeated things that Wester and others like him had been saying for decades. When Larten spoke, vampires listened, and when he asked for their support, many gave it willingly.
They’d met dozens of vampires in the course of their travels, but Council was their first chance to make a deep impression. This was when the great and the good gathered in the wintry wilds of Vampire Mountain, when they could potentially bend hundreds of Generals to their cause. Wester thought it would take thirty or forty years to win over the majority of vampires—Larten would need to become a Prince before they could push ahead with their more elaborate plans—but if they had a successful run at Council, it might be possible to do it sooner than that.
It wasn’t the best time to try to promote a war. The Nazis had driven the world to global chaos. Millions of humans were locked in battle, and it looked as if it would produce the highest body count ever. Many vampires thought that the Great War could not be topped, but those with firsthand knowledge of the Nazis were glumly betting on this one being even grislier.
A lot of vampires were sick of war. They’d already seen some of the casualties, towns razed to the ground, innocents rounded up and slaughtered. They wanted to retreat from battle, hole up in Vampire Mountain for the duration of Council, and pretend they lived in a civilized world.
Larten and Wester ignored all of that and worked hard to win support. They made dire predictions and grand promises, doing all in their power to convince the rest of the clan to follow them into an all-out, decisive war with the opposing creatures of the night.
They regularly focused on Mr. Tiny’s warning and the threat the clan faced if they did nothing. Wester even asked Larten to use the specter of the new World War to drum up anti-vampaneze sentiments.
“If the other countries of Europe had acted earlier, the threat of the Nazis could have been nipped in the bud,” Larten argued a dozen times a night. The words were Wester’s (he would never have used such an expression), but he delivered them from the heart. “They have taken the world to war, but only because they were allowed to. If we do nothing, a Hitler of the vampaneze will come along and then we will face a war of their making. We must act now, while we have the power to control our fate. Better we start a war we can win, than find ourselves in the middle of one we are destined to lose.”
Larten spoke often of his meetings with Desmond Tiny, elaborating and adding details at Wester’s suggestion. He told them Mr. Tiny wore a string of shrunken vampire heads around his neck. That the little meddler spoke with great fondness of the vampaneze. That he had perched on the grave of Perta Vin-Grahl and vowed that all vampires would be buried under ice by the end of the century.
Larten didn’t like lying. It went against all of his principles. And he was bad at it. But as Wester kept telling him, vampires—especially the younger members—were coming to him for horror stories. They wanted to hear tall tales of Mr. Tiny’s treachery. They needed to be afraid, to have a bogeyman to obsess about.
“Everything gets distorted when stories are told,” Wester said. “All legends and myths are one-tenth truth, nine-tenths exaggeration. It doesn’t matter if we change the facts to make more of an impact. All storytellers have done that since the beginning of time.”
Seba Nile was worried about his ex-assistants. Wester had been trying to start a war with the vampaneze for almost as long as he’d been part of the clan. Seba had never thought it would come to anything, that the guard would eventually discard his plans when he saw that most vampires were against him. But Larten had revived Wester’s enthusiasm and was drawing more supporters to their dark cause with every passing night.
Seba knew that Larten sought war merely to force Randel Chayne out of hiding. He was sure Larten would regret his course in the future if he succeeded in driving the clans into battle. He wanted to sit down with the younger vampire and discuss the matter sensibly, reason with him, talk him out of his self-destructive mission.
But Larten had avoided Seba since returning. The quartermaster thought Larten knew of his ex-master’s feelings and was too ashamed to talk with him one on one. It upset Seba that Larten should think that way, but the General was his own man and had been for a long time. It was no longer Seba’s place to lecture him. He had come to believe, over the course of his many centuries, that you had to give the young the freedom to make their own mistakes.
Vancha March, on the other hand, held no such belief. He’d been abroad for the last few years, ensuring no vampires got mixed up with the Nazis. He hadn’t heard about Larten’s involvement with Wester, or the way they were trying to manipulate the clan.
Vancha was in high spirits when he sighted the snowcapped mountain after a long, hard trek. Arrow was to be initiated at Council, and Vancha looked forward to welcoming a new Prince into the ranks, especially one who had fallen into a pit of despair and come so close to losing everything. He might even break his own strict rules and drink a mug of ale in Arrow’s honor when he was presented as a Prince to the Stone of Blood.
His excitement was quashed before he reached the network of tunnels and Halls. As he was scaling his last stretch of mountain he ran into Kurda Smahlt, a young General who had established his reputation as a thinking man’s vampire. Kurda was keen to re-establish contact with the vampaneze and debate their differences. Many vampires distrusted the slim, fair-haired pacifist. Some felt he would have been better off becoming a vampaneze if he liked them so much. But Vancha had met Kurda a few times and been impressed. He didn’t see eye to eye with Kurda on everything, but he thought the General was honest and intelligent, a credit to the clan.
Kurda had checked in with the guards of Vampire Mountain a few weeks before and had only ducked outside now to draw fresh air. He was in a gloomy mood when Vancha found him and the Prince soon learned why. He was surprised to hear that Larten had sided with Wester, then angered when Kurda explained about Randel Chayne and told him some of the wilder claims that Larten had been making about Desmond Tiny.
“I don’t mind a serious discussion,” Kurda sighed, “but they’re using lurid scare tactics to stir things up.”
Vancha was supposed to announce himself to his fellow Princes as soon as he arrived, but he was so agitated by what he’d heard that he tracked down Larten and Wester first, trailed by a fascinated but nervous Kurda Smahlt. The General had never seen Vancha this worked up and wasn’t sure what the Prince planned to do when he found the pair of conspirators.
Vancha located them in the Hall of Sport dedicated to Oceen Pird. Larten had been sparring. He always dre
w a crowd when he sparred—everyone had heard the rumors that he was edging ever nearer to becoming a Prince, so they wanted to catch him in action. Wester had been using that interest in Larten to promote their cause. Once Larten’s bouts came to a conclusion, the orange-haired General would move among the excited crowd, share a barrel of ale with them, and repeat his anti-vampaneze messages in an attempt to win them over.
Vancha kept to the rear for a time, listening to Larten speak of Mr. Tiny, the threat of the vampaneze, the need to organize against them. The Prince’s ears reddened as he listened. When he’d heard enough, he thrust through the vampires clustered around Larten and Wester.
“Crepsley!” he shouted.
“Sire March,” Larten beamed, delighted to see his old friend again. He hadn’t noted Vancha’s angry expression, so he bowed low with a welcoming smile. “I was not sure which of the Princes was going to be absent from this Council. I am glad it is not you. We have much—”
“What’s this rubbish about going to war with the vampaneze?” Vancha snorted, and Larten’s smile disappeared.
“Sire?” Larten muttered. The other vampires sensed trouble and drew back. Only Wester stayed close to Larten, ready to defend him if required.
“Kurda told me you were one of Wester’s puppets, but I had to see it for myself to believe it,” Vancha jeered.
Larten stiffened. “I am no one’s puppet,” he growled.
“You must be,” Vancha insisted. “I’ve known you for a long time and I’ve never heard you criticize the vampaneze before. Everything you’re saying has come straight from the lips of Wester Flack.”
“It doesn’t matter where the truth originates,” Wester said heatedly. “I help Larten with his speeches, but so what? Many a Prince has relied on help from his advisors. Most of our leaders aren’t natural orators. Sometimes they need guidance when it comes to wording what they feel in their heart.”