PROGENY, PART NINE

Part Eight is here.

"I knew it the moment you walked through the door," Roman Drachen snarled, showing his fangs.  "I could smell the taint on you.  A Draegonne.  A Draegonne in the fucking Blood.  I ought to rip your head off right here, Fledgling.  You have no right to exist."

I had no idea what he was saying to me, and the shock of learning Simon Harrow was a distant ancestor was still ringing in my head.  I couldn't think.  As he came across the floor I bared my own fangs, my fingers curling into claws.  I didn't know why he was coming at me like this, but I wasn't going down without a fight.

"Oh boys," the one they called Kit-Kat interrupted, hopping off the surgery table he had been perched on and placing himself right between the two of us.  "If you are done whipping out your fangs to see who is bigger, why don't we all take a deep breath."  He glanced between us.  "Those of us who do breathe, I mean."

"Get out of my way," Drachen growled.

Kit gave him a sharp look.  "Have you forgotten that I brought him here to collect the debt you owe me?"  Now he turned his back to me and stared right into Roman's face.  "I would really hate it getting out that you backed out of your agreement with me.  What was that bit again about a Dragon's word being his bond?"

Roman's face darkened, but he froze, his shoulders straightening.  He jabbed his finger in my direction.  "You are not Blood, Katsuyama.  You don't know what that thing is."

Noetia stepped forward now, putting her white, long-fingered hands on Roman's shoulders.  "Kit is right.  We owed him a debt and he's collecting.  We can't break our word.  And besides," she cast a glance over her shoulder at me.  "This Fledge isn't a Dragon, he's a Raven.  Kill him and you provoke Aurelius and Athena.  We have enough on our hands with the Outcasts.  We don't need a Blood War."

Roman balled his hands into fists, and with a roar whirled around and buried one of those fists into a concrete wall.  The entire building shook.  I found myself relieved I wasn't on the receiving end of those blows.

Noetia narrowed her eyes at me.  "We will nurse this Familiar back to health for you, Kit.  No harm will come to him.  That repays our debt.  But he..." she paused and spat on the ground "...has to get out of here.  The very sight of him is offensive to us."

I shook my head.  "I am NOT leaving Stef..."

Kit turned and put his finger across my lips to silence me.  "Down boy.  Let me do the talking here."  He looked back and nodded.  "Deal.  You keep your end of the bargain by getting this Blood Doll on his feet, and I will make sure handsome here never darkens your doorstep again."

Noetia nodded.

Kit turned and took me gently by the arm.  "C'mon.  Your Boy Toy will be safe here.  They know how to deal with blood loss."

I stared at him.  "Listen, I really don't know who you are, but they just threatened to kill me.  You think I am going to leave my Familiar here with them?"  The tone in my voice made it clear I thought he had a screw loose.

The blue-haired boy grinned.  "You get even hotter when you are angry.  Love it."  

"Who..."

"Shush."  He tugged on my arm.  "Trust me."

I opened my mouth to protest, but my own weariness betrayed me.  I could feel the coming of the sun, the heat building in the air, a dull pressure on my skin.  With it came that awful lethargy.  I was tired and I was hungry, having boiled off a lot of blood rushing Stefan here.  Underneath that, the shocks of the evening filled my hand with quicksand.  I understood little and trusted less.  I had completely lost control and I knew it.  I needed to get out of there.  I needed rest.

Without a word, I followed him out the door, vowing to myself that if they hurt Stefan, I would come back and tear them to pieces.

Big words for such a little vampire.

Outside, in the street, the sky was a pale grey.  To the Quick it was a dim, murky light.  To me, it was a white hot blaze.  The walk back to the Hotel would be hell.

"Hop on," Kit told me.  He had climbed on to a motorcycle and was putting his helmet on.  "I'll get you home."

"You don't know where I am staying."

"That's why you are going to tell me," he laughed.  "Sexy, but not very bright."

I climbed on behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist.

Back at the Hotel, he crossed the lobby behind me, following me right up to the elevators.  Pushing the button, I shook my head at him.  "Where are you going?"

"With you," he smiled.  

"What makes you think I agreed to that?"

He laughed, stepping past me into the elevator the moment the doors opened.  "Because your Familiar is on ice and you are in enemy territory.  You need someone to watch you sleep.  Besides, you look hungry, and I figure I can spare a pint or so."

I stepped into the elevator beside him, half asleep and half blind.  "I don't get it.  What is in this for you?"

He shrugged as the doors closed behind us.  "At first, I was just curious.  You raced by me through the crowd like you were running for your life, so I followed.  Then I saw you with that kid.  You looked so--stricken.  So concerned.  It was adorable, and I am a sucker for a handsome face."  He winked at me as the elevator jerked to a stop and the doors opened again.  "But now?  Well, I am still a sucker for a handsome face, but you fucking scared the shit out of Roman Drachen.  I thought he was going to piss blood.  So now I am real curious what your story is."  

"I wish I knew," I muttered, fumbling with the key card to open the door.  We strolled into the suite and immediately he began shedding clothes, tossing his vinyl trench coat over a chair and tugging off his tight muscle shirt.  He let this fall to the floor.  Slowly, he turned in circles, half to take in the room and half to show off his naked torso to me.  He had narrow hips and wide shoulders, lots of definition and little muscle.  Blue leopard spots were tattooed on his sides, running over his ribs from just beneath his pectoral muscles to just above his hips.  They suited him somehow.  He just felt feline.

"Nice digs.  You must be loaded."

He grinned at me and crossed the floor to the bar, grabbing a tumbler and a bottle of vodka.  He didn't bother pouring, but carried both towards the bedroom.  Setting the bottle and the glass down, he flopped on the bed, pulling off his high-heeled boots and squirming out of his skin tight pants.  He wasn't wearing underwear.

The sun was hitting me hard.  I felt hot and dizzy, the way I felt after too much Scotch when I was Quick.  "What the hell are you doing?"  I asked, standing at the edge of the bed.

He grinned like the Cheshire Cat.  "How's a boy supposed to know where you like to bite?"  He smirked, running his finger slowly down his throat.  "Here?"  Then he ran the same finger over his wrist.  "Here?"  Finally, eyes glittering, he spread his legs and ran his finger along the smooth skin inside his thigh.  "I am hoping for here."

"I don't get you at all."

"You're getting me right now.  C'mon.  Take those clothes off and come eat."

I had no intention of playing his game, so fully clothed I climbed on to the bed and took his wrist.  Too hungry to say anything, I bit into the skin.  Kit-Kat let out a little gasp, and then made a sound like a purr, brushing his own fingers over his naked belly.  "Mmmmmm."

Kaleidoscope.  A village in Europe, a man in filthy rags pushing a cartload full of corpses.  A ballet studio in Paris, pale ballerinas whirling in gyres.  Soldiers with bayonets running blinding through canon fire.  Dozens of disjointed images rushed through his blood, pouring into me, flooding my brain.  And then there was the smell, overpowering, of incense and spice.  The sound of linen snapping in the breeze.  And through this images, following me around as I toured them, whirling tendrils of black smoke.  They seemed to gather and coalesce as they neared me, taking the shape of a large black cat with indistinct shadows whirling around it.  It looked up at me with burning green eyes...

I pulled away, startled.  I didn't know what I had just seen, but I was sure the cat had been looking right at me.  As I wiped the blood from my lips, Kit stared up at me from the bed, a wicked gleam in his eyes.  Something was wrong with me.  Something wasn't right.

Then I realised what it was.  My cock was rock hard and throbbing in my pants.

It wasn't just that...I could feel the hot rush of lust surging under my skin, almost like being a teenager again, when the hormones hit so hard you thought you might die if you didn't get your rocks off.  But this was wrong, this was impossible.  Since crossing over into Undeath I hadn't felt the slightest trace of sexual desire.  Sure, I could fake it...I could use the Blood in my veins to warm my skin and make it look pink, or to force an erection.  But it was never sex I wanted...it was blood.  Blood had replaced all my hungers, tying them up into one scarlet need.  This was not right.

And I was fucking out of my mind with it.

Before I knew what I was doing I had torn my own clothes off, seizing him by the wrists and pinning him down on the bed.  He laughed at me, scissoring his legs up and wrapping them tight around my hips.  I took him, hard, the headboard slamming against the wall.  We thrashed our way across the bed, tumbling to the floor.  I finished him bent over one of the leather chairs.  Then I exploded, shooting over his naked back.  To my horror it wasn't semen at all.  It was dark, crimson blood.

I backed away, feeling spent and giddy.  I fell on the bed.  Cleaning himself up he sprang up on me, straddling my chest.  "Feel better, Tiger?"

"That...shouldn't have happened.  I mean, I don't usually..."

He laughed again, leaning down to kiss the tip of my nose.  "I have that effect on people, living and dead."

"Who the fuck are you?"

"Kit Katsuyama," he grinned.  "Dad was a Japanese businessman.  Mom was a German airline stewardess.  Not much else to tell.  Certainly nothing to make Roman Drachen bug out like that.  So the question really is, who the fuck are you, Tiger?"

He snuggled up next to me, and despite myself, I started talking.  I told him everything, right from the beginning.  I have no idea how long I talked, but the light in the room steadily brightened as I did, and eventually the death sleep took me.  

My eyes snapped open to a darkened room.

Kit was still there, stretched out along the windowsill naked for all the world to see.  He dangled the half empty vodka bottle in one hand and sipped from the glass in the other. Looking out into the city night, his reflection was a ghost in the glass.  The room smelled of alcohol and sex and food.  An empty food service cart was out in the other room.

He turned his head towards me, and from that angle, his eyes caught the light and seemed to glow in the dark.  "Four hours and fifteen minutes," he said, sipping his vodka.

I sat up, staring.  "What does that mean?"

"396 kilometres along the A1 and A5.  I figure why the fuck not?  Your Blood Doll is gonna need a couple of days anyway."

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stood, approaching him.  In the window glass, where his reflection formed a twin for him, mine was nowhere to be seen.  "What are you talking about, Kit?"

"I Googled it.  The distance from Geneva to Oppenau.  I think we need to go check this Night Palace of yours out."

See Part Ten here

  

PRINCE LESTAT, A REVIEW

"...I assumed completely we were cursed and victims of the Blood as surely as mortals thought themselves to be the guilty victims of Original Sin..."

- Lestat, Prince Lestat

Early in her writing career, Anne Rice stopped writing novels and started writing scripture instead.

Her debut novel, 1976's Interview with the Vampire, is a classic. Rice's vampires, stripped of satanism and portrayed not as ravenous corpses but miraculously transformed humans, started the entire subsequent genre of vampire fiction as something distinct from horror.  Interview is the seed from which True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Twilight, Forever Knight, Vampire: The Masquerade, and dozens of other works spring.  Even Buffy shows shades of Rice.  Gone from the vampire cosmos was the garlic and the crucifix, the turning into bats, the vampire's victims rising in three days as vampires themselves.  Now vampires exchanged blood to transform others, now they moved with blinding speed and had heightened senses.  Now they seemed to retain their "souls."

But it was never her reinvention of the species that made Interview a gripping read.  Interview was a painful, soul-searching work, the crucible into which a young mother poured all her pain over the tragic loss of her daughter to leukaemia   Through Louis, Lestat, and Claudia, Rice was grappling with life and death, love and loss, and taking the reader along with her.  Like all great fiction, Interview was emotionally honest.

And...it was a novel.

The same can not be said for 1985's The Vampire Lestat.  In this work, which is part of a pair of bookends with The Queen of the Damned, Rice consciously decides to stop writing fiction and take up mythology instead.  Fitting for an author who would later write two novels about Christ, in Lestat Rice gives us a "Jesus of the Vampires," a Brat Prince messiah who comes to overturn the old, static world of blood drinkers with a new Gospel.    Where Interview was all about asking the questions, Lestat was about revelation.  It had all the answers.  In it, Rice reveals a new vampire mythology, detailing their origin in the fusing of an Eqyptian queen and a bloodthirsty spirit.  They get all sorts of new powers, such as flight and causing things to burst into flame.  And gone, really, is any trace of real horror.  Their are glimpses of it--the stone-like Akasha and her king, the cruel fates of Mekare and Maharet--but mostly it is Jesus Christ Superstar with fangs.

Prince Lestat (2014) marks Anne Rice's return to vampire fiction after eleven years, and is considered by her a direct sequel to The Queen of the Damned.  In many ways it is the most "scriptural" of all her Vampire Chronicles (which is saying something in the wake of Memnoch the Devil), filled with endless chapters of "so-and-so begat so-and-so," a bewildering cast of characters, and its own lingo.  It requires two forwards and an appendix just to explain what the hell is going on.  None of this in and of itself disqualifies it from being a novel, but Prince Lestat comes dripping with agenda.  It takes about two-thirds of the book to get to it, but it all comes clear here;

"...we've waked from those nightmares of the Queen's Blood cult and the Children of Satan. We are finished with such things.  We are in thrall to no belief now except that we can know from the physical world around us...stop with the self-loathing.  Stop with the imagery of 'the damned...'  we are not Damned, we never were..."

Now, Anne Rice's on-again off-again relationship with Catholicism is well known.  She has herself has been quite vocal about it.  In her "on again" mode, she has devoted her talents and much of the last decade to three novels (one forthcoming) about Jesus, and already in the Vampire Chronicles we have seen her extensively explore religious themes (again, Memnoch the Devil).  Now, Rice is "off again," and a declared secular humanist, and Prince Lestat preaches the Gospel of that.  Lestat has come to deliver vampires from superstition, and Rice has come to deliver the readers of her tales as well.

Don't get me wrong...I am not here to condemn Rice for her secular humanism.  I am a secular humanist myself.  But I haven't talked about the plot of Prince Lestat because there really isn't much of one.  A mysterious presence called 'the Voice' is speaking to vampires around the world, trying to persuade the older ones to kill off all the younger.  In a repeat of The Queen of the Damned, the vampires of the world assemble to stop it.  That is pretty much it, and the climax?  Well, let's just say it was predictable. Herein lies my assertion that Rice isn't writing fiction; the "story" is completely irrelevant.  Strip away the pages and pages of her descriptions of gorgeous, unearthly vampires listening to gorgeous, unearthly music, wearing gorgeous, unearthly clothes, and you are left with a book urging you to set aside superstition and look to science for answers.  The whole thing is extended preaching.  Prince Lestat is only a 'novel' if the Bible is.

I don't think I am being wholly unfair in this; characters in Prince Lestat themselves actually refer to the 'Vampire Chronicles' as scriptures.  In the context of Rice's fictional world, the personal memoirs of Louis, Armand, Lestat, Marius, and others have formed a sort of vampire religion.  Clearly Rice is aware of the scriptural quality of her work.  My discomfort with Prince Lestat is the same bone I had to pick with Twilight--thinly disguised Mormon doctrine of be a good girl, wait until marriage, and after you have a child will be rewarded with rebirth into an eternal body.  I had the same gripe with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  I don't mind subtext in fiction, but when the fiction's main purpose is to preach a doctrine, I find it off-putting.

I've stuck with Rice over the years because Interview with the Vampire was unquestionably a great work.  It dealt with broad human themes that everyone eventually has to deal with.  But Prince Lestat is an editorial piece that only some readers will agree with, and the only way to really enjoy the book is if you do.  When Rice puts her mind to it, as she did in The Witching Hour or The Mummy, she can spin gripping stuff.  Prince Lestat feels more like a long-winded secular Sunday sermon.

No doubt Prince Lestat will please Rice's die-hard fans, but it isn't going to win over any new ones.  

NUMENERA; A REVIEW

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clarke, "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination"

TOWARDS THE END OF THE 1960s, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov were sharing a New York City cab.  Alongside Robert Heinlein, both were considered part of the Holy Trinity of science fiction writers, and often asked which of them was the best.  In the back of that taxi, the pair found an elegant solution, and the so-called "Treaty of Park Avenue" was drawn up between them.  Clarke would ever after insist that Asimov was the best, while Asimov would always insist his superior was Clarke.

Despite this, the two had their differences.  Asimov, for example, drew a firm line between "science fiction" and "fantasy."  The first, he insisted, was grounded in science and dealt with the possible.  The latter, centred purely in the imagination, dealt with the impossible.  But Clarke, perhaps in part as a play on Asimov's famous "Three Laws of Robotics" issued Three Laws all his own.  The first of these, I like to think, was a tongue in cheek jab at his friend and rival;  "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."  He finished with the famous and oft-quoted assertion that "sufficiently advanced technology" was indistinguishable from "magic."

No other role-playing game has ever embraced Clarke's point-of-view as deeply as Monte Cook's Numenera.

A bit like Clarke, by 2001 Cook found himself in a Holy Trinity of RPG designers.  Alongside Jonathan Tweet and Skip Williams he was tapped to design the d20 3rd edition of Dungeons & Dragons, writing the Dungeon Master's Guide.  If you weren't familiar with his name from Champions or Rolemaster, or from his days at TSR writing books for the Planescape line, you couldn't be a gamer and escape it in the wake of the d20 system's ubiquity.  Despite my own antipathy for the system, I liked Cook's work in it.  His translation of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu might have been (to me) completely unnecessary, but he pulled it off brilliantly.  Likewise his take on White Wolf's "World of Darkness" was inspired.  By the end of the decade he was bit of an RPG "rock star," and it was no surprise that when he turned to Kickstarter to generate capital for a new project called Numenera, he raised more than 25 times his goal of $20,000.  Cook has that sort of name recognition and fan base, and Numenera is the perfect example of why he deserves it.

Depending on whether you lean towards Asimov or Clarke, Numenera is either a fantasy or a science fiction RPG.  Set a billion years from now, Numenera is about the peoples of the Ninth World.  At least eight previous worlds have risen and fallen back into obivion, each over a cycle of hundreds of millions of years.  Some of them left behind orbital satellites to bathe the world in a massive datasphere.  Some of them terraformed, and then re-terraformed, the planet.  Some of them were the centres of vast, interstellar empires.  Some of them mastered the fundamental laws of physics and played with them like toys.  Some of them created the nanotechnology that now invisibly swarms across the planet. Some of them explored other dimensions.  Some bioengineered new forms of life.  And several--if not most of them--were not even remotely human.

Now, inexplicably, humans have returned to the Ninth World, though no one can say from where.  Spread thinly across part of the planet in a quasi-medieval patchwork of kingdoms known as the Steadfast--and some in a wilder region known as the "Beyond"--the humans of the Ninth World dig through the ruins of the ancients collecting "numenera," a catch-all term for any and all of the wonders of the past.  They are guided by the Order of Truth, a "church" of sorts led by the Amber Popes and dedicated to improving the human condition by learning the secrets of the old worlds.

If you close one eye and look at Numenera from the right angle, this is all pretty generic fare.  Medieval kingdoms built on the bones of ancient, wondrous empires, bold adventurers combing dangerous, monster-filled ruins for treasures...we've seen this a thousand times before.  Even the three core character classes--the Glaive, the Nano, and the Jack--look pretty much the same as the Warrior-Mage-Rogue archetypes from other games.  Numenera looks the same as any fantasy RPG.  But shift a few steps an take a look again.  Suddenly Numenera starts to look like a post-apocalyptic future.  Move a bit further and it looks like weird horror.  From another angle, an almost Roddenberrian game of hope, wonder, and exploration.  It can be used any of these ways.  It is at its best when used in all these ways.

Which brings us back to Clarke's laws.  That desert hermit, mumbling to himself?  With hand gestures and incantations he can bring a rain of fire out of the sky.  Is he activating the clouds of nanotech machines swarming through the air?  Is it some form of pyrokinesis caused by a mutation in his brain?  Does he channel extradimensional energies?  In the end it is simpler just to call it what it is; "numenera," the same as the Doctor's TARDIS, the Monoliths from 2001, or the "killing words" of Dune.  This is tech so far beyond us it looks like magic.

So what is the game about, then?  How does it work?

Numenera is a game of discovery, where experience points are handed out for uncovering wonders rather than killing enemies.  It operates around a simple d20 roll and a difficulty scale running from 1 (ridiculously easy) to 10 (practically impossible).  When a character wants to attempt an action, the GM assigns a difficulty, and the player needs to roll equal to or above that difficulty x 3.  For example, a chasm might require a Difficulty 4 Might roll to jump across it.  Multiplying by three gives us 12, and the player needs to roll that number or higher.

What then about Difficulties of 7, 8, 9, and 10?  You can't beat those on a 20-sided die.

Characters have three core attributes; Might, Intellect, and Speed.  They also posses special abilities and skills.  Skills can lower a Difficulty one or two steps, reducing a Difficulty 5 task to 4 or 3.  Certain abilities and pieces of equipment can lower a Difficulty as well.  Or, the player can chose to use "Effort," spending points from his attribute pool to lower the Difficulty.  This can be risky, because your attribute pools serve as your "hit points" as well.  The amount of Effort you can spend, and how much you must spend, is ruled in part by your Tier (level).  A lower Tier character needs to spend more Effort to lower a Difficulty by a single step; a higher Tier character can spend less Effort to lower a Difficulty a step, and can lower Difficulties by multiple steps.  It is a simple, flexible, and very elegant mechanic.

Combat, incidentally, works the same way.  Your opponent has a level from 1 to 10, which determines the basic rolls you need to strike and defend against it (again, level x 3 modified by unique NPC features).  In Numenera, the GM never touches the dice.  All rolls are made by players.  Damage is fixed by weapon type (Light, Medium, or Heavy) and reduced by armour.  A roll of 17 adds +1 to damage, 18 adds +2, 19 adds +3, and 20 adds +4.  19s and 20s can trigger special effects as well.  Naturally, a character's abilities affect combat and damage as well.

One of the finest features of the game is that it is "player-facing."  The GM, as mentioned, never rolls dice.  Instead, Numenera uses a mechanic known as "intrusion."  The GM is allowed to make things "happen" that normally would be handled by a roll.  Do the palace guards hear the sounds of the player characters breaking in?  Does the ancient bridge collapse under the character's weight?  Does the device the character is carrying suddenly malfunction?  The GM can invoke any of these effects--any effect she needs to further the plot or make things more interesting--but for a price.  The character affected by the intrusion is given two experience points immediately...one to keep for himself, and one to award another party member for any reason.  Or, he can refuse the intrusion, and pay an experience point back to the GM.  Between this mechanic, and the ease with which NPCs and creatures can be extrapolated using the simple 1 to 10 scale, Numenera eliminates the heavy lifting other games saddle the GM with and lets her concentrate on moving the story along.

Character creation is another excellent feature of the game.  It basically works out to a simple sentence in which the player picks the noun, the adjective, and the verb; "I am a (adjective) (noun) that (verb)."

The noun is the easiest; it's the three "classes" I mentioned above.  There are the warrior Glaives, the mage-like Nanos, and the roguish Jacks.  Each gets special abilities to chose from each new Tier, as well as a base pool of points for Might, Intellect, and Speed.  Each archetype comes with options to personalise the character choice.  

The adjectives are things like "Charming," "Graceful," or "Strong-Willed" that bestow a package of bonuses, skills, flaws, equipment, and connections to the setting.

Finally, the verbs are things like "Bears a Halo of Fire," "Controls Beasts," "Explores Dark Places," or "Masters Weaponry."  These are professions, super-powers, or character motivations that grant a suite of additional abilities that increase each Tier, as well as a wealth of character shaping details and extras.  

Thus, a Numenera character might be "a Clever Jack that Works the Back Alleys," "a Rugged Glaive Who Howls at the Moon," or "an Intelligent Nano Who Commands Mental Powers."  These three lenses come together to create detailed and interesting characters.

What Cook gives us then is a streamlined and very modern "D&D" with an Arthur C. Clarke twist.  Much of what characters do--explore ruins, discover treasures, fight hideous creatures, navigate local politics--happens in other RPGs, but Numenera's focus never leaves the theme of wonder, of weirdness, of discovery.  Whether it is science fiction or fantasy depends on how the group approaches it, and it's unique setting allows the GM and players to shape the world to their tastes.  Already with a strong line up of supporting products, Numenera is a far future game with a bright future ahead of it.

Go see the Numenera page here.

  

  

     

  

  

  

    

   

     

PROGENY, PART EIGHT

Read Part Seven here

Shaking with rage, I lifted the boy from the filthy rain puddle he had been left in, brushing wet hair from his face.  I whispered his name, gently using my fingertips to pry open his eyes.  The pupils were fixed and dilated, turning his irises into twin black holes.  He was dying, right there in my arms.  I could feel him teetering on the edge, right to the point of expiration I had been before Athena turned me.  What did I do?  Could I open my veins right here and turn him into a creature like me?  I had no idea if I even possessed that strength yet.

Panic gripped me, and I hated myself fiercely right there and then.  You fucking idiot, running off like that.  You don't know the first goddamn thing about the world you've been reborn into, and look at what you have done.  You have gotten this loyal, faithful child killed.  If the sun could have killed me, I think that for a black minute or so there I would have waited for it to rise.

No.  There had to be something I could do.  Call an ambulance?  Bring him up to the hotel?  Calling an ambulance was pretty much out of the question; any vampire can lick the wounds he leaves on a victim after feeding and close them, healing them up so they look like nothing more than an ugly bruise.  But these marks were left by another...and I could only close the ones I myself inflicted.  If Stefan went to the hospital, twin punctures in his throat and veins drained of blood...no.  Out of the question.

Turn him.  Give him your Blood and make him like you.

I reminded myself that he was a Familiar, that he was stronger than the Quick.  Maybe I could get him up to the room if I ran fast enough, moving like a blur through the crowded lobby and up the stairs.  He could rest there.  Maybe. 

Decide, Damien, and decide fast.

That was when I saw him.

Not many can creep up on one of us, except of course for those of our own kind.  So immediately I tensed, baring my fangs.  My face contorted into a hideous death mask, eyes blazing.  And in that instant I learned a power I didn't previously know I had...with sickening popping noises, my fingers elongated, nails stretching into claws.  

"I'm not the guy who hurt him," he told me, a light accent edging his English.  "But I am pretty sure I know who did."

My senses leapt out invisibly, taking everything in.  He was no vampire.  His heart beat strong and steady in his chest, and his lungs pulled and released air.  A stab of guilt shot through me...showing myself like this, exposing my nature to one of the Quick, was a crime among my kind.  

Despite my appearance, he took a step closer.  He was young and slender, not skinny, but sleek.  If I hadn't heard his voice, I might have initially taken him for a girl.  He had tawny, almond-shaped eyes that seemed to glitter even in the dark alleyway, watching me from under a wild mane of thick, dyed blue hair.  He was wearing a long vinyl jacket, skin tight pants, and knee-high leather boots with ridiculously high heels.  His partially see-through tank-top had blue leopard spots, almost making it look like the pattern was part of his pale skin.  A giant set of headphones was around his long neck.  "I shouldn't have followed you like that," he said, "but when you blew by me like that I was curious.  Bad habit, that.  Someday it might kill me."  He flashed a white grin.

His nonchalant manner kept me on my guard.  I didn't back down.  After all...he was saying that he felt me run by him.  How?  I could move fast enough to be invisible to the Quick.

"Look, I might be able to help.  If you'll let me."  He nodded down at Stefan.  

Slowly, I straightened up.  "How?  How can you help me?"

"I know some vamps," he replied casually, the same way someone might say I have some gay friends, like it was nothing.  "They might be able to help him.  I know they've got some stuff for quick transfusions."

I narrowed my eyes.  "How far?"

"Not far," he said noncommittally.  "But first I have to ask which kind you are.  I mean, are you one of the blood-drinkers, or one of the soul-takers?  These guys don't mix well with the soul-taking crowd."

Soul-takers?  I had no idea what he was talking about.  "Blood-drinker," I said quietly, looking back down at Stefan again.  "Please.  Can you help him or not?"

The blue-haired boy flashed me a wry grin.  "Aw that is sweet.  You are really worried about him."  He nodded suddenly.  "Yeah, sure.  Got nothing better to do tonight."  He gave me an address and told me to let him call ahead.  "I need to let them know you are coming."

He took out a smartphone and started speaking to someone in French, nodding.  The glow of the screen lit up his hair in the dark, making it glow an eerie electric blue.  After a few minutes he nodded and hung up.  "Yeah.  They'll do it.  They owe me a solid.  Course you know this means now you owe me a solid."  To my surprise he poked me in the chest with his finger.

All of it--his casual attitude, his lack of fear or surprise--confused me.  I just stared at him like an idiot, the rain beating at my face.  I didn't even realise that my face and claws had returned to their normal human state.  

He smiled slyly.  "You know you are kinda hot when you drop the whole scary vamp 'tude.  I'm already starting to think of ways you can pay me back."  He laughed at this, and shook rain from his mane of hair.  "C'mon. Get your little boyfriend there.  You run faster than I do.  I'll catch up."

I nodded again, scooping Stefan up in my arms and pressing him protectively against my chest.  Without a word, I ran, blurring past the wild, blue-haired boy out into the street, streaking between the traffic.  As I raced, my head crowded with questions, but I swatted them all aside.  There was nothing that couldn't be answered later.  All the same, I suddenly found myself wishing Athena was there, wishing so hard it hurt.

Holding Stefan close, I pushed myself harder, summoning every ounce of strength I had...and to my amazement I awoke another power.  I was literally flying, my feet no longer touching the ground.

And then, I was there.

I had to stop to scan the house numbers, and to human eyes it must have looked like I just appeared out of nowhere, a boy cradled in my arms.  Fortunately, the street was empty, and lightless as well.  No one was about and none of the street lamps seemed to be working.  "Hold on, Stefan," I whispered, searching for the right address.  "Just hold on."

"Over here," she said, speaking in the eerie sing-song voice we used when we wished to be unheard by the Quick.  I glanced around until I saw her, standing in the darkened entrance of a basement doorway.  "Bring him to me."

I nodded, crossing the vacant street towards her.  I understood how foolish all of this was.  I was in a city I didn't know, and my Familiar has just been attacked by an unknown vampire.  I was following directions from a Quick I knew nothing about, a Quick who apparently knew more about my kind than I did...and now I was getting aid from a vampire I knew nothing about.  My Sire must have been shaking her head in disappointment wherever she currently was.  But what else was there for me to do?  I wasn't prepared to let Stefan die for my stupidity.

"Hello," I said to her.

"Hello," she replied.  She looked me up and down, her eyes glowing faintly from the shadows.  She looked at Stefan.  "Your Familiar is nearly gone.  We will need to act quickly."  She gestured at the doorway behind her.  "Welcome to my House.  Enter freely, and of your own will."

Oh great, I thought darkly, a vampire that likes to quote Dracula.

I nodded, and carried Stefan inside.

Narrow stairs led down into the basement, and the well-worn stone steps were old.  So too were the cellars, a nest of them supported by arches and vaulted ceilings.  The girl swept by me, beckoning for me to follow, and I did.  Ahead of us, from down a narrow hall, came the pale white of fluorescent light.  She moved towards it.

The hall opened into what looked like a make-shift hospital, or underground clinic.  There were a a trio of narrow tables in the centre of the room, one of which was already being set up for transfusion.  I watched them suspend a plastic bag of blood from the IV rack.  "I don't know his blood type..." I stammered.

There was laughter around me, not just the girl, but also from the young man hanging the blood.  "AB," the man said.  "I smelled it the moment you brought him in."

"You are a young one, aren't you."  The girl said.  Her voice was flat and emotionless, and I couldn't tell if it was meant as a jibe or not.

The man took Stefan from me and laid him out on the table.  He shook his head in what looked like disgust.  I wondered who he was disgusted with, the attacker, or me for letting it happen.  Maybe I was just projecting my own self disgust on him.  As I watched, beating myself up, he fed a line into Stefan's arm, and the red blood started to flow.

The girl appeared beside me.  "It will take time now, for him to heal."

"Who are you?"  The man asked, whirling around.  I saw a flicker of red in his eyes, and felt the warning hint of danger.  "Why haven't you presented yourself?"

I stared blankly at him.  "Presented?"

The two exchanged glances, and the woman put her hand on my arm.  "How old are you, Fledgling?  And how is it the one who Sired you told you none of these things?"

I looked between the two of them.  "I was Sired less than six weeks ago.  I am in the Clan Tenebrati, in the Raven's Claw..."

"One of Athena's brood?"  The male asked, drawing closer.  

"She is my Sire, yes."

"Athena is your Sire?"  The woman's eyebrows shot up. "I find it hard to believe she would release one of her own into the world without a proper education first.  The Mother Lioness is ever so protective of her cubs."

"And you have a stench about you," the male added, leaning just inches from my face and taking a deep whiff of me.  "Something old and unclean, I think."

"What is your name?"  The woman asked.

"My name is Damien Draegonne, and I am telling you the truth."  I didn't like where this was going, and was mentally assessing my position.  I was in their lair, and Stefan was in no condition to be moved.  It was two against one.  In short, the odds were all very much against me coming out on top of this if it went bad.  "I was sent here because that blue-haired kid thought you could help.  I am not looking for trouble."

"Draegonne?"  The male stepped even closer, so that our noses were almost touching.  He said my name slowly, like he didn't believe it.  "Sind Sie von der Nacht Palast?"

I stared, caught off guard.  The Night Palace.  Twice in one night.  That could not be coincidence.  He must have seen the look of recognition in my eyes because he snatched me by the throat, showing his fangs.  I unsheathed mine as well, ready for a fight.

"Bad time then?"

The male released me, snarling over my shoulder at the blue-haired boy.  

"Sorry to be late.  'The Dead travel fast' but the rest of us need to deal with traffic."  He moved around us towards the table, looking at Stefan.  "Will the kid pull through then?"

"What did you get us into this time, Kit Kat?"  She was speaking to the blue-haired boy, but her cold eyes never left me.  "This one comes stinking of lost things better left forgotten."

The boy, 'Kit Kat,' shrugged.  "You lot owed me big time, now our slate is clean.  That is what matters here, I think.  Besides," he winked at me.  "I like this one.  So handsome and all devoted to his little Blood Doll there.  I think I might play with him awhile."

I yanked away from the male vampire, staring between the three of them.  "Listen, I am not ungrateful here, but who are you people?  I understand about ten percent of what is going on."

The girl frowned, then straightened up to her full height.  "I am Noetia, Damien Draegonne of the Tenebrati.  And this is my Brother in the Blood, Roman.  Noetia and Roman Drachen."  She emphasised the surname, never taking her eyes from mine.  "That name, and its variations, is common to those in our Blood Line.  We are of the Order of the Dragon."

I nodded, though with all the revelations of the night whirling in my head, I couldn't fully grasp the weight she was putting on the name.  I knew of the Order of the Dragon from Athena, as I knew a bit about all the other Blood Lines.  I knew they were strong in Eastern Europe, that they had a long and bloody history, and that they had a penchant for Embracing human nobles into their Blood Line.  That was all I could remember.

"I am very grateful to you both," I said carefully.  "Really I am."

Kit Kat cleared his throat.  "Moi, handsome.  Grateful to moi. I am the guy who called in his markers tonight."

I nodded impatiently.  "Yes, grateful to you all.  And I am sorry I didn't present myself or whatever.  I had to leave my clan quickly...to see to business here.  I didn't realise it was customary to present yourself to the local vampire population."

Noetia frowned, glancing at Roman.  He was having none of it, and continued glaring at me.  "More than just customary.  If you don't present yourself, we might just assume you are another Outcast."  He narrowed his eyes.  "And I am not convinced you aren't...you smell of the Raven's Claw, yes.  But there is a foulness there as well."

Harot.  Harot's Blood.  After all these years he can still sense it.

"And don't try to pretend you don't know what the Night Palace is, little Fledgling.  I saw it in your eyes."  Roman finished, his voice icy.

Feint, I told myself.  I turned and looked at Kit Kat.  "And you?  We haven't been introduced either."

He leaned against the table where Stefan lay, grinning at me. "Kit Katsuyama, at your service."  His grin broadened and he winked.  "And if you need servicing, let me know."

I tried to ignore him.  "You said you knew who did this to Stefan?"

"I said I might," he looked over at Noetia and Roman.  "I spotted one of the Nikolea and his group in that area earlier."

Roman sneered.  "Outcast scum."

Noetia nodded cooly.  "He must have smelled the Tenebrati on your Familiar, Draegonne."

I looked at her.  "Why?  What makes you say that?"

Roman scoffed.  "This Fledge really doesn't pay attention."  He spoke slowly to me, as if addressing a child.  "Tensions have been flaring, Little Fledge.  Your Clan and the Outcasts are pretty much at War.  We all may be soon."

I nodded at this, recalling the whispers I had heard in the clan hall.  I cursed myself again for bringing Stefan here, looking at him lying so pale on the table.  So much was going on I needed to understand.  And Harot seemed to be part of it.  Biting my lower lip, I decided to roll the dice, and looked directly at Roman Drachen.  "You mentioned the Night Palace.  You were right...I had heard the name before, but the first time was earlier tonight.  That's why it surprised me.  What is it?  Why did you bring it up?"

Roman looked at Noetia, and she furrowed her brow at me.  "You really don't know?"

I nodded.  "I really don't."

Roman sighed.  "The Night Palace once was held by those of our Blood, Noetia and mine, I mean.  He ruled the Black Forest from its walls.  Upon being Embraced into the Order of the Dragon, as Noetia told you was common, he changed his surname and that of his mortal descendants to a variation of 'Dragon.'  Noetia and I are Drachen.  Drakulea was the name assumed by one of our more famous Brothers in the Blood.  This Dragon fell, however, and for his treachery was made Outcast.  He was exiled, and his Night Palace forfeit."

Recognition dawned on my features.  "Harot?  His name was Harot?"

"You just don't listen, do you," Roman snapped, a sneer on his face.  "'Harot' was the name he used before joining us in the Blood.  The ruler of the Night Palace, and the mortal family that served him there, was called 'Draegonne.'"

It took everything I had not to scream.      

Catch Part Nine here.