Sleeping With The Vampire (Immortal Vampire #2)

Chapter 6

Lucca

I rest for a few hours, then go down to the outer ward. I like to be around the castle at this time of day. There is a changing of the servants, the routines switching from day to night. There are not only our kind here, but an army of men as well, who have been bound to me by right of blood. I need them to drive the trucks out with the blood product for our distribution.

With an organization like this, we cannot afford to be running at night only. It has to be a twenty-four seven arrangement, completely modern and part of the times. My tolerance for light is high and if there is sufficient cloud cover on overcast days, I can even be outside.

I like to watch them loading the trucks, checking the routes and signing in the drivers. Usually, it is a well-oiled operation running smoothly.

But not today.

I see men standing around, muttering to themselves, shaking their heads. There is shouting and swearing and by five o’clock some of the crates and shipments still haven’t been loaded. I look for my general, a man called Marlon, who has been in charge of the operations for the past twenty years.

“General!”

He comes running over, keeping his head respectfully low.

“Sire,” he acknowledges me.

“What is going on?”

He glances up at me quickly, uncertainly.

“There seems to be a problem,” I press on, impatiently.

“It’s the changed route… Sire, the drivers weren’t informed until this morning. And we can’t take that route, there are reports that it isn’t safe.”

“When was the route changed?” I demand to know.

Marlon’s face remains impassive. “I was only informed this morning, Sire.”

“By whom?”

“Prince Layrr.”

“He is here?”

Layrr doesn’t usually involve himself in the day-to-day running of the business and I seek him out, finding him in what we call the warehouse, one of the outhouses. I see him staring at maps and consulting with some of the drivers about alternative roads.

“What is going on here?” I demand to know.

I see him do a double-take when he sees me in the door. He is not happy to see me here and barely hides it.

“Father! I was not expecting you,” he says, bowing his head. Then he tells me about another attack on one of our convoys. He had only heard of it last night and had been trying to find out how the bandits had found the secret new route, which had been known to only a few individuals. “We have a leak, but I don’t know where it is,” he says, darkly.

“This is our fourth loss in a month?” I had known about one of the ambushes, but not that there had been three others since then. “What has this cost us?”

Layrr will not meet my eyes. “Close to a million.”

The shock of it almost takes my breath away.

“Why was I not informed?” my voice is cold and low.

“You were so busy trying to find out what happened to Tanata,” Layrr’s voice rises. “I couldn’t get hold of you so I’ve been taking decisions!”

“Where is Ragnar?” I ask about my other son.

“He is off on one of his missions,” he says, dismissing him. “We’ve been unable to catch any of these bandits, it’s almost impossible to know what is going on.”

“Not impossible at all,” comes a voice from the other end of the warehouse. It is Ragnar, striding towards us, his voice cool. “Some of our men have survived the attacks, they told us they saw vampires.”

“They could have been mistaken or fooled,” says Layrr, barely hiding his contempt for his brother. “Anything could cause those injuries,” he says dismissively.

“What do you think?” I ask Ragnar, who smiles at his brother.

“I think we need to take the trucks out ourselves, try and catch these fuckers red-handed.”

Layrr interrupts him, “We have doubled the convoy size! We can’t afford to move the operation to night time only! We will not meet the supply!”

Layrr’s temper bothers me. He needs to have a cool head when dealing with a crisis.

I call Marlon over. “What is your take on this?” I ask him in a low voice, as we walk away from the brothers.

“Someone is trying to cash in on our operation,” he says.

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “But they’re organized and they know what they’re doing. I have asked some of the men who survived and the attacks are brutal and swift.”

“Our kind?”

Marlon nods, not meeting my eyes.

“Father,” I hear Layrr behind me. “I am tracking the last shipment that was taken. Those bottles were fitted with markers to try and see where they pop up. I sent spies out to look for them.”

“And?”

“They are cropping up in the Citadel.”

The Citadel is under the control of Tempesto, a vampire with a seat on the Council. He has been in this position since the formation of the Council and was elected by all of us. I can’t imagine that he is part of this.

“We need more information,” I say.

“I can go,” says Ragnar. “I think we need to take a firm stand here.”

Layrr sniggers. “Fat lot of good you’ll do, going around beating everyone up. You will hear what you want to hear.”

Ragnar has a reputation as a blunt tool, effective in its own way but Layrr is more of an operator, more smooth. At least, he used to be. What I saw today gives me pause.

“I think this is a job for Sunil,” I say, and see Layrr close his eyes for a moment.

I am unpleasantly reminded of the bitterness between all of my sons, and how it caused my second eldest son to leave the castle permanently. Layrr and Ragnar are, of course, closer, even though they hate each other with a passion. My first wife, Queen Simonis, tried to foster a sense of brotherhood. That is partly why I married her. She was an ideal partner in building an empire. She was a vampire princess, from a highly respected family. Sunil was the last to join our family, I had rescued him from an orgy gone wrong in the badlands many years ago, the young man was about to bleed to death, when something about him made me decide to save him, to take him in, give him a better life, a name and a family. He has always been grateful, the least manipulative of the sons, closer to me. But this in itself has made him hateful to his brothers, who have never known another life than this and see the family and the business as their birthright.

Their way is the ruthless, old-fashioned way. Submitting to the agreements of the peace accord did not come naturally to them. Sunil, on the other hand, prefers diplomacy and negotiation, he shies away from killing, which has helped his career in the Citadel, where he represents our family interests and he serves in various capacities.

There was no time to waste.

I needed to get word to Sunil.

“Father,” Layrr called out to me.

“I need… to warn you… about Sunil.”

“Not now!” I said, furiously shaking off his arm. “I don’t have time for this ridiculous sibling rivalry!”

“No! That’s not it!”

But I walked away from Layrr, wouldn’t hear what he had to say.

I went back into the castle, into the library. Filled with heavy bookshelves covering entire walls, and books dating back centuries, this had always been a place to think and strategize. I sank into one of the deep armchairs, suddenly wondering about Izzy and how she was.

I wanted to check in on her but she needed time to come to terms with what had happened. There was no doubt in my mind that eventually, she would be more accepting of a relationship between us, but it would take a while. She was human after all, even if she was different and special, she had to get used to the idea. Unlike me, she had not spent years walking the wilderness alone, knowing how incredibly rare it was to find someone who really saw you for who you were, and accepted you.

She would be someone I could talk to, someone I could trust. This was what I needed right now, to talk through the situation that was in front of me. I needed the voice of reason. My sons had their own agendas and my advisers also had their own views. They would be thinking of the business, the family company, but not necessarily the family.

The only one who cared about the Fallon D’Valleira name, was me. It had been founded by me, years ago, when I roamed the countryside, at first alone, then with my small band of followers. I had to be ruthless back then, to stake my claim. Then we were at war and nobody walked free, all of us looking over our shoulders. The big vampire clans ruled with absolute might and were wiping out the humans. The mortals fought back, but they were losing the battle. There were too many vampires, growing too strong and their thirst for blood was expanding too, we were going to wipe out our source. Some families had started keeping humans as slaves in their lairs, feeding off them but keeping them alive. It was an inhumane strategy and the humans gradually became weaker and sick, dying after some time.

I joined the tribe of warrior vampires led by Zendan the Great. I rose in the ranks and became his right-hand man, leading us into battle to defeat some of the great vampire houses and help to end the Great War. I married his daughter Simonis, set up my own family and kingdom in the West. After years of negotiating with the mortals, we founded the ideas of blood banks with a syndicate of three top vampire families. Initially, I was part of Zendan’s family but within a few years, I bought his family share and became one of the premier business partners. I supported Tempesto in his campaign for a Council seat and he was a second partner in the Syndicate. Back then, I thought it was prudent to stand with those who supported the new world order, who wanted to be a part of the peace process.

But Tempesto in time, showed hidden agendas. He wanted control for himself. He let me rule the West, not interfering at first but over the years, I noticed him taking more of the lands that were under my rule. I saw him change the distribution centers for the product, fought him on the price fixing. I saw how others were bowing down to him, like the Lusuth Clan, who had remained in the North, but had never accepted their loss of the power following the end of the Great War. John Lusuth had been defeated by Zendan in one of the great battles towards the end of the war that cleared the way for peace. His son, Bernard had taken his place and I had always feared him taking revenge on me.

Simonis had always urged me to get rid of him, had said he would never accept that I had killed his father and taken power from their family. But I was tired of the bloodshed and was enjoying the quiet after the war, setting up my kingdom in the West, ruling over the lands. She accused me of becoming weak and it had caused strain between us. At the time of her death, she had been in the Citadel with Sunil.

Despite the tension between us, she had understood what was at stake and how to manage the politics of the post-war world. She knew if we wanted to remain prominent we had to play by the rules, bend them if necessary, but not break them.

Until now.

Izzy could be someone like that as well.

If she wanted to.

This was an important point to consider. There was a chance that she would not accept this. I didn’t want to consider it. But she was stubborn and hard-headed, part of what made her a good bounty hunter. The refusal to see reason, to consider risks. She would rush in and ask questions later.

I feared that this could bring danger to her.

The women in my life had all come to bad ends.

I could not let anything happen to Izzy.

I sent out a crow to watch out for her, to be my eyes and report back. She would not like this and I instructed the crow to keep out of sight at all times. Only to report back if there was a sign of imminent danger.

I needed to keep her safe.