THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON QUEEN

The Spring of Falsehoods and Blood Debts, 1808

Love lay dying on the rumpled divan.

It wasn't glorious or addictive. There was no revelling in this collapse of the

flesh. This death was a tragedy he had thought himself immune to. He looked at his
wife's pale face, only made more beautiful by the sickness that tore her body
apart. Emotions he believed long dead warred within the emptiness of Vlad von
Carstein's soul.

'Please,' she whispered, barely giving life to the sound.

He knew what she wanted, and what she was offering not to die.

But he resisted. He could not explain why.

'I will call the physician back. Perhaps Schliemann can soothe your passage with
some root,' he said, resting his own cold hand against the chill-fever of her
cheek. Her eyelids fluttered weakly and closed, and for a moment he thought she was
gone and that he was bereft. Then he felt the faintest flutter of her pulse against
his hand and he knew he could not abide losing this troubled woman who completed
him. He felt her life against his palm. The blood was erratic.

Her kind were so short-lived, their presence in the world occasionally glorious;
always fleeting. They were like his beloved birds in that respect, their tiny
little hearts beating wildly, wasting their life away in fear.

She looked at him, pleading. Eleven years was not enough.

He did not know if the thought was his own, or his wife's. Eleven years had passed
since he first walked into the cold halls of Draken-hof and defenestrated his only
rival for rule of the province.

He took away his hand, unable to endure the coldness of her.

He gathered the folds of his thick cloak across his chest and turned his back on
the woman in the bed. He did not love her. There was nothing left within him
capable of the emotion. Yet something in his body resonated to the frequency of
her. They were mated in more ways than the physical. There was completeness to
their bonding. He found it hard to imagine the protracted loneliness that would
accompany her parting.

Outside, the night was dark. It ought to have been raining. That was all he could
think of for the longest time. It ought to have been raining.

Behind him, she coughed. It was a pitiful sound.

He had resisted for so long, believing Isabella capable of overcoming the ill-
humours of the blood plague, but looking at her now he knew she was failing. The
irony of this death of hers did not amuse him. So many superstitious fools had
called the curse of his kind the same thing, and yet this most human of sicknesses,
a weakness in the blood was anything but supernatural in origin. It had nothing to
do with the thirst of his kind.
But it did not change the fact that she would leave him before dawn.

He knew it should not bother him; she was a convenience, a means to an end, a
foothold into this forsaken territory but... by dawn he would be a widower and he
would be reduced by her loss. He knew that for the truth.

Was it love?

She was most assuredly more to him than a bridge between the old cruelties and the
new, but could it be called love?

Were any of his kind capable of such a human folly?

'Please,' she begged again.

He wanted to leave her but could not. He had never been one for rash action, that
had never been a part of his philosophies of death. He found himself taking her
hand and asking, 'Are you sure you would give up the immortality of your soul for
me, my love?'

And perhaps she did love him, at least, because she opened her eyes and said,
softer than a prayer, 'You cannot join me in the life hereafter, so why should I
wish to abide there alone?'

The physician waits outside the door, he-'

'Cannot help me now,' Isabella sank back into her sweat-stained bolster, sucking at
the air desperately for a breath she couldn't catch.

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It hurt him to watch her thus. Frustration burned within his black blood. He was
master of death and yet here he knelt at this woman's bedside as helpless as any
other.

'Please/ she begged again. 'If this is death I do not want to go into it without
you.'

'Yet I cannot join you, Isabella. Your light has burned out and mine, well mine
casts only shadow.'

'It... need not... be so,' she managed between raking coughs. Blood and phlegm
flecked her chin and cheek.

'But it must,' he said, sorrow in his voice. He looked down at her, this frail
little woman who had always had such fire, such fight, and knew she was already
dead in all the ways that mattered.

'Then let me taste you, this once, let-'

She broke off, hacking up blood as her entire body convulsed through the coughs.
She wiped the blood away with a trembling hand, then held it out, offering it to
him. There was no fear in her eyes. He leaned in and placed the tenderest of kisses
on her feverish palm, his tongue laving the lifeblood from her fingers. He closed
his eyes, savouring its tang. He could taste the sickness in her. It made every
ounce of his flesh ache but he licked the last drop from her palm. 'Let me open a
vein and drink of my love. Let that be the last thing that I do. Please.'

He shook his head. 'It cannot be so.'

Then drink of me, drain me, end it now, not this vile sickness.'

That he could do. That one small mercy. It was not as though he had never killed.

'Is that what you want, my love?'

'There is no other way I would rather die,' she said, tilting her head slightly on
the stained pillow to offer up the vein in her throat.

He leaned in close enough to feel her pulse on his slightly parted lips, and let
his teeth rest there, pressed either side of the vein hard enough to draw the salt
from her skin but not so hard as to puncture her flesh. Not yet. He savoured the
taste of her, his mortal wife, his love, his folly, and then bit down, drawing the
blood out of her.

It was a tragic feast.

Isabella's body stiffened in his arms, a single strong convulsion pressing her up
against him. He could feel the frailty of her beautiful corpse through the bed
sheets.

'Take me,' she whispered in his ear, a desperate breath.

He closed his eyes as he drank her in, remembering all of the bittersweet moments
they had shared in their short time together. She was, he had always known, quite
unlike any mortal girl he had tasted - and he had drunk from hundreds, thousands,
decanting their passion with a tender kiss or tearing it from their flesh with
savage thirst. She was the

mirror of the darkness in him. That first whisper, claiming her uncle's life as a
wedding boon, had told him all he needed to know. Isabella van Drak was a predator.
Even now she was more dangerous than a cornered she-wolf. He knew that
instinctively, yet he let his guard down in grief and allowed himself to mourn her
even as he fed.

Her breath quickened in his ear. 'I choose this pain,' she said, digging her
fingernails into the nape of his neck hard enough to draw blood had he been the
kind of creature that bled.

'Go now,' he said, hesitating a moment before drawing that final fatal swallow.

'Look at me, one last time,' she whispered, her voice a husk of humanity.

She tangled her fingers in his hair, and drew his head up. He did as she bade him;
how could he not? And their lips locked in blood, hers and his, as she opened him
up with hungry teeth so that their darkness might at last mingle.

She suckled at his lips hungrily, taking from him what he had sworn he would not
give.

He pulled away from her punishing kiss.

'More,' she gasped. 'I need more.'

'It won't be enough,' Vlad said, pushing her back down into the pillows as his
ardour rose. 'You want this life? You really want it?'

She nodded hungrily, her eyes alight with the fever of death.

'Then I will give it to you.' He held out his wrist, tantalisingly close to her
lips, and then drew it away biting out the thick veins with his own teeth. He held
the ragged wound over his wife's lips as she licked and slurped at the dripping
blood, desperately trying to sink her teeth into the wound itself. Her mouth opened
wider and wider, his tainted blood pooling in her mouth before she swallowed him
down.

Her body shuddered against his, revolting against his blood as it spread through
her veins, replenishing what he had stolen. The irony of his healthy blood mixing
with her sick blood was not lost on Vlad, nor the fact that it could only restore
her to unlife, not somehow transfuse her with life.

She looked at him then, pleading for more, with eyes he knew he would never be able
to resist.

He had played the dutiful husband, never leaving her bedside as she prepared to
cross that final threshold between life and its last great mystery, but in that
moment, looking down into her eyes and seeing the emptiness, she owned him.

He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips, sinking his teeth into the last
flutter of pulse at her wrist, and drained her.

She died in his arms that night, and he wept for what he had done to both of them.

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Come dawn he laid her corpse out on the bed, making it around her, and banished her
handmaidens while he waited for her to come back to him. He kissed her brow and
said an old prayer in the tongue of his people that ended with the admission that
all words were dust. Then, as one last farewell to the flesh, he drew the sheet up
over her face.

He knew there were things in his protectorate that he had allowed to fester for too
long.

Meinard Vogler, for one.

The man was a thorn.

A thorn with a reputation for malice and murder.

Few transitions were smooth, especially those that involved allegiances and
devotions. Ambitions, more often than not, had a way of interfering with what ought
to have been common sense. Vlad had sent two emissaries to Vogler s court. The
first had returned with the message that the baron, Meinard Vogler, did not
recognise the right of succession, the second did not return at all. Vlad
understood the message Vogler had sent him. He would not send a third. Men like
Vogler only understood strength so while the game of kings was a subtle one at
times in some instances it required brutality. Vogler had tried his patience one
time too many, he would be forced to bend the knee. Defiance was viral; where one
man pulled at the reins of power others would invariably follow, unless their petty
rebellion was crushed, ruthlessly and quickly.

Vogler was no fool, he knew precisely what his refusal to bend the knee would cost
him, yet still he stubbornly refused to accept Vlad's right to the title his
marriage to van Drak's girl inferred, even now, eleven years after the deathbed
ceremony. Vlad did not hurry vengeance; time was the one thing the immortal count
was not short of.

That refusal was an insult the Vampire Count could not brook. This invite now to
the man's stronghold was an interesting gambit. It suggested Vogler was prepared to
see reason, but something about it rankled. Vlad had worried away at the invitation
for two weeks since it had arrived via messenger. The timing of it almost certainly
meant Vogler had been relying upon his wife's illness to distract him. With the
invite refused he could hold up his hands and say 'I tried'. But what the
rebellious baron could not have known was that Isabella's health had past beyond
mortal concerns. She would need to feed when she awoke, and Vogler's people needed
to be taught a lesson. There was a coincidence of needs there that could be played
to his advantage. Itwas almost... poetic. He smiled coldly at the realisation.

He left Isabella at peace and set about the business of politics and power.

He found his man, Kail, skulking about the ramparts. He joined him there, coming up
beside him silently.

'How is she, my lord?' Kail asked without looking around.

'At peace,' Vlad said. The sun was rising on what would most certainly be a
glorious day.

'I am sorry.'

'Do not be. Her peace will not last.'

'Then you...?' This time Ansard Kail did turn, his face twisted with jealousy as he
faced his master. The man had made no secret of his desire to join their kind and
serve Vlad in death, but while he was useful he was not a face the vampire wanted
haunting him for millennia.

'We will be leaving the castle tonight. My love must feed and as you know, I have
pressing business with Meinard Vogler. They say,' Vlad said, with the wryest of
smiles playing with his bloodless lips, 'that you can judge the strength of a man
by the enemies he makes.'

'Then Vogler must be a very powerful man indeed,' Kail said, matching his master's
mirthless grin. 'Shall I make arrangements for your visit to Vogler's
protectorate?'

'Indeed. We shall need a coach, and a pliable maid to see to my wife's needs, and
perhaps another for food should those needs overwhelm her restraint.'

'I shall see to it,' Kail assured him. 'Should I also inform Posner that you will
be requiring his services? I am sure his pack are straining at the leash and ready
for a run out.'
'There is no need. I will bring our errant baron to heel. One man, even with a few
swords at his disposal, does not concern me. There is no uprising, the other nobles
are generally cowed. One man will not undermine my rule. I shall crush him.'

Power was an accumulation of subtle strengths - he had been slowly gathering the
trust and respect of the other counts and men of power throughout the province. Few
had held out against his sweet words, promises, or, finally, his might. Those that
had, one by one, met with tragic fates. That was the way of it: no outright
fighting, no display of might, merely an unfortunate accident here, a streak of
foul luck there. Vogler was one of the few who still resisted - and almost
certainly because he believed himself to be beyond the awareness of the Vampire
Count, too far removed from his seat of power to be a true threat. Out of sight,
out of mind as the old adage went.

Very good, my lord.'

Vlad laid a hand on his man's shoulder; it was not a gesture of affection. His
fingers curled tightly through the fabric of his coat, Vlad's immaculately
manicured nails digging into the bone. 'Do not be jealous of her fate, there are
worse things than death, my friend. Many, many worse things'

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But Kail did not answer him. He watched a raven in the sky, banking and swooping
low after some unseen prey down in the valley below. Vlad left the man alone,
trusting that he would do what he had to. Other things pressed on his time. He
wanted to be the first thing his wife saw when she returned to this life. There
would be much within her that she did not understand and could not hope to cope
with alone.

Sweeping through the dusty corridors of the castle, Vlad cursed himself for a fool.
Her mirror still rested atop the dresser. It was one thing to wish for a new life,
and to think you grasped the constraints of it, but quite another to pick up a
mirror out of vanity and habit and not be reflected in the looking glass. Servants
balked as he brushed by them. He took the stairs two and three at a time, barely
making a sound as he whisked through the galleries and back to his wife's room.
Vlad threw the door open and stalked inside.

The sheet over Isabella's face was undisturbed.

He snatched up the mirror, then moved quickly around the room, seeking out anything
that had a reflective surface. He took her mother of pearl hairbrush as well as a
copper bowl she kept her hair pins in, a twin-stalked pewter candlestick and a
blown-glass trinket. He almost forgot the locket at her throat. Pulling back the
blanket he snapped the chain and pocketed the jewellery. Only when he was satisfied
there was nothing left within the room that might offer Isabella an accidental
glance of a reflection that was no longer there did Vlad leave the chamber, intent
on disposing the things he had confiscated.

He found Herman Posner's men, Dade and Belew, coming out of the duelling hall. He
ushered them over. 'Every reflective surface, anything that catches an image, I
want it gone from this place before dusk.'

'So the whispers are true, then,' Belew said, an undertone of disapproval in his
voice. 'The lady's light has not truly burned out. Was it wise to bring her over to
the night?'
'Do you question me?' Vlad said, his voice dangerously restrained. He inclined his
head slightly.

Belew knew better than to push his master. 'What would you have us do?'

'Empty the castle of reflections, that will suffice. These first few days are
difficult enough without the constant mocking of looking glasses and half-glimpsed
reflections. She is a woman remember, a creature of beauty and vanity. The shell on
the outside is important to her sex. We men cast it off, become the beast with
pleasure, but it is different for women. Waking into unlife is painful, they shed
the skins of their past lives but hold to the memory of their faces. There is
identity in

the angle of a cheekbone and the curve of a lip, they are us, after all, in so many
ways. And yet the memory fades and after a year, two, a hundred of solitude and
loneliness those lines and imperfections have left us and we remember nothing.
Better to let them slip away than face the shock of having them stolen away by one
careless glance.'

'We shall see to it.'

Belew turned to Dade. 'Round up the others, we shall denude the castle one floor at
a time.' To Vlad he said, 'Perhaps a portrait, to help her remember herself, sire?
Something she could gaze upon at will. There are precious few paintings around the
castle, and none of the lady herself save the cherubic daub her father had
commissioned for her birth. Old Otto was not a patron of the arts.'

The notion appealed to Vlad.

'That would be a suitable gift for her unveiling, my thanks for your
thoughtfulness, Belew. As you say, her father's home has always been austere. A
portrait to capture her undying beauty would be no bad thing. Let me think on it.
Dispose of these, please. I would be at her side when she wakes.'

Posner's wolf nodded, taking Isabella's few possessions from him.

Vlad returned to Isabella's room, content to sit out the rest of the day at her
bedside. He stood at the window, surprised to see so many peasants gathered in the
courtyard. It stymied him at first, then he realised they were waiting on word of
their countess. Smiling softly, he threw open the hinged wooden shutters, and gave
them the word they so desperately wanted to hear.

'My people,' he called down, spreading his arms wide in greeting to encompass all
of the gathering. So many faces, washed out and wan, looked up at him with wretched
expectation. So many women had fallen to the blood plague already. They knew he was
about to tell them she was dead. That was the only way this story could end: the
death of a maiden. '1 thank you, we thank you, for your vigil and your prayers. The
gods themselves have chosen to answer, this morning, when we feared all was lost,
my sweet Isabella's fever broke. She is resting now, but rest assured, friends, she
is well and will recover fully. The fates have smiled sweetly upon us.'

His words were greeted by disbelieving silence; these people knew well enough the
debilitating nature of the blood plague - and more importantly that few if any
survived. That he proclaimed Isabella well was a small miracle to these people
whose lives were bereft of the divine.

And then someone down there shouted, 'Merciful Shallya!' and the cry was taken up
by others.

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'Indeed/ said Vlad. 'Now please, she is weak and we are all tired. We would sleep
now. Go home safe in the knowledge that your countess is whole and eager to return
to you.'

They cheered again, the cries muffled by the wood as Vlad drew closed the hinged
shutters.

He closed the thick curtains and sat a while in utter darkness without even the
sound of breathing for companionship.

Isabella awoke with a gasp and nearly choked on the sudden intake of air.

The sheet fell from her face as she sat up in the bed. He could see the
disorientation in her face as she looked around the room trying to fix on something
real to focus on. He could not remember his own death dreams now, they had been so
long ago time had all but erased them, leaving a vague memory of discomfort and
choking. They were still writ fresh in his wife's mind. Blood would slake them...
eventually.

'Have I come back to you?' she asked. 'Or is this more fever dreams come to taunt
me?'

Vlad sat on the edge of the mattress beside her. 'You have returned to this world,
my sweet.' He took her hand in his, marvelling at the delicate bones and veins just
beneath the skin.

'How can I know? I feel so... weak. The air smells of dust. Can you smell that?
Such an unfamiliar perfume. Dust. And unburied dead. That sour-sweetness is my own
smell, isn't it? My flesh has turned.'

'It is the stench of rigor, in those first few hours between death and unlife your
flesh corrupts just as all flesh corrupts. Musks will mask it and in time it will
fade.'

'And the thirst?' she asked, touching her fingers to her lips.

'That will never fade, though you will learn to master it.'

'And this dreadful arousal that courses through my body? Will that too fade, or
will it burn within me for eternity?'

'That is the blood.' He held up his wounded hand. Though the wrist had already
begun to heal, dried blood still crusted the scars where he had opened himself up
for her. 'Our bodies thrill to the fragrance of life. It is more than mere arousal,
it is the serenity of life, and all of our ancestors inhaled in one heady aroma.
The blood you drank - my blood - contains traces of every woman and man I have fed
upon, their lives and their stories, and my sire, and all the lives he fed upon and
his sire, and so on into time immemorial. The blood is the life.'

'I feel...' she touched the sides of her face, then mirrored the explorations on
his face. 'Nothing, neither happiness nor hope, sadness no despair... I feel...
empty.'

'That is our curse,' Vlad admitted. 'There is nothing within that we would
recognise as human. We are husks.'

'Then how...?' Isabella began, but did not want to continue the thought. 'You never
did, did you? You never fell in love with me.'

Vlad said nothing. That was all the answer he could give.

Her eyes were dark with deep smudges and her breathing ragged. The first moments of
the transition were always difficult.

'I can have meat brought to you, raw and bloody. It helps but it is not the same as
a first feeding.'

She looked at him then, as though seeing a stranger. 'When must I feed? How soon? I
feel weak as a lamb.'

'We will go out tonight, when the moon is up. We will find you something docile for
that first blood. There is much for you to learn yet about this new life you have
brought on yourself, if you hope to survive it.'

She reached out for him, clasping his wrist. 'Give me more blood.'

Her nostrils flared as she breathed him in. 'I hunger.'

He pulled his hand away. 'There is no sustenance in my blood now,' he lied. 'It is
dead. You crave the blood of life.'

It was not true; she had tasted the power of his bloodline, in essence the might of
the man himself. To allow her to drink more would weaken him and unduly strengthen
her. He would be a fool to consider either.

'Give it to me!'

Vlad slapped her, a stinging blow across the cheek. 'You are no maiden whose
chastity I dream of stealing away with pretty words, and there is nothing within me
capable of cherishing what I take. Do not make the mistake of thinking I am bound
at your side by some kind of mythic adoration. You are my blood now. I could break
you if I so chose, and cast you aside if the whim so strikes.'

She looked at him then, horror in her face as she understood the same hungers she
felt still burned within him. He released her hand. He could smell the fire in her
body now, the reek of the blood soaking into the organs beneath her skin, and into
her meat> steeping it in its succulent juice. And though he remembered the tang of
her on his taste buds, she was already more potent now, freshly bom into the
unlife. And yet she was different, wrong. There was no fear in her awakening, no
panic. She was calm, almost rational. He had not seen the like before. Those others
he had sired had, at first at least, wrestled with the loss of their humanity and
the ensuing emptiness that opened up where their essence had been. Isabella simply
accepted it. Welcomed it, even.

'You would feed on me?' She offered her own wrist, the gesture a parody of erotica
as she held it up to his lips. 'Drink your fill, empty me. I chose to walk forever
by your side, my Vlad. I did not know you were incapable of love. I always
thought...' she let her words trail off into silence.

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'That we were soul mates, the blood drinker and his mate, yet now you understand
that there is no soul within the shell and feel lost because the world you thought
you understood is not as you imagined it. I do not need to drink you, but soon you
will need to feed. Rouse yourself, dress, my queen of the blood, then let us find
you fresh blood.'

'Tell me this one thing, why do I still love you if there is nothing?'

And for that he had no answer.

Vlad took both of Isabella's hands in his. 'It is time to unleash the beast, there
is a monster within you now that needs to be let live. Reach inside with your mind,
can you feel it?'

He had taken her out into the forests beyond Drakenhof for her first hunt. It was
imperative that she taste fresh blood, and soon after being sired, for the
transition to be complete. His man, Kail, had set six cattle loose, giving them the
chance to run for their lives. They wound hunt them one at a time, giving Isabella
the chance to bring down helpless prey and savour her first kill.

'I do not know what you mean,' she said, but he saw the flicker of recognition in
her eyes. He could sense her uncertainty. She was sickened by the notion of
killing, and yet simultaneously excited by it, hungry for it. She itched to run
free in the forest and bring down the prey he had released. It was all part of the
great game.

You do; he said. 'I want you to focus your thoughts inward. Search with your mind.
There is another presence within you, a third if you like. The first is the old you
that is dying out, the second is this new you born into the unlife, but the third,
the third is the most potent of all. The third is the she-wolf, the huntress. She
is a savage beast. Find her within yourself. Embrace her. Call her forward.'

Her face began to shift, the muscles around her throat stretching, the softness of
her brow shivering and elongating as the beast came forward. And then it lost its
shape and her face returned to the simply wan beauty of the dead woman. What is
happening to me?' There was no fear in her voice, as he had expected, she relished
the transformation.

You are becoming the she-wolf. In that form you shall be able to scent the living
aura of your prey. Embrace the hunger. Now, again,' he encouraged. 'Unleash the
beast.'

And she did.

Her spine arched, her hands clawing at the side of her face, fingers becoming
claws, the fine hairs along her arms growing thick and coarse as her jaw distended,
becoming a snout and her teeth sharpened. Her eyes shifted colour, deepening to a
dark grey. She howled her pain, an inhuman cry.
Beside her Vlad shifted shape, mirroring her change.

In a moment two majestic wolves stood side by side on the forest road. He looked at
the moon, then answered her, baying with a howl of his own, announcing his bride to
the children of the night.

They ran, an easy lope at first, then more spirited as they scented game.
Occasionally the she-wolf would catch another sent and take off after it, driven by
her hunger to feed. Vlad gave Isabella her head, allowing her to bring down her
first kill. He knew her scent, she could not stray far.

He shifted back to the shape of a man, and sat a while listening to the sounds of
the night, enjoying the solitude for a while before he walked after her. As he
neared, he could hear the sounds of her feeding as she tore at the flesh of
whatever forest dweller she had brought down. He sniffed the air, catching the
fragrance of blood - but it was wrong, it was not the fit healthy wine of some
frightened peasant girl, it bore the taint of animal, wolf or fox, blood without
the sustenance of human life. He began to run, pushing through the skeletal
branches of the trees as they snagged and pulled at his cloak, fear pounding in the
place where his heart used to hammer.

He found her sitting cross-legged, the body of a wolf in her lap. She was no longer
in bestial form but had reverted back to a vulnerable nakedness. Blood smeared her
lips and chin and streaked down her chest where she had succumbed to the frenzy of
feeding. That was not what brought him up cold. There was madness in her eyes as
she looked up at him, desperate for approval, the head of the wolf in her lap. As
Isabella shifted her weight the wolfs body fell onto its side, exposing the
shattered cage of his ribs and the ragged hole where she had reached in with her
feral teeth and chewed out the animals withered heart.

She had drained the wretched creature dry.

'It tastes... like... nothing I have ever tasted,' Isabella's voice was drunk with
the potency of the wolfs blood. She dipped a hand back into the open cavity of her
victim's chest^and teased out a string of muscle, lifting it to her lips. She
breathed it in before taking the meat into her mouth and chewing it.

It was wrong, the first feeding should not be on some wild animal. She needed blood
filled with the vitality of mortality. There was madness in an animal's blood. Vlad
knelt beside her, looking into her face, afraid of what he would see in her eyes as
she looked back at him. She reached up, taking his face in her bloody hands and
drawing him into a crimson kiss, her tongue lingering in the melange of blood and
saliva their contact shared.

He broke the kiss.

The blood was good, rich. But it was not strong. He had told her the truth: all of
their yesterdays were locked away within the blood, like

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secrets never to be told. But some stories bled to the surface. On another night he
might have knelt beside her and finished the beast. But such intimacy was denied by
the all-consuming look of hunger in his woman's face.
'No more/ Vlad said, grabbing a handful of hair and hauling her away from the dead
wolf.

She did not fight him. She gazed up at her sire, a curious look of detachment on
her pale face. 'It tastes divine,' she said, then craned her neck to look up at
him. 'I frighten you. I can see it in your face. I am not the woman you-' She was
obviously about to say loved, but caught herself. There was no love between them,
not then, not now. 'Eat with me, husband. There is plenty to go around.'

'Do not vex me, woman. Clean the blood from your face. We shall leave this wretched
beast for the birds. There is more suitable blood out there in the woods, do you
not smell it? Virgin maids, frightened cattle.'

He needed to remove her from this place. As she said, she was his wife, damned to
walk forever by his side.

She smiled at him then. 'My handsome protector. They shall call me the Crimson
Queen, Queen of the Blood, Mistress of the Shadows.' There was both power and the
first glimpse of uncertainty in her voice, as though she needed his approval. 'Do
you think they will worship me?'

The black brougham coach waited down in the courtyard. The driver swathed in black
sat on the bench, whip in gloved hand. No inch of the man's skin was exposed to the
dusk. There was no farewell cortege. The courtyard was quiet, the peasants of
Drakenhof having returned to their hovels in the town below, content to believe in
miracles. Vlad led Isabella by the hand, opening the door and waiting as she
clambered inside. She moved with an awkwardness she had never known in life, the
stiffness of death still to be worked out of her muscles. He sat himself beside her
and drew the thick velvet curtain so that no one would see the carriage's
mysterious passengers. He rapped once smartly on the roof and the coach lurched
forward.

For an hour the only sounds between them was the sparking of horses hooves on the
small granite cobbles that lined the road, and then even that small familiarity
faded as the road became hard-packed mud.

All around them shadows made their allegiance with the moon, creating emaciated
spectres to haunt the trees.

The first stage of the journey took four nights, following the roads that wound due
south through Pfaffbach and then bore west from the ancient township of Nachthafen.
The second stage took considerably

longer, taking them across the Draken and into the skeletal woods of the ghouls
before emerging on the far side, in the Bylorhof marshes and the territories that
bordered the furthest western edges of his land. They travelled only by night,
sleeping in the coaches by day. The leather banquettes rested over a thin layer of
grave dirt, providing the comfort of the familiar for the vampires that sheltered
within the coaches.

Baron Meinard Vogler's castle was not so much a fortress as a ruin in the shadow of
Grimspike, a great tooth of mountain that pierced the bog and marsh of the
countryside - a single spar of rock in an otherwise sodden territory. But it was a
huge ruin, almost as vast in scope as Drakenhof itself, with parts of it recently
restored and fortified.
It was, Vlad had to admit, an impressive sight.

Oil lamps burned in the windows of some of the upper rooms, the light from their
dipped wicks flickering fitfully.

As the brougham rolled into the courtyard, Vlad felt a shiver of trepidation. Where
he had expected a petulant fop with his few flunkies in tow, he was greeted by an
honour guard of forty heavily armoured men. Banners and pennons flapped and snapped
in the evening air. Across the courtyard another fifty men ran drills, swords
clashing with organised precision. The display of strength was obviously for his
benefit. Eyes along the road had obviously noted their approach. Ninety men in the
yard, in full regalia going through their paces could hardly be coincidence. It was
almost certainly a glimpse at the home of a man with his eyes on greater prizes. No
matter; greater men had fallen to the vampire.

Servants bustled left and right: chambermaids, scullery maids, cooks, game keepers,
wardens and more, all moving with purpose, bowing and scraping as they came within
the baron's orbit.

Meinard Vogler himself was gracious, effusive in his compliments and well-wishes
for the countess's healthfas he helped her out of the carriage. He did not once
look Vlad himself in the eye. The vampire was no fool, he knew within minutes of
setting foot within the castle this arrogant mortal had no intention of letting
them leave his home alive. The irony that neither of them had arrived in that
precarious mortal state amused the count.

'Welcome to my humble home, von Carstein,' Vogler said, finally addressing Vlad as
he swept open the thick wooden door. The word 'humble' was the last one von
Carstein would have chosen to describe the lavish splendour of the castle. The
hallway was draped with thick tapestries and rugs. Vogler was obviously a throwback
to the mindset of Otto van Drak and those other robber barons who bled their people
metaphorically. The new baron was, at least, literal, in his

Vampire Wars: The Von Carstein Trilogy

bleeding - and his people would benefit from kindnesses they had never previously
known, for a little bit of the crimson juice. 'I am so glad you were in a position
to take up my invitation. I must admit I was concerned when I heard of your lady's
plight.'

'As you can see, she is quite well.'

'Indeed. Now, You must have worked up a fearful thirst on your journey. Mannheim
will see to your luggage and make sure your chamber is ready and your horses
stabled. Let us go to my study and talk over a nice glass of red like civilised
souls'

They ghosted across the plane of a huge silvered mirror, only Vogler himself
casting a reflection. Their host did not appear to notice. Vlad, though, cursed his
thoughtlessness. Such a simple thing could undo them both.

Vogler was a beast of a man, the alpha male of the family litter, with wide-set
black eyes and a hooked nose that flared excitedly as he made a point of leading
them down the corridors that showed off his wealth, and up the stairway to the
study. He dressed with all the civility of a pig, draped with petty embellishments
meant to prove his prowess and fearsomeness. The metal brocade of his gown was a
fine line of skulls in various states of agony, his hair a wild unkempt mess of
curls. Chains hung from his belt, ivory casts of bones dangling like trophies. His
face bore the scars of battle - they did not make him any uglier than he already
was. Vogler was no doubt used to being obeyed; big men often were, backing up their
words with their physicality.

Vogler led them into his study. Again, like the lower rooms this one was opulent to
the point of excess, the taste on display vulgar but then, the house was a match
for its master. He walked with an arrogance that irked the vampire, but soon enough
the man would be humbled for his hubris.

Ancient leather-bound tomes lined the walls alongside oil paintings of the
landscape of ruin. A huge oak desk stood in the centre of the room, with three gilt
armchairs set before it, arranged in a neat circle. The rug they walked across was
worth more than a petty duchy alone. Behind the desk a beautiful brass cast of a
skull rested on a wall plaque like a hunter's prize kill.

'Well, here we are,' Vogler said, gesturing for his guests to sit. 'Let us toast
your wife's good health, shall we?' Vogler said, turning his back on Vlad as he
decanted three crystal goblets of thick red liquid.

'You intend to make the pledge then?' Vlad said, folding his cloak around himself
as he sank into one of the chamber's three carefully arranged armchairs. They were
a weak man's chairs, Vlad thought, as their softness cushioned him.

'To interrupt is vulgar, von Carstein,' Vogler chastised. 'Before we talk of

unpleasant business let us at least pretend civility.'

Very well,' Vlad said, disliking the man more by the moment. He would enjoy killing
him. Slowly.

'Now, a toast, if I might make so bold.'

Meinard Vogler handed the goblets out between them. Vlad did not rise from his
seat. He took the drink in his hand.

Vogler had offered them a rich vintage of Bretonnian claret. It was an expensive
drink, but he expected no less of the man.

'To new friends,' Isabella answered, raising the goblet to her lips.

She spat the liquid out, throwing the goblet across the room, a look of abject
revulsion on her wan face. She rose in a fury. 'What is this foul stuff?'

'Not to your taste, countess?' Meinard Vogler said smoothly. 'Perhaps you like a
younger vintage?'

'I like blood,' Isabella rasped, forgetting herself.

'Don't we all,' Vogler said, raising a mocking eyebrow.

The man's casual confidence set Vlad's danger-sense to prickling. The fetishes
ought to have been clue enough for him to realise Vogler's predilections and
peculiarities went beyond the norm. So, he shared a taste for blood or was he
trying to be provocative?
'Shall we cut the pleasantries?' Vlad said. 'They are quite tiresome. Isabella,
dear, perhaps you would like to go and freshen up? You have made rather a mess of
your gown. It would be only right to dress for dinner. Assuming Vogler intends to
feed us.'

'Indeed,' Vogler said.

She nodded, less than eagerly, and left them alone.

Vogler paced back and forth. 'Now,' he said finally, 'let us drop this pretence,
shall we?'

'I am all for dropping things,' Vlad said, remembering Leopold van Drak's pitiful
screaming.

'Good. You will cede your control over my protectorate, von Carstein. We shall be
neighbours, and while It suits, allies'

The arrogance of the man shocked Vlad. He had expected something: treachery,
treason, but not blatant idiocy.

'I think not,' he said.

'Then you shall die and the issue of your rule or my rule shall be moot,' said the
baron. 'Which would be a pity. Together, I think, we could bring about death on an
unprecedented scale.'

Vlad stared at his posturing host, wondering if he truly were arrogant enough to
believe his petty protectorate could ever be a match for the might of his undead
kingdom? 'You think to threaten me?'

'Did you not see the might of swords just waiting to answer my beck and call when
you entered, aloneV He stressed the last word, lingering on what he obviously
believed were the implications of Vlad's solitude.

Vampire Wars: The Von Carstein Trilogy

Vlad smiled, cold and cunning. 'I saw a few blades but nothing that inspires fear,
Vogler. Men doing drills are not something I think to concern myself with. A pile
of corpses at their feet would no more turn them into ruthless killers worth
fearing. They are cattle. No more, no less, no matter how you dress them up.'

'Then you are a bigger fool than I thought, von Carstein.'

Vogler walked across to his desk and reached down, lifting a brass bell. He rang
it, twice, sharply. It was answered in different parts of the castle, bells ringing
out the summons. Within moments Vlad heard running feet and the clatter of steel as
Vogler sprung his trap.

Cursing himself for a fool, the vampire wheeled on Vogler, fury drawing the animal
from within his face, and grabbed the man by the throat. 'You mock me, little man.
Do not,' he rasped, his voice dropping to a cold whisper, 'make the mistake of
thinking yourself superior. You and all of your armies are not. I have outlived
better foes than you. You will leave this life before I do. Do we understand each
other?'
Vogler nodded once, sharply, as he twisted savagely against the vampire's iron
grip.

'Good,' said Vlad. 'I would kill you, here and now, for the insults you have given
me - but I will not, not yet. I will kill those around you. I will deprive you of
everything you believe you love, the people and the finery you hold dear, I will
take it all. I will destroy it all. And I will keep you alive to see it all leave
you. Then perhaps I will kill you. Or perhaps you will see life with new eyes and
we will become those firm friends you talked of. Now I think I shall whet my
appetite with a mouthful of traitor's blood.'

Vlad pushed the man away from him, catching him by the wrist as he fell. He raised
his hand to his mouth, fangs bared, but Vogler surprised him with almost
supernatural speed, and a strength that far outstripped anything a mere mortal
ought to have commanded. With a single, arrogant, twist of the wrist and push Vlad
went sprawling from his feet. He hit the floor hard. He looked up at the Vogler and
saw that he was more than some mere trumped-up petty upstart. He saw a thirst for
power in the man's eyes. And a strength that had no right to be there.

Vogler had pledged his soul to a new master.

A fearful foe stared back at the vampire.

Laying his hands flat against the floor, Vlad sprang. With no blade, he was reduced
to cunning and claws. Matching the fierce grin of Meinard Vogler, Vlad unleashed
the beast within, allowing the savage to tear out of his skin. He roared, throwing
himself at the man - only to be thrown from his feet again by a savage roundhouse
of a punch that cannoned into his jaw.

Shaking himself, Vlad rose slowly this time.

'I did not think you would be so weak, von Carstein,' Vogler's voice changed,
arrogance subsumed by a well of power that resonated within Vlad's bones.

'You talk a lot for a dead man,' Vlad said.

'The same might be said for you,' Meinard replied.

'Ah, but 1 like to play with my food,' Vlad said, a smile twisting his bloodied
lips. He flew at Vogler, tooth and claw, his jaw distending wolfishly as his teeth
snapped at Vogler's throat.

Six thunderous blows drove him back again, each landing with superhuman ferocity,
speed and precision, hammering into his guts and lifting him bodily from the floor.
Vlad fell to his knees, shaking his head in disbelief as he tried to dislodge the
fugue of shock that locked his muscles.

'You are weak, von Carstein. I shall take no pleasure in killing you.'

Vogler clapped his hands, and the door flew open, more men spilling into the
chamber. A blow to the side of the head sent the vampire reeling, his face sliced
open from the bite of an iron blade. He did not bleed.

Vlad circled, his mind still working like the pack animal his instinct fled to,
seeking to draw Vogler into a mistake. Four men came into the room, each dressed in
the regalia of a vile warrior bedecked in skulls and gore. They moved to circle
him, seeking to trap him in the centre and make easy work of him. He needed to
surprise them, though how he could do such a thing trapped within their circle of
blades, he had no idea.

'Flesh corrupts,' Vlad whispered, raising a hand as though to accuse the man before
him. Vogler laughed, but the laugh mutated to a scream, a sound that lost all
coherence as the tongue in his vile throat rotted, decaying in a matter of seconds
until maggots of flesh spilled forth from his gaping mouth. *

The men around him moved as one, their weapons slicing in high and low. With no
blade to parry the weapons, Vlad hurled himself from his feet, rolling and coming
up in a tight crouch beyond their circle. He cast about quickly, pulling down the
row of bookcases and sending Vogler's precious leather tomes spilling across the
floor. He picked one up and threw it into the face of the nearest man as his
attacker moved in for the kill. The spine of the book hit him across the brow of
the nose, shattering the cartilage. He kicked the man's knees out savagely. The man
screamed as his legs buckled and he hit the floor. Vlad charged by him, five
lightning fast paces, and launched himself off the desk at the face of the second
man. Before the warrior could raise his deadly blade Vlad's teeth had torn his
throat out. The count hit the floor hard, spinning.

Vampire Wars: The Von Carstein Trilogy

Three men faced him.

Three became two as Vlad snatched up a letter opener from Vogler's desk and rammed
it into the third swordsman's eye. The warrior crumpled without a sound.

Two became one as Vlad charged at the last of the warriors, lifting him and
impaling him bodily on the great brass skull so that the teeth and jaw of metal
protruded through his armour.

Finally he turned on Meinard Vogler who stood calm in the centre of the chaos of
death, a smile spread across the ruination of his mouth. He did not try and speak.

There was no laughter from Vlad this time.

'Beg me, mortal. Grovel. Throw yourself at my feet and beg for mercy before I end
your life,' he goaded, drunk on the violence of killing.

With a single smooth motion Vlad grabbed Vogler as, incensed at the taunts, the man
threw himself at him again. With a single savage twist Vlad snapped the man's neck.
Vogler shuddered once and went limp in Vlad's arms. There was rage in the lifeless
face that gazed up at him. It was almost daemonic.

He found some small joy in that. He leant in close, inhaling the man's essence,
savouring the power of his blood. He had been more than a mere man, that much Vlad
knew now, but not how much more - not until Vogler's head lolled and he saw the
intersecting lines of the tattoo at the nape of the man's neck. He knew the mark;
three parallel lines, one thicker than the rest, crossed by two more lines, making
the mark of Khorne.

Cursing his own hubris, Vlad hurled Vogler's corpse aside and left the study, going
in search of his wife.

The castle had been a trap, baited by his own arrogance.

How well the dead man had known him.

That single thought burned Vlad but he cast it aside. Isabella was alone within the
castle, newborn and weak with the power of undeath only just stirring within her
veins.

The burgeoning fear he felt for her was quenched with a single step into the grand
ballroom Vogler used as his throne room. Isabella sat on the elaborately carved
throne in the centre of the room, bathed head to toe in the blood of Vogler's
court. Around the room thirty people, Vogler's cooks and cleaners, maids and men
were arranged like dolls in an insane playhouse, posed for Isabella's amusement.
They embraced, they lay at one and another's feet in worship, they held their-hands
to their faces in horror. At their feet, the blood she could not swallow pooled
thickly. She sat there, the queen in her crimson court, regal, wan and serene. She
was, beyond any pale shadow, worthy of being called his wife.

'Aren't they pretty?' she said, seeing him. She held in her lap the face of a woman
she had torn away. She lifted it in front of her own as he walked toward her and
asked, 'Which do you prefer? I think she is pretty. I would like her. Do you want
me to look like her, my love?'

And in that moment, he knew that she was lost.

He had never loved her more.