NOSGOTH NOIR

I don't like going over to Aquile's place. The little squirt got a bad deal, what with being lower-ranking than a swamp rat in the Clan and a weirdo to boot. He lives right on the boundaries of clan ground, in a shack that barely keeps out the light and lets the rain in by the bed. I don't take no invites to stay over for a bite at Aquile's serious. The oddness of his eating habits don't even bear repeating.

Still, it ain't his fault, and I guess that's why I'm his friend. In private, anyways. In public I get to smack him around and stamp on his neck same as all the rest. He understands. "Helios," he says to me, "I wouldn't have you jeopardize your standing just to stick up for me." So you see, a good kid underneath, it's just a shame about the weird. Escobar likes weird about as much as he likes vampire hunters. It's part of his way of toadying up to the Emperor. Anything new, anything odd, anything that shouldn't be – Escobar laps it up like a dog and then drools it out in front of Lord Kain's sainted feet. Kain's a caring overlord, he likes to take an interest in his subjects. And the last thing any fledge in any clan wants is the Emperor getting interested in them, know what I mean? That's what Lord Raziel's for. Say what you like about the guy, he was good at keeping Kain's interest firmly aimed at the shiny bits in his armour and the nasty ideas in his head. He protected us. And now he's gone, and I can't say I don't have my suspicions that he may have been removed by a higher power – and I ain't talking about the Dark Gods.

Listen to me, shooting my mouth off! I'm gonna end up bunking with Aquile in his damp, bright rat-hole if I don't watch my step. A good detective knows when to keep his mouth shut. A great detective knows to make sure no-one cares about his mouth in the first place, capisce?

"Hey, Arcturos!"

Ah, damn. Agremor and Ithiel. Escobar's favourite boys. If they find out I'm working for Dumah these days, I'm dog meat.

"Hey, boys, how's it going? Your master let you off the leash?"

Agremor growls. I forget. They ain't got no sense of humour, or at least, in Ithiel's case, no sense of humour anyone sane can understand. And besides, from what I hear about Escobar from some of the ladies who works in his house, I may have hit a little too close to the nerve with that leash comment.

Hey, what're you talking about? Sure I know some ladies! I may be a bit of an outcast but I'm not a monk or a hermit, get it? And who's telling this story, anyway? Right. So zip your lips and let me talk. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Escobar's prettyboys. As I was saying, these two are not a low-rank's best buddy. Agremor is almost like a Dumahim in his blunt-headed desire to smash things to pulp, and Ithiel's nuts. I mean really, nuts. Wackier than a human in a room full of Melchahim fledges. He has this way of looking through you as if he's seeing a whole bunch of magical leprechauns hovering over your left shoulder, and what's more, each and every one of those leprechauns is flipping him the bird.

"Think yourself above us, don't you, Arcturos?" Agremor's moving, now, walking towards me deliberate-like. Small rocks fall from the overhang. The ground shakes. Nah, not really, but then the world got no respect for drama. You get the picture. Agremor is huge.

"Above you?" I'm backing up, now. "No, no. Not at all. You got me all wrong. Me, above you? Not a chance."

Hells, he's almost seven foot tall. The Pillars have a job being above him. Ithiel giggles. Even though he's crazy, I think he's a lot smarter than his good buddy and he sees right through my evasive words. And it's real hard to stay focused with those mad yellow peepers of his fixed on my every move.

"Where are you going?" Agremor persists, stopping toe to toe with me and inhaling my scent as if it will tell him something he doesn't know against my will. He's welcome. Our noses are good, but not good enough to sniff out a liar. Lucky for me. All he gets to find out is that I'm afraid, I'm on the edge of hungry and I don't want to be near him. Big surprise. "Going to get a bite to eat, then taking some leftovers over to a friend of mine," I say, forcing myself to tilt my head respectfully to one side. If Lord Raziel could see me now, baring my veins to these two mooks, he'd smack all three of us so hard you'd be able to hear us yelling from the bottom of the Abyss.

Ithiel shoves his face rudely under my chin. It takes me all I got not to gag or recoil. This only happened to me once before, if you don't count getting turned, and that time was when Raziel himself happened by and caught me playing footsie with a girl who was way out of my league. That time I thought my last sight in living Nosgoth was going to be small chunks of my own throat flesh bouncing merrily off my boots while the girl I'd taken a shine to rubbed herself all over my clan lord like some kind of cat. But it turns out the boss had been feeling lenient towards his own sex that evening, or else I'd just drawn the luckiest hand in my life. He killed the girl, snagged my scruff with his fangs and shook me like a rat, just once, then passed on like a ghost into the citadel. He'd been so close I'd smelt the rank of him on me, a heavy powerful scent like hot metal on a foggy day. There ain't a vampire alive in Nosgoth can stand on his own two feet for long when his clan lord wants him down.

And I ain't ashamed to say I ran for it and didn't show my face outside in clan grounds for a week. It was shortly after that I took up smoking.

What I wouldn't give now for a decent cloud of the old human weed. Ithiel smells as crazy as he is, and to have his teeth this close to my skin is making me almost want to take a dive into the lake just to burn the reek off me.

"Listen, Helios," his thin, insinuating voice says, close to my chin. Always uses first names. Ithiel wants to be everybody's best friend. Until he wants to wring your neck, that is. "Lord Escobar has told us to keep an eye out for incursions into clan territory. He believes that in the temporary absence of our own Lord Raziel, his ambitious brothers may try and take over our home. And you know what would happen if they were by some terrible chance successful, don't you, hmmm?"

Sure I do. Same thing that happens when a new daddy lion moves in and takes over a pride of mummy and baby lions. Smack. Crunch. Bye-bye, Razielim. I ain't stupid.

"Yeah," is all I say. trying not to flinch as Ithiel moves behind me. "Yeah. I do."

"So I'm sure we can trust you to be a faithful little fledge and tell us if you see any invaders, can't we?"

And I start sweating cold, even though we ain't big on sweat, us vamps, because I suddenly realize Ithiel knows. He can smell Dumah's boys all over me. He's got me marked for a two-faced son-of-a-bitch.

"Yeah," I repeat, making sure I sound normal. "You got it."

Agremor's itching to ditch me and get going, and painful though this is for me I have to say I'm glad he's there, because his fretting makes Ithiel antsy and he's more likely to peel off me and get moving. Ithiel's still right up close and personal, which is making me more uncomfortable by the minute. I heard from those same clan ladies that Escobar and his cronies don't pay much attention to personal space in the most personal of ways, you get my drift? And I don't play those kinda games, especially not with high-ranks. Those kind of games have a way of turning sour real fast, and if you ain't careful you can end up burning with the fishes. I don't want Ithiel taking a fancy to me.

"Come on," Agremor rumbles in his big bass drum of a voice, "work first, fun later. We have an uprising to quell on the east side."

"Oh," says Ithiel, giving me a big, friendly smile as he draws back, "and a small human massacre isn't fun? You disappoint me, Agremor my brother, you truly do."

And like that – gone. Both of them turn and trot off like good little armoured puppydogs. I can breathe again, if I had to that is. The last thing I need right now, with Lord Dumah as a client, is to see my name added to Escobar's List of Exceptions. That list may be an urban myth, it may be a rumour put about by his stooges to make him look big, but even if it ain't real I don't wanna be on it, you get me? The word on the street is that the list contains exactly what it says on the tin. Exceptions. Things that shouldn't be, and things that shortly aren't after Escobar notices them.

Still, I can't help wondering, because the Dark Gods saw fit to give me a brain that don't do nothing but wonder – why is there even a need to quell an uprising on the east side? There's been no trouble for years, what's got the mortals all riled up? And when you get right down to it, why are Escobar's lapdogs going to deal with it if it's just a little local trouble? There's plenty of fledges you could sacrifice to that cause, stupid bloodthirsty patsies that they are when they're newly turned. And usually that's exactly what Lord Raziel would order, because he has his sire's sense of humour sometimes and likes to see young up-and-coming members of his clan run screaming from a few human farmboys armed with buckets of water. He says it teaches them not to underestimate either him or humanity.

But once again I keep coming back to the fact that Lord Raziel ain't here, a fact that doesn't seem to have figured high on Escobar's famous list, big surprise again, and I gotta get my nose back on the case. I check the skies for rainclouds, check the trail for high-ranks, then set off again to Aquile's with my brain buzzing like a nest of wasps.