AN: This chapter introduces two canon characters that I could not add to the character list because of the limit. Salome, and Remus the Impaler (who did not appear in the television series but in the comics).


When she closed her eyes she saw her home.

The sea lapped the rocky shores like a million sapphires churning endlessly. The sun warmed the strong stones of the castle where inside her husband stroked her pregnant belly and spoke soft words to the child inside.

When she closed her eyes she still felt him inside of her.

The way Max had touched her had always been gentle as if she would easily break. When she laid on her back for him, his lovely dark eyes always told her the love he had for her was endless, and when they had made their son she felt like a goddess.

When she closed her eyes Aurelia Marius imagined that she was not here.

When she closed her eyes she was still the living princess, her beauty was still heralded everywhere, and she was still happy.

In this world of make-believe she imagined that her family was still alive and with her; that her home was not history.

But when she opened her eyes everything turned to black.

She was no longer a princess, and she was no longer a mother-to-be; the only thing she would ever give birth to was hate. The only thing she would ever be a mother to was her raven, the blood she thirsted for, and the dark places she hid in.

Aurelia stood on the shore of the Black Wash. The water bubbled past her like thick ink.

It was near freezing but now so was she.

Her hands went to the laces on the front of her dress; black for the way she mourned. The fabric slipped from her slight shoulders, fell over her breasts, and down her hips until it piled at her feet.

Naked she waded into the river, her hands trailing over the freezing surface.

She felt nothing at all.

The black water swallowed up her legs and then the place that should have born her son. It rose higher and higher until it completely consumed her.

Tipping her face to the sky Aurelia watched the holes of light wink at her as if they shared her secrets. A woman always had secrets.

A woman was strong, much stronger than her men but she had to allow them to believe that they were the brave ones.

The stars slipped away as the girl drifted down below the surface. Darkness engulfed her, tickled her bare skin. The freezing water embraced her like a lover and quenched the pain from the outside in.

Her eyes opened expecting blackness but instead they saw fire.

A fire underwater was a most unusual thing; impossible really.

Aurelia watched as the flames floated towards her and danced over her skin without burning.

These flames wrapped her body in a powerful feeling that she had not been able to muster up herself; she may have been transformed into a very strong creature but inside she was weak.

But she had lost everything she knew and loved to the fire; it should be her enemy.

The phenomenon sparkled on her fingertips as if she herself were made of fire, and it did not feel like a foe come to claim her too.

When Aurelia lifted her head from the water the fire was gone and her skin was only wet and not alight with red.

Emerging from the river her mind was no less troubled.

"Enjoy your swim?" A man's voice asked from the line of the trees.

Aurelia's eyes landed on the long, lean form of Eric the Northman.

Then she remembered her nudity.

Her arms went to conceal herself quickly out of the modesty she had been bred for; ladies should allow no man to look upon their naked forms aside from their husbands.

Checking the ground for her dress, Aurelia was desperate to find that it was not where she had stripped it off.

Instead it was in the hand of the undead prince.

The female shifted uncomfortably. "Give it back," she pleaded.

Only, Eric took his long strides to her and was suddenly and unfortunately right by her side.

As true to the tales, Eric was very handsome. He was one of the tallest men she had ever seen, with hair spun out of gold silk that fell just past his shoulders. His arms and legs were well muscled and he moved them with unnatural grace. It was beyond clear that he had been high-born.

"You know who I am, correct? Eric Northman. You may have heard me referred to as the prince, or the warden's son, or Godric's childe... Any of those I will answer to so long as it is nothing offensive." The way he grinned reminded Aurelia of a large golden cat.

Her tongue began to move of its own accord: "I know who you are," it formed.

Hatch and Celia have told me all about you, even the most intimate parts.

But she would not meet his eyes, not now; it was much too embarrassing.

He held the crumpled dress in front of her face. "You lost this, yes?"

"I did not lose it; you stole it."
"You have no proof of that." Eric laughed.

He reminded Aurelia of a lion; a predatory, golden, smirking lion.

Then this lion roared once more.

"There is no reason for you to be shy; I have already caught a look of all that there is to see." He granted her with a lecherous look that made her shiver.

"Then there is no reason for you still have my clothes." Aurelia let her arms fall away from her chest and her eyes meet Eric's.

This seemed to satisfy him as he returned her woolen gown.

Aurelia was shaking as she pulled it back over her head, feeling violated.

It was hard to think of Eric as Godric's progeny, despite the vileness that they had in common.

Where the elder was dark, the progeny was light. Godric possessed an air of unattainable wisdom where Eric was much more accessible. The ancientness in the warden's bones was intimidating but Eric seemed to easily blend in. And Aurelia already knew much of what the women of Ghostwoods thought of Eric, while Godric remained isolated and seemingly untamable.

Besides, she could not shake off the last conversation they had had; the wicked things he had told her.

"Daughter of Korun," the lion spat at her.

Hurt filled the girl's eyes.

She was no daughter of Korun's; her father had been a brave man, a lord who treated his people fairly and fought valiantly. He had passed when she was only twelve but Aurelia remembered him well.

"You have no idea who I am," she boldly retorted.

"I know that evil blood taints you, that it will rot your heart soon enough and you will become as mad as your maker, and I will not let you destroy my home, or my people, or Godric."

Aurelia closed her eyes and saw her home burning.

"I just do as I am told," she whispered into thin air.

But that went past Eric the lion like a leaf on a breeze. He reached out one paw and grabbed a long tangle of her damp hair.

"You are made of black magic; your hair has been kissed by the moon while your lashes remain black as your raven's wings."

"It is only a genetic anomaly." She shook her head.

It was true that when the princess had been born it had been with a full head of dark hair like her mother's. She couldn't have been more than five when it fell out in clumps and grew back pale as glass.

Perhaps it was a curse, and perhaps she was made of something dark but Aurelia would not confess such a thing to Eric Northman.

The lion prince shook his mane lazily. "You may have been a princess in life, but in death you will be a queen. In one more cycle of the moon you will be a married woman once more. You will have no duties to fulfill, you will only be worshipped by your people, and you will grow powerful and hungry. They will call you Death's Queen and fear you as much as they love you.

You should know that you have been given a gift you are not worthy of. You are only here by the word of a man who is too honorable to betray it. I do not trust you, Aurelia Marius, and I have a stake waiting with your name on it."

The girl stared at the much older vampire knowing that this was no lie.

She nodded her head and said to him, "I have a stake waiting for me too."


When he closed his eyes he felt the weight of his chains.

The heavy manacles cut deep into his young skin to form bloody gouges that burned and itched horribly.

He could tell that they had held prisoners before, that those prisoners had died in these chains, and that he too would die a slave.

When he closed his eyes he saw his home burning.

Gaul had been alive and dead within less time than Godric had been.

When the Romans came everything ended. It was the last time he saw his family, his people. Men of a capable age were rounded up and chained together to be sold at auction; among them were Godric and his brother, Remus.

One by one they were stripped and pushed onto a block like cattle. Many men were not purchased at all, which meant certain death; but what was worse: death or slavery?

It was by some miracle that the brothers were sold as a pair.

When he closed his eyes Godric remembered the way he stood on that block and watched the buyers appraise him. His chest had heaved with breaths of fury and pain, his muscles taut against his restraints.

It couldn't have gotten worse until it did.

The man who became their master was instantly cruel and had wasted no time in branding them with angry red marks across their shoulder blades.

SLAVE was what those brands meant; that they were the property of someone else.

Godric and his brother only existed to serve their Master, and serve him he forced them both to do.

It began immediately, the pattern of which they were made to get used to. The Master tortured them simply for the purpose of torture, and their screams of agony sickeningly aroused him. Which was where the worst of it began.

While other slaves were made for multiple tasks, Godric and Remus' sole purpose was for the pleasure of their Master.

He took pleasure in raping them, in whipping them, and hitting them and slicing them with sharp knives; and then he took pleasure in drinking their blood.

It was not at first that the Master revealed his true demon form, but after the young men had been beaten into such oblivion that it almost did not surprise them.

Of course the Master was a devil, of course he lived on the blood and fear of his slaves, but he claimed to like Godric and Remus most of all. Which was why he turned them too.

After the transition the torture did not stop but was only made worse by the fact that they could not so easily be killed.

They starved, oh how they starved; the Master withheld the blood they needed to survive to make them as weak as possible and only allowed them to drink from his own vein. It kept them in a perpetual state of imprisonment.

Godric had since tried to put a finger on how many years he had existed this way; the majority of his childhood he had been a sex slave, then he died just as he became a man. He learned to be undead under the guide of the Master-turned-maker, learned how to be just as cruel and sadistic as he.

Only, Godric of Gaul had an intelligence that his Master did not possess.

One night he achieved what little to no vampires ever achieve: he murdered his own maker.

Of course this outraged the undead society in which he had been forced into, and they threatened to destroy him too.

The only regret he found was that he had not been able to rescue his younger brother.

The boy had become so overwhelmed with sadism that he had begun to turn on Godric.

When their maker's head was removed from his body and reduced to ash, Remus threatened to kill Godric too.

It was this way that the vampire was forced into isolation. He never once looked back. If I look back I will find myself in chains once more.

Yes, he was evil and convoluted and just as abusive as his Master-Maker had been; Godric had no mercy to spare, the way he killed and drank was beyond vile. The way he raped and tore at flesh and bathed in the blood would have made his maker proud.

He had years of revenge to extract and his target was an endless path laid out far into his eternal future.

Often he heard the long-gone voice of his maker warn him, "beware the God of Death" and Godric had lifted his face smeared with gore to the sky and shouted "I do not believe in the God of Death; I am Death!"

But when he opened his eyes he was a king.

He was barefoot and clad only in a pair of thin, dirty trousers and marching up to the great stone door. He didn't knock, for this was his kingdom and he must remember that he could go anywhere he pleased.

Inside the silver girl shot up like lightning from her chair and the raven screamed.

The look in Aurelia's eyes was foreboding when she answered his call, as if she had been expecting an intrusion like this to happen at any moment.

Godric stared so coldly at the great flapping bird it froze him in place, and he could only puff out his feathers in indignation while the boy took his girl's hand and rushed her away.

Deep into the forest he dragged her but she said nothing in protest; this was a good girl. For all she knew he could be leading her to the slaughter.

Finally he spun her around in the fog and the gloom and demanded, "let's see what the hatchling knows."

But the girl only stared at him. She searched his face before trying to make sense of the dark markings that decorated his ghostly skin. For the first time Godric noticed that Aurelia did not seem fearful of him but rather angry.

The irritated crease of her brow only served to provoke him further. The warden bowed his face towards hers and said, "run."

The chase would not be as exciting for Godric as he was endlessly faster than the young vampire.

Aurelia allowed her feet to catch on raised roots, and her ducks and dives could not outsmart him.

When she attempted to leap into a tree he knew that he had her.

With both hands the boy clutched the girl's waist and pinned her to the mossy floor with a loud thump. She made a noise like the air was being punched from her young lungs and stared at him wildly.

Twigs and leaves scattered her long, long hair like a crown of thorns, and finally his bride-to-be looked like she belonged to the forest.

"You run like a wounded animal, woman." Godric hissed.

"Which is meant to be more insulting: a wounded animal or that fact that I am a woman?"

She probably would have spit on him too if Godric hadn't tipped his head and grinned impishly. "It is no small feat to be a woman, let alone an insult. The females of our kind have always been much stronger."

The moon-pale face before him contemplated that. Undoubtedly it was the opposite of what she had been taught as a human; it took time to unlearn the wrongs of human society.

In the meantime Godric watched the lovely face from the most perfect vantage point. Her eyes were rimmed with the darkest lashes he had ever seen despite the stark contrast of her hair; even lighter than Eric's. How could these two traits exist at once? There were secrets to this woman that he had not considered before.

- Like why she chose to hide her body beneath conservative gowns of black and gray when the warden was now finally able to feel the firmness of her underneath his own form.

She is beautiful and yours.

That's right. A curious seventeen year-old's hand traveled the slope of her hip and up the winding path of her waist. The muscles beneath were tense and not at all yielding. She only tolerated this attention but the look on her face confirmed to him that she did not desire it.

As he had told Eric: an uninterested lover was boring. So Godric leaned back on his heels and allowed Aurelia to sit up.

A cloud of deep consideration struck her features for a moment. She looked at the boy again to ask, "teach me."

"Teach you what?" For there was so much she could learn from a monster like him.

"Everything." The word fell from her mouth like a lead weight landing right onto Godric's lap.

"You don't know what you're asking." 'Everything' dictated the bad with the good, the evil that lay inside every undead creature just waiting for the key to its release. If Aurelia asked so easily for it, the warden was sure to give it to her.

Then again, she had no maker who was worthy of training her, and any lesson Korun would pass down to his progeny would turn to a thick coil around her soul; another chain. Godric could not let another maker use chains.

Aurelia spoke up again, unaware of what he was thinking but determined to pry an agreement from him. "Please. If you teach me how to be a night creature, I will give you whatever you want." Those thick black lashes lowered so practiced in decorum.

"Now you truly don't know what you're asking." The impish smile returned to the warden's curved mouth, those gray eyes brewing with yet another storm unbroken.

"I- I think that I do," the girl stammered.

"No, woman. You want to learn how to feed so carefully you won't kill, how to leap from the trees like a shadow, how to fly like your wretched bird. Things you have never even dreamed of. You haven't even killed yet."

Aurelia blinked. "Stop calling me 'woman', I have a name and I've heard it on your lips before."

Godric laughed. There was no sympathy he could show her.

"Come. I will take you to your first lesson."

The warden led the princess away into the forest, past a frightfully abandoned graveyard. Past fields and stony paths and a stream that fed into the Black Wash beyond.

Fog licked at their ankles and dampened their hair to their brows; this pace seemed slow, too slow for the ancient.

Finally they reached gardens and pastures and the signs of human life.

Two rows of cottages rose up from the earth like crooked teeth, smoke curling from their stone chimneys.

Aurelia tensed at Godric's side, and for a moment he thought that she would try to flee; she only looked at him for further instruction.

His eyes landed on a house with a lone individual inside; there she sat in her widow's robes.

Taking the girl by the wrist he marched her to the door where a cross greeted them menacingly. It was meant to keep evil away, and yet here they were knocking.

The girl stared at the icon as if it would burn her.

It was wooden and could have been used to kill them both if the killer knew as much, but holy relics could do no damage otherwise.

An old woman answered their call, her thin skin lined and sagging. Rheumy eyes evaluated the pair curiously.

"What are you children doing at such a late hour?" The crone peered beyond them as if expecting to see a guardian accompanying them.

The boy had to prod the girl in the side to get an improvisational story out of her: "forgive us for the intrusion, Madame. My... brother and I were passing through and had some trouble with... our horses. May we trouble you for some water?"

"Well, I suppose so." The widow leaned on a cane of sturdy wood.

Aurelia made to step past the threshold but Godric grabbed at her gown and hissed, "you must receive an invitation for us."

"Um, Madame, what exactly are you asking of us?" She almost winced.

"To come in of course, dearies. It's a cold night and you're hardly dressed for the weather." The old woman looked concerned about the pair's state of undress; Godric barefoot, and Aurelia wearing only a thin dress.

Godric pushed Aurelia into the heart of the house after the crone who ventured back to check the boiling water in her kettle.

"I was just sanitizing this water meaning to make soup with it, but I suppose you children can have it when it cools." She lowered herself painfully into her chair.

"Thank-you..." Aurelia was watching the woman, no doubt feeling uneasy.

The warden brushed past her. "First."

He leveled his face with the human's and felt the familiar power of that mental line reaching out to her.

The glamour wrapped its unyielding tentacles around the weak human's mind until her muscles went slack and her eyes glazed over as if she had just been issued a healthy dose of morphine.

Her cracked, yellow smile reached the vampire as if he were her own child. Then the most soothing voice told her, "you are going to allow us to drink your blood, you are going to die for us. You may feel pain but you will not scream for help."

His weapons of choice emerged from his gums; two long fangs of gleaming alabaster.

Two twin tears were made on the crone's thin wrist and the red blood came forth as if it had been waiting for them.

As expected, the youngling rushed the bleeding human.

Godric gave way to the hungry female and he saw her fangs for the first time; identical and perfect they protruded from her mouth.

Without any concern for the integrity of flesh, Aurelia bit down into the wrist and immediately began sucking hard.

Godric heard the blood drain from the widow's veins like a river rushing south.

When she had tired of the radial pulse the vampire attacked the carotid, ripping through the neck like a wolf attacks a rabbit.

She drank and drank while the warden watched the life slip from her victim; her first.

Within a minute the woman was dead and Godric was sending a silent prayer to the night lands.

The corpse stared blankly at the ceiling, the undead creature drank it dry and pulled away sated.

Fangs pointed like arrows to the sky and that hair tumbled to the floor like a swirling cape. Aurelia uttered something in a language Godric did not comprehend, but he understood the gist: she was overcome by the blood.

When she turned her face to him everything was white and red. The human blood stained her face from nose to chin and dribbled down her neck and splattered her hair.

Perhaps he should have known what would come next being so experienced, but Godric only sat rooted to his place while the lusting creature crawled towards him.

He remembered clearly how often and naturally feeding and fucking went together, and he had taken his own victims a number of times he could not begin to count.

His ravenous fiancee pulled herself into his lap and smelled his powerful scent, the scent of centuries of bathing in the blood and never regretting it.

This was not the true Aurelia, he knew, but a creature dominated by the bloodlust he had led her into. If she had been in her right mind she would never touch him like this, nor let herself be touched.

She was as guarded as her own castle had been, but even that had fallen to the right kind of evil.

He smelled the wet blood on her mixing with her own scent; it was still so human.

Godric held her at the small of her back and teased, "you called me your brother, but would a brother ever handle you like this?" And he licked the blood from her chin.

Aurelia moaned softly and hugged her breasts to him.

"I never had a brother," she breathed.

"I do not wish to be your brother." His hand was in her mane of hair.

"I know what you want. It's the same thing that every man wants." She did not sound at all cross about it. "You may be old enough to hide it but you are still a man; dead or not. You are not righteous enough to deny that you want me."

His hand wound around her throat, the thumb finding the spot where her pulse should have been.

Do it, her eyes seemed to beg him.

It would be too easy to remove her head from her neck, just as it had been with his maker.

Age did not matter when it came to destruction, nor did power or strength or sex or beauty.

Aurelia split her lip open on her fangs and spoke through the dripping blood.

"I am to be your queen; this is what everyone keeps telling me.

Your queen of hell, and death, and cold. I am only a symbol, nothing more. I have been stripped of life and stripped of an identity.

Why not take everything, my lord? Why not truly kill me and start over?"

Godric swallowed.

Didn't it sound so easy when she let it slide past her swollen lips?

His bride could not account for the wrath of Korun, the likelihood of his taking revenge on Ghostwoods and its people, on Godric too.

No, if he destroyed Aurelia it would not be as easy as starting over.

There was more to the story.

Godric let his hand fall away and his gaze become sorrowful.

"You are to be my queen; what they say is true. Bride of Death suits you too well.

What is not true is your lack of an identity. You are not merely a symbol, Aurelia Marius of Castamere. If I wanted a symbol I would not have made a deal with the devil."

She had tears of blood in her vivid eyes.

They sat in the dead widow's house for hours that night.


He had recalled this man having no face.

Now he did.

"How do you do that?" Korun laughed greedily, for he was already coveting the impossible capabilities of his maker; capabilities that men sold their souls for.

Only, Korun had no soul left to sell.

The Night Man accepted Korun's envy with a sneer in his direction.

"Don't be a fool, Korun. I have always been able to change my face." This face was now brown and rather lovely; the skin of a young Indian boy.

The robes he wore were plain, and he walked barefoot. This disturbed Russell Edgington; a man of this great power ought to present himself as such.

"You only believed that I had no face because it was never constant; it has always been the best way for me hide." The voice of the boy was even smoother than Korun had remembered.

The raven was concealed in the body of a man; perhaps Korun had found his own way to hide.

"You have always had a weakness for whatever you found aesthetically appealing, Korun. The weight of it made no difference so long as you drenched yourself in gold."

The nameless man probed his progeny's sharp face with eyes darker than a cave.

Korun shivered.

"What a useless sentiment!" He spat smugly. "If my greatest weakness is having good taste then I must be the strongest bastard on this earth!"

But his maker shook his dark head. He knew the doom ahead.

The two men stood off against each other; creator to monster, teacher to student.

When the Night Man spoke again his voice had darkened to a dire tone. "I came not to argue flaws; I came because you have made one of your own."

Now Korun clasped his jeweled fingers together tightly and peered off at the dark blue horizon. "This is true."

His maker shifted. "What have you done with it?" As if a monster even worse than Korun had run of the valley.

Korun noticed the uneasiness in this most old and powerful being; he had never seen his maker look less than in complete control.

"I gave her to the Gaul. She'll afford me power over everything I want." That included everyone as well.

Like a large cat the Night Man stalked towards Korun until he had him in his claws; and those fingers suddenly were eerily claw-like.

"You created for spite, for wealth. You are greedy, Korun. That is your weakness." The boy hissed into his creation's ear.

The raven man laughed quite gleefully. "You do not understand; you never have. You're too damned old to look beyond the piss-poor ways of you god-humpers. I created for progress, for prosperity! How dare you accuse me of using my own blood for anything otherwise."

Two pairs of dark eyes locked on each other in a precarious dance.

Korun knew that his maker was beyond old, perhaps even the oldest thing still in existence, and he could vanquish him without remorse; the two had not shared ties for the majority of Korun's lifetime now.

"How could you toss away your own blood like a mere plaything? She is of my blood too. Does our kind's sacred bonds mean nothing to you, rabe?"

Korun spat. "You dare to say such a thing to me? What of our bond, Übel ?" For the Night Man had thought less of Korun than a noble does of the lowliest peasant. And Korun was no lowly man.

The devil who wore the body of a beautiful young man stared threateningly, and Korun knew to expect hell to pay.

"You will bring her to me as punishment for disobeying me and desecrating the traditions of the Holy Sanguinists." It was a command despite its loss of supernatural effectiveness.

Korun met that order with laughter, such an ugly sound. "You cannot ask that of me. We will settle on a compromise instead."

The Night Man waited in trepidation.

"Out of the generosity of my heart and my gratitude for you, Übel, I will give you the lands that your grand-progeny once ruled: Castamere." What more could an impossibly unnatural beast want- a charred hole of a once gorgeous place.

The Sanguinists liked those places to hide in, Korun knew. They liked to pray to their godless God in private halls, and flex their boundless faith to something they could not see or hear or taste.

Korun only answered to the blood.

He had never once been capable of considering himself one of them despite the strong way he felt about their kind's superiority, and their blood.

His problem with the Sanguinists had always kept a discordance between he and they.

They knew him, and they lusted after the incredible power that came with his advanced age- they knew how valuable it would be to their cause- but they failed in convincing him.

There was one such Sanguinista, a woman of rather biblical fame, who had almost succeeded in drawing Korun into the cult.

She called herself Salome and she danced the dance of the Seven Veils.

"Castamere." The Night Man's smoky voice broke.

"I do not want your discarded toys, Korun. I do not want your city of bones and ash. I want you to do right by your blood."

Because his maker knew very well that the best tactics to use on Korun were those that made their subject the sole benefactor.

Rings clacked together when the raven vampire sealed his fingers to fists.

"You want me to take back my progeny."
"- Or release her. It is what's right... But what would have been more right would have been not turning her in the first place when you lack responsibility."
"You know nothing of the responsibilities I have." Korun flapped his arms like giant wings.

"Look around you, old man. Everything here belongs to me; I govern it all." A sweep of one wing indicated everything in sight.

"And it can be taken away in the blink of an eye." The brown boy said so as if he planned on as much.

Korun gave him a dark look.

"Regardless, I do not come alone."

The Night Man- who now looked more like a boy- turned swiftly, his long cloak swirling behind his naked heels.

He disappeared beyond darkness and did not see if his progeny would follow, though he did.

The ravens stirred the wind as they trailed their master and their master's master.

Hoods, dark hoods made of rich crimson velvet like blood surrounded the Night Man in a half-circle like the crescent moon.

Korun stopped abruptly sensing familiarity in this small cluster.

"An ambush, Übel - It has been how many years and you come with an army?" The raven lord spat venomously.

But a hooded figure broke the circle moving with such grace and purpose.

Korun narrowed his eyes at her before she removed her hood to reveal what would be a beautiful face surrounded by curls of a brown so deep they could nearly be called black.

"Korun, it has been too long now." Salome intoned in a lush voice. "I could not deny your maker's invitation to visit you in your own environment."

The female looked around.

"It is no Castamere but it is nice, my lord."

Korun sneered.

"Responsibility, Korun, is the backbone of a good man." His maker said so as if he knew what a good man was.

Yet the lord of Raven's Peak donned a most charismatic smile and swallowed the bile down into his stomach.

"How could I be anything but honored to treat old friends?" And for a moment even he believed that lie.

But there was no one in sight that Russell Edgington nor Korun could count as a friend.

There remained two more hooded figures, males, whom hadn't said a single word.

Korun could not allow strangers into his nest; not true strangers, at least.

"Step forward, friends. Don't be shy," he coaxed them.

Don't be fucking cowards.

The two hoods swayed forward and bowed respectfully before showing the faces within.

To the right was a man who appeared to be of an age with Korun, but who possessed numerous less years. He had closely cropped peppery hair and lines around his eyes and mouth. He was rather fatherly looking, but Korun knew that this man had never made any children for there was nothing but space between his legs; the man was a eunuch.

The other was much younger in appearance but older in existence. His hair was styled in a way to force it away from the boyish face until it came into odd spikes at the nape of his neck.

Black lines crawled out from the hem of the boy's sleeve, and Korun smiled slyly.

Gaulish bastard.

He was slightly younger than Godric but just as filthy looking. The only thing that stood out about this one was his respect for his elders, the way of the blood, and Korun's power.

"Remus and Archer, Your Majesty," Salome purred. "They have been most loyal disciples of the blood for many years now. I trust them."

Trust. What did their kind know of trust? Korun sneered; he trusted no one.

When he turned to look at his maker again he knew just why.

The Eastern boy with the mop of dark curls was unlike anything Korun had remembered or even seen before. He hated the way his maker could change skins like clothes.

"See us inside, Korun," the Night Man instructed.

Bathed in firelight this group seemed even more unusual.

An ancient and legendary faceless creature sat beside a famous murderess beside a eunuch beside the second to last link to Gaul.

And at the head of them all was a man bathed in the shadows of hungry ravens.

They would make a most formidable holy army indeed.

Salome circled the table like a cat hunting for prey; for birds. The large black on Korun's shoulder puffed its feathers.

The female's hand made contact with every shoulder she passed in turn.

Remus looked as if he would devour her, and Korun was thinking that he already had a time or twelve.

When Salome reached the Night Man she lingered purposefully. Her dark eyes stared lewdly at the unattainable beast.

Korun sat hunched like a child made to sit in time-out.

"Aeternïs is growing stronger with each new moon. We can easily overtake Ghostwoods within the next month."

Aeternïs was what Salome and her peers had dubbed the stronghold of the Sanguinists in the south; it meant eternal rule, and Korun thought that to be exceedingly pretentious.

The raven king laughed.

"What do you intend to do with that pit of sticks and bones, bury it?"

Salome turned on him. "No, My Lord. We mean to take it for ourselves. You do understand how politics work, correct?"

The bird on his shoulder screeched as if it understood the insult.

"Oh I understand, my dear. What you seem to miss is the fact that you will have no supporters to your cause in Ghostwoods; they love their savage king."

The female's eyes grew dark and foreboding.

Korun would love to see her try to take him on.

"We do not intend to make friends of the traitors in Ghostwoods, Lord Korun. We intend to enslave them... And as for their savage king, we have reserved a place in hell for him."

Remus did not inch a muscle as he stared fondly at Salome.

He wanted this, Korun realized; the boy wanted to see his own brother chained once more.

Perhaps he would see it as revenge for what Godric had done to their maker.

"Korun's progeny is in Ghostwoods currently; we could extract her." The full lips of the Night Man moved carefully.

Salome nodded slowly. "We could." But her eyes dug fiery daggers into the nest master.

"He made a deal with Lord Godric; he gave him the girl to wed to seal an alliance."

Traitor. Bastard. Devil.

Korun ground his teeth together. The Night Man was betraying him in front of his own eyes and ears.

"You made an alliance with Godric?" Salome looked at him as if he were the traitor now.

He would have to swim backwards now if he didn't want to drown in this sea. All eyes around the table stared accusingly at him.

"I found a suitable bride for the savage, yes. He was looking for my protection against you, against everyone. I didn't trust him so I sent one of my own blood. There is nothing sacred about it; it is only a farce. I have no allegiance to Ghostwoods."

"But you released a lamb into a wolf's den!" The one called Archer slammed his fist into the table.

Korun and his ravens bristled at the outburst.

Salome intervened. "He means to respectfully inquire as to why you would hand off a newborn to a creature as ancient and cunning as our Lord of Ghostwoods?"

"I have control over her, don't I?"

"- And I asked Korun to either take her back or break their bond; it is perverse to put a woman in another man's bed while having access to her feelings, her thoughts." The Night Man looked disgusted at his progeny. "I have taught him better."

"Yes, if you break your bond with the child then we can consider her one of them; you will have no affiliation whatsoever." Salome looked pleased again.

My word is sacred. He had said as much to the Gaul the night he turned Aurelia.

Korun hated lying to himself; he hated being the King of Bird Shit.

No one would take his reign seriously if they could not take his sacred words as such.

What of his power? Why should he allow these fanatics, these Lilith humpers to overshadow him?

He was older, and this was his land.

Korun had half a mind to banish them for their mere idiocy.

Yet- he could easily imagine the power these weaklings could afford him.

He would have the alliance of Aeternïs, which was an incredibly powerful nest despite its ludicrous name.

Instead of moving in on Ghostwoods slowly he could take it with a force that would leave those abominations inhabiting it with their fangs splitting.

And how he would rejoice to see the Gaul put in chains, demolished to the nothingness that he deserved.

Korun's lips curled.

"No affiliation whatsoever," he repeated. "I like the sound of that. But it would do you all well to remember that I am the one with the den of wolves."

The other vampires smiled.

Even his maker looked slightly pleased.

Salome perched on the edge of the table beside Korun, grinning at him as a friend might.

"Plans should be arranged quickly then; we have a wedding to attend."