((Hey guys! Now that the Tumblrpocalypse is over, maybe I can finally start posting again. It's the most wonderful time of the year, so I've been sitting back and enjoying the season, so I'm sorry for the lack of updates. Once the holidays are over, maybe I can get back into my groove again! In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy this chapter. As always, comments feed my rotting soul! And you can still follow me on my somehow still-intact tumblr at unchainmesister too!))

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Many years ago, the Lost Boys had spent a very long night making sure that every window in the old Comstock place was covered in a thick layering of blackout curtains, many of them nailed into the wall so that no light could even think of getting into the house. With the exception of a few un-nailed but still shaded windows in the living room, one up in the attic space, and the largest library window, the curtains remained eternally fixed over the glass. If any of the house's residents wanted to take in the view outside, they would simply have to either take themselves out the front door or learn to live with the disappointment. A little bit of inconvenience was a small price to pay for your life when the sun crested the trees surrounding the old Victorian manor.

So it was that, despite the tug of sunrise pulling at each of their brains, slowly but surely drawing them into the sleep of the damned, every guest of the Clayton household stood wide awake in the spacious living room. Those who couldn't find a seat in time stood against the walls or simply sat down on the floor wherever there was room. Including their latest additions, there were now fourteen vampires hiding under one roof from the deceptively gentle rays of the pre-dawn sunlight. The atmosphere was tense, and if any of them had been given the time to think about it, they all would have made a hilarious picture: most of them were in their nightwear, an eclectic mix of mismatched, rumpled items that gave normally imperious and frightening figures a more human edge. The only ones still in what could have once been termed presentable clothes were sat on the small couch in the center of the room, although their formalwear was now torn, bloody, and singed. A cup of blood was being passed between the two, in the hopes that some food would calm them down and heal their more superficial injuries while the others waited for them to regain their balance.

After many long and uneasy minutes, their long-overdue explanation came.

"We were betrayed." Teodor's voice was unusually small, his normally devious half-smile missing from his striking face. Dried blood cracked around his lips as he spoke, the red mixed with black soot as charred skin healed itself.

"By who?" David asked, although he would bet good money that he already knew the answer. History loved to repeat itself. So unoriginal.

"Michael, and most of our personal guard." Cosmina whispered, leaning into her mate as if he was the only thing holding her up.

She was less damaged than Teodor, her skin smeared in ash and blood but lacking the obvious burning and tearing that her husband had suffered. It was clear that he had done his best to shield his mate, something that earned Teodor a grudging sense of respect from the Santa Carla vampires.

"It was cunningly planned. We never heard a whisper of it." Teodor's glare could have burned a hole through the wood of the coffee table. Maybe it was. "There are always several assassination plots swirling around us, almost too many to keep track of if most of them are just rumors instead of credible threats. That's what they used against us. Our so-called informants plied us with information about suspected attacks, and I am now sure that most of them were false flags planted by the conspirators to draw our attention away from them."

"We heard rumors of a coup, but nothing on this level." Reina supplied, her long nightgown whispering against her skin as she shifted. She stood on the stairs, a favorite place of hers, it seemed. "We suspected an all-out attack, not a quiet overthrow."

"Then your information was just as useless as ours." Teodor growled, his frustration seeping into his spider silk-soft voice.

"And we were not the only ones fooled." Cosmina's hands gripped the empty cup tightly, nearly cracking the glass. "There is treason everywhere."

"You weren't the only ones attacked?" Marko leaned closer towards them from where he sat on the arm of David's chair.

"There were five conspiracies in total." Teodor finally met David's gaze, his eyes cold and hard, although underneath there lay an almost ancient sadness. "The heads of some of the greatest and most ancient covens of Europe lie dead forever."

"Who?" Mae asked quietly, her mind already turning over the lists of European covens, trying to guess who was the most likely to be dead.

"Lennox and Vivian, King and Queen of the English covens." Teodor began, his teeth clenched in rage. "Rikard, Lord of the Swedish vampires. Some said he was a warrior from ancient times, long before his country's written history. I hope he took his killers with him."

"Georgette, Queen of the French coven. She cared so deeply for her followers, how could they have done this to her?" Cosmina seemed especially shaken by this one. They must have been friends, Mae thought.

"And Callistus, High Lord of Iberia. He was the oldest of us all, we think. It was he who warned us, and our loyalists, in time for us to defend ourselves." Teodor finished, fishing his phone out of his pocket. "He warned us with the last of his strength, telling us who sent his killers: it was one of his lowest subordinates, Felipe. Someone he never suspected. He always kept his enemies close."

"So I called Rikard, but he never answered. Then I tried to call Georgette, and it went through, but it must have been because someone stepped on the phone just right, because all I heard was the roaring of a fire before the signal was lost. Then we were attacked." Teodor leaned back, covering his eyes with his hands.

"We know that Lennox and Vivian must be dead, because it was their top officer who knocked down our door, tearing through the barricade we set up. Our peace with them is nearly as old as we are, and to violate such an agreement would be foolish for either of us. You could almost say we trusted them." He laughed without mirth or spirit.

"There were ten of them, six from our coven and four from the English one." Cosmina continued the story in an effort to give her husband a rest. She placed a comforting hand on his knee, her eyes dark with memory.

"Emilian…no, Michael, didn't even bother to come himself. His overconfidence will be his undoing." She snarled, her face becoming monstrous for a moment before she forced herself back into a human shape. "He sent the strongest of his supporters, armed with silver bullets and sharpened stakes. The close-quarters nature of the fight was to our advantage: they had little room to use their guns without harming their accomplices. Still, they had a wretched fervor and lust for power, and because of this they took terrible risks. Of our three guardsmen who remained loyal, none made it out alive, although they took all but one of the conspirators with them when they fell."

"Teodor and I cornered the final man, the oldest and strongest of the assassins, injured but still living. With his strength and cunning, it would be plausible that he would be the sole survivor of this mission, living when all others fell. The two of us together invaded his mind, breaking it into pieces, extracting the names of all the conspirators across every coven. It was all too easy." Cosmina's mouth curled in a cruel smile. "He is now completely under our control, though he does not know it. He believes that we are both dead, and we gave him enough 'evidence' to prove our demises to even the most doubtful of critics. No one knows we are alive now, save for you."

"We escaped through the window, in case the doors were being watched, and we flew here as fast as we could. As far as we know, only the French, English, Iberian, Swedish, and Romanian covens suffered such betrayal this night." Teodor sat up again, running his hand through his filthy hair. "I'm afraid we know nothing more than what we have told you."

The room settled into an eerie silence once Teodor and Cosmina finished their tale. Outside, beyond the tightly-shut curtains, the morning birds sang their songs without a care in the world, their cheerful music a jarring counterpoint to the evil deeds of the night before. While the American vampires had expected trouble of some sort to crop up, none of them had expected something of this magnitude. At worst, it should have been a barroom brawl or two between rival factions, nothing more. A full on coup, though? That was the last thing they'd thought the covens were capable of this far from their home bases. The balance of power was constantly shifting in Europe, and while vampires like Cosmina and Teodor usually managed to maintain their positions as leaders of their own groups, it wasn't unheard of for even ancient vampires to be unseated now and then. But here? In a foreign land, in neutral territory, where breaking the peace was such a dangerous prospect for those involved? It was practically unheard of.

David sat back in his seat, his hands crossed in front of his chin as he thought. The coup was on such a large scale, and so close to dawn, that there was nothing he could do about it until the sun set again. Once the sun did set, it was more than likely that he would either find the usurpers already gone, spirited away during the daylight by minions who could walk in the sun, or his men would reach their resting places just in time to see their taillights disappearing into the distance as they made good on their escapes. Since those who had been dethroned were dead (except for the two sitting across from him), and their loyal followers were either dead as well or in hiding, there was no one to bring up charges against the rebels. He bit back a curse as he realized the alarming intelligence of the traitors.

They had found a loophole in the laws of the haven cities, one that David himself had never thought of until this very moment: if there was no one able or willing to demand justice for a crime committed within a coven in neutral grounds, then those who had committed the crime could walk away without consequence. Most offenses that occurred within the city's limits were between lone vampires, like a mugging or a murder, or a fight between one coven and another. He'd never heard of a case where the killer had been a part of the same coven as the victim. Takeovers just didn't happen in neutral cities, especially in America, where such matters were almost always solved in house, so to speak. Fucking bastards. If David had still been alive, he would be having the worst headache of his long, long life right now.

Still, there was a silver lining in this shitstorm: Teodor and Cosmina were very much alive, and that was something David would bet good money on Michael never planning on happening. If he was still the self-centered bastard he was back in the 80's, then David had a feeling that Michael hadn't even thought of the possibility that his plans would fail. No, he was almost sure of it. Anyone stupid and cocky enough to go against some of the oldest vampires in the world in the middle of neutral territory wouldn't even think to have a backup plan. It was sheer luck that they'd managed to kill as many leaders as they did. If David had still believed in a god, he would think the deity was laughing his ass off at the strangeness of fate.

Now the only question left was what to do now.

David uncrossed his legs and sat up once again, leaning forwards to rest his arms on his knees, his sharp eyes assessing the two vampires sitting across from him. While life had been good to him and his boys in the ensuing decades, David and the Lost Boys had never forgotten, nor forgiven, their brutal betrayal at the hands of Michael, his brother, and Star. The only thing that had stopped them from getting their revenge was the idea of losing their territory if they went out hunting for the traitors, and the only thing they loved more than violence was their home. Decades had passed while they rebuilt their lives, become stronger and more powerful than they ever could have dreamed of being before their fall.

But David was nothing if not patient, and now his patience had been rewarded: their chance for vengeance had been dropped right into their laps. He couldn't care less about the vampires that were dead, beyond the trouble their deaths could cause him and his own. He had no time for the petty power struggles of the rich and the ancient, not when his own kingdom needed running. His ruined heart held no pity or sadness for the night's dead, and if they weren't promising to be of great use to him, David wouldn't have minded if Teodor and Cosmina's smug little existences had been wiped out as well. However, he now had a vested interest in seeing them kept alive and restored to their thrones, because they now had the same goal: to kill the traitors that destroyed their lives. With Teodor and Cosmina as his secret weapons, David could finally have his revenge.

All around him, he felt his brothers and sister pick up on his devious plans, and their feral glee warmed him in a way no blood could ever manage.

"Teodor. Cosmina. Go get cleaned up and get some rest. You are more than welcome to stay here in Santa Carla as long as you like, as my personal guests. We'll give you all the help you need to restore what is rightfully yours. What kind of hosts would we be if we let such a tragedy go unanswered?" David's voice was strangely cheerful, and his sinister grin did nothing to ease the confusion of the others in the room…although their confusing quickly turned to amusement as David continued to speak.

"…And the price of your…hospitality?" Teodor asked, his eyebrow rising as he sat straighter, eager to return to his throne, but wary as ever of help so happily given.

"Michael, Star, and Sam. Dead. Slowly. Painfully." David growled, his smile becoming a snarl.

Teodor turned to his wife, a question in his eyes. The two spoke without words for but a moment, then they turned as one back to David, eerily serene smiles on their bloody faces.

"We agree."


The plan had been successful. They were the new rulers of Europe. No one would dare to go against them, the vampires that had killed the ancient heads of the most powerful covens in the world. The revelry had been swift by necessity as the irresistible call of the sun dragged them all to sleep.

All but one, who held on until the very last possible moment, for his own private celebration.

Now, he could shed the name of Andrei, forced upon him like so many things were in those first days of his immortal life.

He was Sam Emerson once again.

And with a red-rimmed glare that could kill mortal men, and a smile that spoke of nothing but cruelty and contempt, he watched his brother and his mate sleep, the two of them blissfully unaware of the malcontent in their midst.

His time would soon come.