2006, 13th January

Paris, France

Thud.

Thud.

“Keep your elbows tucked in. Keep your shots as straight as you can.”

Lucia shifted her weight forward, landing a heavier-than-normal jab from her left hand on the pads James was holding.

James shifted backwards, shifting his torso to intercept the incoming right hook.

That was when he noticed the position of his opponent’s feet had shifted, and a left hook clattered against his jaw, knocking him down.

James groaned, massaging his jaw.

“You didn’t do that last time.”

“What I did didn’t work last time.” Lucia replied simply, unbinding the gloves from her hands.

“Most people don’t get rid of their tendencies that easily.”

“Don’t they? I wouldn’t know.”

“Must be nice, all this natural talent.”

Lucia pulled her collar to her nose and smelled no sweat.

She really should have expected that.

James wiped the cracked skin around his jaw off, drawing a red smear across.

Lucia understood that James resented her, for having been granted a gift he himself was never worthy to have.

If this could be called a gift.

But despite Lucia being a so called pure blood, while James belonged to a lesser class of vampire, it did not change the fact that James had the advantage of at least 50 years of experience over her, and the power of his blood was stronger than her own.

“It’s almost sundown.” James’ voice pulled her from her thoughts. “Your father will be expecting us soon.”

Lucia did not reply as she retreated to her own room.

There, she stared at the sealed windows with the strangest sense of loss.

She was forbidden even a glimpse of sunlight for as long as she lived.

She stripped the training gear, washed herself up and pulled on a maroon blouse and black jeans.

The recommended colour, in case she got some blood on her clothes, her own, or someone else's.

She darkly chuckled to herself. What a concern to have.

She went down to see James had already pulled the sedan to the front.

“Ready to go?”

Lucia very pointedly sat in the back seat.

James said nothing, and they drove off to La Defense once more.

“You had better prepare yourself. The congregation I picked you up at? That was nothing. A curtain. Today is the real deal.”

“Right. Can’t wait to rub shoulders with the who’s who of bloodsucking parasites.”

“Take this seriously. There are monsters there so ancient you and I couldn’t possibly imagine. None as dangerous as your father, of course, but enough to snap you like a twig.”

“And how old is my father, exactly?”

James was silent for a moment, then spoke.

“Much older than either of us… but still quite young when compared to his peers. But that’s what pure blood can afford you. He’s simply a… higher creature."

They finished the rest of their drive in silence.

And finally they had arrived.

“This is an underground parking lot.”

James stepped out of the vehicle, and visibly took a moment to collect himself, tugging at his collar.

Then Lucia could feel it too.

The foreboding pressure in the air stood like a physical barrier in front of her.

James gestured to a red steel door.

“We’re here. Remember what I said, and don’t run your fucking mouth as much as you like to do.”

Lucia assumed a straight backed stance, flicked her middle finger at James, walked forward and pushed her way through the door into the den of monsters.

The first thing she noticed were the slaves.

She didn’t quite have another way to describe it- half naked people with glazed expressions, offering wrist or throat to passing parasites, drowning in expressions of pure ecstasy replaced once more by hollow emptiness when the fangs were pulled away.

A tall muscular man, very obviously daubed heavily with makeup, offered her his wrist as she passed him by.

She nearly snarled in displeasure.

Her family had it’s fingers in numerous pies, but nothing was ever able to explain the wealth and power they could bring to bear so casually.

Her father was known to be rich, but hardly exceptional.

He was one more in a sea of multi millionaires, never quite at the top of the 1 percent.

Lucia knew all their wealth simply could not be entirely above board.

But now, she had some idea what trade Lionel Bellone primarily involved himself in.

Lionel himself surrounded himself with two other men, one with a blonde child on his lap.

The blood slaves seemed to give them a wide berth.

Lucia did not blame them.

The air around them was thick with tension, and seemed as cold as their undead flesh.

Lionel caught her eye, and gestured her over.

She momentarily thought about refusing altogether, then thought better of it.

This was neither the time nor place for that kind of thing.

As she drew closer, she was vaguely aware of James tailing along at her elbow.

She stood beside the table at which the three men were seated, but made no move to take a seat herself.

The balding man with the child seated on his lap spoke.

“Is this child supposed to be our drink for the night?”

Before Lucia could throw all caution to the wind and tell the paedophile exactly what she thought of him, Lionel looked squarely at the child and said, “Do mind your tongue, or you are bound to lose it.”

The girl pulled her lips back to reveal gleaming fangs, and Lucia noticed now how the man whose lap she was sitting atop had his own muscles constricted, eyes staring somewhere off into the distance.

“So humourless, my dear Lionel. Any family of yours is family to me as well.”

The voice came, broken, from the man’s throat.

Lucia really should have noticed something wrong, but she wasn’t sure how to anticipate something so outlandish.

A buzz of murmuring broke out near the entrance, and Lucia felt a chill rattle down her spine, not unlike the first time she had come to see her father.

A man who could not be less than 7 and a half feet tall, with shoulder length hair and a beard the colour of copper, in a black leather overcoat stretched taut over bulging muscles, carrying a duffel bag, waded his way through the crowd towards them.

James hastily pulled Lucia back by the arm, while whispering in her ear.

“That’s Azhar. They say he was a persian warrior back in life. Right now, he’s a monster to rival your father. Stay clear.”

Ultimately James had to physically pull Lucia from his path, as her instincts were screaming with unexplainable aggression.

Lionel himself, on the other hand, remained unmoved, and gestured to an unoccupied seat for the larger man.

Azhar shook his head, and dropped the duffel bag on the chair.

“Let’s get this shit over with. I have places to be.”

Lionel pulled the bag over and unzipped it, prying a laptop and another object Lucia did not recognize.

A dark sphere with grooves carved on its surface with some strange symmetry.

“Is this…”

Lionel placed it aside and opened the laptop.

It was unlocked, a video set to play as he opened it.

The angle ensured Lucia couldn’t properly see it, but she caught glimpses nonetheless.

Dilapidated humanoid forms.

Tumorous masses of flesh.

Strange text scrolling down the screen.

Lionel snapped it shut, face yet expressionless.

“This is all true?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t have wasted my fucking time otherwise, would I?”

Lionel rose from his own seat, stuffing both objects back into the duffel bag.

Nodding slightly at his companions, he turned to leave, but not before gesturing to Lucia.

“Follow.”

He then walked to an adjoining room, Azhar walking beside him.

He did not turn to check if she followed or not.

Lucia walked at a distance behind them, this time unaccompanied by James.

The other room was bare, unpainted concrete.

A steel cabinet and a table at the centre were the only objects placed there.

“Azhar,” Lionel began to say, “meet my successor, Lucia.”

Azhar turned his steely gaze at her, nostrils flaring.

Lucia felt the room was suddenly rather cramped.

“This girl? You expect the other leaders to respect her?”

“If they don’t then she will die.” Lionel said, matter-of-factly. “Then I will make another one, perhaps less fragile.”

Then her father addressed her directly.

“It is time you make your presence known in a more… involved manner, to my peers.”

Lucia stubbornly pressed her jaws shut, lest the Fuck and You fluttering about behind her teeth escape in unfortunate company.

“You will make your first stop at Reykjavik. It will be your biggest test. You will swim, or you will sink…”

Lionel continued to speak even as he pulled the metal cabinet open.

“There is one equaliser I can offer you. Fire.”

He pulled a shotgun and a case of shells from the cabinet.

“Every one of our kind fears fire. No matter how old we get, how powerful, fire and sunlight remain our greatest banes.”

He meticulously loaded the firearm with ammunition.

“Mankind is fragile, a flawed existence, but they have supplemented their power with fire. Such as this weapon, loaded with incendiary ammunition, which can destroy most of our kind as easily as normal bullets do humans. You may do the same.”

Lucia did not miss the implication the words, most of our kind, carried.

“What’s on the laptop?” she blurted out.

The three of them regarded each other silently for a moment.

“The brat really lets her mouth run away in front of her,” Azhar broke the silence.

Lionel shook his head.

“Me and Azhar will be dealing with that. It’s none of your concern. Take this.”

He pulled the laptop and sphere from the duffel bag once more, and replaced it with the shotgun.

“James will show you how to use that. He will also procure any other weapons the two of you need for your journey, and he will fill you in on the locals and what is expected of you there. You leave in a week. Get yourselves prepared before then.”

Lucia wordlessly pulled the bag from her father’s outstretched hand.

Lionel said nothing as she left, turning to Azhar, and she slammed the door shut on her way out.

She gestured to James and they left together.

“So, Iceland is your first destination. Your father really doesn’t like making things easy.”

Lucia said nothing, thoughts still racing.

Iceland was a distraction- a very obvious one- but from what?

“But that isn’t the biggest concern here. Azhar is a lord that rules vast territories for our kind from all the way from Russia to some in the middle east, which is almost impossible for any of us. Between him and your father, they may as well rule the entire Eurasian subcontinent. So why would he-"

“Why is it impossible?”

“Eh?”

“You said it’s nearly impossible to rule territory in the middle east. Why?”

James shook his head.

“There are far more things out there that go bump in the night than you or I have any idea about. Some of those call that area home. It isn’t wise to go poking around.”

“What about that sphere? You ever see anything like it?”

“The first thing anyone learns working for your father is, we stay out of his business.”

Spectacularly unhelpful.

The sedan pulled back up at the apartment they were staying at.

“I’ve got about a week to make sure you’re not a liability that gets us killed at Reykjavik. So we start with the basics.”

“Great…”

They climbed out of the vehicle and headed upstairs.

“It’s far too late to take you to a gun range, but the sun doesn’t come up for a while yet. Best we make use of all the time we’ve got.”

Upstairs, James turned up with a laptop and dumped it at her feet.

“Self study. You’ll find most relevant information about the Draugr of the north here. And this way I don't have to be stuck with you for the better part of two hours.”

Lucia wordlessly took the laptop and waited for James to leave.

And then she opened the laptop, and pulled a list of missing persons cases.

That man offering her his wrist, upturned, the memory of his face fresh within her mind.

Cases of kidnapping- which age group should she be looking at? Which area?

Nothing.

She remembered the other faces too- a woman, couldn’t be much older than her- face drawn tightly in ecstasy as a parasite drank from her.

5 at least that she had seen.

She found nothing.

Releasing a breath, she decided to at least look over what she was supposed to look at.

Vampires of the north- called Draugr.

By themselves, or by others was unclear.

Lived in frozen terrain- undead physiology had apparently adapted to not freeze in temperatures below zero.

Lucia wondered idly how she was supposed to mimic these adaptations.

She scrolled through grainy images of pale humanoid creatures, some more feral than the rest.

She paused at the sections displaying images of corpses, some bloated, flesh blackened and eaten away on some others.

Apparently, the Draugr used frost to their great advantage while hunting.

Lucia instinctively knew when the sun was over the horizon, even though sunlight was not allowed passage into any section of the apartment.

She placed the laptop aside, and stepped out of her clothes.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she fell into a strange, fitful trance that could not rightly be called sleep.