The coven vampires part to make way for their King. Otherwise, they do not grant him much attention. They are consumed by the feast given to them.
“Dagan!” Logan spreads his arms wide when he comes within reach. He embraces me, kissing each cheek, then takes me by the shoulders and looks into my eyes. “It is so good to see you.”
Is it? I wonder. I can see the miasma storming in his eyes.
“And you brought a guest,” he says, looking beyond me to Beth.
She averts her eyes and gives a demure nod.
“Well, then, come, join me,” he says, laying one hand over my shoulders and leading me to the throne. “Tonight is a special occasion. We have decided to grace the coven with ten vials of The Ancient’s blood.”
My eyes scan the room for the supremely powerful vampire. He is nowhere to be found.
We reach the throne and the long table before it. Logan motions for me to sit at his side. I do.
Beth remains hovering behind.
“So, you defeated the demon,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Congratulations. For that you deserve a reward.”
I let the little vial he’d tossed to me drop on the surface before me. “I haven’t yet taken the first,” I say.
Logan looks at me… and starts to laugh. He swoops the vial off the table, then surges up.
“Vampires of The Crypts!” he calls. “Tonight, you are all blessed by extraordinary luck! One more vial has come into my possession—and I intend to share it with you!”
A massive roar of approval goes up, the vampires all drunk with exuberance.
Logan walks over to the fountain and makes a grand show of opening the vial dramatically and pouring it in. Immediately, all those vampires close to him swell in to get first share.
Logan struts back to us, satisfied. “I’m impressed,” he confesses. “I was certain the demon would overwhelm at least one of you. Yet here you are, whole and sound, and you did not even use the blood I gave.” He leans into me. “Tell me how.”
I grunt, unwilling to disclose any more than I absolutely have to.
“Chalk it up to good luck,” I say. Then I shift the conversation in a different direction. “How many of these feasts have you given while I was gone?”
He smiles. “We’ve had one almost every night.”
My lips curl back in distaste. This has to do with Blood Magic, I’m sure of it. The majority of vampires in the coven share the same distaste for magic that I have. Logan knows this, and he is letting them become gluttonous and ever-more reliant on him, probably in the hope that they don’t notice anything about him is any different.
I meet his eyes for a moment. I see that, once again, they are perfectly clear.
He understands exactly what I’m looking at. He sweeps a lazy hand over them.
“It is easy to mask the miasma with a bit of magic,” he tells me softly. “It is only you I allow to see me as I really am.”
“Thank you for the privilege,” I say dryly.
He slaps me on the back and laughs once more. “Who else do I have to share my successes with? Now that you’ve come back, we can finally take the final step to achieving the dominance we’ve always dreamed of!”
I say nothing, looking straight ahead at the revelers.
After a moment, Logan stands up. “Come with me,” he says. “I want to go somewhere quieter to discuss… certain things.”
He catches me looking at Beth and says, “Let the girl stay. She is as welcome as any member of the coven.” He raises a goblet to her. “Drink, enjoy, be merry. Strengthen yourself with the great gift flowing through the fountain!”
She does not meet his eyes, instead looking at the floor and murmuring some sort of thank you.
“This way,” Logan says, and leads me out through the back.
Once we exit the doors and walk a few steps away that invisible barrier seals off all the sound from within. I walk side-by-side with Logan, feeling, for a moment, like it’s old times.
But the miasma he revealed to me tells me it is anything but.
“I know about your betrayal, Dagan,” he begins. “For a while, it was heavy on my heart. I know you let Riyu get away. You see, he is my son, and that affords a special type of connection between us. I can tell where he is at all times.
“But then you recognized your error, went out, found him, and did what needed to be done. I congratulate you. You have proved loyalty to your king.”
“It was never in any doubt,” I say.
Logan stops. He looks at me. I feel his eyes weighing, judging everything.
“Yes,” he finally says. “I do sense some truth in that. You just do not like that I can do this, do you?”
A fireball suddenly erupts around his hand, the flames licking at his skin without burning it, a deep red and a poisonous black.
It winks out of existence. He examines his hand.
There’s not a mark.
“What you do not—cannot—understand, Dagan, is that magic gives immense power. I remember how I found you. Crippled. Weak. You were the greatest warrior, and you and all those you love were struck down by some little witch.”
I growl. Those memories are not good ones.
“Now, now, relax,” he teases. “This time the magic is on our side. No more cowering in fear of those witches. No more having to live in awe of Morgan’s Haven. No more being stopped from taking what we want by her damned wards!”
The anger in his voice grows as he speaks.
“Think of a future, Dagan, where you and I have absolute control. We no longer need cooperation from the other coven to get it. We will take it all, take it from them, by force!”
He opens the door that leads into his chamber. As soon as we cross the threshold, I am struck by the stink of ruined blood.
He sees my reaction and smiles. “That is not my blood you are smelling, if you’re wondering. Come. I’ll show you.”
I walk a step behind him, an odd sense of trepidation seizing my soul.
We reach a small and unremarkable door in his study. He opens it.
The stench of spoiled, rotten blood wafts out.
I almost gag, able to hold it in at the last moment. Logan walks into the second room, which is nothing more than a small closet, and motions to one wall.
On it, three of our vampires are hanging nude, bound in silver chains.
Logan walks over to one and jabs him in the ribs. He gives a feeble cough. Blood spatters out.
“These are my three most loyal vampires,” he tells me. “To them, I owe it all. Blood magic always requires a sacrifice. Through them, I grow my magic more and more.”
He turns around to face me. I am disgusted by the sight. On each of the vampires’ bodies are open wounds, leaking puss and blood.
“I keep them all just on the edge of death,” he confides in me. ”I think it more merciful this way than always finding a new sacrifice. These three suffer so that all the others may live.”
I look on without saying a word. Revulsion fills me with every second I’m in there.
“I give them blood,” he continues. “Blood to let them heal. But blood tainted, each time, by a few grams of silver. It destroys their insides, as you see, and causes all these wounds, the silver does. But the blood it is contained in has enough for the vampiric gifts to fight death off. And then I collect their blood—” he motions to buckets at the vampires’ feet, into which the rotten blood drips, “—and use it as the essential substrate for my magic. Genius, isn’t it?”
“More like diabolical,” I say.
He laughs another time. “That’s why I like you, Dagan,” he says, stepping out of the torture room and closing the door. “You are not afraid to speak your mind to me.”
We return to the main part of his chambers. This is the area where I fought him in the Dream.
If he does not want to mention it, neither will I.
“Do you hate me, Dagan? Do you hate what I’ve become?” he asks, suddenly. “It doesn’t matter if you do, just as long as you stay loyal. Besides. Fear and hate and loyalty very often go hand-in-hand. And we both know who the more powerful amongst us is.”
I look at him without blinking. Is this his way of reassuring his position over me, after what happened in the Dream Realm?
Could be. For what it’s worth, I’m happy to let him do it.
As he said; we both know which one of us is stronger.