Chapter Text
Step 1: Identify The Threat
Two things were true about Scott Goldsmith. Firstly, he had been around a long, long time. And secondly, he was not any sort of warrior. Obviously not. What a revolting thought. Scott was not the sort to fight his own battles. But the world was a hungry, violent place, usually more so the further back you went in its history, and yet from each era Scott had emerged victorious, holding tightly onto power with his perfectly manicured hands.
So how did he do it? An elder vampire though he might be now, there had been a time when he was young, weak, and stupid. Always he grew stronger, and so it was expected that with each month that passed, he felt that way about the version of himself who had lived the month prior. Scott survived and flourished–always–because even at his worst, he understood power and how to keep it.
Scott Goldsmith was a terrifying, undefeatable, infallible elder vampire, and so could not remember the last time he’d felt fear. Fear was a thing of shaking hands and rash decisions, a thing for lost, lonely boys with beautiful eyes. To show fear was to show weakness, and Scott was not weak. What Scott experienced now was then not fear, but a gut feeling, instincts honed from years of victories. It was the skin that rose on his back when he identified a threat.
“Drift and Shelby weren’t particularly happy with me,” Owen said.
He walked ahead of Scott, effortlessly graceful in how he navigated broken stone and splintered scaffolding. The water rushed below, a distant background music for their conversation. Owen was the kind of vampire who liked to get his hands dirty. He was a fighter, a rabid dog—not a lord, not a ruler—but that didn't mean he didn’t understand power in his own base way. Scott had encountered vampires like him before and so knew to be cautious. Owen was the sort who could smell weakness, even off his undead peers.
“No…” Scott agreed, his surprise perfectly concealed. “They didn’t mention it was you, though. They only mentioned Pyro.”
Scott was aloof, unbothered. He matched his demeanour to Owen’s. For all the emotion they showed, they might have been discussing the weather. To Owen there had been no loss, had been no betrayal, and so it was no different for Scott. There would be time later to examine the splinter of emotion lodged beneath his skin. Time healed all wounds, and so Scott’s concern was for his own continued existence, as it always was.
He’d noticed the presence minutes ago: the imperceptible brush of feet on stone, the unique scent of blood beneath flesh that Scott was intimately familiar with, as only a sire could be. Pyro stalked them, silent and unannounced.
“I see–”
Scott interrupted Owen’s response. The disrespect Pyro showed, believing he could hide from his maker, from his better, had to be undermined.
“I’m assuming that’s Pyro who’s invisible following us?” Scott asked, perfectly unbothered. It wasn’t really a question.
Anger, too, was a thing born of weakness. Pyro was beneath his notice, beneath even his most base emotions, and so Scott was not angry.
“Indeed…” Pyro appeared behind him.
He did not grovel. He did not simper. Somehow, beneath Scott’s nose, Pyro had changed. As Pyro’s fear receded, it revealed the truth of the vampire Scott had created, and he was the most dangerous sort. Perhaps Scott had not learned from his mistakes after all.
“You have really good ears,” Owen noted.
Scott stood alone on the bridge that led to his castle, Owen on one side and Pyro on the other. There was a camaraderie between the two that took Scott by surprise. Last he’d checked, Owen hated and distrusted Pyro, wanted him dead even. That was how Scott had liked it, but at some point he’d lost control of the situation. Scott Goldsmith, the all-powerful elder vampire, should not feel surrounded mere steps from his own front door.
“Well, you tend to have a sense for your fledglings,” Scott said, a reminder to Pyro how easily he’d ended his previous life.
“So anyways…” Owen returned immediately to the topic at hand. Was that a trace of vindication that Scott heard? A hint of smugness? “Was it that I held the stake and you hammered it in? Or the other way around?”
“I believe I held the stake and you hammered it in,” Pyro said. His smugness was less concealed. He was too new to the games of power played between immortales. He had not yet learned to hide his hand.
Owen held the door open for him, and Scott stepped through with a smile. He was all charm, all confidence, because the dirty truth was that those were the strongest weapons Scott had. While for vampires, power did increase with age, such gains were not infinite, and Scott Goldsmith was not a warrior. Owen was less than a fifth his age, but at 200 years old he was no fledgling, and Owen had violence in his blood. It was all he was; living not to enjoy infinite life as Scott did, he persisted only to destroy.
Scott needed Owen to believe he was all-powerful because if he did not, there was no way to know what the other vampire might do. When their true faces had been revealed to one another, Owen had stepped back and ceded their prey to his elder. Since then, Scott had believed he had him under control. Scott had been wrong, but he lived and he learned. If Owen and Pyro could go behind his back and murder Avid, what was to stop them from turning on him next? They had a taste of power now, and so there was no going back.
There had been other vampires in other centuries who had challenged him, and barring one notable exception, each time Scott had emerged victorious, often without dirtying a nail. He could handle this. Poor, defenceless Avid hadn’t stood a chance. Scott forced thoughts of the fledgling from his mind; memories of how he’d looked at him with such adoration, of how he’d looked in Scott’s clothes. There was no time for weakness. Avid’s sacrifice had done Scott a great favour. Like a canary in a mine, his death was a warning. The tides of power shifted.
Owen and Pyro might come for him with claw and tooth, but Scott would be ready. He understood the subtle art of power. He understood politics, was a master of manipulation, and he was wiser for all his years. Owen had made the mistake of becoming a threat, and he would die for it.