Chapter Text
Blood was a sweet thing, intoxicating and thick on Scott's tongue, and he had never regretted drinking deep enough to taste life on his tongue. Of course, very few times did he actually get the chance to drink as deeply as he wished. The Lyon coven was large, and he was one of the newer fledglings in it, rating just barely above the most trusted thralls. And even then, he did not receive the same level of trust as those whose obedience was compulsory. Scott, after all, still had the free will to rebel.
He was a good fighter, though, which was part of the reason he had been turned. That, and he had killed four vampires to protect himself, until the coven had caught him and brought him to their sire. And it was their sire who decided he was useful.
Playing on his insecurities about death was predictable, but it worked. Becoming a vampire didn't have enough disadvantages for him to turn down, especially when the other option was death. He accepted the gift so he didn't have to face the threat hovering behind it. And he told himself it was worth it.
It felt worth it, eventually. As a fighter, he was sent out to manage populations. Anyone who didn't submit to the sire's demands were to be taken out with prejudice, and that was when Scott got to slake some of the never-ending thirst for blood that gripped him. He had never felt more alive as he did on those battlefields, blood on his fangs, life running away from his claws. The very essence of what being a vampire meant was closer than it had ever been before. He knew that he was one of the boogeymen that the common folk warned their children about, but he was fine with that. It meant that no child would ever dare come too close to him. It meant that soldiers were the ones he had to fight, and that eased the mortal sensibilities that had lingered in his unlife.
If you only killed your enemies, was what you were doing really wrong?
People learned things, though. They adapted, figured out what could hurt vampires and what couldn't. Iron and bronze were discarded in favor of the softer silver. It was difficult to keep an edge on such weapons, but humans didn't need an edge when the metal burned. Garlic became a popular thing when humans realized how it messed with vampiric senses, drowning out all attempts at conscious thought and reasonable actions. Scott didn't run from it, but he had watched many of his coven members flee the moment they smelled it on a battlefield. He knew that he didn't have enough favor with their sire to get away with running from danger, not when he was part of the front line. Not when the battlefield was the only place they would suffer him having any sort of freedom. Almost anything the humans could do to him would heal. Their sire, on the other hand, could do so much worse.
But their sire was obvious with his presence. He didn't care who knew he was there, and he relished in the bloodshed and death he left in his wake when he commanded his coven to destroy all life in a region. Destruction for the sake of destruction was the reason he was so feared, even by other vampires.
Destruction for the sake of destruction was the reason humans figured out how to kill vampires.
In an odd turn of events, Scott wasn't part of the battle where the humans first managed to kill a member of the coven. He felt it, of course. No one connected by the bonds of their coven could have missed the sudden and completely unknown sensation of a thread being burned away. He had been resting back at the main castle and had been one of the few not completely debilitated by the sensation. Their sire howled, enraged and in pain, looking towards the east where the sensation had originated.
It took several moments to parse out that someone had died. It wasn't confirmed until the fighting force that had been sent out came back with the news that their leader had been impaled by a wooden spear of some kind and completely crumbled to ash.
It was significant, that moment, but Scott would never realize it until much later. He may not have been in the battle, but he was part of the coven that had unleashed monster hunters on the world. The Lyon coven had changed history, just like their sire had always wanted, but it had been in the worst way possible. They had proven that vampires could die, and the humans now had the knowledge to make it happen.
Every battle after that was more tense. Scott was sent out more and more, dodging killing blows often while the humans began to build a coordinated force. He and his coven members were no longer the untouchable force of destruction, which meant that skill was more prized than numbers, and Scott had proven his skill over and over again.
As the human vanguard drew closer and closer to their sire's castle, Scott was kept back more, having proven that he was one of the few fighters capable of actually defending against credible threats. They did not trust him on his own, but they wanted the protection he could provide them for the sake of saving his own life.
Castle defenses were crucial when the humans began to send their own people into the fortress itself, hiding amongst the thralls to strike out at the elders of the coven, most of whom were so entrenched in their power that they hadn't seen a true battle in at least a hundred years. Scott, who had been fighting almost non-stop for the forty years since his turning, was as expendable as he was useful, and that meant they wanted him closer, to appear to be the bigger threat.
Humans were not stupid, though. They were a little unpredictable, but they were not going to be fooled by Scott's power when it was clear that he was beholden to the vampires giving the orders rather than giving the orders himself. He had gotten tired of being part of that charade. He could recognize the humans weren’t under thrall, but he stopped trying to point them out because no one actually listened to him. If they didn't want to take him seriously, he didn't have to let them abuse him.
He started protecting the fledglings and new bloods who did respect him. They knew who was protecting them, and it wasn't the elders. If he turned a few 'thralls' around so they were going in the correct direction to encounter one of the elders, well, the foolish human usually didn't survive that much longer, and Scott wasn’t about to betray himself.
He was almost glad to be reduced to filling the positions that would normally have been taken by thralls. Because of the infiltration, the elders had given up on all of the thralls, choosing to drain them and have the fledglings provide for them. Scott was still retained at the castle, responsible for bringing vitae back for the new bloods and making sure the elders didn't have to deal with any of the annoying bits of growing a coven.
He would resent the Right of First Blood, but as it only applied to turning someone into a vampire, Scott neatly sidestepped that rule by getting his blood when he was hunting for the fledglings outside of the castle.
Things were changing, though. People were starting to be more on guard, blood was getting harder to gather, and it was difficult to sustain a coven their size. Scott had been providing for the fledglings in the nest, practically forgotten by the elders, who spent more of their attention on the attacking humans that were getting stronger and stronger, assaulting the edges of their territory often.
It was clear, however, that the elders didn't realize the other threat they were under. Scott was more than aware that some of the vampires in the coven completely vanished sometimes. No one bothered to search for them before, and no one was searching for them now that the coven was under near constant attack. But they would meet with vampires outside the coven, get a taste of something better, and they would run further than the elders would ever dare to catch them.
Scott would have run as well, but he was supporting more than just himself these days. The new blood fledglings didn't deserve to be abandoned to the elders who would not care about them. They could not fight as well as Scott could, they could not hide, and the humans would not be merciful to them. Every time he considered leaving, preserving himself and trying not to care about anyone else, something would happen and he would tell himself to wait just one more day to make sure that their position was sustainable.
But the elders kept collecting new bloods to support their numbers, and the situation persisted—another fragile group of children new to the night and desperate for someone to care enough about them to help the transition along. Scott had been the younger sibling in his family, babied and provided for in ways he didn't fully recognize until after his turning, but this felt like what his older brother always complained about, a strange compulsion to care that he did not want but could not argue with.
He didn't know who he was if he followed the desire to not care as much, but he knew it was a much darker, much lonelier path. And he could only imagine it would have an ending not unlike the one the elders were running towards at full-tilt.
The vampires from beyond the coven were just as bold as the human hunters. The first time Scott noticed one of them inside the castle, he had startled, abandoning the work he had been involved in to go and protect the nest with the newest fledglings. No one was guarding it, and vampires that weren't part of the coven were a threat to them, able to recognize their newness and exploit it.
He had stayed with the fledglings that night, and several nights after it as well, even as the hunger gnawed at him. He eventually had to go out and collect blood for the fledglings, but he was faster about his work, not drinking his fill that night in order to get back sooner and make sure no one had encroached on the safety of the nest.
This pattern persisted for several weeks, and Scott could feel the attentions around him shifting, how the infiltrating vampires were watching him even as he bared his fangs at them in challenge, daring them to test him. He may not want to pick up the methods the humans used to kill their kind, but he was not above setting a fellow vampire back as much as he could, sending one of these interlopers back to their crypts to recuperate for trying to interfere with him.
Still, they came closer, watching him with interest and disgust and curiosity. He wanted to pluck out their eyes and demand to know what they wanted from him so badly that they were delving so deep that the elders might actually notice.
He never got the chance to ask directly. The humans finally broke the defenses of the castle, and Scott scrambled to collect the fledglings and lead them through the tunnels he had secured for their escape himself. The group was not as large as it could have been—as it should have been—because Scott was too effective at teaching the fledglings to defend themselves and had turned them into weapons like him. They had been sent out in his place, fought the humans he would have been forced to fight, and they had died in the position he should have held.
He gathered the fledglings close when the scent of stale blood caught on the wind blowing down the tunnel. They could not afford to go back to the castle, which was already burning behind them, but Scott was not hopeful about the vampires they would meet ahead. He could tell from the way they had been looking at him that he was not someone they respected or trusted.
Coming around the bend in the tunnel, Scott came face to face with 12 vampires, three of which had been infiltrating the castle and seemed surprised to see him there with the fledglings.
"What are you doing here?" The leader of the group demanded. "Running away from the judgment being visited on your coven."
"Sire, that's the one who's been guarding the nest," one of the infiltrators whispered. "The one called Scott."
"Scott." The leader grunted, looking him up and down. "You've been on the battlefield before. I've seen you. Now you turn fledglings into what you are, a weapon for the Lyon coven, new bloods to die in your place."
Scott tilted his chin up defiantly. "I do not make those decisions. And I've not seen you on any battlefields."
The leader scoffed. "You wouldn't have. My coven does not hunt down whole villages, but we won't stand and defend them either. We don't have the time or the fangs to destroy as much as you and your coven has."
Scott maneuvered himself to keep the attention on him, blocking the view of the fledglings behind him. "I don't care where you've been or what you've been doing. Clearly some of it has been infiltrating this coven," he nodded to the three he recognized, “so I don't know what you're doing here, other than allying with the humans in wiping us out."
"Allying with the humans—!" The leader hissed at him, fangs on full display in his affront. "We came to save the nest, you arrogant leech!"
"I saved the nest," Scott countered. "It's my job."
"Your what?" The leader started laughing, a strange bubbling sound that did not match the imposing figure he was trying to present. "Your job? The great weapon of the Lyon coven has been reduced to a nest keeper?! What offense did you commit to be put in that position?"
The fledglings behind Scott shifted uncomfortably, some of them pressing closer to him and whining in the way that he let the new bloods do when they were in distress. He usually shushed them when the elders were near—who did not like when the fledglings displayed anything but gratefulness for the gift of immortality that had been forced on them in the expectation of service. Scott knew better than the others that those feelings never really went away, but he'd managed to learn to hide them behind his fangs because he wanted the threat of violence and pain even less. He made sure that the fledglings never felt the pain that only immortal beings could endure.
The elders had crafted him into a weapon, and they'd conjured obedience in him through a full year of the worst torture—hunger and pain and humiliation until he learned that they found his reactions amusing enough to continue, and the only way out was to stop reacting and stop fighting. When they got bored of him, he was sent out to destroy their enemies, and suddenly they were amused in an entirely different way.
"Sire," one of the other infiltrators spoke up, "we should take him with us. He is a fighter, and he could be useful."
"We have fighters," the leader countered. "And even if he isn't as washed up as he appears, he's too obvious. His methods give away his nature, and we can't have that in the coven if we want to be safe."
"Then turn him over to the Council," another one of the vampire said, bored. "They could find something to do with him, I'm sure. Or, if not, they could just drain him and kill him like the other liabilities they've dealt with."
Scott did not let his apprehension show. They wanted a reaction from him, and he wasn't going to give it. He had fledglings to protect, and if they weren't following enough of the conversation to know what was going on, they were going to panic if he started fighting. It would get them hurt.
"That's not a bad idea." The leader stepped forward, taking advantage of the fact the fledglings were pressing close behind Scott so he couldn't back away. "I think the Council would love to figure out what to do with you." He reached up and stroked Scott's cheek, not unlike the way their sire would after he had been particularly useful. "Gather the fledglings and take them to our nest. They've had a long day, I'm sure, and they need the sort of safety we can provide." The touch on Scott's jaw grew harder, though it would still appear gentle to the outside observer. "That's okay, isn't it, little nest-keeper? You want the fledglings to be safe, don't you?"
"Yes," Scott hissed, keeping his tone and temper even through sheer force of will. He turned slightly to the fledglings behind him. "Go with them. They won't hurt you." The last bit was directed at the leader, a threat and a promise in a neatly packaged form that would not startle the fledglings into a panic.
"Of course not, little nest-keeper. We're not of Lyon stock. We know how to treat fledglings."
It did not inspire the trust that the leader likely intended, but Scott knew that it was useless to fight. As he watched the leader's people lead the fledglings away, he wondered if they weren't just going to kill him there, ignoring what they'd said about whatever council they were talking about. He didn't fight as long as the fledglings were within earshot but attempted to slap the hand away from him as soon as they were gone.
The leader, however, had been waiting for him to try something. He wrapped his hand around Scott's throat, lifting him effortlessly into the air. "So, you do have some fight left in you! I was wondering. No matter. The Council will decide what to do with you, and they would be very cross with me indeed if I decided to take matters into my own hands here simply because you were disrespectful." The detached tone had never really left their voice, but they seemed even more disinterested in what was going to happen to him. "We're vampires, little one. We know best of all that blood must be paid for with blood. I'm sure you'll learn that lesson soon."
Scott didn't even have a chance to protest before his vision went black
Scott was in some kind of underground cell when he clawed his way back to consciousness. He didn't know how the leader of that mystery coven had managed to knock him out, but he didn't like the implications of what was going to happen now. He was alone in the darkness, and an iron door separated him from the world beyond.
The bonds with his coven were broken. He could feel that emptiness inside him, yawning wider than any single death had before. He hoped that didn't mean the other vampires had simply murdered the fledglings he'd been protecting. He hoped it just meant that the death of their sire had dissolved the bonds that had held them all together. If not, he was dangerously close to the edge of apathy he'd been holding himself back from for the sake of the new bloods.
Scott would not pretend that he was a good person anymore—there was far too much blood on his hands for that—but taking care of the fledglings in the nest had kept him locked into the Lyon coven and trapped by all of the rules and demands that came with it. If all of that came to nothing because these other vampires had simply killed them all as soon as Scott wasn't there to protect them, then he had no compunction against destroying all of them and himself in the process.
They had acknowledged that he was a deadly fighter when he didn't have anything to protect other than himself. If the fledglings were gone, Scott would tear down whatever covens and institutions they had built up for themselves just to make them feel the same emptiness they had given him.
He wasn't sure how much time had passed, stewing in his thoughts in the cell with no way to track the passage of time. The hunger was constant, the ache behind his breastbone throbbing without rhythm as it threatened to drag him into the blackness he seemed caught in. What use was being a vampire—what use was eternity—when it held nothing for him?
Eventually, the door opened, and a tall woman stepped into the cell, the door shutting behind her.
"You, Scott Goldsmith, are a challenge," she said, looking down at him. "Most of the Council was content to leave the Lyon coven to implode on their own, growing much too big for their resources to maintain, losing vampires for every step forward they tried to make in their campaign of blood. And then they turned you."
Scott did not flinch. He had been raised to maintain dignity wherever possible because too often one's dignity was the first thing stolen. He had carried that lesson from the corpse of his humanity, all too aware that he had become something smaller in the eyes of something much larger and more powerful than he had been. Now, decades later, he was back in that same place, staring up at someone who held his fate in their hands, someone who was going to demand he abandon his dignity in order to survive.
He would not do it. It hadn't been worth it last time, and this time he would make them fight for it all over again. This time, he carried another lesson from humanity: how to kill those like him.
"You don't even know why you're here, do you?" she muttered when he didn't reply. "You don't even know what you've done."
"I fought," Scott replied. "From the moment I was first attacked, to my last breath, to the rise of humans capable of hunting vampires, to making sure the fledglings could escape the fire that started in the nest."
"You really don't know." The expression on her face shifted to something like pity, but Scott didn't care. Pity did nothing for him. Not if people had already made up their minds.
He stopped focusing on her face. He would have looked out a window if there had been a window to look out. As it was, the only thing in the room he hadn't memorized was her. So he stared at her clothes, the dark woolen tunic draped with more richly dyed fabrics that gathered at her shoulder and tucked into a narrow belt at her waist. It was plainer than any of the outfits the elders of the coven had worn, but there was an essence of elegance to it, nonetheless. She did not bother to hide her claws behind folds of fabric, didn't bother to disguise the readiness to act should he do anything threatening in her direction. The fact that she had come in alone meant she was a powerful person, and the dark hair that seemed to drink in whatever ambient light there was stood harsher in testament to that fact.
The elders had white hair. Scott's own hair, which flickered between the now permanent blue dye he had applied mere days before his turning and white, had shown how much blood he had consumed well enough for the elders to praise or criticize him at their leisure. This woman, while clearly well fed with blood, had darkened her color palette rather than turning paler. Scott wondered if she was a step beyond what he had already seen and experienced for himself. Or perhaps she looked this way in defiance of all expectations.
"You, Scott Goldsmith," the woman began, looking down at him sitting against the wall of the cell, "are described as the most dangerous opponent one could have coming into contact with the Lyon Coven, and it's not because you're a fighter." He glanced up, accidentally meeting her eyes but refusing to look away. "It's because you don't care."
Scott scoffed. "Who told you that?"
"If you think the ones you identified as infiltrators were the only spies we had in the coven, you would be much mistaken." She laughed. "Although the stories of your infantile bristling at those you perceive as intruders has been quite amusing. They were almost tricked into believing that you did care. You put on an excellent show for the fledglings, but there are those who know you better."
"Who?"
She did not respond, merely smiling at him as though he'd said something funny. The well of apathy surged within him, but he pushed it back down, all too aware that he needed to be present for this.
Of course, the impetus to prove her wrong helped him find the strength to ground himself in the moment.
"They cried when we broke your bonds. They'll survive—younger vampires always do—but they were quite upset not to be able to feel you anymore." She tapped her chin with one pointed claw. "I think some of them may have managed to maintain some level of connection with you despite the broken bonds, but that will fade with time and distance. They don't truly understand the blood on your hands."
"We're vampires," Scott pointed out testily. "There will always be blood on our hands."
"Yes, but not many have managed to massacre full armies on their own and then turn around and convince the new bloods that they're harmless." Her smiled deepened into a predatory grin. "Not many vampires learn to lie as well as you can."
Scott held his tongue to avoid pointing out that not many vampires came from regions in conflict, learning to skirt around the various claims of authority and power. Not many came from clans trying to hold onto that power in the midst of other clans scrambling their way to the right to rule and the encroaching edge of expansion of an empire they were not going to be able to fight on their own.
Scott was the second son, the one trained by his mother to negotiate and outmaneuver anyone who tried to control or cheat them so his elder brother and father could manage the clan's resources and prestige without incident. Not many vampires would have garnered enough attention and respect to have been able to travel deep into Roman territory to secure the protections for his clan's lands against all who wanted to take pieces of it for themselves.
He had sent them a message as soon as he'd had the freedom to do so, warned his family of his failure to meet with the Roman representatives and his turning. He gave them the chance to prepare something else while he was trapped in a situation he could not leave without getting hunted down. They knew he was a vampire and what that meant, and they knew that his only method of survival at the time was to capitulate to the stronger power until he gained enough of his own to break free.
Humans got there first, it seemed. Now more vampires with more authority had swept him up in the aftermath, and he was yet again faced with the realization that his fate was out of his hands.
"If I didn't know any better, I would have thought you were working for us after a point," the woman continued. "You let the human infiltrators pierce deep enough to harm some of your elders. One even managed to make it to your sire. And you let him. You heard his heart beating in his chest, saw the weapons he had brought with him, and you, their favorite fighter, did nothing to protect them."
"Didn't you hear I'd been demoted to nest-keeper?" Scott taunted lightly, using the words the other vampire had used against him. "I was responsible for the new-bloods, not the elders."
"No one demoted you to that position. You took it for yourself. You used it as a shield, and you're continuing to use it as a shield right now." She knelt down, looking him directly in the eye. "I don't think you understand the position you're in right now. I'm the one who gets to decide whether you leave this cell or remain here until the hunger manages to turn your body to ash."
He should have been afraid. The hunger was unbearable. He had watched those who had fallen out of favor go mad with the feeling, but Scott couldn't find it in himself to be concerned. Because this woman, whoever she was, had just confirmed that the deepest of his fears—that the fledglings he had protected had been callously murdered just out of his sight—had not happened. What was more, he wasn’t going to be murdered himself simply for being part of a reviled coven. Not until a decision was made, which gave him the chance to fight for it.
He was not going to beg for his life, though. She had to bend down and kneel on her skirts to engage with him; he was not going to make this moment convenient for her when she had done nothing but threaten him vaguely about something he had practically assumed was a fore-gone conclusion.
"You don't care even about this, do you?"
"Oh, I do care," Scott replied, "but I don't see the point in arguing uselessly with someone who has already made up their mind. You and I both know that nothing I say is going to change what you think."
"Such an agile tongue. Romilius really never knew what he had in you, did he? A soldier with a scholar's tongue. You were taught well."
He did not flinch hearing his sire's name. None of the coven spoke it, for fear that he would hear what someone was saying if they uttered his name. And while Scott didn't quite believe such a thing, he was not going to test it. Now that his sire was dead, he wouldn't be able to hear anything at all.
"Are you going to get to the point some time this century, or are you going to keep offering backhanded compliments until I manage to waste away from hunger?"
The woman looked briefly angry before her expression smoothed out and she stood up, regarding him with a cool disdain all elder vampires seemed to learn at some point. "You want to know what's going to happen to you? Fine. You'll be put on trial before the Council of Blood for your actions as part of the Lyon coven. As the eldest living member of the coven remaining, it will be within the Council's purview whether or not to charge you with the crimes of the coven and carry out the sentence that requires."
"Crimes," Scott said slowly. "Of the coven."
"Yes, exactly."
"And your role in this is...?"
"I shall be the one presenting your crimes."
Scott held up a finger, staring her down. "Not my crimes. The coven's crimes. The coven to which I have been beholden to and in service of for less than fifty years."
The acknowledgement of time seemed to throw her off, as Scott had expected it to. The elders seemed to forget that he had not always been there simply because he managed to outlive the rest of the chaff they had converted around the same time. It gave him a level of longevity in the eyes of the coven, but not nearly enough to match the actual elders. They had assumed that he'd been there longer than he had, and it was useful enough to leverage that expectation against them.
"For how much you were bragging about your spies, I would have thought you'd know that."
The woman stared at him for several moments. It wasn't quite anger in her eyes this time, but it was like she was suddenly taking into account how young he actually was compared to the vampires whose crimes they were attempting to place on his shoulders.
It had taken him a single year to adjust to the world he had been unceremoniously thrown into, which was far less than some of the fledglings and new bloods he had encountered. Some of them had been in the nest for almost ten years, kept small and compliant to exist in service to the elders or because their skills were not enough to guarantee their survival should they go out and encounter any meaningful resistance.
Of course, most of his first year was not actually spent in the nest itself, but he didn't think that mattered. He had tried to run, they had caught him, doling out worse punishments with every attempt to escape. Throwing him at their battlefields had been a punishment of its own, one he had survived by being better than the enemies he was sent to fight. It had to be silly to her that he, a vampire who was not even fifty years beyond his turning, had accomplished more than some of the elders of the coven had achieved in the unknown centuries they'd had.
"I think we're done here for now," she said finally, turning away towards the door as though she had won the argument. She had not, and they both knew it.
Scott waited until the door closed behind her to smirk. He would have laughed, but he didn't know who was beyond the door of his cell or whether they would report anything he did back to this Council of Blood. It was a pretentious name, but one that obviously came from the fact that everyone on the Council was a vampire and wanted everyone else to know it. He'd not heard of a central body of leadership among the vampires, but clearly there was one, and the Lyon coven had no part in it whatsoever.
It was probably one of those things that they ignored until they couldn't anymore, like the threat the humans posed to them.
One way or another, Scott was going to survive this. Even if he had to trade on their guilt to do it.
He was glad the fledglings were safe though. Yes, they were being folded into new covens, but they would probably be better protected there, not thrown into a fight as soon as they were stable enough to leave the nest.
Tucking himself back in a corner, he imagined them being brought into a coven that treated them as a family, setting each of the broken bonds in his head to rest and making peace with the emptiness left behind. Maybe the yawning void didn't have to be apathy. Maybe it could be its own kind of victory.
Time passed and Scott used it to compose arguments in his head the way his mother had taught him, trying to anticipate what this Council of Blood was going to want from him. The fact that they hadn't already come for him to run him through their form of justice and mediation meant that something he had said actually struck a chord with the still nameless woman who had visited his cell.
He hoped they were talking, because it meant they were thinking, and anyone who took the time to think about something usually ended up being the sort of person who could be convinced by proper arguments. Hasty judgments based on minimal information usually led to decisions that people regretted later, and vampires had a lot more time in their lives to regret any mistakes they made.
Finally, someone came to retrieve him from the cell. It wasn't the same woman as before. Instead, it was a group of four vampires, and he knew that something of his reputation had reached them because not one of them looked like they wanted to be there. One of them was actually shaking, which was more amusing than it should have been because Scott hadn't done anything to merit this sort of reputation around other vampires.
He didn't ask if they were a new blood. As unwise as it would have been to send a new blood or a much younger fledgling to be part of the guard retrieving him from his cell, he could guess that they would not answer his question directly.
They led him out of the cell, each taking up a position around him. Scott schooled his face carefully to avoid letting on exactly how funny he found the whole charade because he knew it would not be appreciated. Besides, it was the first time he was getting a look at the building beyond his underground cell.
It was definitely a fortress of some kind, and he was in what was probably the deepest part of the dungeon. Which was... flattering? The Council of Blood must have been more focused on appearances than any of the elders of the Lyon coven, and the placement of his cell was definitely part of some kind of intimidation tactic. If he hadn't been through similar situations while he was traveling as the primary negotiator for his clan, he might have actually been a little afraid of what was coming.
But the care his visitor had implied when talking about the fledglings he'd been protecting was enough of a sign that this group took age and seniority into account—and Scott did not have the kind of seniority they assumed he had. He was, in their eyes, probably nothing more than a particularly violent baby as far as vampires went. Which, while not the best or most flattering thing for him, was still working in his favor. They weren't going to kill someone they still viewed as a fledgling for what he needed to do to survive in a coven like Romilius Lyon's. Survival was the very first necessity, and everything else came after that. The fact that other fledglings were trying to argue on his behalf even in his absence was almost certainly working in his favor as well.
Scott was led up three flights of stairs to get out of the dungeon and into a part of the fortress that looked like there were more distinct signs of use and habitation.
The tapestries on the walls were a nice touch. It reminded him of some of the clan houses he had visited to negotiate terms for protecting his own clan. The subjects didn't even look that different, as nothing obviously vampiric or out of the ordinary was depicted. There were battle scenes surrounded by figures supporting one side or the other. Certain figures were given special treatment by the tapestry maker. They stood out in all of the stitching as one of the people to pay attention to. The way the dim torchlight glinted around them as he passed made it clear that some kind of metal treatment had been applied to the threads before they were woven in, and those threads identified them as the heroic figure people should know.
Scott wondered if the figure was a vampire. He would assume that the heroic figure in a piece of art in a vampire stronghold would be a vampire, but there were no obvious signs one way or the other, and he didn't have enough knowledge of figures in the world of the night to know who it was supposed to be.
His escorts would not allow him to stop and ask about the tapestries before he was shuffled away towards a set of grand doors at the end of a long hallway. Clearly this would be where he finally met the Council of Blood. As much as he had been waiting for the moment, the familiar twisting of uncertainty settled in his gut. He didn't know who he was going to find beyond those doors, or how many of them there would be.
Keep your shoulders straight, your head up, and don't let anyone break you down without a fight. Make it bloody if you have to but make sure they know that you are not someone to be dismissed.
His mother's advice always came back to him in times when he needed it most, but it was comforting to have it at that moment, as unexpected as it was. As much as he had thought about her and how she would have reacted to everything he had been through, he had thought he would have forgotten the exact cadence of her voice, the way she lilted the words like they meant nothing and everything at once. The realization that he hadn't lost nearly as much as he thought he had warmed him, adding the weight he needed to his spine to follow the advice as though she was standing beside him and whispering it in his ear at that moment.
The doors opened, and Scott received his first glimpse of the Council that would be deciding his fate. They were seated along one side of a long table, facing the door as he entered. Not everyone was paying attention as they brought him in, but more than a few of them paused their conversations to glance his way before going back to whatever conversation they deemed more important at that time.
By his count, the Council of Blood was made up of 15 vampires. The woman who had come to meet him in the cell was sitting near one end of the table, her dark hair standing starkly out against the sea of white heads. Another vampire was leaning close to her and whispering something, and she glanced between Scott and the speaker before saying something too quiet for him to pick out of the various conversations going on at once.
At the center of the table was a vampire who radiated a presence unlike anything Scott had ever felt before. No one was talking to this man, but he was staring at Scott as though the secrets of the cosmos were going to spill from his body language. Scott wasn't sure if he found what he was looking for or if he simply grew bored of staring as the man raised one hand gracefully into the air and cut off all conversation with a lazy gesture.
If Scott wasn't sure that it was simply because of the man's presence, he would have thought that the man abruptly cut every throat in the room at the same time. Which would have been a more impressive feat than anything Scott had seen in his life.
The Council members took their seats at the table silently, all of them suddenly staring him down. He very carefully didn't fidget under their gaze—the chains still bound around his wrists would have given him away if he had—but if he were anyone else, he might have thought about it. That many pairs of eyes focused on him was at once both unnerving and exactly what he had trained his whole living life to handle. He had an audience with a higher power than he had ever held, and he needed to convince them that he was worth their time. There was no choice in the matter, but there never was in such situations.
The man at the center of the table looked towards the black-haired vampire who had visited his cell. "We did not need the fledgling here to decide the fate of the Lyon coven, Hester. Why have you argued for his presence in these chambers before we've decided the sentence?"
The woman—Hester, apparently—did not look admonished by these words. "Because we have truth-speakers here who would best pierce the heart of all his clever words. And I believe they are words this council needs to hear."
"What could possibly be so important?" Another vampire demanded, looking at Scott like he was a particularly vile bug crawling across the room. This one was large, and Scott could tell from the way he held himself that he allowed his bulk to do most of the fighting for him. Being a vampire, he was probably decently fast as well, but he gave off the impression of someone bull-headed and more likely to dive into the heart of the battle than employ much strategy to take out the key players first and watch the rest crumble under the lack of clear leadership.
"His age, for one," Hester replied sharply, and Scott realized the woman seemed to be on his side. An odd choice when she'd been so proud about being the one to present the crimes of the Lyon coven before. "We have clear rules about fledglings and the judgments we can mete out for them, Prometheus. We have a clear definition of how old a fledgling must be in order to be held accountable for their actions."
"He's not been nest-bound for nearly fifty years!" the apparent Prometheus countered. "He falls well within our definition!"
"Bold of you to assume I was ever bound to the nest," Scott muttered. He was then given the pleasure of watching every face on the council cycle through some gamut of emotions including realization, pity, and horror in some combination.
"I'm sorry, what?" One of the other women asked. "What do you mean?"
"I was only in the proper nest for two days," he told her. "They never bound me to it. But they didn't like that I kept trying to escape."
"You shouldn't even have been conscious!" She exclaimed. "Your instincts should have kept you in the nest!"
"I don't know what you're talking about; my instincts told me to run. And I did. At every opportunity."
Scott still didn't understand the horrified befuddlement that gripped the Council. He was sure some of them had to have left the nest earlier than the others. The clingy fledglings had stayed in it, holding onto each other and whichever older vampires came to make sure that they were learning to manage the hunger and the new skills as well as they could. Often, those fledglings gravitated to him, even the ones who were not much younger than him. But he had felt no such pull, none of this instinctual connection to the place he had never been allowed. From the moment of his turning and even before, he had been trying to get away because there was something more important to him than being a pet to a being that already had a hundred other pets.
Scott was not a pet.
"He speaks the truth," one man whispered, and it was loud in a room where no one breathed.
"Cornelius. Are you sure?" The man at the center of the table demanded.
"Without question."
"Perhaps you were correct, Hester. This is not a matter to be decided without some consideration." The man stood, his piercing eyes feeling like they were cutting into the place where the tattered remains of Scott's soul was hidden. "I am known as Judas. The leader of the Council of Blood and the eldest recognized vampire. What is your name?"
"I am Scott Mac Ghabhann, second son of Aonghas and Kenina Mac Ghabhann, the leaders of my clan."
"Why are you known to us as Scott Goldsmith?" Judas demanded. "That was the name from the records we received."
Scott straightened. "It is a rough approximation of what my name means together with a sort of insult. The speaker-smith, with a tongue of gold instead of silver." And he had let them use that name for him, had not argued with it because it afforded space between who he was before and what they were trying to make him into. What he eventually became.
He didn't think the name was a lie. It had become him, as these things did, and he had even sent a letter secretly to his family to inform them of it. It was a warning and a promise, something he had hoped to be able to fulfill. He wasn't sure what would come of it now that his parents were almost certainly dead, and his elder brother likely gone as well or soon to follow. The years had been nothing for him, but far too long for his mortal family. He would go back, if he could, if only to see what became of the clan. Perhaps someone would remember him.
First, however, he needed to make it out of this meeting.
"Scott Mac Ghabhann." Judas sounded the words out carefully. "You are a long way from home."
"Oh really? I hadn't noticed." Scott knew it probably wasn't a good idea to sass the people in control of his fate, but something about stating the obvious annoyed him enough to comment. They were already regarding him with little more than a passing interest. Perhaps snarking at them would ignite something in their cold faces and he'd be able to leave.
Or he'd die. Which was clearly their original plan, and he was getting the impression that it would reflect poorly on them if he did.
"Have some respect for the Eldest," Prometheus spat, his eyes flashing just a bit.
Scott turned to look at the vampire. It wasn't the first time he had seen vampires flash their eyes at him like that, but he had gleaned that it was supposed to do something somehow. It had cowed the others in the nest, but his unbent head was the first thing that had frightened the nest-keeper into suggesting he be placed in the dungeons beneath the Lyon fortress.
Tilting his head to the side, Scott glanced between Prometheus and Judas. "Why?" he asked. "Why does age matter? I'm too young to be held accountable for the actions of the coven I was brought into, but he's too old to be disrespected. Where do you draw that line when the promise is eternity?"
There was a shift in the atmosphere, a familiar one, and for a moment Scott felt like he was staring down the nest-keeper again. Something had changed in the way they were looking at him, and it had something to do with those flashing eyes, he was sure of it.
Judas's eyes flashed this time. "Sit down."
Scott didn't move. "I don't know if you've noticed this while spotting the obvious, but I don't have a chair down here like the rest of you do."
Silence fell, and in a room full of vampires, not even breath could disturb it. Something had definitely changed. Scott tried to regret speaking so dismissively after having been reprimanded for it, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. He didn't have a chair, and he'd done enough sitting in the dungeon cell he'd woken up in. Besides, it was far easier to maintain the posture that his mother had trained him to keep in deep negotiations and fraught situations when he was standing. It left him ready to act.
"You didn't feel anything, did you?" Judas asked. "That wasn't deflection, you genuinely didn't perceive that as an order."
"First of all, that was a demand, not an order. Secondly, I fail to see why I should follow any orders from you when you were—unless I misunderstand what I've heard—discussing my imminent execution until you learned how young I am by your standards." Scott let out a sigh. "Third, as I said, I do not have a chair down here, and I fail to see why I should put myself in the vulnerable position of sitting on the floor when I am already outnumbered and in chains."
"Did you feel anything when I spoke?"
This was a test, but Scott wasn't sure what its purpose was. "No," he replied truthfully.
"Nothing at all?"
"Perhaps vaguely annoyed, but I don't respond to demands well."
Judas looked over at Cornelius, who seemed paler than before. Cornelius nodded, and Scott knew this confirmed that there was some kind of test to this. What kind of test, however, remained to be seen.
"That's impossible!" Prometheus raged. "This is some trick, some bait that the Lyon coven has conspired to place in our midst!"
Hester scoffed. "They would allow their entire coven to be destroyed to place one vampire in our midst? How would that even make sense?"
Something was supposed to have happened when their eyes flashed. Scott had never felt anything when another vampire had flashed their eyes at him, and apparently that was a problem. Based on how the other fledglings and thralls had reacted when other vampires flashed their eyes around the coven stronghold, it must have been a sign of instant, compelled obedience.
Scott was beginning to understand why he had been thrown into the pit with the dissenters and traitors of the coven. It was a near universal instinct to fear that which one cannot control. He would have called it human, but the fear clearly reached beyond the end of humanity and into the realm of the creatures of the night. Scott had learned a long time ago that the only thing he could control was himself, and the clarity that had come with that realization had been freeing. Now it might be the thing that got him permanently killed.
He wouldn't go down without a fight. He refused. Even if it was hopeless, he wasn't going to let them kill him.
Twisting his hands carefully in the cuff they had put him in, Scott grabbed onto the chain, watching the Council carefully as he slowly squeezed the iron links as hard as he could. Yes, it was probably the most inefficient way of doing things, but it was also the quietest way to do things.
Maybe this was the point to start fidgeting. Purely from a tactical perspective, of course. Let them think that he was nervous—and he was—that they knew what was in his mind. The chain rattled as he twisted the chain, still standing staring at the elder vampires to whom he was meant to show some allegiance or respect.
"You're afraid," Judas observed.
"Most would be when facing down death," Scott replied simply, letting the tongue that had gotten him the mocking name do what it did best. "Some would even call it sensible."
"We are not in the habit of killing fledglings."
"All that tells me is you still have that option on the table." One of the links of chain cracked beneath his hands. "Just because you do not make a habit of it does not mean you don't reserve it as an option. Especially since you all have realized that you can't control me."
The words exposed him, but Scott preferred laying out the harsh truth for himself than letting them believe that he remained partly or fully ignorant of the position he was in.
"We could discover why he is resistant to thrall," one of the vampires at the table suggested, regarding Scott with a cool look. The man's visage spoke of dark laboratories and experiments that his test subjects barely survived, of never tasting true freedom again. Scott wondered how many of his experiments had failed once his test subjects realized that true death was an option.
"Nikodeimos, you already have plenty of projects to keep your attention," one of the women at the table countered. "And there is a reason no one would trust you within five miles of their fledglings."
"You only speak up because you think he's a pretty specimen for your collection, de Vrae." The named Nikodeimos flashed his fangs at her, but she ignored him.
"You do have such delicate features." The woman, de Vrae, smiled at him. "Perhaps folding you into an existing coven like your fellow fledglings would work." After tilting her head to the side, she hummed. "Well, perhaps not for the behavioral differences, but there are other methods of control."
Another link of the chain cracked under his hand, and Scott grabbed the other side to start working on breaking the links near the other cuff.
Hester, the woman who had come to his cell, frowned. "He's not a piece of meat, Genevieve. And regardless of what a coven head might decide, the true measure of things is if the rest of the coven can cope with it. I don't think a single one of us have a coven that can cope with a fledgling no one would be able to control. I don't, however," she added, with a pointed look in the direction of Prometheus, "believe that he deserves to die for it. Not for the actions of the coven he was embraced into and not for his resistance to thrall."
Judas straightened, turning to face her while keeping an eye on Scott. He briefly glanced down at the cuffs then up at Scott's face for a moment, smirking. "What, then, do you suggest?"
Hester turned and looked fully at Scott, her expression unreadable. Again, it seemed like she was searching for something in him, and he could not guess what that might be. "By our reckoning of time, he is a fledgling. By our understanding of his experience, he is fully fledged. Place him with a coven and he will chafe under the scrutiny while the hierarchy will bend almost to breaking trying to control him. We cannot instill loyalty with threats, either with him or with the covens that look to us for guidance. In this instance, I believe it is best that we extend mercy."
"You would have us set an untested, uncontrolled vampire from a coven of traitors loose without oversight?" Prometheus roared. "If you want to destroy us so completely, why not be direct about it? Why not abandon our rule entirely?!"
"Prometheus," Judas cut in levelly. "The decision is not yours to make alone."
Yet another link cracked in Scott's hand, and he saw the corner of Judas's mouth twitch ever so slightly. He definitely knew what Scott had been doing, but he wasn't stopping him.
"He's a threat," Prometheus insisted. "We've established he cannot be controlled—"
"But he can be reasoned with," Judas replied. He stood up, drawing the attention of the Council. "As the Eldest, I am invoking my right to make a unilateral decision." From the way that the others at the table jolted, Scott could tell this was not a common occurrence. "Scott Mac Ghabhann, we will not hold you here. While it has been established that we cannot control you, I ask that you control yourself. We are entering a perilous time for our kind, one of which I believe you are uniquely aware, and I would hate to see a vampire as promising as you fall to a lack of caution."
Scott stared at the man, trying to discern whatever hidden meaning or threat existed behind those casual words. Negotiations were give-and-take, and this was entirely too much give on their side. Deciding that he had gotten this far with cutting straight to the heart of the matter, he dropped the chains, letting the broken bits fall to the ground. He had a couple of tacky iron bracelets, but nothing constricting his movement anymore. He only just barely managed to hold back the smug smile as everyone at the Council table other than Judas stared at the broken chains on the ground.
"What's the catch?" he demanded. "Knowing what you know about me and where I came from before this, you're not just going to let me walk out of here completely free."
Judas smiled, and it was not malicious, but there was something about it that felt smug and disingenuous. "That's true. Some oversight should be employed. But I think we both know that you would attempt to lose anyone following you at the soonest possibility. So instead, I will send someone to check in with you once a year to ensure that you are surviving well enough and not causing too many problems for the wider community of vampires. We do, after all, have to survive in this world somehow now that methods for our destruction have been discovered."
"Only once a year?"
"I think you'll find that eternity has a shrinking effect on time. The older you get, the shorter a year seems to feel, and I'm sure you'll start chafing under that restriction sooner rather than later."
Scott frowned. He wondered how old Judas was, how old any of the council members were, but he wasn't about to ask. He didn't think any of them would answer truthfully if he did, and he didn't doubt that at least one of them had stopped counting their age just to be able to say they didn't remember.
"With that," Judas continued, "I do believe we're done here." A few members of the Council opened their mouths to argue, but they were silenced by a sidelong glance from their leader. "Unless you want to keep them, I believe one of the guards would be able to help you remove the iron cuffs. To my understanding, human society wouldn't particularly appreciate the fashion."
Scott didn't move, not until the vampires were leaving the table and out a couple of doors on the far end of the room. A couple of them looked back like they wanted to say something to him, but whatever expression was on his face must have dissuaded them.
He didn't know what he looked like. He didn't know what expression was on his face or how disheveled he looked other than what he could see of himself. He wasn't even quite sure what he was feeling at that moment, other than that familiar sensation of being adrift that had been with him since his turning. He turned and pushed open the council room doors, letting himself out while the chains still sat abandoned on the floor behind him.
The guards were outside the door, but they made no move to stop him as he walked past. One did flinch when he slipped a couple of fingers under one of the cuffs and broke it open before dropping it on the floor. The other cuff followed, and Scott left them behind as the last link to the Lyon coven as it had been. He'd been set free—to a given value of freedom when his actions were still going to be under scrutiny—but he was not blind to the fact that this left him with nothing.
It was exactly as he had entered the world of vampires, with only himself to trust and the weight of enemy eyes on his back. Scott managed to find his way through the halls of the fortress and out the entrance. Still, no one stopped him. No one even suggested it, though he did not miss the whispering behind him.
It did not matter. He was used to being an oddity and a spectacle in one. He'd been through the crucible of life to burn away the impurities, and he'd encountered a second in unlife as well. The process would take time, but he would survive it. Time was the one thing still on his side.