For Vincent, this was simply madness. Madness at its darkest light. Yet, how could he refuse? There was no good reason, and Vincent didn’t want to enter a battle against the Conseil. Should he refuse?

The seconds dilated into minutes as he remained unusually silent in the carriage that Véronique fetched for both. His heart began racing and each beat resounded in his ears, making him almost deaf to the outside world while his mind raced, listing each possibility to find out what went wrong and yet, no answer he came up with could satisfy his growing anxiety.

“We are almost there, monsieur” Véronique’s voice dragged Vincent’s mind out of his own train of thought. “Would you like me to run the details by you again?”

“Actually, I’m fine,thanks.” He replied. There was no need, the information was fresh within his mind.

In the abandoned industrial plant, there were a number of maimings and killings performed on the unaware that wandered into it, whose bodies were found days later, mangled beyond recognition. The Conseil decided to act as it could be a rogue vampire acting on their own, as some of the victims were vampires themselves. Even though they weren’t nobles, a vampire’s strength, endurance and reflexes are nothing to scoff at, hence why the Conseil suspected some sort of rogue vampire wreaking havoc...

But Vincent still had to question why they decided to call him. There were far better candidates for this sort of mission. Any police officer would do way better than him. So why him, a humble waiter at a small café?

The only reason that he could think was terrifying, but impossible. They had no way of knowing. So why?

“And here we are.” Véronique announced when their carriage stopped.

The golden light of the lamplights showed a little passageway, creating a breach within the light river that poured through Belteaux’s streets, flowing just like blood within the veins of the proud capital. They climbed down the carriage, Véronique paying the man to stay and wait for them as long as needed. The conductor, a short and wide man in the ways that only intense manual work could shape someone’s body, sporting a large, graying mustache, gray pants and a white dress shirt with weather-beaten black boots, simply agreed as the pay was considerably higher than his normal fee. And so, together, they left, with Vincent trying to ignore the feeling in his gut, the fight-or-flight reaction, the visceral instinct, the precognition that every living being had when entering a place that reeked death.

The abandoned plant seemed like the carcass of a dead predator; a gigantic beast of steel and flesh slain in forgotten eras whose flesh decayed and was finally devoured by maggots before only the skeleton of concrete and iron remained, populated by the workers before finally being put to rest, an old memory that no one could forget and could merely ignore in hopes that the monstrous corpse would finally rot away and cease to be the malignant blemish it was in the face of Belteaux.

Far away, the church’s bells rang, the clear chime echoing in the darkness of the sky, the pale moon and the golden glow of the streets below.

“Now, monsieur, it’s best for us to split," Véronique said. “We will meet here in about an hour from now.”

“But... Weren’t vampires attacked as well?”, Vincent asked. “I mean, you pointed that out yourself, Mademoiselle.”

“I did, but I am not a common vampire”, Véronique replied, with the calm confidence of someone who truly believed their words. “Besides, I have more tricks up my sleeve than I could tell you. But could this be your intention? To have me reveal e-very-thing?”

“No thanks”, Vincent replied, resisting the urge to grimace. He barely knew her so why was she teasing him as if they knew each other for their entire lives? “I’d rather have us just finish the job as soon as possible.”

“If you are just that cold, then I won’t have any problems hanging out with you in the summer!” She chuckled. “But let’s go now. I don’t want to spend any more time here than necessary... And the sooner we wrap this up, the better.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

After a quick nod, the duo split to start their investigation.

----------------------------------------

Véronique had to admit that Vincent was interesting.

Not just from a personality standpoint (he was the type of person she wanted to poke the most fun at, but that wasn’t enough by itself to justify her interest), but also because of the simple fact that the Conseil ordered her to team up with him specifically. Why a simple waiter as her partner, she had asked when her superiors delivered her orders. While the response made sense, she couldn’t help but imagine there was something more. While rare among the Routiers, him being a suspect of having Vermeil Onirique wasn’t enough to warrant that kind of attention…

Authority of Crimson

Vermeil Onirique.

The mark of the Noblesse. The right that gave power to the ancestors of the current ruling chaste, allowed them to rise above the common folk and create their government and turned the vampires who had this distinct ability into aristocrats, nobles and scholars. The divine authority of Red that was the reason why the Noblesse had the power. Every noble child learned that from a young age; Véronique, her older sister Thérese, her older brother Rénaud and her younger sister Marguerite weren’t exceptions to learning why they were inherently more valuable to the system than the Routiers, the peasants who weren’t lucky enough to be born with the symbol of nobility.

In summary, Vermeil Onirique was the unique ability to shape and use blood, altering its properties in order to externalize numerous phenomena. While it was the sign of the Noblesse, it would appear every now and then among Routiers, but it was still rare even among them.

And, as far as Véronique knew, not a Routier able to use Vermeil Onirique was called to such a mission under the Conseil on suspicions alone.

Her boots echoed in the empty hallway with each step, raising small clouds of Dust from the old carpet, the broken down walls illuminating the ambient with the moonlight that entered through the many cracks. Véronique saw an old door whose plaque read: “Central Administration Room”. The Talonner opened it; the creaking and squeaking of old, humid wood sounded ghastly as her eyes peeked into the room.

It once was lit and certainly busy, having a number of cabinets filled with old documents and folders that were completely useless by now, either gnawed by mice or destroyed by humidity. The cabinets themselves were blackened due to the lack of maintenance and the small bits and pieces of metal were so corroded that, if she were to touch them, they would surely turn into reddish dust. It was hard to imagine that room as the nervous center of Drayonne’s Industrial Park, the heart that pumped oil and steel into the kingdom and would be the vanguard who would lead Drayonne into the future. The spearhead that would pierce time and turn Drayonne into the kingdom of the new millennium, evolving a thousand years in less than a hundred.

Nobody truly knew what happened. From what Véronique learned with her childhood tutors, one night disaster struck. No one knew exactly what happened, but the park was completely ruined in a single night, destroyed beyond repair, as if the gods themselves had taken offense with their arrogance and decided to destroy the legs that carried their nation into the bright future that, now, all saw as bleak, a useless attempt at going in a direction they were never meant to head.

Véronique saw that as nothing more than superstition and fear hindering progress. If she burned her hand in a stove, the stove wasn’t evil or possessed, nor did that mean they needed to cook raw meat in sticks over open fires. It merely said that she needed to be more careful. But the Conseil was stubborn.

The room itself was made from a number of small, individual tables where employees would remain seated and conduct their activities, mostly directed through information received in the telefones on their tables. There was something that told her that this room used to be quite busy. And now, it was just another husk, abandoned by life.

It was honestly sad.

Her fingers ran through the table closest to her as she walked, her gloves stained with the generations of accumulated dust while the long line she made followed her until the edge.

However, Véronique felt something weird. The scent was off.

In an old, abandoned room, the scent one expects to find is humid and musty, heavy and puffy. The scent that marked how fungus, mold and moss took over space and showed how nature was quick to reclaim what belonged to it. She didn’t expect a dry and hot smell, with the eye-watering sensation and the burnt feeling that marked the presence of smoke. Véronique turned Around, letting her other senses guide her before finding a wisp of smoke before coming closer and kneeling. Someone took old papers and used them as fuel for a small fire. Véronique took one of her gloves off and touched the cinders.

“Still hot”, she muttered to herself. “Then, this means that...” Her heart raced as her eyes widened, blood running from her face with the revelation...

She turned and ran as fast as she could.

In Belteaux, the golden lamp lights flickered in the night air.