Abbot Tain leaned back in his throne, his eyes wistful. He put a hand to his mouth to suppress a cough - something he'd gotten used to doing. He'd been dealing with that illness for hundreds of years, after all. When he'd performed the first ritual and become a vampire, he hadn't been aware he was sick. Now that illness was frozen in time, living forever within his body, just like the rest of him.

'Maria?' he said quietly, his eyes inscrutable. 'What do you suppose the greatest distraction of mankind is?'

'Distraction?' said Maria, from the other side of the dining table. 'Lust? The desire to reproduce?'

Tain's wife was a beautiful woman - she'd made herself so before becoming a vampire - with long black hair and bright yellow eyes. She was wearing a simple dress today - that is, simple for her. It still had the three ribbons wrapped around her waist, of course. She went nowhere without her defenses. The ribbons were enchanted, and if anything got too close to their master they'd slice it to pieces in an instant. Vampires couldn't perform magic, of course - their physical souls couldn't handle it - so she'd created the ribbons before she'd been turned. She was wise in that way.

'Lust...' said Tain, considering it. 'Could be. It could be. But there's things outside of that - things that aren't influenced by lust, so it can't be the greatest distraction, can it? There's got to be something above it.'

Maria cut her steak as she thought - there was no need for vampires to eat, but she still liked to taste food. Tain didn't feel the same way. To him, the process of eating was a tedious matter that interrupted the things that were truly important.

'The greatest distraction,' continued Tain. 'The way I see it, is fear of death. Nearly all aspects of humanity stem from it. The desire to reproduce. The desire to make a mark on the world. It's all, deep down, the wish to live forever in at least some form.'

'You think so?'

'I do. I've seen it in immortals - over time, they become...inhuman. That's because they shed their fear of death. They are distracted no longer, and can achieve their true selves.'

'Do you count yourself among them?'

'No. I've seen men who truly cannot die,' he tapped his chest, just over his heart. 'We just can't die of old age. The fear of death is still there. Lessened...but still there. People seek immortality because they fear death. It's just another form of that distraction.'

'You're one of the most powerful men in the world,' said Maria. 'If not the most powerful. What do you have to fear?'

There was silence. On the walls above, paintings of many men - most of them Tain during several stages of history - looked down on the two. They were married in the loosest sense of the term. The title of being Tain's wife was something given to Maria as a reward - when she came to Tain, she'd brought decades of magical research to strengthen the vampiric race, stolen from her Circle. There was no love between them, only the relationship between a leader and a valued contributor.

'I could kill you right now,' said Tain, slowly. 'It wouldn't even be difficult. It would take me perhaps a second - perhaps - and then you'd be gone. Doesn't that frighten you?'

'Of course not.'

'Please don't lie to me, Maria. Why would you join the Family as you did if you did not fear death?'

Maria leaned forward. There was something in her eyes, the glimmer of a fanatic - but not one for the Family. Tain knew that Maria's adoration was reserved for herself most of all. As a magical researcher - even if she couldn't perform magic, she could still investigate it - most would think that she was in love with her discoveries. They'd be right - but she didn't love her discoveries because of a love of discovery itself. No, she loved them because she were the one who found them. It was simply an extension of narcissism.

That, Tain reflected, was her greatest distraction.

'I've told you this before, my dear husband,' she said. 'But I looked into humanity for eighty years. I'm done with it, I've seen all there is to see. I want to see what happens next.'

Tain looked into her eyes. It was an everlasting disappointment to him that there really was nothing more to his wife than that.

Silence passed. Maria ate. The clock ticked.

'I need to feed my hounds,' she said, suddenly, and left the room.

Tain didn't react as she left the room. Once she was gone, he leaned back in his chair once again.

The clock ticked. Eternity continued.

-

'It's been a while, Athena,' said Otto, wrapping the woman in a bear hug the moment he saw her. The magical engineer was huge, dwarfing Nathan as he looked at the two reunite. He was half-afraid that Athena would be suffocated by the man's bushy beard before the hug ended. After about a minute, Otto released Athena, who seemed to still have plenty of air in her lungs.

They were standing in Otto's workshop within the headquarters of the Circle of Thompson, located beneath an abandoned power station in the city of Leston. It was a little after three AM - as an exile, Athena wasn't exactly supposed to be in a Thompson facility at all, so they'd had to come in under cover of darkness.

Weapons were scattered everywhere within the workshop - guns, swords, daggers, spears and a colossal hammer that seemed to have pride of place above the fireplace. No doubt every single one of them was enchanted - according to Athena, Otto was employed to create enchanted items to be handed out to Thompson Sorcerers according to rank. One could grow exhausted during battle and be unable to use spells, but an enchanted item would continue functioning until destroyed.

The workshop itself was blazing hot, and Nathan was sweating like a pig every second he was in there. Otto, on the other hand, seemed fine - presumably, he'd enchanted his own body at some point to better deal with the heat.

'You're cheeky as fuck, you know?' grinned Otto, hands on Athena's shoulders. 'You could've just come to see me tomorrow - they're having their fancy gala. Even wizards and witches welcome - they're trying to recruit some.'

'You know me,' said Athena, a similar smile on her own face. 'I hate doing what I'm supposed to.'

'Wouldn't have you any other way,' said Otto, then his eyes flicked to Nathan. His smile flickered for a moment, but he quickly restored it. 'Who's the new face?'

'Nathan Westwood,' said Nathan. 'Nice to meet you.'

'Otto,' said the man, extending a hand for Nathan to shake. 'Same to you.'

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Nathan shook Otto's hand gingerly - it was stained with oil, and Nathan got the feeling the man could break his hand with the slightest squeeze on top of that. The handshake lingered for a moment too long, Otto's eyes boring into Nathan's as if searching for something in particular.

'Don't break him,' laughed Athena, an uneasy grin on her face.

After another moment, Otto relented, releasing Nathan and roughly ruffling his ginger hair. 'Sorry, sorry,' he grinned. 'They're just so fragile these days.'

She punched him in the arm. He didn't even flinch. 'They're not fragile,' she said. 'You're just too strong.'

Otto turned away from them, and went over to his workbench - a battered metal table that seemed to have born the brunt of quite a lot of hard work. He rolled up his sleeves.

'Ah, I'm as strong as I need to be,' he said. 'So - if you've come to me, you want me to make something for you, yeah?'

Athena smiled apologetically. 'Haven't the luxury of personal visits, I'm afraid. My mantle was destroyed in my last fight.'

Nathan's eyes flicked over to Athena. He hadn't even known she had a mantle. Judging from the fact that she was going to a magical engineer about it, it must have been enchanted. What had it been for? He'd assumed she was simply more experienced than him, but was she just better equipped? There was definitely a huge gap between them in terms of ability, but was it smaller than he'd assumed?

'Mantle?' said Nathan.

'Made it harder to aim at her when she put it on,' said Otto mournfully as Athena handed him a shredded cloak from her bag. 'Oh, what've they done to you?'

Nathan turned to Athena. 'I could have done with one of those. Rhodes definitely didn't have any trouble aiming at me.'

'Wouldn't have worked,' she said. 'Otto made it for me - he enchanted it so that it couldn't be used by anyone else. Didn't want it getting stolen.' She saw the look on his face, and chuckled. 'This was before I met you - I wasn't trying to keep you at a disadvantage, don't worry.'

'I wasn't worrying about that.'

'If you say so.'

Otto had taken the shredded mantle to his workbench and was inspecting it with some kind of eyepiece - probably enchanted as well. For all Nathan knew, everything in the room was.

'I can get it fixed up for you,' he said, after a few seconds. 'Don't say I never do anything for you.'

'I never would,' smiled Athena.

Otto grinned back, and reached for his tools.

'Uh, sorry,' said Nathan. Both Otto and Athena turned to look at him. 'I actually have a request, as well.'

-

Gabriel Rook took a swig of his coffee, following up with another drink of his ice-cold orange juice. It was important to keep your internal temperatures balanced - it encouraged good luck and warded off evil spirits. He'd heard that from a one-eyed shaman in Ireland...India...some country with an I, at any rate. It was funny, thinking about that - there were lots of countries containing the letter 'I' (their names, that was, although the letter I was probably also written down innumerable times within that country), but very few that actually had eyes. There were National Spirits, of course, but those didn't really count.

The waitress looked at him, a bemused expression on her face. She was pretty. Cute. Pretty cute, for that matter, if he was any judge. He wasn't, however - he was just another citizen, not someone who really had the right to rate somebody's appearance. He wasn't cut out for that pressure, that responsibility, either. He wouldn't even know what rating scale to use.

'I like to keep my internals at room temperature,' he told her, as way of explanation. 'Like the engine of a car.'

'But...' she said, as if she were unsure if she should even be talking to him. 'Car engines are supposed to be hot, right?'

'Who told you that?' he said. He hadn't been informed of this - he'd never really looked into the inside of a car during his long, long, long life. One day they'd just replaced carriages, and he'd just rolled with it.

'I...nobody told me that, I just know.'

'Are you an engineer?' Rook leaned forward in his booth, shifting the pile of plates in front of him. He'd been in the Lucky 8 Diner for a few hours now, ordering food and drinks, and he was fairly sure that his waitress wasn't an engineer. He had a good eye for people.

The waitress didn't even reply. She just walked off back to the kitchen with a worried look on her face. That hurt. It stung - like a bee, or perhaps a wasp. Wasps were worse, in Rook's opinion, as they could sting as much as they wanted. They'd evolved the capacity for sustained violence. The waitress stung just like one of them. He looked younger than her, but that gave her no right to treat him with such disrespect. He was a paying customer. Well, he hadn't paid yet, but he had every intention to.

Rook looked out of the window at the highway outside. He was about halfway between Saint Hester and Leston, so he felt he'd deserved a little rest stop. He didn't need to rest, or even eat really, but that didn't mean it wasn't satisfying.

He activated his Blood Drive. The soul of Rhodes, previously captured, connected to his mind.

I'm dying. I'm dying, it said.

'No, you already died,' sighed Rook, a downcast expression on his face. 'Sorry about that. I need the memory of the person who killed you again - his face, please.'

It was awful when a member of the Family died - killing one of them was an unforgivable crime, and Rook was more than happy to execute the punishment. One looked after their own, after all.

Kill him. I need to kill him. He'll kill me, I need to kill him.

Rook sighed. He shouldn't have released her soul on the way here, but it seemed to be the right thing to do. He hadn't wanted to keep her trapped in her last moments of dying panic, but he'd left her alone too long. Her soul was undergoing the process of reincarnation, suppressing the memories of her previous life. During his first life, when he was but a simple necromancer, he'd become quite familiar with the process. The longer you waited to bring someone back, the less them they were. It wasn't an easy thing to witness.

'Goodbye, Rhodes,' he said, and let her soul go for good. He'd never met the girl when she was alive, but he had no desire to keep her from reincarnating longer than he had to. Letting her go meant he couldn't use her Blood Drive, but he'd do without it. Her memories, too, were gone - but he'd do without them. He still remembered the essentials of the target from the first time he'd contacted Rhodes' soul. Ginger hair, freckles, and bright blue eyes. He wondered what sounds the guy would make if those eyes got popped. Would they sound like Rhodes' screams? Full of regret and confusion?

He'd just have to find out.

-

'I wasn't expecting you to want an enchanted item,' said Athena, as they drove back to the motel. 'But I have to say, those would be pretty useful.'

Nathan sat next to her, looking out the window. The city of Leston was in infinitely better shape than their last shop. With the Circle of Thompson being present in the city, the vampires couldn't run a campaign of fear like they had in Saint Hester. The streets were full and bustling, even at this late hour. This was what a normal city was like - it honest shouldn't have been so surprising to him. Maybe he'd lost some perspective on the world, focusing on the vampires that infested it.

'I thought of it after my fight with Rhodes,' said Nathan. 'The trick with the knife saved me, so I thought a knife they couldn't just pull out would be fantastic. Do you think Otto can do it?'

Athena laughed. 'A request like that? Honestly, that's nothing. One of the students of the Circle here could probably have done it for you. A knife that changes shape once it's inside a body is simple stuff.'

'So you could have done it?'

Athena's laugh trailed off, and she glanced at Nathan - and then quickly away again. 'My focus wasn't - well, isn't - on enchanting items, exactly.'

'I know. You have the spell that launches the stakes, right? That's your speciality?' He'd first seen that spell - Burst, he thought it was called - the night when he met Athena. For a vampire hunter, Nathan could think of no better method of attack. It gave the stakes the speed and force of bullets - even if it didn't hit the heart, it still caused enough damage to down the vampire long enough for a second stake to hit its mark. Nathan was quite eager to learn it, but apparently his body wouldn't be able to handle it yet. It was a reason he heard a lot.

'That's useful, and I put quite a bit of work into it, but no.'

'So, uh, what is your speciality?'

'Not important,' said Athena - and that was the end of it. Nathan assumed that she hadn't really meant to say as much as she did, and she'd be more careful in the future to avoid saying anything potentially uncomfortable.

They drove in silence for a while, the music from numerous clubs outside wrestling for supremacy.

'We'll go to the event tomorrow - Otto can hand us our supplies back then,' she said.

'What's this event, anyway?'

'A gala - a chance for wizards and witches to become Sorcerers and join the Circle of Thompson. It's also a chance for exiles like me to visit the Circle without getting into trouble - without getting killed, mainly.'

'You were exiled from the Circle of Thompson?' said Nathan, cocking his head.

'I was exiled from the Circle of Domino, but I'm generally not welcome everywhere else.'

'Oh. You must've fucked up pretty bad, huh?' Really, that wasn't meant to come out as bad as it did. Light-hearted ribbing, not harsh accusing. It didn't seem to bother Athena, though, who simply nodded.

'Mm,' she said.

And now, that was that.