“Isn’t this nice?” Tyron said with false joviality. “Me, a humble Necromancer, bringing my betters together at the table. You must be so pleased to have a chance to talk together at last.”

For a moment, he’d thought Yor was just going to try and rip his head off. She may very well have succeeded too; he wasn’t sure precisely what the vampire was capable of, or how much she could get away with. Fortunately, his head remained on his shoulders and the two of them… or three of them, had retired to another room for more privacy.

“I warned you not to get involved with them,” Yor said, her entire demeanour ice cold. She didn’t even look at the rat, focusing her attention on Tyron instead. “You’ve made it difficult to justify for my Mistress to offer you any more assistance.”

He scoffed at her.

“Do I want more of your assistance? After our recent entanglements, I’m no longer convinced. Besides, why should I choose your faction over theirs? Why should I have any position regarding vampire politics at all?”

“We have invested in you,” Yor said snippily.

“I’ve paid you back many times over,” Tyron replied, blunt as a hammer.

“I’m feeling wounded here. Are you really going to ignore me, bitch?”

The voice emanating from the rat was… strange. The rat’s mouth and throat were moving, it literally was the rat speaking, but it was mimicking the speech of another. Hearing that guttural, at times animalistic voice coming from the small creature was off-putting, to say the least.

Yor sneered.

“Crawl home with your tail between your legs before I rip you in half. Does that suit your needs?”

The rat tsked.

“You thought you could keep a realm this juicy all to yourself? It’s full of blood and just teetering on the edge of a full fucking collapse. That fat spider must have anticipated quite the haul when everything went to shit. Oh no, we are going to get a slice of this, bitch, and I don’t care if I have to bite your hand off to get it.”

Judging by the glint in her eye, Yor’s Mistress had been expecting exactly that.

“Always, your appetite runs ahead of your ability, Valk. What can you do, skulking in the sewers and touching the rats? This realm will belong to my Mistress, not to the mutt you serve.”

“You were here first, and what do you have to show for it?” Valk replied with contempt. “An infested den of depravity, just so you don’t miss home. Yorin, you are going to fail here, and it won’t be me your mistress hollows out when all is said and fucking done.”

The vampire and the rat snarled at each other as Tyron watched, entirely bemused. So Yorin was her real name?

“You two seem to know each other very well. I didn’t realise this would be a meeting of such old friends,” he drawled.

Both turned hate-filled gazes upon him, and he irrationally felt the urge to burst out laughing.

“Valk… I presume that’s your name. Don’t try to stare me down with the rat, I can’t take it seriously.”

“If he had some courage, he would have come himself,” Yor sniffed.

“As if you would let me walk out alive. Treachery is your way of life.”

Tyron brought his hands together sharply, cutting off both vampires before they could descend into bickering again.

“As fun as it is to listen to you two snipe at each other, I have other things to do with my time,” he stated. “I imagine there is a purpose to this conversation other than insults, Valk; otherwise, you wouldn’t have paid me so much.”

“If he wants to negotiate, you will need to leave, Tyron,” Yor said. “You have no need to listen in on matters relating to the Court.”

“Except I do,” Tyron said, leaning over to rest his chin on one hand. “That was my price for facilitating this get-together.”

“You…!” Yor turned her enraged glare down at the rat, who occupied itself with its whiskers. She sighed, the emotion draining out of her face and leaving only the emotionless monster behind. “If you want to talk, then talk, Valk. What do you want?”

“Nothing too dramatic,” he replied easily. “We have a great big city to operate in, plenty of space for both of us. I felt as if we should come to an in-principle agreement about which areas will belong to who.”

“I could hunt you down and drink your soul, Valk,” Yor said plainly, “then I wouldn’t have to share it at all.”

“You want to chase us down? You know better than most how hard it is to root us out once we get our claws into a realm. A disturbance like that would risk exposure, for all of us. Doesn’t seem like that would be in your best interests.”

“It would hardly be the first time my Mistress burned everything to the ground to prevent your Master from touching something she wanted,” Yor countered, folding both hands in her lap.

“And it cost her dearly. For how long can she keep playing the game that way? Eventually, she needs a win.”

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“Underestimate the spider at your own peril.”

“If it’s going to be ‘I win or we all lose’, then we are all going to lose, Yorin. I only hope that when it all burns down, I get to mix your fucking ashes into the ruins.”

They continued to bicker back and forth, threatening their lives, souls, and all they held dear almost every other sentence.

Tyron wondered if this was how all negotiations between rival covens were conducted. If so, it was a wonder the Scarlet Court has risen to be as powerful as it had become. He’d learned a little from Valk in their brief interaction after he’d accepted the vampire’s offer to meet, and from what he could gather, the Court was closer to a hell than a paradise, even for the deathless creatures who lived there.

It was playing out right in front of his eyes. A lack of trust was one thing, but it went much deeper than that. Both parties in the negotiation knew, deep down, that the other would betray at the first opportunity. It was difficult for mutual cooperation to exist between two people who actively wanted to kill the other.

The Court was divided into many factions, but there were a dozen major ones, each led by a truly powerful, truly ancient vampire. All they seemed to do with the eternity of time afforded to them was try and bring the others down and advance their own interests, trying to seize a throne that was impossible to hold.

When Yor said her Mistress would gladly cut off her own nose to spite her face, she was deadly serious. The various factions would gladly light themselves on fire if the flames made the others vaguely uncomfortable.

Such an exhausting way to live. Listening to them go back and forth, like two starving dogs in a fighting pit, taught Tyron a valuable lesson about their kind. Regardless how much they hated each other, there was an uneasy level of respect there. They recognised that the other had the capacity to hurt them, which was not something they believed about the humans they depended on for food. To the vampires, the people of Kenmor were like bottles of wine. Items that they wanted, but wouldn’t be upset if a few of them broke. Or a lot of them broke.

It didn’t bother him, even if he recognised that they fundamentally thought of him in exactly the same way. He was food. Protected food, but food nonetheless. Which was why they were so surprised when he cleared his throat, cutting off their negotiations and bringing their attention to him.

“This has been very productive,” he said, “but it's clear you can’t come to an agreement. Why don’t we save some time and agree that both of you are going to work for me? For the near future, anyway.”

There was a moment of total silence in the room as both Yor and the Valk-possessed-rat stared at him, a mild frown on their faces.

“Is this some sort of… joke?” Yor asked, her voice as chilled as ice.

“No,” Tyron replied. “I’m not very funny.”

“Hah!” Valk laughed harshly. “You could have fooled me.”

It was interesting to note, now that they had a common enemy, how well they fell into line together.

“Let’s stop wasting time,” Tyron said. “The reason you are talking to each other at all is because of the purge. Both of you are at constant risk of exposure, and unless I miss my guess, the situation is fairly dire for both of you. Unless, of course, you have blood-starved vampires ripping the throats out of your customers every other night, Yor.”

He let the unspoken question hang in the air, and accepted her silence as sufficient answer.

“And Valk, I haven’t known you long, but I gather your coven would rather slit their own throats than cut a deal with Yor and her kind. So why exactly are you here?”

He paused to take a deep breath of the musty, smoke-filled air.

“Smells like desperation in here. In fact, I can practically taste it.”

“You need to be very careful, Tyron,” Yor warned him, her face a flat mask. “The Scarlet Court is not to be trifled with.”

“Unless your Mistress,” he turned to the rat, “or your Master are going to come here, to this realm, then I don’t think I have much to worry about. Until they do, and so long as the threat of the purge is hanging over your heads, it seems that both of you are going to have to do exactly what I tell you to.”

“I could kill you here and now,” Yor told him, leaning across the table, not bothering to conceal the animalistic hunger she felt burning in her veins. “I could turn you into one of us, bound by blood. Is that what you want?”

Tyron smiled and brought up one hand.

“Unless you want me to vent Death Magick into the ground floor of this establishment, I suggest you don’t make the attempt. I can assure you, it would be so potent the Priests would sense it from their dorms in the cathedral.”

“You cast a spell inside my parlour? Are you insane?”

“Just a little ritual,” Tyron shrugged. “I’m almost certain nobody noticed, but it’s difficult to be certain of anything in these trying times.”

Yor stared at him, the beast within raging in her eyes, and Tyron looked coolly back, his hand held in the air.

“You might have her over a barrel,” Valk hissed, “but not us. You have no idea where to find my coven and no way to threaten us.”

“I don’t have to,” Tyron said, still holding Yor’s gaze. “If I reveal them, what do you think is going to happen when the empire’s done burning their way through this place?”

He raised a brow at the rat, who remained silent.

“I’ll tell you what will happen: they’ll tear the city apart looking for more vampires. Brick by brick, they’ll rip their way through every building and every sewer. Eventually they’ll find me, and my little basement, and that will lead them straight to you.”

He shrugged in an exaggerated manner.

“You can take the risk, obviously. Maybe you’ll be able to avoid detection. Better yet, perhaps you can scurry back to the court with your tail between your legs.” He smirked. “I presume your Master is more forgiving of failure than Yor’s Mistress?”

Unless he missed his guess, they would be ripped to pieces if they failed their tasks and returned empty-handed. The Court demanded blood and slaves, an ocean of both, and the empire could provide for a long time.

Neither Yor nor Valk spoke into the silence that hung in the air; instead, they glared daggers at him. It was easy to imagine them thinking of tearing into his throat with their fangs and ripping out his soul.

He placed his hands flat on the table and spoke clearly.

“So, for the duration of the purge, you will agree to do what I ask you to do, when I ask you to do it. It won’t be anything too burdensome, a few chores here and there. In return, I’ll help provide what you need to survive this period of heightened danger, and I won’t reveal your presence and have you all painfully destroyed. Does that sound reasonable?”

Yor glared at him, animalistic bloodlust seething in her eyes.

“We have a deal,” she said, her voice so low it was almost a growl, “but you will die for this, Tyron. When the danger is passed and you can be safely disposed of, you’ll be left to bleed out in an alley. The Court will demand it.”

The rat nodded and bared its fangs at him. Clearly, Valk agreed.

Tyron sighed as he pushed himself up from the table.

“That’s the problem with you, Yor. You’re always thinking three or four steps ahead, always calculating the next angle.”

He brought up a thumb and tapped it to his chest.

“I don’t have any more steps to make, or more angles to play. You want to kill me when the crisis is over? As long as my goals are achieved, why the fuck would I care?”