Headache

  Everything sucked, and I had a headache. Which was weird, as vampires didn’t have headaches. It’s been barely two days since my valiant storming of Bled Castle and the thorough thrashing I inflicted on its vampire “ruler”, in order to rescue my dear mortal friend.

  Aurora grumbled from next to me, cursing as she used her Mask’s power to close the hole in the building wall that I made during my fight.

  “You made the hole,” she hissed in my direction.

  “I rescued you,” I responded.

  “I could’ve done that myself,” she huffed as she gestured widely with her arms and was raising half crushed bricks from the courtyard floor up into the air to fill up the hole.

  “You were drugged.”

  Aurora showed me her tongue then turned her head away to look at what she was doing. I saw the corner of her mouth twitch upward, my eye twitched.

  We were, of course, not really fighting. Our bickering was more for my amusement, also a way for me to try and keep the headaches sulking in the corner away from me.

  The human occupants of my newly conquered castle kept their distance as they stood on the other side of the courtyard pretending to be doing work cleaning up the mess that my fight with their previous rulers had made. But you could only swipe the broom across the same spot so many times before there wasn’t much more you could clean.

  I could smell their fear, even in daylight. Just a few short months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to even survive the sun’s gaze. Now, the sun that shone above us was no longer the one that I grew up with, and even its weakening rays no longer bothered me nearly as much as they had before.

  On Ish Vimza, the day meant that I turned almost human, now, it was barely an inconvenience. I had changed significantly, and far too fast to even come to grips with it all.

  But, while humans and their fearful stares were annoying, the main source of my headache was the Elder Vampire standing and being ignored on my right.

  Cazimir was silent, but I could hear his thoughts. Not literally, of course, but I could almost feel his disapproval. The fact that he wouldn’t voice it was what gave me the headache. And worse, I could feel the thirst in his veins.

  The moment I defeated, or rather the moment I showed him what I truly was, he had capitulated and become… subservient to the extreme. My experience with vampire politics was practically nonexistent. I was changed and kept ignorant by the Master of the Cartel I served—which I learned was by design later—and what my sire had told me was far different than the rules that most other vampires in the world lived by.

  I wished that he had taken the time to explain it better to me, but… knowing my sire and who he was I feared that he didn’t know any better than I did. Vampire politics just didn’t apply to him, and apparently me.

  Finally, I sighed and turned my eyes to Cazimir. His expectant expression didn’t change, and I forced myself from saying anything that I was thinking. The man might have accepted me as being above him, but he was still an Elder Vampire, and one much more skilled than me, even if I was stronger.

  The truth was that I knew that what he wanted was important, and that I had to deal with it, but I just didn’t want to. The only thing I wanted to do was collect Aurora, Carlito and Kai, and leave for home. Except, I couldn’t. I had taken more responsibility, had “conquered” this castle and the small town below it, and now I had seemingly inherited more problems. Why couldn’t everything be as simple as bashing another’s head in and establishing dominance?

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  “Fine,” I whispered, in the low voice common for vampire speak. “Let’s talk, but send for Carlito and Kai first.”

  We gathered in a small room, well, every room in the castle was small-ish. I hadn’t realized, but medieval castles weren’t actually that big on the inside. I guess I didn’t appreciate how difficult it was to build something on top of a steep hill.

  Fighting my inner claustrophobic, I walked over to stand at the head of the narrow and long table. Cazimir entered the room behind me and came to stand on my left. Carlito and Kai followed after him and moved over to my right across from the Elder Vampire.

  Cazimir moved to speak, but I raised my hand to stop him. His words died in his throat, and he just inclined his head. The subservience grated on me, but I suffered through it. Instead of listening to him, I turned to Carlito and Kai.

  “What did you learn?” I asked them.

  Carlito cleared his throat and gave me a complicated look. “Well, they all seem to be in some kind of a cult.”

  I blinked, not expecting that answer. Carlito and Kai had spent the day interrogating the captives that we rounded up yesterday down in the town. The people that were loyal to King Proximus, the ruler of these parts. Well, until recently.

  I raised an eyebrow and Carlito continued.

  “They worship this Proximus fellow, think of him like some kind of a god king. Supposedly, we’ll all burn in his magnificent light if we don’t surrender immediately.”

  I rolled my eyes. It only took one small apocalypse for people to lose their fucking minds—though, to be fair, I wasn’t much better. My first instinct was to just head over and bash this “king’s” head in. It took the scent of fear pouring of Cazimir at my suggestion to make me hesitate, as well as his verbal warning. I hadn’t ever seen a vampire be afraid, especially not from a human, which Proximus was.

  “Anything else? How many people does he have? How much land does he rule?”

  “The Sun Kingdom’s territory stretches from here up to a great lake in the north. It is a bit hard to tell with the way territory was shuffled around, and most of the people didn’t really know. Most agreed that the Sun Kingdom had six settlements, including this one, with tens of thousands of people. They’ve swallowed up all survivors around them.”

  I grimaced. Most survivors would be fit and capable people, those who could fight and live through the chaos that followed the arrival of the Grand Spell. Thousands of combat capable people was an issue.

  “And Proximus himself?” I asked.

  “He’s the strongest person they have, by a wide margin it sounds like. Has the power of the sun, can burn people to crisp with it. And he styles himself as a conqueror, he intends to unite the world from what I can tell. And his people believe he can.”

  Such a goal didn’t surprise me, it was the same one I had, and probably a hundred other warlords scrambling around the world right now. The man’s idea wasn’t bad, or wrong, not really. I would be a hypocrite to say that. But… from what little I know, he does regularly kidnap people, so there’s that.

  “I don’t remember his name from the list,” I added.

  Cazimir cleared his throat, and I glanced at him, after a moment I waved for him to speak. “Thank you, Great Master,” he started, and I suppressed the desire to wince. I was not used to the reverence he held in his voice.

  “Proximus isn’t his real name,” Cazimir said. “It is the name he assumed after the world changed.”

  I nodded, that made sense. Though, I wondered why that name didn’t show up on the list anyway. The name I was given by Shadow did. Perhaps the YoKai-ni custom was more accepted by the Grand Spell? It was something that had existed on Kirios for a long time. Just taking up an alias didn’t mean much.

  I shook my head, dismissing the errant thoughts. “So, Cazimir, what can you tell me about Proximus? Namely, why you’ve been following a human, and why are you scared of him.”

  I had let Carlito speak first on purpose. It might not seem smart on the surface, since Cazimir could now just agree with everything Carlito said, but I had a secret weapon, namely my [Smell Lie] skill.

  Cazimir’s face steeled into the vampire emotionless mask. “Proximus is an inspiring leader,” Cazimir started. His words were the truth, which surprised me. For a human to inspire a vampire, he had to be impressive indeed. “He is also very powerful.”

  “You’re a vampire,” I narrowed my eyes at him. “And you’re terrified of a human enough to serve him?”

  Cazimir’s eyes flickered away but quickly returned to look at me. A vampire kept their emotions under control, well those that weren’t me, to see even a flicker of it on his face, something that was real and not a show. That worried me.

  “He has the power of the sun,” Cazimir answered finally.

  I glanced at the ray of light that was streaming in through the window and across our faces. “And?”

  Cazimir shook his head. “Not this, our sun. The one that burns us.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it quickly.

  “Well fuck.”