While Sue and the Lord System were sleeping like a log in Sue's old room, two people trashed the last remaining scrolls left by the late patriarch. The documents were heavily protected with a warlock's protective spell.
The curvy woman was clad in thin golden robes and adorned with coral jewels seethed. Her bouncy breasts heaved up and down like the tides after she did all she could just to destroy the threats to her and her daughter. Madam Shanica set the scrolls on fire, soaked them in boiling water, and even tried to cut them into pieces with an ax, but to no avail. The scrolls remained unscathed. She guessed it was a mighty warlock who cast a protective spell on the scrolls, making her more desperate to tear them to shreds!
'If that bastard made an effort to hire a warlock, then the contents of these scrolls must have been so important! I can't let that wench have these documents! Never! Even if I have to eat these scrolls, I will do it.' Madam Shanica Terin, the late patriarch's last living wife, thought as she stepped on the unopened scrolls.
A reluctant voice pulled Madam Shanica Terin from her trance. "Mom? Are you done?"
Since a partition covered Madam Shanica from Sabina's line of sight, the former reacted immediately as she turned her attention to her daughter. With the scroll now hidden under a table at the late patriarch's office, Madam Shanica eased her tension-filled face. "Of course, darling. When did your mom ever fail you?"
Sabina leaned against her mother's caress. "Did you find the servants' identification cards, Mom?" A cold glint flashed in her eyes, the very same sparkle that flashed in her eyes when she betrayed Sue a few months ago. In an aggrieved tone, Sabina continued. "Leave that bitch to me, Mom. I want to be the one who will kill her this time!"
"Anything for you, darling girl. But have you found that wench a little odd?"
Sabina scoffed. "She is always odd, Mom! A freak show! Why are you interested in her? She is a dead man walking, so she is not worth our time."
"That freak show made us bend our will, darling girl." Madam Shanica almost vomited blood upon hearing how her daughter underestimated the wench. "She forced us to summon the elders without threats but sweet-laced words."
"So what, Mom? It is not like the elders will change sides after the meeting." Sabina clasped her hands together when an idea popped inside her overly simple mind. "I have a plan. Why don't we put Sue in her 'rightful' wretched place in front of the Terin Clan's elders? That way, she will be too embarrassed to even participate in the rite for the inheritance!"
Madam Shanica Terin could not see a potential fatal flow with her daughter's simplistic plan. The elders had long been on her side since the death of the last bearer of the Terin bloodline. Having a legitimate heir with human blood was a far cry for the ancient elders of the clan. And so, even when Shanica and Sabina were from the Leopard Tribe, they were bound to the Terin Household through marriage – plus, they got the beast in their bloodline and not some puny little human who was the last of her useless race.
Madam Shanica Terin and the Second Miss Sabina Terin were the better choices than the legitimate daughter, Sue Terin. And tomorrow, Madam Shanica would thwart any ridiculous thoughts in Sue's mind – or so she thought.
DAMPHIRS AND MOROI women littered the throne room. Their snow-like skin turned transparent upon the loss of their 'blood essence'. Though they were two different levels of vampires, a part vampire, and a pure-blooded vampire, they had two or more similarities aside from the fact that they had lost their source of life, also called the 'blood essence'.
The similarities began from their twisted heads, bite marks on the slope of their right necks, mangled naked bodies, and their eyes which reflected that they were in the throes of utter passion when they lost their lives.
It was a plain massacre.
And sitting atop the pile of forsaken vampires was a man who was smoking. His white satin shirt was half open, and his sleek silver hair was wet from the shower. The silver-haired vampire had no expression while he sat cross-legged on his marble throne. Lost in his thought, a pair of eyes that were as dark as the night stared into the darkness.
"My Lord."
Two words pierced through the eerie silence of the vampire lord's throne room. The even tone of the vampire lord's subordinate was followed by the pounding sound of the poor man's heart. The room was so silent that even a fly could hear the subordinate's struggle as he stood a few meters from his master.
"The wraiths have arrived," said the man in his languid voice before he blew a smoke. It was not a question but a statement. He had long heard of his secret guards' arrival; he was too busy to bother. He threw his cigarette, and before it could touch the ground, it turned into a pinch of dust made of ice. "So, have you found a cure for my insanity, hmm?"
The subordinate gulped, careful with his following words that would determine whether he lived or died this night. The blood curse that caused the insanity of the vampire lord plagued the latter after his thousandth kill. For someone who would live thousands of years, a limit of a thousandth kill was not enough, especially for the eccentric vampire lord of the Vampire City, Levi Vlad Tepes.
"…." Before the subordinate could produce a sound, his throat turned into ice, rendering him speechless. Like a fish out of water, he kept opening and closing his mouth in an attempt to save his life.
Vampire Lord Levi casually waved his hand. "You don't need to speak anymore. I know that look on your face." He flashed a candid grin. "You failed again."
The subordinate, who had lost his chance to report, waved his hands frantically.
"Why aren't you speaking? Have you gone mute?"
The subordinate did not know whether to cry or laugh at Levi's curious questions. He badly wanted to smack his master's head upside down, but he could only dream of it inside his head. He desperately pointed at his frozen neck. During this time, he was glad he relied on his blood essence to survive. No matter how his master tortured his body, like severing his limb or freezing him, his blood essence would stitch him back to his original healthy form.
"Oh." Levi snapped his fingers. On cue, his subordinate's throat returned to normal. Pulled from the madness he was in, he looked around and found a familiar scene. Realization dawned upon him that his blood curse had run rampant again. "I killed the tributes again, huh?"
"My Lord, please let this humble one finish the report first! I have received the failed report from the Silver Tower, but I also have a note delivered by the eldest son of the Lupine Pack of the Beastmen Territory!" Before his master could silence him again, the loyal subordinate reported that he was being chased by the devil. In a way, it was indeed the case, and the devil was named Levi Vlad Tepes.
With the mention of a new variable, Levi stopped his attempt to vanish through the shadows that cloaked his marble throne. "Hmm. What did that stupid Lupine dog say? I believe it must be worthwhile since he is desperate enough to bend the knee to me."
A mad smile etched on Levi's perfectly sculpted face.
Instead of answering his master, the subordinate flashed from his spot to a meter-away distance from his master in front of the throne and surrounded by dead women. Bowing, with his hand offering the magic-protected scroll, the subordinate waited for his master to finish reading the secret message.
"Interesting."