No one had been more perplexed by their friendship than Malkom. Kallen was the crown prince of the Trothan Demonarchy, hundreds of years old, and filled with wisdom.
Malkom was the illiterate thirty-year-old son of a whore, raised as a vampire's slave - and filled with rage.
Yet somehow he and Kallen had become comrades in arms, brothers by choice if not by blood. Kallen had said he'd recognized something in Malkom, an innate nobility. As if he'd known how badly Malkom wanted to be noble.
"Penniless, ignorant, and fatherless," the Viceroy intoned. "The son of a demon whore who sold her body." With a sneer, he added, "Until she could sell one of her offspring."
Malkom could deny nothing.
"How easily you sprang to life, when you should have been no more than seeping waste in a back alley."
"If Malkom is not noble in blood," Kallen said, "then he is noble in deed."
Kallen, still defending me.
The Viceroy seemed amused. "I can imagine none so lowly, yet you had the gall to resist us, knowing death awaited. Amazingly, you very nearly routed us from your world, demon."
Malkom could scarcely comprehend this. Though he'd won numerous battles, he hadn't imagined his foes were on the brink of surrender. Malkom had never known an Oblivion without the walking-dead vampires here.
Decades before his birth, they had arrived from an alien plane filled with myriad breeds of immortals and mortals, settling here for one reason.
Blood.
When the vampires consumed Trothan blood, it made them more powerful than they'd ever been, made them heal from injuries more swiftly. Blood had eventually become the currency in Oblivion.
"So very nearly," the Viceroy continued. "But in the end, breeding will tell." The vampire traced to stand just beside them. "You can dress in your fine warrior clothing." He reached down to rip Malkom's rich cloak from him. "But you can only mask what you truly are. Under those manacles at your wrists, I bet I would find bite scars."
Again Malkom voiced no denial. He normally wore silver cuffs to conceal those shaming marks.
The details of his past weren't necessarily held secret. All the demons in Ash knew how Malkom had earned his bread as a boy, how he'd eaten from their trash once he'd grown too old for a vampire lord's tastes.
But for this vampire to know as well ...
"Does not matter how you appear, demon - you are still nothing."
"Do not listen to him, Malkom," Kallen said. "You are a good man. A stalwart leader."
"Who was betrayed at the earliest opportunity?" the vampire said.
A gang led by the powerful and devious Ronath had tricked Malkom. Before he could trace or attack, he'd been caught in a metal net and stabbed through repeatedly.
"You rose up high for the briefest time. But I will break you down once more."
Malkom craned his head up to face the Viceroy. "Break me down?"
"You submitted to a vampire master once. You will do so again."
"Is that why we live still? For me, save yourself time and kill me now." Nothing this vampire could do would be worse than what the slave master of Malkom's childhood had done. Malkom gazed at the demon boy, unconscious in the dirt. Nothing.
" 'Tis not so simple," the Viceroy said. "It never is with our kind." Had he signaled something to the sorcerer at the back of the chamber? "You've destroyed so many of my soldiers that I have decided to create more, starting with you two, the strongest of your kind. You shall be transformed, remade in my image."
The rumors ... 'Twas said that the overlords had developed a rite to transform Trothans into Scarb a - demonic vampires who thirsted for the blood of their own. A demon and a vampire united, an abomination stronger than both.
The Viceroy drew his sword from a scabbard at his hip. "You will drink my blood, and it will open your veins to the ritual. Your deaths will be the catalyst." He ran a finger over the edge of his sword, while in the shadows his sorcerer began to chant, fueling a sinister curse.
Power emanated from the sorcerer with every utterance, filling the room with forbidden black magics. Some unseen force seemed to wrap around Malkom's body, digging in.
Even more guards closed in, heaving tight on Malkom's and Kallen's chains. One of the largest vampires jammed his knee into Kallen's spine, forcing his head backward, while another wedged a bit between Kallen's teeth.