dead. More so,” I added, since being dead on this boat was the normal condition.
“Should I send out a tug to meet it?”
I shook my head as I continued to look through the binoculars. “There would seem to be no need, they are lowering a rowing boat. Put down the ladder.” I returned the binoculars. “Then let us go and meet them.”
It was only at times like this, when there was something that approached official business, that I realized how alone I was. This was not necessarily a bad thing; for most of my existence I had been alone by choice and in many ways I preferred it. Friends can be a thorny problem for a vampire, or for any species with a long lifespan—in the end, they all leave you.
It may have been in the back of my head when I formed the Coalition that, since we were all vampires together, there would be better opportunities for making friends who would not die so precipitately. But it had not happened that way. Perhaps it was because I was the boss, perhaps it was because I showed less enthusiasm for certain indoor sports and other debauchery that was the main preoccupation of my fellows, or perhaps it was simply that I radiated an aura of wanting to be alone. It was probably that last one.
In general, it did not bother me, but at times like this it was hard not to let my mind stray back to more convivial times. If a visiting dignitary had arrived at Kinloch Kirk, back when it was the seat of the Underworld’s ruling queen, then the whole council would have been there to meet them. Queen Jolie and her husband, Randall the Dull, the Fae Mathilda, the witch Mercedes, Odran the Fae King, werewolves, vampires, elementals and so on. But in the fleet, there was only me.
First up the ladder that had been put down over the side were a pair of vampires whose every movement screamed ‘bodyguards’. One was male, the other female but they had a similarity about them that suggested sibling, possibly even twins. Clad in ankle-length leather, like a pair of walking stereotypes, they stood to either side of the ladder, glancing furtively from side to side, alert to any possible danger. The next face I saw, coming up over the liner’s rail, was one I identified with the flag, but one I had not expected to ever see again.
“Laucian,” I breathed, surprised all the way to my marrow.
“Sinjin.”
Laucian’s voice was deep and rolling, with a hint of non-specific eastern European to the accent. He was tall and handsome, dark-haired and pale skinned, his eyes red rimmed and so dark, they were almost black. He wore an impeccably tailored suit that had last been fashionable during the reign of Queen Victoria, with an opera cape draped over it, and had a flamboyant cravat of blood red at his throat.
“I thought you were dead.”
Perhaps not the friendliest welcome I could have picked, but I was genuinely surprised to see him. I was also surprised to find that I was glad to see him. Laucian and I had never been, as they say, simpatico. His version of vampirism was not so much old school as old fashioned; he still dwelt in the castle he had inherited from the vampire who had turned him, centuries since. He favored virginal young ladies on which to feed, preferably dressed in low cut, billowing night dresses. He believed in the dignity of vampirism. All of which should explain why he also disliked me.
I suppose you could say I was the nouveau riche to his established gentility.
But he was a Master Vampire, and the relief I felt in discovering I was not the only one, took me quite unawares.
“Rumors of my death,” Laucian gave a light wave of his hand, “etc, etc. Word got about and it suited me for people to believe it. Times have been…”
He trailed off, but I nodded in understanding. I knew as well as anyone what times had been. While Laucian had not been a natural subject of the Underworld—seeing vampires as something apart from the other races—he had recognized the job Jolie had done in bringing peace, and he was in favor of it. To Laucian, vampires were not a war-like people, we did not care for power or profit, and fighting for such was crass. It was easy for someone like him, born with a silver spoon in his mouth,