Shadow Phantoms - H.P. Mallory Page 0,50

and it was only down to a stroke of luck that I’d found him at all—if you could call an assassination attempt a ‘stroke of luck’. Pagan would not make the same mistake twice. For one thing, he no longer had the men to lose.

That realization was what had prompted my new plan.

Though he had suffered bad losses, Pagan would probably not struggle long. He drew people to him by force of character in a way that was as impressive as it was annoying. It was not as though he could give public speeches, but the rebels had a little underworld network of their own, and Pagan’s words circulated through it, helping him to recruit new disciples to his cause.

That would be my way to destroy him.

I had tried the blunt approach, crushing him from the outside, and it hadn’t worked. Now I would be subtle and I would tackle him from within. I would infiltrate the Order of the Templar.

It was a good plan, but it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. He might be brash, but Pagan was also very cautious, and Tintagel would only make him more so. The man was a powerful ‘warlock’ and surrounded himself with other witches and warlocks who were also adepts at their craft. Sneaking a spy into their group would be next to impossible if they were on the look-out for one. Any magic user, particularly one of my people, would be instantly suspect, they would be subject to scrutiny, and they would likely be found out.

But someone from one of the other factions would not be so suspicious. It was common knowledge that there was no love lost between any of the factions and particularly between the King’s Alliance and everyone else. Pagan would have no reason to suspect a vampire, lycanthrope or Fae, in fact he would have every reason to think they hated me as much as he did.

That was why I had so wanted Sinjin to be at the meeting today. He and I shared no common goal, but we were both alert to any threat to our respective groups; he for the sake of his people, me for the sake of myself. Also, while the other factions were secretly worried about me becoming too powerful, Sinjin was arrogant enough not to care. He felt he was more than a match for me. If I had been able to convince him, or his representative, that Pagan posed a threat to the vampires, I might have been able to get a vampire agent into Pagan’s group, reporting back to me. Such had been my plan, but now that I had lost my temper and stormed out, it seemed unlikely I would be able to carry it out.

Still, it was not the only way.

While the vast majority of vampires now made their home on the Coalition ships, there were a few stragglers who didn’t like the company of others. They tended to be those vampires who objected to any sort of organization, who thought of themselves as loners and wanted to kick back against the man, the system and the establishment. In other words; morons.

Such people are easy to manipulate. If you use words like ‘conspiracy’ and refer to things ‘they don’t want you to know’ then you can get people like that to do almost anything you want. That type of person goes through life, worried about what ‘they’ aren’t telling you, without ever knowing who the hell ‘they’ even are.

Then there were the lycanthropes—the werewolves and other shifters.

They had been amongst the hardest hit by the fall of the Underworld, possibly because they were pack animals who had suddenly lost their pack. Smaller packs had formed, of course, and there had been various attempts to unite them all together under one rule again, but so far nothing had stuck. There were always lone wolves out there looking for someone to bite. Wolves did not make such good infiltrators as vampires—vampires are born spies; subtle and ruthless, while werewolves struggle with secrets and prefer to just kick the door in.

But a smart werewolf might do as well, though a ‘smart werewolf’ was quite the oxymoron.

Getting into my car and giving a curt instruction to my driver, I contented myself with these thoughts as I headed home. I would find my way into the Order of the Templar, and then, Pagan would be mine.

Still, although my mind was mostly taken up with Pagan and with my next move against