ramps and in the entranceways. Guards, aye, but thralls for all that; but Wratha was more than any mere thrall now, for she went under her own direction.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
She climbed Cragspire at its rear, to an unguarded lower level, then came up onto a walkway of cartilage grafted to the stack's exterior. The walkway spiralled steeply for the heights but there was no one there to stop or challenge Wratha. Higher, the spire was hollow in many of its parts, so that she entered within and proceeded all the faster, from hall to hall, stairway to stairway.
She knew the rooms where Karl's lieutenants kept their Szgany odalisques, and the closets where the women kept their clothes. And dressed in just such a sheath, which revealed far more than it concealed, finally she made her way to the Lord of Cragspire's quarters. And all the spire asleep now except for those with duties, whom Wratha had known to avoid.
But in all three of the approaches to the penultimate levels under the seared ramparts of the spire itself, there she found small warriors on guard, protecting their master's privacy. And in the third such entrance-way, because her patience was used up, she approached the tethered monster openly, with her head held high. The creature blinked its many eyes at her and shuffled, but merely grunted and made no move to stop her. For the beast recognized Wratha: that she had used to come and go with the spire's master. And HE had instructed that this one should be allowed to pass, with no interference. It was an order which had never been rescinded. Also, the master's scent was on Wratha, even in her blood.
And she passed the armoured bulk of it by, where its pincers and stabbers worked unceasingly at thin air, and its cavern of a mouth chomped however vacuously.
And so Wratha came to Karl in his rooms, and knew where to find him asleep. Except he wasn't asleep, for the vampire in him had warned of someone's approach. And entering his bedroom, she found Karl waiting for her. Then ...
... His astonishment was great! He drew her to him, lifted her up, gazed upon her from every angle. There was no word in his mouth, which gaped. And Wratha ... she had been beautiful before, even as a lowly thrall (though in truth, she'd never been lowly). But now ... everything about her was a man's fondest, darkest dream. Just looking at her, Karl knew she could make even the most erotic dream reality. And he saw with every glance what he had made: such a vampire!
Aye, and he knew what he had missed all this time . ..
She took off her dress for him and sat on his great knee, and as he fondled her, he was now more thrall than she - far more. Then, when he would have her, she made him wait and told him everything, sparing no detail.
Hearing her out, Karl's rage flared to match his inflamed passions. For just as Wratha had guessed it, so now the Lord of Cragspire likewise knew the author of this thing. His eyes bulged and his snout flattened back and grew ridged and convoluted, like that of a great bat, while the teeth sprouted in his jaws like scarlet scythes! Until he came roaring to his feet with a name on his bloodied lips:
'Radu!'
'But my way,' she insisted, clinging to his arm. 'Do it my way.'
'He dies tonight, now - the death he planned for you - changed to a vampire and buried forever. Not in a cave, no, but in a grave fifty feet deep, whose construction I shall supervise personally. Especially its filling!'
'Ah, no,' she advised, 'for as we've seen, even the best-buried persons sometimes return. And Radu is a traitor you must be rid of always. Do it my way.' And she told him her way. Karl listened, and smiled in his fashion; which in the circumstances was hardly a smile at all. Then: He called for Radu, who got dressed and attended his Lord at once, wondering what it could be, at this hour of sunup. And in Karl's quarters Wratha was hidden away, watching and listening to everything.
'Lord?' Radu stood before Karl's great bone chair.
Karl's crag of a body hunched there, his scarlet gaze accentuated by the uneven flaring of gas jets in the walls. Such was his doomful silence, that for a moment Wratha feared he'd lost the