CHAPTER ONE - THE THIEF

Tech billionaire Jason Meeks’ mega mansion perched on top of the cliff. It looked as if it was about to jump into the water of the Pacific Ocean over one-hundred and fifty feet below. Made of concrete and glass it was more like an oversized sculpture than a home.  But with its multi-level balconies spanning several thousand square feet that jutted into space over the crashing waves, it was made for parties. Though it was an odd time for a party. The Sun was still up, bathing everything in golden light. 

Nicholas “Nick” Avery cast his gaze over the hundreds of party-goers as he leaned negligently against a balcony railing. There was a small smile on his lips. Women in plunging neckline dresses let out tinkling laughter as they sipped chilled champagne. Men in suits, but without ties chuckled low and throatily over inside jokes while swallowing fiery whisky. Famous actors rubbed shoulders with venture capitalists. Influencers spoke about their newest ideas with bored or too eager agents.  Rock stars strummed a few chords in corners. Waiters in crisp white, button down shirts and black pants or skirts bobbed through the crowd like corks on a stormy sea with platters of chilled crab, scallops wrapped in bacon, and other bite-sized treats. 

But “this” party was not “the” party. 

No. 

“The Party” was below and even the wealthy, beautiful and gifted here were not welcome.

But he was.

He was the guest of honor.

Though neither Jason Meeks nor the other tech overlords knew he was coming.

Say my name and I shall appear, Nick thought with a slight narrowing of his eyes.

“Are you enjoying yourself, Nick?” Harriet “Harry” Myers asked in his ear through the earpiece she had designed to be nearly undetectable unless someone fished in there with a Q-tip.

“Always,” he smiled. 

“Describe it to me. What you see.”

“You see it, too.”

“Cameras can’t capture it quite like you can. Indulge me.”

“All right. The weather is fine.” The day was pleasantly cool, but warm enough that the massive doors being opened to the outside was still comfortable. “The company,” here, his eyes scanned the party goers. He could easily classify them into buckets of wealth from the ruddy man wearing the $31 million dollar Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime watch negligently on his left wrist to the sylph-like woman dripping with over 100-carats of diamonds, most of which hung down her bare back on a long platinum chain that she couldn’t even see, “is promising.  And the drinks,” he drained a super chilled shot of vodka in a glass made of ice, “are refreshing.”

“You almost make me want to try field work sometimes,” Harry deadpanned.

“No, I don’t think so. You hate people,” he reminded her.

“I do. People are awful,” she quipped.

He imagined her in her nest within the Eyrie, the abandoned Beaux Arts style building he’d purchased over a decade ago in Frostholm’s slums. It still appeared abandoned, one the lower floors at least, but the top three? Those were his and were quite a bit different than the empty, dusty, garbage-strewn floors below. Harry’s legs would be tucked underneath her as she spun from one monitor to the other in her gaming chair in her tech nest. It was easy to forget that walking was difficult for her, because she rarely left that chair, content to interact with the world through screens. 

Sometimes. She sounded almost yearning there.

“So the tech bros are meeting one floor down from where you currently are,” Harry said.

He heard the faint click of keys as she observed him through Meeks’ own security cameras. That footage of this night would mysteriously be corrupted after he left the party. There would be no record of him or his people here.

“Hmmm,” he said, already knowing this, but Harry was a stickler about repeating the plan. Discuss. Analyze. Determine. Repeat. That was how they did things. It left little to chance. 

“You know, you could just pickpocket that Graff Diamonds Hallucination watch the woman in the corner is wearing. It’s worth $55 million. And we could call it a day,” Harry pointed out.

The woman had a swirl of dark hair pinned to the top of her head. She lifted her right hand where the watch resided. Crusted with pastel-colored diamonds, the watch glittered like frost as she sipped her martini.  Her head turned, revealing a pale face, red lips and arched eyebrows. She studied him with no expression whatsoever on her face. He tossed the ice glass that had held his vodka over the side of the balcony railing. She smiled and turned back to the gaggle of men who surrounded her.

“Not enough of a challenge,” he shrugged.

Harry let out an exaggerated sigh. “The ice on that thing is worth millions and there’s even more around the room that you–”

“Jason and his compatriots are offering far more,” he reminded her.

Far, far more. Enough that we would never have to take another job.

“Yes, and that’s what worries me. Because whatever they’ll want you to do will be commensurate in danger,” she pointed out.

“Commensurate?” He raised an eyebrow. He loved when she extended her vocabulary, but he teased her about it, too. It was a thing between them.

“What?  Don’t know what it means?” she asked, and he imagined her squirming a little in her seat.

“Fancy word.”

“Fancy party,” she retorted. “Anyways, pickpocketing everyone here would be easy while whatever Jason Meeks wants you to do is bound to be hard. Maybe impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible,” he murmured, hardly aware that the common phrase left his lips. It was a favorite of his, because it turned the world and all its problems into a puzzle that could be solved. “These people don’t see money the same way we do.  Maybe it will be a simple case of corporate espionage.”

“My father is rich and he’s the biggest skinflint you’ll ever see. So were all of his wealthy friends. They never wanted to pay people for anything,” she reminded him. “Not the little people anyways.  So if they’re really offering the sum of money you claim then…”

“Then?”

“It must be… bad,” she whispered.

Bad? He lifted an eyebrow. That was not a descriptor she normally used.

“No one says we have to take it. If the job is bad, as you say, I’ll turn it down.” Nick pushed off of the balcony railing and headed inside the mansion. It was time to join the real party.

“You never turn stuff down,” Harry almost sounded distressed.

“Not true. I do it all the time. Don’t you remember just last week when that bastard Rennert asked me to steal his ex’s–”

“Not stuff like this,” she protested.

He picked up a silver tray with flutes filled with champagne and an ice-slick bottle of Krug. His motions were fluid, economical and without hesitation. Hence, they were unnoticed.  This was the key to being invisible. Acting as if whatever one was doing was natural. And Nick was very good at disappearing into a crowd.

“Stuff like what?” he asked.

“Challenges.” 

“We do this job and we’re–”

“Done? You’ll never be done, Nick,” she sighed. “I don’t know what you’re chasing–what you’re looking for–but you’ll never find it. But something… something bad may find you.”

Bad? That word again. What is up with her?

He frowned slightly. Harry could be serious, but not like this. She truly sounded worried. His recent jobs had been risky–stealing the already stolen painting The Concert by artist Johannes Vermeer from the Russian oligarch and filching Lady Veronica Salt’s blue diamond the Deep Ocean from her supposedly impenetrable vault–but not so out of his usual ballpark that she should be concerned. Or maybe her concern didn’t stem from what he was doing, but because her view of the world had changed. 

Vampires were real. 

He could almost hear the Vampire Prince Julian Harrow say that famous line. How many times had he and the crew watched Julian Harrow and Christian Thorn’s Youtube series about the immortal, blood drinking beings? Too many. Perhaps Harry feared he would steal from a Vampire. He hadn’t so far. And he could always identify them. 

He frowned again. There were no Vampires here, because it was daylight.  They’d be tucked away in their beds or coffins or the Ever Dark, that pocket universe where no sun ever shone.  But, even if it had been night, he would have noticed the Vampires' absence. No silver eyes. No slithery graceful forms. No predatory smiles. He knew that Mirryr Vampires could make themselves look like anyone, even supposedly inanimate objects, but no matter how hard Vampires tried to blend in, they didn’t quite move right. Or rather, they didn’t move like humans. Harry had said that he moved like them. And he supposed that was true in a way. He sought not to be seen and was always hunting. 

Why have a party like this during the day? It isn’t a cookout. This thing shouldn’t have started until the Sun was well down and yet…  Isn’t Jason Meeks wining and dining Vampires? Nick wondered.  He’s partnered with a bunch of them. There was that press conference last month where he’d agreed to work on creating a network in the Ever Dark. So why is this party not taking place after midnight so Vampires could be sipping on a few famous necks?

He caught sight of the golden curls and wide blue eyes of his newest hire–Tristan Shire–and remembered there were times when it was good to be seen as well. Tristan was doe-like, sweet and all innocence. With that bashful dip of his head and flutter of long lashes as he spoke to some of the older venture capitalists, he appeared completely naive. A fruit ripe for the plucking.

But only if that fruit was poisoned.  He must be marking them for later jobs. Only reason he’d let them get that close.

Brought up on the streets practically since he was born, Tristan had used his body and his mind to provide for himself and a group of other children in the same situation. He likely would have still been with them, ignoring all of Nick’s offers of help except for the fire. 

Tristan’s crystal blue gaze flickered to him. Nick made a small gesture with his champagne bottle for the young man to move to the required location. Nick kept talking to the men, but his head inclined briefly.  He understood.

Nick’s dress shoes made no sound across the sleek marble floor, though none would have noticed in this racket, but moving silently was his stock in trade. None would remember him passing by them in his brilliant, three-piece crimson suit with the black tie. Well, they might remember the suit, but his face? No. Not unless he wanted them to.

And tonight, he didn’t want them to. 

Amaya Umeda brushed up against him.  Dressed in a white shirt and slitted black skirt, the same as all the servers at the Meeks’ party, everyone assumed she was working. “Would you like a canape, sir?” That was likely what people thought she was asking, but instead, she said, “Ready?”

“Yes,” he answered.

Tristan was suddenly at the top of the set of stairs that led down to “the” party. Amaya turned to face him. Her severely bobbed black hair swayed like a silk sheet across her cheek, hiding the burn scars that puckered her face from delicate jaw to small ear.  She moved over to Tristan, the silver tray in her hands extended with shrimp toasts on top, as if to offer him some. But somehow, though there was nothing on the floor to cause it, she tripped. The tray left her hands. The shrimp toasts flew through the air and most of them landed with unerring splendor on the front of Tristan’s shirt. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry, sir!” Amaya cried and made a move to use some crumpled napkins in her hand to dab at the oily paste that was sliding down the formerly pristine ice blue shirt.

“For fuck’s sake!” Tristan’s voice rang out with disgust and barely suppressed rage. “What have you done?”

It was a convincing reaction. 

Amaya held up a rather helpless hand with the crumpled napkin. “It was an accident, sir! I tripped! I–”

“You fucking tripped? On what? Your own two feet?” Tristan raged quite effectively.

“I’m not sure. The floor–”

“Not sure? Well, do you know what I am sure about? How much this goddamned shirt cost!” Tristan snarled. 

Amaya once again went to dab at the mess on Tristan’s ruined shirt. “I’m truly sorry–”

He grabbed her wrist and squeezed it brutally. “I’ll make you truly sorry–”

She cried out in pain. Ironically, if Tristan had actually touched her like that, she would have broken his arm and had him on the floor in two seconds flat. But she played the role of helpless victim so very beautifully.

It was then that the guard who had been standing at the base of the staircase, keeping any errant party goers at bay from entering Jason Meeks’ sanctum and the real party, came up the stairs.  He was evidently convinced by the fake fight.

“Hey!” the guard growled at Tristan. “Is there something the matter here?”

“Yeah, this bitch ruined my goddamned shirt,” Tristan snarled. “I demand–”

Tristan and Amaya continued to move during the “fight” so that they were now ten feet from the staircase, more than enough room for Nick to slip past the guard’s back. The guard did not see him head down the wide stairs illuminated by only strips of neon light that led to a lower level of the mansion. 

“He should have had two guards on the door,” Harry remarked as Nick made it to the door. 

“Lucky for us, he didn’t.”

Of course, it was locked by a biometric eye scanner and a twelve-digit code lock, but all of this was based on technology. Technology that Jason Meeks had designed.

“I always feel like I’m doing something good for the world when I break a tech bro’s code,” Harry nearly giggled.  

There was a click and a thunk. The door was open.  She’d done some of her tech magic.  He pushed inside, adjusting the bottle of champagne and silver tray of glasses easily. The moment the door opened he smelled the rich, redolent odor of tobacco followed by the clinking of crystal. He stepped into the thick carpet of the hallway, which would have muffled anyone’s footsteps, but completely swallowed the small sounds his feet made. He reached into the inner pocket of his suit coat. He pulled out the thin, hard mask that appeared plain, plasticky white. He lightly placed it over his face.

“... telling you that they don’t appreciate us!” The hornet’s whine of Jason Meeks’ voice was easy to distinguish coming down the hallway.

“They appreciate our money,” another voice, deeper, older chuckled. 

“They don’t need our money, Richard!” Jason hissed. “You haven’t seen the riches in the Ever Dark!  Diamonds as large as pigeon’s eggs. Rooms overflowing with ancient gold stamped with the likenesses of–of monsters. A forgotten civilization. Even one of those coins would cost a fortune, forget about the melt value. There’s magical weapons and–and then there’s the damned Eyros who can convince anyone to hand over their fortune or stock tips or secrets!  Anything really!”

Nick slowly walked down the hallway towards the room where the four party goers were meeting. They were all men. All between twenty-five and forty-five. Each of them, he knew, had the individual wealth of nations and together? Well, together, they had the same worth as half the world. 

“We’re working on a pair of inner ear sensors that will keep out the Eyros’ mind control powers,” a reedy voice rose up.

“Bullshit,” a fourth voice said, slurring the word somewhat. There was a sloshing sound likely of alcohol being poured into a glass. “It won’t work. It will never work.”

“You don’t know that, Collin! You haven’t seen the plan! We’re testing–”

“Fred, how do you know it works? How are you testing it exactly?” Jason asked wearily.

“Well, we have enlisted some low level Eyros–”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Collin, the drunk man, let out a bray of angry laughter. “You’re believing what those Vampires tell you?”

Fred shrilly exclaimed, “We’ve paid them well and–”

“They’re lying to you,” Collin said and there was a click and hiss of a lighter’s flame. More smoke entered the air. “They’re always fucking lying.  Like they’ve lied to all of us! Told us that we would be rewarded and… yet here we are. Still mortal. Still weak.”

The Vampires only announced themselves six months ago and already these fools are angry they haven’t been turned? Nick lifted an eyebrow underneath his mask.

“No, no, I tell you that I have a way to get around their gifts,” Fred insisted.

“Have you been in a room with Lord Balthazar Ravenscroft since you started this mind control blocking tech of yours, Fred?” Jason pressed.

There was a long silence. 

Collin brayed with laughter again. “You’re such a cuck, Fred! He knows all about it! Read your mind and sent you his own Bloodline to check out your tech!  Leading you by the nose and you’ve no fucking clue.”

Lord Balthazar Ravenscroft was also known as the Immortal Eyros, one of the Vampire types that could read minds and control them. It was said that with one whisper in one person’s ear, Balthazar could sway whole elections, start wars or end them, convince anyone to do anything and then forget all about it. Nick understood why Harry was getting a little twitchy about the world when he really thought about it. 

“That can’t–I–we–no way!” But Fred sounded like he realized he’d been had. There was a heavy thump as Fred likely sat down on a couch.

“Nothing we do,” Jason said, “will ever be enough to get around their gifts. It would have been bad enough if they were like the legends where they could turn into bats or smoke–”

“Weryn Vampires can turn into fucking dragons. Have you heard about that?” Collin snorted.

“One of them returned a dragon from the dead,” Jason said pedantically. “But I don’t think they can shift into one. Yet.”

Nick lifted an eyebrow. That was new. He was tempted to ask Harry if she’d heard anything about dragons. But he focused on listening instead. He had come to the end of the hallway and walked into the circular, domed room. 

Don’t see me, he thought as he stepped into the open. Don’t see me.

It was something he said to himself internally whenever he entered a space where he wanted to remain unseen. It was ridiculous to think that it did anything. More superstitious than anything else, though he wasn’t above believing in a bit of luck. But the truth was with his tray and champagne bottle, the men saw him as a servant, which made him better than invisible. 

Even if they hadn’t ordered anything, they were used to being served and simply not seeing those who moved around them taking care of their wants and needs. It was this blindness that allowed him to remain invisible even as they argued about something they shouldn’t want anyone to hear.

But their voices were crystal clear. The noise of the party up above was non-existent. This floor was completely isolated from the rest. If they were talking about Vampires it made sense to have this party during the day. Disguise it as some bachanal while really they were discussing… what? What were they up to? That, he still didn’t know.

Nick noiselessly set the tray of glasses onto a table pushed against the wall. The four men were seated on two half-moon shaped couches in the center of the room.  Jason Meeks–a lean man who had taken to working out religiously and to data-hacking his body with supplements and various restrictive eating regimes–prowled the center space. Jason’s wealth came from creating the first social network that had trumped them all.  Before the Vampires revealed themselves, he had been focusing on AI technology, but that seemed to have taken a back seat.

The drunk one–Collin Wanderly–was at the end of one couch. Nick recognized him from Forbes. He was behind a lot of military technology. Some say that the Space Force was really his idea as he didn’t think the Air Force would let him create the space soldiers he’d dreamed of since he was a kid.   A cigar hung negligently from Collin’s lips. His eyes were bloodshot. His cheeks were ruddy. He was splashing yet more whisky into his glass. Most of it ended up on the table and running down to the floor. 

I wonder if he knows more than the others about the Vampires’ plans because of his military contracts? Maybe that’s what has driven him to drink. He’s aged since they appeared.

Sitting next to Collin was Fred Carson. Fred was big into alternative energy though his family had made their fortune the old fashioned way through oil and gas. People whispered that his real motive in investing into alternative energy was to kneecap it. Basically, slow-walk whatever came out to the market, buy up competitors and shelve their truly revolutionary products, and keep the family’s black gold empire going. Fred narrowed his eyes and his lips writhed back from his small, corn-like teeth as he watched Collin splash whisky everywhere. 

Opposite Collin and Fred on the other half-moon couch was Richard Sellery. Older than the others by a couple decades, he appeared more amused than concerned by what they were talking about. Richard was from an old banking family that had its tentacles stretched across the world. He regularly attended the conference for the superwealthy and powerful at Davos, Switzerland. There were no puff pieces about him in magazines. No chirpy reporters would ever interview him. He was, by far, more dangerous than the other three in terms of what reach he had in the world. 

Or, at least, that had been the case, before the Vampires revealed themselves. 

Nick wondered if his organization was riddled with Acolytes–humans that served Vampires giving them their blood, their money, their bodies, their everything in the hope that they would be turned eventually–or if he was one himself. Yet Jason didn’t seem to think so if he were speaking to him so openly. He seemed too much like a blunt instrument in Nick’s mind to be used openly by the Vampires. But who knew?

Richard had an unlit cigar in the right corner of his mouth. He moved it to the left and chomped on the end. “It’s not like you to give up, Jason. Did you really call us all here to tell us we’re done?”

Jason stopped his pacing and brought his lean hands up to his face in an almost prayer-like motion. “No, no, I didn’t. I asked you all here, because we’ve got to stop doing the same thing and expecting a different result.”

“Are you sure you want to tell old Fred here anything?” Collin tipped his head towards the reedy man. “He might go hang out with those Eyros Vampires again. Can’t be trusted.”

Fred practically popped up off the couch like a corn kernel in hot oil. “I’m not trustworthy?! Me?! What about you, Collin? Doesn’t take a Vampire to make you talk! Just fill your glass and–”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Please!” Jason brought his hands up like an orchestra conductor gesturing for the players to go softer. “Here’s the deal, if you want to know what I’m going to say, you have to agree not to leave here until it's done.”

“Until what’s done?” Fred demanded.

“He’s not going to tell us, Fred, unless we agree to stay,” Richard reminded the other man.

Fred sliced a hand through the air. “I don’t make decisions without having the data!”

“The data is… me.” Jason gestured to his chest. 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Collin asked with one dark eyebrow lifted.

“You all know me, yes? You know my work. My mind. My ethics,” Jason said.

Collin snorted into his drink. “Ethics? Oh, yeah, connect the world through the web, just tell us all of your little secrets so we can sell them to the highest bidder.”

Jason flashed him a sharp look. “Connectivity doesn’t come without cost.”

“You don’t need to explain that to us, Jason,” Richard said as he crossed one meaty leg over the other. “None of us got where we are being fools.”

“Yes, well,” Jason smoothed his hands over his designer t-shirt, “the point is if I tell you I have a solution to our problem, do you believe me?”

The other three regarded Jason for long silent moments. 

Collin shrugged. “I’m sure you think you do.  Whether you’re right…”

Fred had sat back down on the couch, perching on the edge. “Well, you have a good mind for problems. Jason. No one can deny that.”

“You want us to trust you, is that it?” Richard asked as he picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue.

“Yes,” Jason admitted. 

Collin blinked blearily at him. “Fuck. Why not? I trust you. And what else have we got? It’s not like King Daemon is going to grace us with immortality anytime soon.”

“But he could!” Fred protested. When the others just stared at him, he said, “He should!”

Jason came over and clapped a hand on Fred’s thin shoulder. “Yes, Fred, he should. But he’s decided not to. And so, we need to take matters into our own hands. Now! Do I have your agreement that you will remain here with me until this is over?”

“Whatever this is,” Richard said dryly, but then he, too, shrugged. “I’m game.”

“Fred?” Jason asked.

Fred’s shoulders slumped. “S-sure. Sure. I’m good too. Now tell us what this is all about.”

Jason smiled thinly, “It’s simple. The Vampires won’t give us immortality and their gifts, so our only solution is to take them.”