His shoulder was sore, and his legs felt stiff, but he ignored that as he adjusted his vision to suit the current lighting conditions. Will wasn’t even certain what had alerted him, but as his view improved, he saw grey figures moving around the market square. The vampires were spreading out, and it was evident from their faces that their attention was on the building he had warded the day before.

  Watching them, he noted that some were sniffing at the brisk evening air. No doubt they smelled him, though they still weren’t aware of his location. One of them stood just twenty feet away, still staring at the place they thought he was hiding within. Which one is Mahak? He still didn’t see the wizard, but with different lighting conditions and his relative unfamiliarity with the individual, it was entirely possible he’d overlooked the leader.

  The vampires he could see looked ordinary enough, clad in plain tunics and loose trousers, though they carried a variety of two-handed weapons, mostly swords and axes. Will approved of the weapons, but he’d hoped for armor. Most of them were male and of fairly average size, another disappointment.

  “Human! Come out! Don’t expect me to walk into your traps. Show some trust and meet me in the open!”

  The one that spoke was thirty yards distant, closest to the warded home, and Will was certain from the sound of the voice that it was Mahak. The vampire was exceptionally tall, possibly tall enough to have an inch on Tiny, but where Will’s friend was wide, Mahak was painfully slender. The blood drinker wore a respectable but not ostentatious wool coat that helped compensate for his thin frame, but if the vampire hadn’t called out, Will wasn’t sure he would have identified him.

  It was time to gamble.

  Focusing his attention on Mahak, Will performed a multitude of actions in quick succession. He summoned his falchion and put a silver-sword spell on it within half a second, then teleported directly behind the master vampire. He would have preferred to teleport first, for a better dramatic effect, but he wasn’t sure if his will would be strong enough to use the spell at such close range. Better safe than sorry.

  The creature felt the shift in turyn even though Will kept his arrival completely silent. Mahak was already turning, his face taking on an involuntary expression of surprise as he lifted a hand that was tipped with long claws to defend himself. As Will had expected, the vampire’s speed was nothing to laugh at. Without proper preparation, he wouldn’t have a chance against the fiend’s lightning reactions.

  The other Drak’shar were reacting similarly, turning to him, ready to spring to their master’s defense, but Will’s next spell had already appeared, a force-wall that formed a ring closely around him—and Mahak, with nothing separating the two of them. “I’m right here,” said Will evenly. “I have no need for traps. Unless you intend to test me.”

  Mahak regained control of his reflexes just in time to avoid raking his claws across Will’s face, but one of his subordinates failed the test, crashing nose-first into the force-wall. Schooling his expression, Mahak raised one brow and replied, “Most mortals wouldn’t risk such proximity to one of my kind. Are you brave or foolish?” The vampire’s eyes noted the burning sword, but his visage remained calm.

  He was already in the process of determining the answer to the vampire’s question as his will contested that of the ancient wizard. Will wasn’t trying to cast a new spell; instead, he was trying to take possession of Mahak’s protective spell against sunlight. If he failed both, he and the vampire would know it, and at that point his only option would be to kill the Drak’shar before Mahak returned the favor and stripped him of his iron-body spell.

  Assuming he won, he would then have the somewhat difficult job of getting control of the blood drinkers after killing their leader, but to his surprise, it didn’t come to that. The struggle lasted a brief second, and then Mahak’s will crumbled. The spell protecting the vampire tore free and faded away. Will and his opponent both knew immediately, though none of the turyn-blind regulars outside the force-wall were aware that anything had happened.

  This was Will’s preferred outcome, assuming Mahak was reasonable. Smiling, he kept his voice smooth. “Now that we’ve said our hellos, can I expect your cooperation?”

  Mahak struggled for a second longer, then answered in a voice that suggested he was chewing nails. “Do you expect me to kneel?”

  “They can’t hear us,” said Will reassuringly. “So no need to worry about losing respect. A small bow will suffice. After that we can pretend to be friends, and once this is all over you can go back to whatever you were doing before and tell them I was lucky you were feeling generous. No one has to know you came within a heartbeat of being burned to ash.” Sparks played over his fingertips as he spoke.

  The vampire wizard said nothing for several tense seconds, then bowed slightly at the waist, tipping his head toward the ground as he did. As he straightened up again, he said, “You are not what I expected.”

  “You thought Androv’s end was a fluke.”

  Mahak lifted one brow and pressed his lips together in an expression of irony, lifting one hand expressively as he answered, “Let us say I was skeptical—even the best swordsman can trip and die on the blade of a novice. In light of new information, I must reassess my doubts.”

  Will tried not to let his relief show. Androv’s death hadn’t been luck, but it had depended on a stroke of inspiration that had struck him at the very end. If Androv hadn’t wasted time toying with him, he was certain he never would have survived, much less found victory. Today, he had no idea how it would turn out, though he was certain it wouldn’t be such a lopsided battle anymore. “I’ll drop the force-wall and allow them to hear us again. When I do, call your people together and have them kneel so there’s no mistake in the future.”

  Mahak nodded, and Will released the spell. Half a minute later, the vampires had gathered in front of him, and after their leader’s curt command, they knelt respectfully. None of them were as large as Will had hoped. Singling out one with an unusual stir of turyn around him, Will commanded, “Theravan, join us inside while I discuss my plans with Mahak.”

  The wizard stood and nodded, hiding his surprise. Theravan hadn’t been using any active spells, so he probably hadn’t expected to be identified. Will led them to the ward boundary around the house, then reassured them, “It’s a simple alarm ward. It won’t harm you.”

  Mahak snorted. “A clever use. I was convinced you were within.”

  “The simplest things make the best tricks,” said Will.

  Theravan spoke then, his voice dry and raspy. “Few have such an understanding at your age.”

  “My teacher was a very irritable old man. I had to be creative to get through his training,” Will replied. Once they were inside, he led the two Drak’shar to what must have been the main family room and gestured toward the chairs arranged around the hearth. “Have a seat.” From the limnthal, he summoned a bottle of wine and a glass. “I would offer you something to drink, but I’m not willing to part with anything that would suit your taste.”

  Theravan studied Will’s limnthal with interest during the brief moment it was visible, then produced his own and summoned an unmarked bottle, which he offered to Mahak. Before Will could say anything, he asked, “So it’s true. Arrogan was your teacher.”

  Will nodded, and Mahak chimed in, “You and Theravan have something in common. One might describe you as cousins, of a wizardly sort.”

  “Cousins?” Will was confused. Looking at Theravan, he asked, “Did you know Arrogan?”

  Theravan shook his head, causing the wispy white hair that lay against his temple to drift about. “Only in passing. Aislinn was my teacher a decade before she met him. May I see your limnthal again?”

  Will reactivated it, and the soft-spoken vampire did the same with his own, holding his hand out so they could compare the two. “They’re almost identical,” said Theravan before pointing to the final set of runes. “Yours is only different here, in the place where Arrogan added his own signature. Before that, we have the same wizardly ancestry, up to the point where mine ends.”

  “So Theravan is your uncle, so to speak, in a wizardly sense,” clarified Mahak.

  “Arrogan was my grandfather, many times removed,” said Will.

  Mahak laughed. “Not in the true sense. In Theravan’s time, wizards put some store in the pedigree of their teachers. He and Arrogan were brothers of a sort, since they shared the same teacher. As Arrogan’s ‘son,’ you would be his nephew.”

  Theravan waved his hand dismissively. “It wasn’t anything official, just a custom of the time.”

  Will turned to Mahak. “You said ‘Theravan’s time’—does that mean your time is significantly different?”

  “I’m a thousand years his senior,” said Mahak. “You would not even recognize the world I was raised in.”

  Will did a quick bit of mental math. If Theravan was slightly older than Arrogan, he might be seven hundred and that meant Mahak had been around for the majority of two millennia. Without thinking, he asked the first question that occurred to him. “And Androv?”

  The ancient vampire answered without hesitation. “He was older than Theravan but younger than me, though I’m not sure if he had a full millennium behind him or not. He wasn’t the most sociable, if you understand.”

  “He was a prick,” said Theravan without reservation. “Most of us become somewhat antisocial, but he was exceptional, even for a vampire.”

  To clarify, Will asked, “Exceptional in…?”

  “Being an asshole,” said Theravan. “If you want to measure fangs, Mahak was stronger.” Mahak gave the younger vampire a disapproving glare, but Theravan didn’t seem to care. “Why do you care? He already has your measure, Mahak. There’s no use in trying to hide things. You don’t want to live forever, do you?”

  The confession surprised Will, but he still struggled with part of it. “Fangs?”

  Mahak sighed. “A more human expression would be dicks. If we were measuring dicks, I was stronger than Androv.”

  Still tense, Will couldn’t help but chuckle. For vastly older wizards, the two of them were almost likable. Arrogan has ruined me, Will realized. The old man was so irritable that these fiends seem more genial than he was. He wished he could speak to the ring just to relay that tidbit. As so often happened, he regretted the thought, for it made him feel even more alone. He was unlikely to ever see the ring again. Pushing his dark thoughts aside, he observed, “Your candor is remarkable.”

  The senior vampire nodded. “Much as I hate to admit it, Theravan is right. Neither of us cares much about survival. This existence is a burden.”

  Will frowned. “Not to spoil the mood, but I’m fairly certain you were planning to kill me when you arrived. Help me reconcile the disparity here.”

  Theravan started laughing, which earned him another dark look from Mahak. The senior vampire stared him into silence, then responded, “I intended to establish control. I wouldn’t have killed you unless you seemed too weak to be helpful. In truth, I thought our master had tricked you into presenting yourself for easy recruitment.”

  “And now?” asked Will.

  “Now I am not so sure. As badly as we need new wizards, it would be a shame to spoil you if you’re truly on our side.”

  “Spoil?”

  Theravan interrupted to clarify, “Turning you would destroy your talents.”

  Will spoke up. “It’s a mistake to think I’m on your side. Let me be clear on that.”

  Mahak studied him intently for several seconds. “What do you think of when you think of ‘our side?’”

  That set Will back in his thoughts, but after a brief pause, he gave the simplest answer he could think of. “Death, or rather undeath. Parasitism. You survive in the darkness by virtue of stealing blood from humankind. Am I wrong?”

  Theravan’s face darkened at Will’s response, but Mahak merely nodded with a sense of resignation. “That’s the heart of it, I suppose. The ugly reality we cannot deny, but your answer ignores our purpose.”

  Will broke in before Mahak could begin his self-righteous rant. “You say ‘our’ purpose, but are you referring to all vampires, or merely yourself?”

  Mahak stopped, then answered, “Fair point. I meant Theravan and myself, and once upon a time, Androv too perhaps, before he lost himself to madness. Now, may I finish?”

  Will gestured for him to continue.

  “The reason we are here, the reason we are still here, after all this time, is because of the dragon and its nest. That alone was why we agreed to be transformed into the abominations we now persist as. Why do you think this world hasn’t been overrun with vampires? It isn’t because we can’t increase our numbers—we don’t want to make more of us,” said Mahak.

  “What happened in Cerria would seem to contradict that statement.”

  “That was Androv,” hissed Theravan from one side.

  Mahak nodded. “Our master chose Androv for a reason, and he might just have foreseen that Androv would lose control or worse, might actively seek to spread our disease.”

  “Again, you argue against your so-called noble-cause,” stated Will.

  “Don’t be so naïve,” returned Mahak. “You already know our master wanted an easy solution for Androv. He hoped Lognion—or you, the dragon’s pawn—would remove the madman from the game, but even if you didn’t, he had a larger purpose for what happened in Cerria.”

  Theravan interrupted, raising one hand. “I’d like the record to show that I was against the entire thing. The end does not always justify the means.”

  Mahak gave the younger vampire a dark glare, then continued, “You know the reason our master chose to survive beyond his own normal span, why he created us, but have you considered what he has been doing for these many centuries?”

  Will leaned back in his chair. “From what he told me, it’s mostly been a failure, aside from some of the small tidbits of information he’s gleaned from the elves and other sources.”

  “Do you really think he would spend an eternity without finding some way to make use of it? He’s been looking for the nest,” explained Mahak.

  Impatient, Will nodded. “Which he hasn’t yet found. Instead, he’s spent uncounted centuries fighting wars and treating the nations of Hercynia as playing pieces on a gameboard.” Other than finding a method for killing dragons, it was the greatest problem hanging over his head, although Grim Talek had assured him that an answer would soon be revealed—hopefully.

  “We’re close,” said Theravan softly. “So, so close.”

  Mahak shushed his subordinate. “He’s been winning, which is remarkable enough, considering his opponent. Our master is the greatest political genius in history, and over the long centuries he’s driven the dragon out of every nation, one by one—except Terabinia. Do you understand?”

  Will frowned. “Are you implying what I think?”

  Mahak nodded.

  “But Terabinia is still a large nation…”

  “Consider how large our world is! Finding the nest was an impossible task without narrowing the search down somehow. In the beginning, after the dragon’s arrival and initial destruction, Lognion controlled everything through proxies and puppets. The first tribes, the resurgence of small kingdoms, the early empires—they all belonged to the dragon. Our master has had to work his way through all of them, overthrowing good and bad rulers alike, forcing the dragon to surrender control. Darrow was only the latest and probably the final example of this.”

  Will interrupted, “By Darrow, you mean…?”

  The ancient wizard smiled, showing disconcerting fangs. “The Shimerans were one of Grim Talek’s more recent conquests, and he used them to create the threat that led to the modern political situation. The Terabinian War for Independence, the Prophet, all of it was orchestrated by our master as a response to the demon threat. Sorcery, the civil war that split Darrow, your teacher’s betrayal to rid the world of the heart-stone enchantment—all these things were byproducts of our master’s war with the dragon.

  “Across the centuries and continents, through the rise and fall of empires, our master has driven the dragon from every nation, until all that remained was Terabinia, the half of Darrow that Lognion chose to retain when it was clear he couldn’t maintain control of both,” concluded Mahak.

  “Because the nest is there,” muttered Will, his mind reeling at the implications.

  Theravan spoke up. “The game of nations was never a game, not for our master. It was the only method he could use to narrow down the location of the nest.”

  Considering all the wars, suffering, and ensuing chaos, Will could barely comprehend what he had heard. “Surely there was another way?”

  Mahak shook his head. “The elves abandoned Hercynia when the dragon came. In fact, they traded with the fae for their new world, in exchange for allowing the fae to access this plane, and when demonkind threatened their new home, they traded knowledge of this world to them to guarantee safety for their new dimension.”

  Will’s mouth fell slightly agape. He had always understood why the goddamn cat hated demons, and even the fae seemed understandable, but the elves had seemed blameless.

  “In their defense, it seemed logical, since they knew this world was already doomed,” added Theravan.

  “If you hadn’t stopped Androv, we might already have the final puzzle piece in our hands,” said the older vampire.

  “A pyrrhic victory,” commented Theravan. “Allowing Androv to run amok in Cerria never sat well with me. Even to find the nest, destroying an entire city was just too much.”

  “That’s monstrous,” declared Will.

  Mahak nodded. “Enough time and we all become villains. Our master is the finest example, but I am no different. Even gentle Theravan, barely past the normal span of a wizard, is half numb to the wellbeing of mortals and the moral concerns of good and evil.” Looking up from his hands, Mahak’s eyes bored into Will. “But some things are necessary, and only a greater monster can defeat a dragon. We chose to join Grim Talek for that purpose.”