Prologue
An excerptfrom an article titled “Blood Bride Ring Busted: Grim’s Priest Arrested On Charges of Imprisonment And Sale Of Sentient Beings”by Bob Sasini published inTheSan Francisco Light:
Yesterday, at approximately 7PM EST, authorities of the Department of Citizen Protection raided a small crypt in Moorseville, North Carolina and arrested four people on suspicion of running a blood bride trafficking operation. One of those arrested was High Priest Mitchell Hoyer, a vampire who ran the crypt and its attached funeral home for close to ninety years. Four others were arrested as well, including acolytes and employees. A handful of suspects, including a woman known as the matron, are currently being pursued and are expected to be apprehended in the next 24 hours.
According to a credible source close to the investigation, the Neutral Zone’s CPD has been surveilling the Mooresville crypt for years, mostly for workers’ rights violations and money laundering. It was a tip-off from an insider that propelled the investigation into its active phase with the CPD’s vampire task force. The insider claims agentsdiscovered several rooms within the crypt that suggest several people were living there off the record.
“I can’t share any details,” the source told us in a quick phone call last night, “but investigators have been able to track down a few brides already by tracing some of the money. There might have been ten vampires in the crypt at one time, but there were probably a lot more in and out over the years. The rumor is that most of them have been there since they were kids.”
When asked why no one reported any suspicious behavior, the source claimed that the captives were dressed and trained as acolytes of the goddess of death herself. They worked in the funeral home and tended the temple within the crypt. “No one would have known by looking at them,” they said. “They looked just like every other acolyte.”
But they weren’t just devotees to Grim. They were blood brides, and they lived in plain sight, ready to be sold to the highest bidder whenever the time came.
For San Franciscans and other citizens of the Elvish Protectorate who might be unfamiliar with it,blood brideis a gender-inclusive term that refers to a venom neutral vampire mated — or intended to be mated — to another vampire. Normally, two vampires could never feed on one another or reproduce, since their venom and blood is fatal when ingested by one of their own kind.
Due to a rare genetic quirk, a bride can act as an anchor — a vampire’s mate — in exactly the same way another being can. They have no trouble producing vampiric offspring, which has made them a target of vampiric bloodline purists for centuries.
The blood bride trade has been in business for a very long time, and Grim’s acolytes, known for their commitment to the dead and worship of the goddess through celibacy, have historically denounced it and supported it in equal measures.Vampiric culture has also changed its level of tolerance toward the practice many times.
Today, it’s mostly seen as the domain of zealots, criminals looking to legitimize their bloodline, and the most vulnerable — those who are forced to give their children up to be brides, either for money or simply through the inability to protect them, and those who volunteer themselves for similar reasons.
The trade has been outlawed in most countries for at least two-hundred years, but there are enormous amounts of money to be made from wealthy vampires seeking to add prestige to their bloodlines. The EVP has strict laws against the practice. However, due to the territory’s incredibly low vampire population, it’s a rare case that makes it to court. Most blood bride trafficking happens in the Neutral Zone, where the largest number of vampires in the world resides.
The penalties for trafficking blood brides are steep, which is probably why, when High Priest Hoyer got wind of the upcoming raid, he allegedly acted swiftly to sell off the brides in the crypt’s possession. “There were at least six just a couple weeks ago,” the source said, his frustration evident. “But now they’re all gone. I really hope the investigators can track them down. Or else the gods only know where they’ll end up.”
Chapter One
October 2048 — Somewhere in the Orclind
It wasa bad idea to take the job. Atticus felt it in his bones the moment he stepped out of the car and into the deserted parking lot.
Mr. Junger said it was a nothing job for someone like him. He agreed. He’d been trained and served under the command of his adopted father, Harlan Bounds, since he was a scrawny preteen picking pockets for synth money. He’d been forged into a weapon, a hunter, and an assassin whenever necessary. This kind of job was so far below his pay grade, it was basically charity.
“It’s just a transport gig,”Junger had assured him. “Nothing illegal, but something precious. I need a good, honorable man to bring it to me. Someone who won’t stab me in the back the first chance he gets.”
Atticus would never go so far as to say he was good or honorable, but he was raised to be a man of his word, and he didn’t fuck around on clients. That was the quickest way to get a bolt through the brain, and he liked his brain how it was. Mostly.
He wouldn’t have said he trusted Junger, who was little more than a friend of an acquaintance, but he also wouldn’t have taken the job if he thought there was anything unusual about it. Hubert Junger was a businessman who owned a small chain of synth manufacturing plants in the Sacramento area. He was a vampire, just as Atticus was, and kept his nose clean with the law. Sure, he was a bit of a blow-hard, and he’d definitely fallen into that vampiric trap of obsession over his legacy, but he had money and a job that would get Atticus away from home for a while. That was exactly what he was after.
There was nothing wrong with home. He liked it a lot, actually, but he’d been restless lately. Short-tempered and anti-social. So much so that Harlan took him aside and asked him if he needed a break from working security detail on the estate.
The memory burned. Atticus imagined shame felt a bit like acid reflux, though he’d never actually experienced it.
He didn’t need a break from work. He loved keeping his people safe. But that didn’t mean he was satisfied with his life. Not completely. He didn’t want to keep coming home to an empty house every morning. He was tired of staring at his ceiling, wondering if he should be more grateful for the gifts he’d been given and why he felt like such an outsider, a voyeur looking in on other people’s happiness.
His sister was safe, even if she’d run to live as far from them as she could get. Harlan was blissed out every damn minute of the night thanks to his anchor, Zia. Atticus himself had a full belly and a roof over his head. What was there to long for?
Something of his own. His own reason to come home every morning. His own life to be proud of. His own family, maybe, or something else that could make him feel like he wasn’t just coasting through life, waiting for the next shoe to drop.
So no, he didn’t need avacation,but he didn’t want Harlan to feel like he needed to apologize for his growing family andshifting priorities, so he agreed to some time off. A quick, safe job would get his head on straight.
There was no outward sign that this job wouldn’t fit the bill. There was no sign of anything at all. The gas station was brightly lit but deserted. The blacktop was cracked and stained with puddles of oil. Old paper signs nearly covered the windows of the building.
There were no other cars.
A cold crawling feeling started up the back of his neck as he surveyed the darkness around the station. The glow barely made a dent in the yawning blackness of the desert stretching all around them. He stood at the very edge of an island of light. The closest town was a forty-five minute drive back the way he came, and the nearest city was hours and hours away.
Atticus adjusted the strap of his backpack over his shoulders, then checked the gun holstered at his side. And the one at his right ankle. And then the knife strapped to his thigh.
