[Baroness Belleza, The Head of the Melchiott Vampire Family!]

  Baroness Belleza Melchiott dispersed into fog, slipping through the cracks in the doors to materialize in their given large sitting room. Her family followed, taking shape in their chairs.

  Her eldest son spoke in their silent communication method that reached all of them equally through the mist, examining the bottles of blood that had been provided for them in the stone cabinet beside the hearth.

  “Do you believe the others are aware that our dear Countess is, in actuality, an alien to our planet, worming her way into our courts?”

  Her husband responded, rubbing his short beard and studying the portrait of the previous lord over this nation; his painting had yet to be removed in this room, it seemed. “Perhaps the more pressing question is why someone close to Elizabeth became a turncoat, providing us with such information. You must think that Baroness Audrey received the same letter with corresponding evidence, Dear?”

  Belleza hummed, accepting a bottle her son brought her and peering into its pearly inner liquid; it wasn’t blood but a rare flower that they had given Baron Morgan before Elizabeth somehow murdered him. It was not an accident.

  “Patience… I look forward to asking our host that very question soon enough. It is easy to tell that Elizabeth has not let a single drop of blood touch her skin since draining Baron Morgan’s blood and taking his land for her own. She is weak.”

  “I see,” her beloved daughter, Kastilla, giggled from her chair, popping a cork and filling a glass her brother had brought her. “She cannot dilute Baron Morgan’s blood in her system, or the castle and land will reject her. She has forced this Bloody Masquerade in hopes of sinking her fangs into the neck of the next Head of House to strengthen her connection to the land… Baroness Audrey Morgan is her target.”

  “Bold,” her husband laughed, vision rising to the mirror that expanded over the fireplace, showing the Main Ballroom Hall as the throng of weaklings dispersed or prepared for the hunt. “I will say that there are a few interesting aliens that our dear Countess has brought from her world…”

  “Oh?” her son inquired, smoothly sitting in his chair to smell the sweet nectar of the pearly liquid he’d poured for himself. “The House of Blood is so…unrefined to have let such rare items waste away on a shelf. Who have you marked as the most formidable candidates, Revered Mother?”

  Belleza leaned her head against her sunken cheek, a small smirk lifting the corner of her thin lips. “Oh, there are a few that have caught my eye in this game, which could make valuable additions to our court… Scarlet is certainly hiding something deep within her soul, but perhaps the most intriguing…is Aurora. Baltish, invite the young temptress to our room.”

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  Her son sighed. “I will say, Revered Mother, I am enchanted by her ‘upper half,’ but the lower part is…unsightly.”

  “You needn’t suckle each other’s necks, Brother,” Kastilla scoffed, rolling her eyes and sweeping her black braid over her shoulder; the girl was the next in line to be matriarch and Belleza’s favorite child. “Just wait for her to return to the room. After that radical and quite…unusual display, who do you think she went to meet through that portal—Elizabeth?”

  “No,” Belleza whispered, feeling a tad queasy about looking further into that particular area of the castle where her mists shied away from. “Whoever it is, she does not appear to be interested in causing us trouble if we do not engage her.”

  Baltish rose to his feet with a heavy sigh. “A neutral party then… Boring. Still, the fact she reached out to Aurora is certainly something to take note of.”

  Belleza’s face lit with a small smile as her son departed for the lower level. A few others had caught her eye, but she would be patient. Audrey thought she would be the one to kill Elizabeth, but she couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, her overly beautiful head would be on a pike when this was over.

  “Kastilla… Knock on the Morgans’ door and mingle a little with that lovely red-headed human that Harper has her fangs on. Stir up a little trouble.”

  Her daughter’s thin frame shook with silent laughter. “You are devious, Mother. I don’t need to be the prettiest girl in the room to leave an impression.”

  “You most certainly do not,” she fawned, “yet you are lovely nonetheless.”

  Mist surrounded them as she heard a knock at her door, and her husband rose to his feet to answer it. Of course, the veil told them who it was, and when it opened, a rat-like woman in a dark dress entered.

  “Well, if it isn’t Black,” Belleza soundlessly said to her husband as the small woman slunk in to sit in the seat her daughter had occupied. “The rodent scurrying about, gathering information throughout the city and castle as her puppy lapdog stumbles about, causing trouble.”

  Black silently took out a notebook from under her arm, opened it, ripped out a page, and slid it across the table to her husband. He took it and handed it to her.

  Scanning the content, Belleza’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and she spoke for the first time to another party besides her family since arriving at the castle. “Is this supposed to be a threat I am to take seriously?”

  Black’s cold, calculating eyes didn’t waver, her hairless tail remaining motionless beside her legs. “Not a threat. A certainty. If you confront Elizabeth, you and your entire family will die. I can prevent that from happening if you follow those instructions. If you do not…Scarlet will kill you, and you will be the first link broken that will usher in the end of everything. Do not confront Scarlet, or you will meet Scarlet.”

  With that cryptic warning, the rat woman left her to stew on her words, and a pulse of excitement ebbed up within Belleza’s dead heart for the first time in centuries. Crumpling up the paper, she tossed it into the fire.

  “What if I want to meet Scarlet? Thank you for the warning. Consider me intrigued. Hehehe.”

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