Orion hadn’t exactly been a social butterfly in his past life. That's something he can admit. But he had spent a good part of his time on a university campus, which meant he was well acquainted with what a wild party was like the morning after.
This looked just like that.
A few young men and women were scattered across the gardens, visible through the iron fence as they groaned and complained about the sun and the noise waking them up.
A couch bobbed up and down in the pool, just like a floatie would. Bottles of liquor, from simple wine to stronger spirits, were scattered all over the property. Orion could even see some of them on the roof.
Garlands, both magical and mundane, decorated the entire front lawn.
Overall, he would have been surprised if anyone could tell that this was a hidden vampire base rather than the mansion of a playboy noble who liked to throw wild parties.
Theodore, the thrall who had led them here, looked on awkwardly, unsure of how they would react. Selene seemed mostly amused by the chaos, and Orion felt more exasperated than anything.
Esmeralda, however, was clenching and unclenching her hands, trying to get herself under control. “I told that stupid idiot. I told him not to waste his time.” She muttered under her breath before taking a deep breath.
Orion almost missed it and only noticed the movement because he had been looking at her hands in the first place.
In an instant, she had swiped her now-visible claws through the air, followed by a deep groan.
The iron gates collapsed a moment later, crashing onto the gravel and breaking into several pieces.
“What the hell?!” A man called from within the garden, propping himself up in shock. “Hey! Who the hell do you think you are?! This is private property!”
Orion smiled in amusement as Esmeralda stomped inside, mentally dismissing another stereotype about vampires as false. She certainly didn’t seem to need an invitation to enter a house.
The man soon realized something was wrong and called out, “Oy! We are under attack! Or something!”
A few more people started gathering, groaning as they got up.
“Where is he?” Esmeralda asked calmly, though a veneer of anger beneath it made it clear she wouldn’t tolerate being denied an answer.
When the crowd just looked even more confused, she briefly closed her eyes, almost pleading for strength, and then asked, “Cassius. Where is he?”
That finally appeared to draw a reaction. The young men and women, who had looked like bachelors and bachelorettes living their best lives, stiffened.
As if a switch had been flipped, they all instantly went eerily still, staring at Esmeralda with lifeless eyes.
“Who asks?” They all echoed together, and Orion had to admit that this was starting to feel pretty creepy. He hadn’t been a big fan of horror movies, but this kind of intimidation display eerily reminded him of them.
But Esmeralda’s eyes had long since drifted away from them. She gazed at the upper floor of the manse, where someone looked down at them from an open window.
“Cassius, come down here!” She yelled, sounding less like a sophisticated noble and more like an annoyed teenager.
[Cassius Ottingen - Lv. 110] [Vampiric Sire - C-Rank]
The vampire, and Orion could tell it was a vampire, with its red eyes, bone-white skin, and prominent canines, didn’t seem inclined to obey. “I don’t know who you think you are, to come here alone despite knowing my name, but you will regret this. Attack!”
Immediately, the crowd shifted from eerily still to a roaring frenzy. Orion quickly activated a Light shield, relieved that his recent training paid off, as more than one thrall slammed against it at full force.
The shield held, if only just, and he concentrated on repairing the cracks. “I’m not going to be able to last much longer. We need to take them all out at once.” He called to Selene, who simply smiled back.
“There’s no need for that,” she said, gesturing toward where Esmeralda had been.
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In the chaos of the attack, Orion hadn’t noticed, but she had lost the glamour that concealed her features and was now displaying a more traditional vampiric appearance.
She was also tearing through the thralls with her bare hands, ripping limbs off and smashing anyone who blocked her path into the ground with enough force to audibly crack bones.
Eventually, the garden fell silent. Orion would have wondered how it was possible that no one had called the guards on them if he hadn’t seen firsthand the haze of blood magic surrounding the manor.
Everyone nearby will have to be checked. If even thralls can pass as regular people so easily, then I imagine the Inspectors will have their work cut out for them.
An even bigger problem was that those who had just attacked them likely weren’t just random people the vampire had turned, but influential scions.
That meant this entire vampiric infiltration had gone much further than he had ever imagined. Almost the entire upper class of Silverpeak had been taken over, as seen by the various symbols stitched into their clothes, and it would take years to recover.
A single rogue vampire had done this. If Orion were in charge of the region’s security, he would see it as an act of war.
Unless there is a way to undo the vampiric transformation? I guess the Sanctum might have someone for that. But from what I can see, the magic is tied to their blood. Even if there is a way, it will be long, complicated, and probably very painful.
Only a minute had passed, but the fight was already over. Esmeralda, now in her full glory as a vampire baroness, looked at her cousin with pure disgust.
“You don’t even know what you’ve done, do you?” She called.
Cassius, on the other hand, didn’t seem bothered at all by the defeat of his thralls. He jumped down the balcony with grace, landing on the gravel without even disturbing the stones. “Oh, it is you, Essie! What a surprise! I didn’t know you were coming.”
Orion had to blink at the sheer audacity. It seemed that even now, the vampire still didn’t understand what was happening.
“And look, you even brought some high-quality prey! I’ve been hesitant to go after the Sanctum’s students because they say their inspectors will ferret out any foreign magic trying to slip into the coven, but with the mess outside the walls, we might be able to pass them off as having been killed there.”
For a moment, Orion’s eyes involuntarily drifted back to Esmeralda. It wasn’t so much that he believed she would betray them, as the long discussion they had before agreeing to help each other had been rational and thorough, but he couldn’t help the instinctive tensing up.
He was near two very dangerous predators, both of which were strong enough to break through his shield.
That didn’t mean he’d necessarily lose the fight, as his lasers had gotten quite strong lately, and he had even more tricks up his sleeves, but if they worked together…
Fortunately, that wasn’t the case, because she quickly pulled something from her sleeve and threw it with enough force to embed it into his chest.
Cassius let out a strangled scream, “Why?”
Esmeralda didn’t even blink as she watched her cousin drop down, holding the silver dagger and desperately trying to remove it.
“The Night Lord himself cursed it. There is no coming back from this, Cassius," she murmured. “You made too big of a mess. If it had been one or two people, we could have paid reparations and smoothed it all out. But with this many highly placed people... No, only blood can wash this away if we want to avoid a full-on war with the witches.”
“We can take them,” Cassius groaned, still desperately trying to persuade her, even now. "I know so much. I can tell you their every weakn—”
He never finished the sentence, because Esmeralda decapitated him with another dagger, dispassionately watching as his remains heated up and began turning to ash.
A strangled noise at his side reminded Orion that they hadn’t come alone, and he watched as Theodore threw himself to his knees, bowing at the edge of what had once been his sire’s body.
Esmeralda didn’t spare him a glance, merely staring at the groaning, pitiful forms of the other thralls. None were dead, and Orion was surprised to find that despite the missing limbs, there wasn’t much blood on the ground.
More blood magic. They seem to be capable of accelerating clotting to an extreme degree. Will that cause scarring? I imagine it would make reattachment harder, but then again, it beats dying from blood loss.
“And that’s over with,” Esmeralda sighed. “There might be a few more thralls around town, but none will have the strength and experience of these ones. He was already pushing it, considering the number of people he was turning. I’d be surprised if the remaining ones were more than animals.”
“Like the old woman who attacked us,” Selene hummed, earning a nod.
“Yeah, like that. It’s what happens when a sire doesn’t have enough venom to give, or if they intentionally don’t give out enough, but that’s pretty rare. Cassius was an idiot, arrogant and blind, but he wouldn’t have sent around thralls without control any more than absolutely necessary.”
“The woman who was found dead a while ago,” Orion threw in.
“Likely one of the new thralls lost control, or maybe he decided to have a snack of his own. Who knows? It doesn’t matter now.”
She seemed more despondent now that she had accomplished what she set out to do. Clearly, killing her cousin had some impact on her, despite how coldly she had carried out the act.
Orion looked at the twin silver daggers she had used with curiosity and was surprised by how complex the magic that covered them was.
If he had to compare it to something, he’d say they were as complex as the Sanctum’s wards. Much less powerful, but the level of skill involved was honestly incredible. He could barely see into the first layer, noticing that it provided a cutting enhancement by essentially forming a monomolecular blade as long as mana was being channeled.
He’d personally seen single-atom tungsten tips used in a lab before, but seeing what he considered the pinnacle of Earth science replicated here was still very surprising.
Many more enchantments lay beneath that first one, but his trait was simply not advanced enough to understand them.
Esmeralda grabbed the daggers, ripping them out of the ground, and tucked them back inside her dress. “Alright, I need to get out of here now. Are we still on?” she asked, turning to look at them.
Before Orion could respond, Selene took a step forward, forcing him to deactivate the light shield lest she slam into it. “We are, but we need to hurry. There are a few witches in town today, and they are converging here.”
Esmeralda didn’t waste any more time and quickly reapplied her glamour. They left the manse behind, still littered with the broken bodies of the thralls and Theodore, who seemed to have fallen into a catatonic state.
“Turn here,” Selene murmured, gesturing toward a wider path.
Orion would have protested, since there were much narrower roads available to them, but he knew better than to go against Selene at this point.
It took them a good hour, considering the long detour they took, but no one complained, especially once they saw the guards starting to move away from their post and in the direction they had just come from.
Eventually, they arrived at the southern gate, where Orion could see a flurry of activity.
Esmeralda turned to face them one last time, smiling. “Well, I thank you for your support. This wouldn’t have been possible without you.” She then handed over the two pouches, one big and one small.
Orion grabbed them, but just as he was about to retreat, she quickly slipped something into his pocket, fast enough that he barely flinched.
It’d be a shame to lose contact. I’m sure you’ll have a lot to tell me.” She then winked, and in the brief moment between one blink and the next, she was gone.
The two of them stayed there for a moment, watching the gatehouse get more and more active, before Orion sighed. “Well, now for the annoying part. Let’s get back to Lucina before the town goes on the warpath.”
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