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Everyone who saw him would believe he was under my spell, a strange other with way too much influence over their throne.

After that he did something to further my suspicions, nodding to Sloan at the last, letting her make the stirring battle speech and command the charge.

He’s really going to do it, I thought in wonder. He’s going to hand the throne to Sloan. I could scarcely believe it—which was foolish.

He’d said as much, and I’d believed him from the start. He wasn’t the liar. That was me.

I was distracted from my musings by Henri. He was up to bat.

He was surrounded by a druid shield, or rather a shield of druids. His skin had gone white, his eyes black, dark veins popping up all along his skin, a black mist surrounding him. Oh yeah and he was floating about two feet off the ground.

He looked less like a hot Jesus now and more like a terrifying Satan.

He began to chant in Latin and some horrifying noises started to seep from the building and to our ears, screeches of pain, mournful cries of sorrow. And fighting, but not with weapons. It was the sound of flesh on flesh combat as the hoard of dead bodies reanimated and became, for the moment, Henri’s pets.

It went on for some time and windows began to break, doors opening as desperate newborn vamps beat the hoard back, so far somewhat ineffectively, since nothing was making it out.

Corbin was vamped out, dripping fangs protruding, face scary. He looked at Dom for his cue.

Finally Dom called it. “Wave two, charge!”

And we were off, running straight into hell.

And it was that. It stank of death in there, old and new, rotting and rich. That alone was enough to give pause, and then there was the noise, overwhelming, blood-curdling screeching.

Fucking vampires.

Henri was more than holding up his end of the bargain, and a good chunk of the wave two dodged past the newborn nasties pretty easily.

I had my axe out, eyes trained on Corbin. He knew where the masters were. He was the man to follow.

I vaguely noted Caleb, Christian, and Sven keeping pace with me, though I’d expected that so it barely registered.

Dom was close too, I felt him like a hot breath on my neck, possibly close to literally.

We were past the first floor of carnage and on a stairwell without even wetting our weapons. Things were going much smoother than we were used to.

I no more had the thought when things went weird in a hurry.

The masters weren’t asleep, which was expected as Henri had been murdering all their babies for a good fifteen minutes.

What wasn’t expected was the protective circle the masters stood in, all twelve of them, a pile of torn up body parts at the center. They were all gaunt and pale, slimy, ugly, and tall. They all wore long black robes that looked suspiciously druid-like.

“That’s a blood druid circle!” Sloan shouted.

“Fall back into formation!” Dom shouted nearly on top of that.

We listened without questioning, druids knew best what to do with master vampires using blood druid circles—what in the ever-loving fuck?

With efficient coordination the druids were setting up their own circle, the rest of us pushed back.

Corbin was the only one that hadn’t backed off. He was right outside of the rogue circle, pacing, eyes on the vamp masters like a predator stalking prey.

“What can they do with that circle?” I asked no one in particular.

“I don’t think anyone knows, but it can’t be something good,” Caleb remarked calmly.

I glanced at Sven. He was looking at the circle like it was a particularly interesting puzzle.