Gold Weaver

prologue

Jade was certainly no vampire. Vampires were long-limbed, egotistical, and fragile creatures. Blessed – or cursed depending on what one has heard – with immortality, the fanged beasts filled their endless days by playing house and they weren't particularly good at it. Strange creatures as they were, they handled their petty squabbles by having the nine largest houses group together to make a judgment.

Every judgment was violent.

When the vampires weren't playing house, they were playing aristocrats – attending prestigious universities and sleeping with the old money of the human world's fleeting generations. They were patrons of arts and music the average human would probably never see nor hear. They dressed in custom attire, going out of their way to look just fancy enough to turn heads but never so fancy as to keep those eyes on them. The most recent trend amongst the fanged was buying private planes. They never used them for anything, as far as Jade could remember, the point was simply that they had them.

Jade couldn't spend more than a few minutes amongst vampires. They talked exceedingly about nothing, and if it wasn't blood-covered gossip it was some long-winded tirade about how werewolves were the worst possible thing to ever grace the Earth. Much to the canine's amusement, of course. It was truly an exhausting experience, at least as far as Jade was concerned.

She certainly was not too fond of being lumped in with them. The most that they had in common was immortality and being alluring to humans – not that the latter was too particularly difficult. Vampires were predators, born into the shadows of night to stalk humans - the very reason humans feared the dark. Jade and her kind were far more interesting. They were protectors and defenders. It wasn't their fault humans were so dull in the mind to consistently push into sacred territory.

You'd think after so many drownings it would be obvious which reefs were not to be messed with.

Still, she was reasonable enough to understand where the confusion could come from for the simple-minded humans. Afterall, despite her distaste for their petty squabbles and gag-worthy food palette, she still dealt with them relatively frequently. Naturally, they were her most frequent customers. And speaking of the pale devils, such a customer had entered her hall.

Victoria Vanhelsing - no one said she was original when she chose her new name - stalked across the tiled floor, her dagger-like heels clicking as she walked. She held her head high, deep green eyes darting to each of the individuals in the room. There were three women, including Jade, and one Victoria. Not the best of odds and Victoria knew this, and more importantly Victoria knew Jade knew this. A false smile spread across her face as she poorly attempted to radiate a sense of warmth. "A beautiful morning isn't it?" Victoria had a lilted voice, each word following one another as though in song or poem. Tantalizing to the human mind, though uninteresting in Jade's. "I'd heard of the quickness of your work, but this is a surprise," she continued. "I had assumed it wouldn't be ready for at least another couple of months."

Jade offered a thin smile. She had no need for pleasantries, much less the poisoned-tip silver tongue of vampires. "Well, after you had informed me this would be a matter or breaking centuries worth of tradition -" Jade paused a bit, letting a wave of fear pass across Victoria's face for a few moments, the speed of which indecipherable for human eyes, " - I was simply too intrigued to focus on anything else."

Jade gestured to one of the young women in the room to approach her. The young woman approached with a small, black briefcase of no notable appearance. The only thing making it valuable was what was inside. Jade gestured again, this time towards Victoria and the young woman nodded in kind, showcasing the contents of the briefcase.

Victoria's eyes widened and her once false smile was replaced with a genuine look of wonder. Ever so gently, Jade picked up the necklace. "Is this suiting to your tastes?"