The Vampire's Crimson Kiss (Editing)

Chapter 1/The girl in the iron cage

Book 1 of the Crimson Crown

It's been about five years since the gates of hell opened. I know you think yeh like she's talking metaphorically but I do mean literally. Who knew Stonehenge sat over some millennial necromantic super prison? Me neither, Yeah go figure. So yes for the past years the road to hell has been littered with good intentions, not to mention the dead bodies of most of the world's armies but also iPhones and stuff. 

"Will someone let me out of here" I shouted.

"Not yet princess" came a voice from the outside.

"Will someone get it through their FAT heads I'm not a princess. My father is a shoe salesman" I shouted back through the blind fold.

OK my father WAS a shoe salesman. A shoe salesman with a good collection of compound bows that strangely lasted longer than all the stockpiled ammunition. He also had good organisational skills and the lack of law and order meant his skills had some new found value. The 'republic' as the people liked to call it was under his command.

"Your father is the king of the Badlands" said the familiar outside.

"No no you don't understand. My father is the current president of the republic of Basingstoke and it rotates on an 5 yearly basis through a list the eligible people. We are more of an autonomous collective than anything else."

"Yes princess" said a voice outside.

"Look I'm not a princess. would a princess say let me out your you F*****G B*****S let me out you H***RS of satans teeth? She wouldn't would she, that's not how princesses talk" I told them. As a kid I had watched the Disney channel, I knew what princesses were like.

"She might do if she was tied up and blindfolded in an iron cage on a barge going to the black keep" said the Familiar's voice.

Familiar scum. FYI I am tied up and blindfolded. I am in an iron cage and I am on a barge going to the black keep. Turns out vampires familiar's are scum but they are also sarcastic scum. That failed to make it to the Wikipedia entry for some reason.

"Look stop calling it the black keep. It's the Shard, aka 22 Fenchurch street, it's an office tower in London the vampires took over and covered in blackout paint like a goth's bedroom" I said I think rather reasonably.

"Does 22 Fenchurch street have a mote perhaps?" said the voice outside while the oars dipped into the water.

"That was global warming" I said. On the edge of the London lake a number of human settlements scraped a living in the ruins of the city. In the centre of the lake lay the taller towers growing out of the water like daffodils in spring time. The flooding was caused by ice melting, in turn caused by global warming, no one is sure how much the loss of ice managed to release the hell hoards upon us. 

"Black tower surrounded by a black lake rich with the bodies of the dead, sounds like a black keep to me" said the voice outside.

"If I ever get good phone reception, and electricity and a phone and a working phone network I'm so calling my dad" I told them. The fall of civilisation can lead to some awkward conversations. 

"Yes princess" said the familiar.

The vampires had  imposed a feudal system on us. They had set up principalities, they called them covens. Each vampire coven was ruled by a vampire lord. The covens sometimes collaborated to herd us, the remaining humans, into subjugation. Now they generally spent their days fighting each other or living in mutual distrust. We, on the other hand were 'kingdoms' free to be raided or conquered as suited the vampire lords needs. The vampires slept in their high towers serviced by human  familiars and doing whatever huge hoards of vampires did. Free peoples, like my dad's 'free republic of Basingstoke' were basically harvested on occasion as blood stock for the vampires. We thought of it as a republic they thought of us as a self managed free range organic human blood farm. I knew which I preferred. Your choices may be different.