Blood Betrayal

Chapter Twenty-Two

Opening the wide doors Alistair found the space large and filled with fabrics in deep saturated purples. They covered the walls, the floor and the bed.

Purple. It was the colour of royals, it was very presumptuous of the Washington King to drape himself so fully in that colour.

Electric lights were shunned there bowing out to firelight in the form of candles and lanterns. A man was hunched over a central table. His hands worked at a large scroll of paper. Charcoal stained fingers moved rapidly darting with quick strokes over the crinkled whiteness.

He was enveloped in an ermine cape that covered an intricately designed paisley tunic. It was as if trying for the look of a medieval European King complete with a golden crown atop his shaggy curled strawberry-blonde hair.

He looked up from his scroll squinting trying to see better through some nonexistent fog.

"I am not to be disturbed!" The man yelled waving one black sooty hand before looking down then once more pushing his soiled fingers into the paper.

He had no sense of danger. So very sure of himself despite Alistair being unknown and old enough to be capable of taking his throne. The man should be wary, he should be able to sniff out the danger that stood in front of him. It was clear that there was something terribly wrong with him.

"I think that you are already disturbed, Byron," Alistair told him in a small incredulous voice. He found the scene hard to look at.

Again he squinted then stood, his wooden chair making an abrupt high pitched scraping noise over the polished concrete floor as he pushed free of the table. He tilted his head to one side then the other.

"I am King Byron to you... who are you? Who let you in here? I'll have them killed."

Byron took an unsteady step towards Alistair. His small piggy eyes still straining to recognise the intruder through the haze of his insanity.

Alistair spoke quietly. The disgust he felt was beginning to seep into his tone giving it a harder edge. "I have come to judge you against the old ways."

"The old ways... whoever you are you are a damn fool." Byron swept the idea away with stubby blackened hands.

"The old ways are extinct as well they should be. We are the future, we are stronger and faster and better than any mortal could ever be. I refuse to be held to antiquated rules that force us into the shadows. Who the hell are you to come into my bedchamber and spout such drivel?" the man near screeched. In his fervour, a line of spittle escaped his lips before a thick purple tongue licked it away.

Byron was no more than a disgusting, small man with dangerous ideas. The evidence of his madness surrounded them in the form of delusional regal aspirations and the scent of old death. His rhetoric was one of complete denial. A delusion so great that it eclipsed any hint of rationality.

Talking could have never be enough to persuade the man of the danger in his actions. It had been stupid to think there could be another way to deal with him. He would have to die just as Daxus asked.

"The High King disagrees. He has found you unfit to sit this or any throne," Alistair informed him. By that point, the pure disgust was thick in his voice.

The man laughed. It was the unsettling high pitched chortle of a madman, grating to the ears like nails on a chalkboard.

"Bah, you are more a fool than I thought to try to hide behind legend. Everyone knows the High King is only a myth put in place to keep the young in line. I am the new King on High. All will revel in the new world I bring about. I am over three thousand years old! None can stand against me and you will die for questioning me." He looked very sure, his eyes shone with the fanatical imaginings of his own grander.

Alistair could take no more, he was on the insane King quicker than the man could protect himself. Killing was distasteful but even he could agree that the zealot must die. Byron snarled at him once more with curled thin lips. His eyes growing wide finally clearing, touched by the clarity of his demise.

"Who are you?"

Alistair reached around to take a hold of Byron's head but he shoved his distasteful reeking hand into Alistair's face forcing him to step back with sheer revulsion.

He fixed his robe before moving in to take a hold of Alistair. He moved so slowly, it was all too easy to evade his tainted searching hands. The vampire was just as old and had consumed much more blood than Alistair ever had. It shouldn't be so easy to evade him and yet it was.

Was it possible to become so full of blood that the man had been rendered muddled in some sort of sluggish blood drunk state? He had never heard of such a thing but it was as good an explanation as any.

The mad King's sureness and stink of death were beginning to stir Alistair's anger. Letting the predator in him take over he caught Byron by the neck and jaw in both hands. The man's face contorted then went slack as his head came away from his fur-clad body. It dislodged with a sickening wet, tearing pop.

In a clamouring violent spray of thick crimson, it was over.

He lay in a twitching heap on the concrete floor. It had been too easy to rip his head away. He should have been killed long ago, why had no one tried to stop him before then?

The table where he had been seated held an artful charcoal drawing newly dotted with blood. It portrayed the mutilated body of a woman. She was bound by her hands and ankles, hogtied like not even an animal should be.

Ribs peeked out from inside the large hole that had been torn in her chest. It echoed the shape of her screaming mouth. Turning Alistair could see the subject of that drawing in a heap by the far wall.

She was dead and had been for some time. The rot had well and truly set in. Fetid liquid pooled around her knees. Her mouth still gaped open in a long silent death scream.

Her foul discoloured heart lay visible in the ruin of her chest glistening in its decay.