King of Sin Read online

  I looked down, surprised. His fangs had been strong enough to pierce my thick skin. It was a pointless wound, though. Then, I witnessed him suckling away at it, swallowing my life force.

  A loud, mirthless laugh echoed from my throat, and I tightened my grip as I felt the king weaken. Had he thought that supping such a powerful being’s blood would make him stronger? I was no weak prey. A drop of my blood could fell an ox, for venom flowed in my veins.

  I drew my dagger. With my blood in his guts, the vampire was as good as dead, but it would be better to make the death decisive and on my terms.

  “My lord.” Pride stepped forward. “If we let him live, do you believe we could forge an agreement? He could be useful in controlling his underlings. Or is it best to kill him now?”

  “What?” The king panted, his eyes bulging from the poison and my grip. “Kill me? No, we can come to terms. Please...”

  I locked my arm around the pale king’s neck, my dagger’s point poised in front of an eye.

  “Don’t, don’t!” he shrieked. “I’ll give you anything you want. Anything!”

  Around me, more of the creatures hissed and howled in helpless fury as they tended to their wounded. And these were the gods of this realm? I laughed.

  “Anything? Good. Give me your death.”

  Red eyes darted wildly from side to side. “You’d break the ancient oaths? Are you insane?”

  I did not know what he was talking about, and I did not care. I shrugged. “I am not bound by your oaths.”

  “But why? You’ll bring war.”

  My eyes gleamed at the thought. “Even better.”

  “Who are you?”

  I whispered into his scentless, white ear. “I am the Firstborn, the Starwalker, the Lightbringer, the New Dawn. Today, I am your conqueror. Tomorrow, I am Salvation.”

  I plunged the dagger into one eye socket, and then the other. A cold purple ichor oozed out of each opening and down his body. I threw the corpse to the ground in front of me, sneering.

  The creatures of the night huddled in fear, some keening, others baring their fangs. Dozens of glowing red eyes watched me.

  “Your king is dead!” I roared. “Go, go! Tell everyone! I am Cain, the King of Sin.”

  They fled, as I knew they would. Soon, their world would know me.

  Chapter 7

  I waited until the echoes of the fleeing vampires’ footsteps had faded up the stairwell, then smirked at Pride. And she had been concerned about my brash tactics.

  “Well?” I said to the half dozen or so vampires that lingered. Alia was among them. “What are you still doing here? I like the style of this building, and it is the site of my first victory on this world. I will claim it as my home.” I clapped my hands. “Are you as slow-witted as you are weak? Begone, this place is no longer yours!” A couple more of them wandered out, but a handful still remained. “Pride,” I said gently. “In a few moments, I want you to start stabbing anyone in this room that is not me. Understood?”

  “Yes, my lord.” My Viceguard drew her daggers and stood ready.

  That got them moving, all except the brunette Alia, with her pale cheeks, crimson lips, feral red eyes. She did not look quite so frightened or confused as the others—shocked, certainly, but that hunger I enjoyed so much still lingered in her gaze. For a moment she watched me and Pride, as if making sure that my threat had been idle. She wandered over to the vampire king’s corpse and looked down at it. Would she mourn? No, she would not. She gave the body a soft kick in the ribs and turned away indifferently.

  “Old fucker,” she muttered. “Should have known he’d end up like this. He was always way too full of himself.”

  “You may end up the same way if you do not leave soon,” I said lazily, but there was no real threat behind the words. Certainly, the cathedral housed many a rat. What was one more pale rodent scuttling about the architecture? At least this one had a pleasing appearance.

  “This is the only home I have,” she said bitterly. “For better or for worse, I’m staying.”

  I licked my lips, studying her, then shrugged. “Pride,” I said. “With me.”

  Beyond the double doors we found a wide, neatly swept staircase leading up to the cathedral’s main floor. More of this world’s wondrous yellow lights illuminated a single doorway on the left of the whitewashed hall. I was about to ignore it to climb the stairs when I sensed movement behind the door and the soft banging of metal on metal.

  “Some trick of the vampires?” Pride asked as I advanced on the door.

  “My dear Pride. Not everything must be a trap,” I chuckled. I leaned against the wall next to the door and shoved it open, allowing the bright light from the hall to wash into the room.

  A row of large cages, seemingly designed for animals, stood against the far wall of the large room. It contained some sort of vast apparatus that I did not recognize, but I ignored the building’s bowels and focused on the contents of the cages.

  There were dozens of humans there. Every single cage was occupied, some of them with two or even three smaller people. Most of them wore little or no clothing, and all had seeping wounds on their necks, arms, and legs where the vampires had drunk from them.

  “Pitiful,” I spat, my mouth twisting in distaste. “This is not a conquered people. This is a wasted people. What good are they like this? Who can they serve or worship when they cannot even stand?” I shook my head.

  Pride came into the room to stand at my side. Her face’s expression shadowed my own, and she tossed her blonde mane, clearly agitated at the sight.

  “This world has need of you, my lord,” she said. “Perhaps there was a greater purpose to our failure against the Enemy. We believed you had lost your rightful claim, but what if it is this world that fate decreed to be yours? Imagine what it could become in a hundred years under your control.”

  I mused on the idea. The people of this world were weak, but clearly, they had potential. They squandered their magic and what might they possessed, but all that could change under my command.

  But I could not start with these pitiful remnants. In order to build something strong, I would have to clear the weak foundations away. I drew my dagger.

  “All of them,” I said to Pride. “Make it quick and merciful. They deserve no less after what they have suffered.” There was no sympathy in my voice. It was a mere statement of fact. Some people deserved to suffer. Let such torture be reserved for them.

  My Viceguard and I moved from one cage to the next, reaching between the bars to stab each human at the scruff of the neck. By the time we had finished, thick pools of crimson had spread across the floor.

  “I will clean this place out for you, when their innards have cooled,” Pride promised. “I will clean the entire cathedral until there is no more foul stench of these vampires lingering.”

  “That may be a little more difficult than you anticipate,” I said, nodding toward the open door. Alia lurked there, peering at me through angry red eyes. Her emotion was clear but so was her hunger. She waited until Pride and I had moved out of the room, then looked the question at me that she could not bring herself to speak.

  “Help yourself,” I said with a careless wave of my dagger. “But take the first few drops from my blade.”

  Alia approached slowly, tentatively. I dangled my dagger in front of her face, the hilt clenched between two fingers. “Tongue out, now,” I chided. The pale woman flinched but obeyed. She stuck out her little pink tongue and lapped at the flat of the blade, her eyes never leaving mine. She knew she was submitting to me in that moment, like a lioness showing its neck. I could have cut her tongue out with the slightest movement. I could have cut her throat with a flick of my wrist.

  She licked her lips and swallowed the crimson vitae, then backed away and turned to kneel beside the cages, shamefully slaking her thirst from the growing puddles.

  “Let us leave the rat to her cheese,” Pride said waspishly and turned on her heel to exit the room. I
lingered a moment longer to observe Alia on her hands and knees, lapping at the floor.

  I rejoined Pride at the foot of the stairs. She raised her eyebrows at me, and I returned the expression. Then we climbed to the main floor side by side.

  The wide staircase grew wider still as we approached the top, and it opened into a grand foyer with a panel of stained glass windows rising nearly two stories high looking out onto the street below. I smirked. I had known something about this place had suited me.

  The place seemed mostly clean, if fairly cluttered. At least half the furniture was covered by dust cloths, while the other half was a jumble of chairs and tables pulled together wherever the vampires had felt like sitting. None of them lingered there now. There was a goblet of warm, watery blood on a nearby table. They had not even paused to finish their meal.

  We moved through the antechamber, hands on weapon hilts in case of a surprise, peering around at the odd choices of decoration. It seemed the vampires—or at least their king—had held a strange fascination with certain celebrity icons of their world. The glossy images on thin paper leered down on me, and I leered right back.

  “This way,” I said, instinctively following a nearby set of double doors into the cathedral’s massive main chamber. Its floor was slanted so that even those seated at the back would be able to see the figure preaching from the dais below. I could imagine the place as it had once been, filled with hopeful faces looking down on a bishop of some sort. I could also envision it as it would be: filled with my generals, the strongest warriors the world had to offer, all gathered together to listen to me speak.

  And I would have much to say. The Enemy could not possibly be far away. Everything that I did would be in preparation for my eventual vengeance.

  We paced down the aisle between the rows of seats, checking left and right and forward and back for any threat. There was none. Some of the cushioned seats bore the dimples of regular occupancy, while others were coated in thin films of dust. It seemed the late king’s charms had not been enough to compel a regular following.

  Standing on the stage before the pulpit felt right. I did not mind the smell of blood, old and new, that emanated from every corner of the place. It was mine, by right of conquest, my first foothold within this new world.

  “You look pleased with your new acquisition, my lord,” Pride purred, stopping next to my side. I almost groaned at her closeness, almost reaching out to touch her, but held back.

  “I believe it will serve us well,” I said, “and I believe the best is still to come. We have yet to uncover the bishop’s chambers.”

  Pride’s pointed ears wiggled slightly as she looked at me appreciatively. “You know your way around this building as naturally as you do a woman’s body.”

  So. She was tempting me intentionally, now that she knew I was in a mood for celebration. I snorted and pivoted away from her, beckoning for her to follow.

  “Come,” I said. “The bishop’s chambers will be back here or perhaps one level up. I must have seen buildings like this at some point. I cannot put my finger on it, but I have an instinct for the layout.”

  I heard her hesitate a moment, but she followed me behind the tall velvet drapes that curtained off the area behind the stage. There was more furniture covered in dust cloths, as well as a number of humming armored wardrobes, each connected to the wall by a strange black cord. I pulled the first open and was surprised when a chill breath of air blew across my face. It was an icebox of some design and contained a yellow light that illuminated rows upon rows of sealed jars. Each jar held a familiar dark crimson liquid, the vampires’ preferred form of sustenance.

  I closed the heavy armored door, shaking my head in distaste. “These vampires are a people possessed by a singular desire,” I said. “That self-styled king was a liar. No matter their strength, such a short-sighted race could never gain dominion over this advanced world.” I was beginning to understand this world. I no longer believed that the source of the yellow light was magic. If it were magic, I would have been able to sense it in some way. I would have been able to interact with it. But these devices emitted no arcane energies, merely their soft light and strange hum. Perhaps they were some manufacture of human ingenuity. I remembered the moving pictures and other devices from the marketplaces.

  Further back we found another hallway, this one lined with a lush black carpet. The hallway did indeed lead to what must have once been the bishop’s quarters. The rooms were garishly decorated with glossy images and strange contraptions, but there was one affectation I recognized that immediately drew my attention: a vault set in the back stone wall. It was almost entirely ensconced in the strange smooth rock, but the flat metal area where the scrolling wheel stood presented a vulnerability.

  “How long do you think this will take me, Pride?” I inquired as I undid my sword belt and laid my weapons on the floor.

  “Oh, ten minutes. Five if you decide to break a sweat.”

  I noticed Alia watching from the doorway. She had wiped her lips clean and appeared satiated, at least in one way. I flexed my shoulders and approached the vault.

  With a sudden explosion of violence, I windmilled my arms and brought one armored elbow down upon the vault’s wheel. The metal groaned and deformed beneath the enormous force but did not break. I grinned. “Ten minutes it is,” I said. “They built this one well.”

  I attacked the exposed front of the vault with a salvo of kicks and forearm chops. Beneath the furious assault the locking mechanism bent and eventually broke away, groaning audibly. I wedged my hands into the small gap it created and heaved.

  “This would have gone much faster with my Lustblade,” I grunted, as the metal gave way and the vault opened up.

  Wealth in its most universal form glittered up at me from inside, gold and jewels, riches of the most identifiable kind. I smiled. The vampire king had been a hoarder. I loved conquering such so-called rulers. Their savings had served me well, and the coming battle with the Enemy would require resources aplenty.

  Further into the vault were bound stacks of green paper, which I recognized as a local form of currency. I had seen it passed between shoppers and vendors on the streets. The vampires had been wealthy indeed, or so it would appear.

  I leaned back from the vault and looked at Pride, one finger tapping my chin.

  “What?” she asked. “What are you thinking?”

  “Well,” I said, “this vault is no longer secure. If it was ever secure to begin with. And I think you have the strength for it.”

  She sighed. “As you wish, my lord.”

  She vanished, once again taking the form of a heavy helmet upon my head. I ignored the gasp and questioning look from Alia.

  I searched the room until I found a satchel bag with a strange fastening system. I hung it across my shoulders and returned to the vault, gathering a double armload of golden jewelry, coins, and gemstone-encrusted medallions. I filled the satchel bag to its capacity, then took as much of the currency as I could carry in my arms.

  I closed my eyes. The world shimmered around me, and I opened my eyes to see the stained glass portraits of my Pridehold staring back.

  I made several trips to and from the locked chests I kept at the rear of the temple for storing pilfered loot. Each time I added more wealth to my personal horde, I should have felt happier and more confident. But as I passed by that strange, closed door with the serpent seal each time, I wondered who had managed to invade my Pridehold, and how. Was the Pridehold still secure? I could discern no stolen good or misplaced item. For now, it remained my safest haven.

  I transferred all of the valuables save for a handful of gold coins that I pocketed for personal use. I stored most of the paper currency as well, but left the remainder in the ruined vault, planning to spend it shortly on the costs of my budding empire. By the time I was finished and Pride reappeared in her elven form, she looked worn and fatigued from the extended visits to the Pridehold.

  “My lord,” she g
asped, holding her stomach as if wounded, “I think I need...”

  I shook my head. “Not now, Pride. We still have much work to do.”

  We spent the remainder of the night working tirelessly. It took little convincing for Alia to show us how to dispose of the many corpses; the vampires kept vats of acid in a sub-basement we had missed entirely for just that purpose. I set the two women to that task, hoping that they would either bond or kill each other, and resigned myself to hauling unwanted furniture and other rubbish out to the side of the road. Alia had explained trucks would take it away for me, for a price. This example of municipal framework only supported my belief that the humans of this world had great potential. They needed to be properly exploited, not sent to rot in cages in between some leech’s feeding times.

  By the time the new moon crested the city’s broken horizon, the cathedral looked almost livable. Pride and I stood on the small balcony outside the bishop’s chambers, which were now my chambers. We watched the sun rise for the first time in this strange world, together as we should be. I inhaled the scent of fresh morning air deeply, happy to clear my lungs of the dust of the cathedral’s interior.

  “It took all night, but we managed to get rid of most of the bodies,” Pride reported. “The bones will take a while longer, it seems. You did quite an impressive job with the rest of the place, my lord. I never knew you to be much of a cleaner.”

  “There is a time and a place for everything, Pride,” I said and then turned toward a sound from inside.

  Alia skulked in the shadows of the bedroom, looking out at us with apparent envy.

  “They’re here,” the vampire said.

  “Who?” I asked lightly, with no concern. My thoughts were elsewhere, on the Enemy, the coming battle, and domination.

  Alia shrugged. “The Overseers must have sent messengers to investigate the reports. There are two men in suits waiting for you outside the cathedral.”