by Craig Zerf
‘Over six hundred years of combined wisdom between the five of you and this is the result,’ said Radford Cromwell, the head of the Nosferatu Enforcers.
‘With all due respect, master,’ answered one of the Aspirants who knelt in front of the Enforcer. ‘We were told that the Sir William might have had the relic. We were simply searching for it.’
The Enforcer glided across the floor and stood in front of the kneeling Aspirant. He looked down at him, an expression of utter disgust on his face as his fangs extended, sliding past his lower lips.
‘With all due respect,’ he whispered. He bent down, his face now level with the terrified junior vampire.
‘You have no concept of what respect is, you worthless leech. Did I tell you to search the Emporium?’
The Aspirant shook his head.
‘Did Lord Byron instruct you to do it?’ ‘No, sir.’
‘Correct. So why did you and your gaggle of moronic parasites break into a place that was covered by closed circuit television and then not even bother to remove the evidence?’
‘There was no way that the cameras could have identified us, my lord Enforcer,’ answered the Aspirant. ‘We moved far too fast.’
The Enforcer stood up. ‘Oh well. That’s fine then. Not a problem. Too fast for the cameras you say?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Faster than a human is capable of moving?’ ‘Much faster, my lord,’ agreed the Aspirant.
The Enforcers hand flashed forward, claws extended. The razor sharp talons tore through the kneeling Aspirant’s neck, separating his head from his shoulders in one single mighty blow. The severed cranium bounced along the floor until it rolled to a stop against the wall with a dull thud.
Cromwell grabbed the next Aspirant by the neck and picked him up one handed. ‘And now, because of you swarm of cretins, somebody out there has photographic proof of someone, or something, that can move ten times faster than a human being.’
‘My Lord,’ rasped the Aspirant who was still suspended by his neck. ‘I am sure that they will merely think that the cameras have malfunctioned. No one will believe what they see.’
‘No one?’ Bellowed Cromwell. ‘No, not “No One”. Most humans will not believe. But there are some that will. In fact there are some that will know exactly what they are seeing. And those are the very people that we do not want looking into what we are doing.’
‘With a casual shrug of his shoulders the Enforcer separated the Aspirant’s head from his shoulders. Tearing it off like he was plucking an over ripe fruit from a tree. He tossed both head and body aside before turning to the remaining two kneeling Aspirants.
‘Get out before I destroy you,’ he growled.
The two juniors sprang to their feet and ran from the room, their bodies a blur from the speed at which they moved.
Cromwell stood still for a while as he pondered. He wasn’t worried about Sir William as such. The man was a mere human. Weak. Nothing more than prey. No, he was more concerned about who else might see the CCTV footage. Namely – the Olympus Foundation.
It was true that they were no longer the force that they used to be a full century ago.
Their numbers had dropped as the vastly superior numbers of the brethren had slowly whittled away at them.
Oh, the house of Lord Byron had lost many hundreds, if not thousands, of brethren to the blades and bullets of the Shadowhunters.
But unlike them, vampires could beget more vampires. Whereas the Olympus Foundation was stuck with a slowly dwindling line of succession that was literally dying out.
But they could still cause untold problems, thought Cromwell to himself. Especially that disgusting old magician. He had been a thorn in the brethren’s side for centuries now. An unacceptable situation as far as the Enforcer was concerned. In fact, he continued to think, it was time to approach the Grand Master with the plan that Cromwell had been working on. A plan to eradicate these so called Shadowhunters and their despicable leader, once and for all.
A purge, as it were.
Cromwell smiled to himself. And his canines shone as white as innocence in the darkling light.
Chapter 13