Loki nodded in agreement and both looked to the angry Elder. Not too proud to concede to their point, Duchess Adela finally nodded in reluctant concurrence. All three sat down again, at least momentarily satisfied.
“Thank you for your clarification,” Raina said to both gentlemen, barely resisting the urge to smile as the French and Italian Elders returned to their seats, as well. Apparently, they realized the futility of sticking with that angle of criticism. “As Duke Connor has kindly pointed out, I am not making any unreasonable demands. If we really are such a great and superior race, and if we sincerely wish to lead by example, then we all should act accordingly.”
Raina paused for a moment before theatrically raising both hands far apart to shoulder-height, palms facing upward. As one, the IVC obediently stood, and again Raina momentarily experienced that strangely out-of-body feeling of being in a minister’s shoes.
“As Grand Duchess of the International Vampiric Council, by the power vested in me by this great Council,” Raina declared with slightly more volume, keeping her arms up and apart, “I do hereby decree that from this night forth, all of the High Court, its followers, and its associates, shall obey the laws of the Code in addition to the laws of the land upon which they stand. All shall respect the laws of the human government of the land in which they live, just as they shall respect the Code. If there is any conflict between the laws of the Code and the laws of humans … then the laws of humans shall be obeyed by default. This is my decree as Grand Duchess, and such shall be our law from this night forth.”
As legally binding as her words were, there was nevertheless a flurry of surprised and alarmed whispers amongst the IVC. Having anticipated this, Raina drew a slightly nervous breath and finally added, “If there is anyone present tonight that offers protest to my decree, let them stand before me now and state their case … or forever remain silent and in full compliance of my decree.”
This was the moment she had dreaded. This was the most extreme test of her authority as Grand Duchess so far. And as it had been foretold by so many others, sure enough, not everyone was willing to cooperate. There was a surprisingly small number of individuals that calmly stepped out from their place amongst the pews, approached her upon the red carpet of the center aisle, and lined up in an orderly fashion, fanning out below the steps leading up to the altar where she stood. She had honestly expected at least a third of the IVC to come charging at her with swords drawn and fangs bared, rather than this relative handful of calm, formal dissidents.
However, this band of eight hardcore nonconformists included no less than four Elders. Duke Lorenzo and Duchess Camille were among them, of course. Another whom she had expected to offer protest was Duke Anthony Costa of Manhattan, New York. Sadly, links to organized crime syndicates were more the norm than the exception, but Duke Anthony was so brazen about it that he had been nicknamed the “Don Dracula” by many tabloids. Of course, Raina’s decree would have, by implication, essentially made a great deal of his wealth and assets null and void, being that his associations and actions over the years had violated nearly every RICO statute in existence. Obeying Raina’s new law to the letter would have forced him to forfeit nearly everything he had gained.
Most surprising of all, though, was Duke Sergey Volkov of Russia. He was the High Court whom Duvessa had put into power and with whom she had brokered an alliance with the help of Lady Svetlana. Of course, his links to organized crime were just as extensive as those of Duke Anthony, perhaps even more so. Even Svetlana was no stranger at all to dealing with the Russian mob, although she had acted more as a translator for Duvessa than anything else over the years. Svetlana held no actual rank with any Russian crime family. Because of his association with Svetlana and his prior friendship with Duvessa, and because he had until then been among the most amicable of the Elders toward Raina, seeing Duke Sergey standing before her in protest was something of a shock. Of course, old alliances aside, she was essentially threatening his way of life, so she could not really see his protest as a personal affront to her. Again, he was a businessman, and this was strictly about the future earnings of his “business” – prostitution, drugs, gambling, smuggling, and everything else that came with those trades.
The others among them were Count Michael Richter of the United States, Countess Sarah Byrne of Northern Ireland, Count Noah Cooper of Australia, and Count Kimura Haruto of Japan. Raina was not quite as familiar with many of the non-Elder members of the IVC. What little she did know of these others was enough to assure her that their motivations for protesting were much the same as the other mob-tied High Court vampires, aside from perhaps Countess Sarah, with whom her prior conversations indicated her inspiration was more idealistic than anything.
Raina removed the Bluetooth device from her ear, switched it off with a press of its button, and laid it upon the lectern calmly as she stepped aside and opened the laptop that sat upon the table nearby. Having known in advance that certain individuals would attempt to make this night difficult for her, what she had discovered in the cellar had been a simultaneous curse and blessing. In spite of the damning and horrible things she had discovered, there was at least this bit of potential good to come out of it. She could hardly think of an adequate reward for Simon to thank him for granting her access to that stash of horrors.
She spoke just loudly enough to be heard by the eight High Court vampires lined up before her. She did not want anyone outside to record anything she intended to say, as she had already likely provided the outside world with more than enough material to publish in their magazines and online blogs. Just as well, what she had to say was meant more for these dissenters than the rest of the IVC, as a whole, as these seemed to essentially be the staunchest of her political opponents. And anyway, there were enough pointy ears and such a blanket of silence in the Hall that anything she said was likely to be heard, anyhow – the PA system was more for show and dramatic effect, really.
“I can probably guess why most of you are protesting my decree,” Raina told them, calmly kicking off her high heels behind the lectern. “As always, I respect your opinions as Elders and members of the Council. And I admire your courage for having the audacity to stand before me now … daring to challenge my word, which you all know is law.”
Half of them nodded to her in silent acknowledgement – Count Haruto, Countess Sarah, Count Noah, and Duke Sergey – while the rest simply glared at her with naked anger. Those who showed little to no respect in this time were surely going to prove to be the most difficult ones to persuade. Fortunately, these were the ones on whom she had the most dirt.
“Some of you have called me a hypocrite. Some of you have said that I am a fool. And yet some of you insist upon clinging to the same ignorant, bigoted, Nazi-like rhetoric that Duvessa tried to cram down my throat from the very first night I met her,” Raina said plainly. “Tell me … what was your opinion of Duvessa? What kind of a person … what kind of creature do you think she was? Really? Do you really think she was as pure of thought and deed as she tried to make everyone believe? Do you still subscribe to all of that nonsense she preached over the years?”
Speaking a bit more loudly so that the rest of the IVC could hear her more clearly, Raina said, “I know that some of you protested my accusations that she was a Nazi conspirator. In fact, I’m sure that a great number of you still do not believe the extent of her involvement with the Nazi SS officials that ran the concentration camps. Doctor Josef Mengele? Angel of Death? Birkenau? Auschwitz? Any of these names ring a bell?”
Nobody spoke. None of the protesters before her even showed the slightest hint of being affected by her words. Deciding it was time for a bit of show-and-tell, Raina reached under the lectern, unsheathed the antique knife, and stabbed it into the bare wood at the top of the lectern, causing a few sensitive souls in the audience to gasp and a couple of her protesters to visibly flinch.
“An SS knife given to Duvessa by Doctor Mengele as one of several gifts for assisting
him in the acquisition of several vampires of various races for the sake of his experiments,” she declared. “It’s the real deal, of course … Death’s Head engraving and all. Duvessa used this knife on a few occasions to participate in some of those so-called ‘experiments’ with Doctor Mengele at her side, performing ‘surgery’ on a few individuals … both humans and vampires. Oh, and then there was this other thing.”
She reached under the lectern and pulled out the old semi-automatic German pistol that was, of course, unloaded and rendered inoperable so as to be UK-legal. This had an even more visible impact upon some other individuals in attendance.
“This pistol was also a gift of hers from an SS officer. Looks like an ordinary Walther P38, I suppose … except for the engravings on it. Oh, and then the little story Duvessa was kind enough to describe in detail in this little black book.”
She dropped the pistol onto the lectern with a clunk that echoed throughout the Hall before pulling out and displaying the rather thick, leather-bound journal. There were more whispers and murmured comments amongst the IVC in response. Quite a few members were visibly fidgeting, including Duchess Adela. She honestly had not yet read all of Duvessa’s more incriminating journal entries yet. To do so would have literally taken years, even if she wasn’t preoccupied with a hectic schedule as Grand Duchess. Still, even with a limited sampling of Duvessa’s autobiography, she had already seen enough names mentioned and enough dirty details laid out to know that she was practically sitting on a goldmine of information. Much of it would have made for ideal blackmail material against quite a few members of the IVC … including more than one Elder.
Raina had chosen to bring along one of the less incriminating journals that had not been locked up within the cellar, so anyone brazen enough to try to steal or destroy the journal she had brought in order to protect their own name would not be successful. She had already created a Plan B and even a Plan C to safeguard against such scenarios, at Simon’s recommendation, and with his help. If Raina lost her head to someone that evening, the floodgates would be thrown open and every damned skeleton in Duvessa’s closet would be set free for the world to see. The Internet was an incredibly powerful tool, after all.
“Your former Grand Duchess was quite a prolific writer. She left me quite a large library of journals like this to browse through in my free time. She had this one and a few others stashed in a spare room, along with all of her other Nazi mementos, as well as a collection of some other interesting … souvenirs, I guess you might call them,” she explained. Raina dropped the book upon the lectern. “I would have brought you all more goodies for show-and-tell, but I guess I’m a little squeamish about body parts and organs in jars full of formaldehyde. Instead, I brought along a few copies of some very educational videos…”
Raina calmly reached over to the video projector and uncapped the lens before starting the video playback on the laptop beside it. Duvessa had stored all of the discs and tapes of footage recorded in the cellar in an electronically-locked vault which, of course, Simon had also shown Raina how to access. Of course, she hadn’t been afforded enough time to preview all of it, but just a random sampling had provided her with enough footage from Hell to literally make her nauseous.
Raina did not need to look at the images being shown by the video projector as it displayed the horrors of the IVC’s past. Simon had helped her to convert a few clips into a common video format from one of the many discs, tapes, and film reels in Duvessa’s macabre collection. Raina had seen enough of it to know that she never wanted to see it again, although the sound that played back through the nearby laptop’s built-in speakers was loud enough to remind her all too vividly. She knew that in this first clip, Duvessa could be seen standing over a male she had secured to a custom-made apparatus of some kind that resembled a weightlifting bench. Duvessa and the male both were nude. In her right hand was a knife; in her left was something that she had just cut off of him. His screams were raw and chilling.
Rather than watching the footage again, Raina focused upon observing the reactions of those before her, particularly those of the four Elders and four IVC representatives. Most of them visibly winced in sympathetic pain at the sight of what Duvessa was doing to her victim, an unidentified Commoner. Only a couple of them seemed largely unaffected. Duchess Camille rolled her eyes, actually looking bored.
“Duvessa had a nasty habit of keeping just about everything that was cut, pulled, twisted, or burned off of her victims,” Raina explained. “And as I’ve said, she really seemed to enjoy documenting everything that she did in great detail … such as her victims’ names, where and how she met them, how she killed them, how long they took to die … and perhaps most importantly, she also documented the names of all of her accomplices.”
This finally brought Duchess Camille’s eyes to meet Raina’s directly. Even from where she stood, she could sense the Elder’s sudden swell of fear, so great that it caused those standing next to her to actually turn and look at Duchess Camille as they also sensed it.
“I don’t suppose many of you remember this Commoner. Most of you probably never met him or heard of him. As far as most of you are concerned, he is probably no more real to any of you than some fictional character in a movie,” Raina said as she held Camille’s gaze firmly. “His name was Jean-Luc. He was twenty-three years old when this happened. He was a new servant to you, Duchess Camille, a fresh bloodspawn that went through the Change not even a year before his death.”
There was a long pause as everyone else’s eyes remained transfixed in sick fascination by what they saw projected upon the tall, blank wall behind Raina – the same place a large crucifix had once been mounted. These were surely some of the most ghastly things ever seen or discussed within the entire history of these walls. In her peripheral vision, Raina could see the simultaneous display of the video upon the laptop just as it was being projected upon the wall. As she glimpsed the dark form of another figure walking into view, the entire IVC seemed to gasp in horror as one. Raina knew what it was they were seeing: Duchess Camille stepping into view of the camera, naked as well, her face clearly visible in the relative close-up color view of the wall-mounted camera. Duvessa handed her the bloodied knife, Camille accepted it with a smile, and thoughtlessly faced the camera directly as she licked the blood from its blade.
“We’re not a brutal race at all … are we, Duchess?” Raina asked her mockingly, narrowing her eyes at her. “No, we’re very civil, highly evolved creatures … ones that make a hobby of butchering one another for pleasure.”
Among those visibly stricken by what was being shown in the video, Duke Sergey abruptly dropped to one knee and bowed his head.
“I withdraw my protest and ask for mercy,” he announced.
As though cued, Count Haruto followed suit, saying, “I withdraw my protest and ask for mercy. There is no honor in this.”
“Bugger this,” she heard Count Noah mutter as he fell to his knee, as well. “I also withdraw my protest and ask for mercy, your grace.”
Duchess Camille looked to the others with her mouth agape in shock, stunned that her would-be allies were folding. This, too, Raina had anticipated – hence the reason for the video footage. While she was sure that not all of these individuals honestly had a personal distaste for the horrible things they were seeing in the video – obviously, considering that she had other videos that she already knew included other members of the IVC – she was equally certain that they would not wish to have the public stigma of these things attached to their name, either by the media or by others within the IVC. It was not the torture, itself, but the shame that they hated. Perhaps Duvessa had been right to believe that one’s public image was everything, at least among the High Court.
Without warning, Camille reached to her waist, jerked her sword free of its sheath, and took a step forward, aiming the tip of her weapon at the Grand Duchess. Having anticipated the Duchess’s reaction, Raina drew her sword almost simultaneously as she ste
pped away from the lectern. The sound of Camille’s rapier and Raina’s katana clearing their scabbards with their distinctive metallic scraping sounds brought an immediate and total hush to the IVC just as quickly as it had begun.
“I challenge you, Grand Duchess Raina Fallamhain!” Camille declared angrily. “Do you accept?”
Raina dared to allow a smirk to curve her lips. “As Grand Duchess, I am allowed by right to accept your challenge conditionally.”
“Name your terms!” she snarled, jabbing the rapier in her direction as the others nearby backed away to give them space.
“First, this duel will be stopped only by forfeit or death,” Raina replied. “Unconsciousness will be considered forfeiture. Secondly, you will be fighting as a representative for all those present with you that offer protest to my decree. If I win, then my decree stands as law, and there will be no further challenges issued against me tonight.”
“And if I win?” Camille demanded. “What will be my prize when I kill you?”
Raina shifted her sword to her left hand and grabbed the golden pendant that hung between her breasts, lifting it overhead and slipping the necklace off. She slapped the golden symbol down upon the lectern with a loud bang.
“If you win,” she said, “then your prize will be this golden ankh. I will either be dead, or I will walk away in shame, and you will be free to rule this Council however you damned well please as Grand Duchess.” A commotion began again amidst the IVC, and Raina silenced them with an angry wave of her arm. “Do you accept my terms, Duchess Camille Richard?”
“Oui,” she acknowledged with a terse nod.
Raina shrugged off her blazer, letting it fall to the floor as she took her sword in both hands. “Then I accept your challenge.”
* * * *
Chapter Seven
The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations Page 14