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Description
Mitchell Livingston had been born during a time when the abacus still defined the technology of modern computing, in an era before cars and trains dotted the landscape of the country he was raised in. His short, black hair slicked back with a widow's peak perched atop his forehead, he appeared to be the consummation of Count Dracula himself, sharp fangs slumbering in a sea of white. His dark, cunning eyes could cut through men with the simplest of scowls. Nobody liked to anger Mitch. The results often proved fatal.

The evening started as most did for him. After a shower and a fresh change of clothing, his fingers raked through the hair of the woman he kept as a pet. Her gaze met his expectantly - a pretty little blonde thing he picked up in Texas (fuck, but those women were feisty before they were broken) - and a sharp moan punctuated the prick of his fangs into her throat. Mitch only stole a few sips from her, but he knew the day was coming soon when he would have to end her. Her large, brown eyes indicated the lights were on, but the resident was vacating the building.

With a sigh, Mitch settled into his chair, noting how quickly it seemed those pets met their expiration date. The vampires of his bloodline - the Lamiae, according to the Supernatural Order - often supplemented kills with quick feeds and the keeping of pets. The problem being that feeding from a human too often eventually reduced them to a mindless zombie. Granted, he had held onto this one longer than her predecessor, but even the strongest of mortals could not avoid the inevitable. And Mitch had no desire to blood bond with her to keep her rational beyond a few additional feedings.

Other than that, things seemed to be quiet. Mitch reclined his leather office chair and oscillated from side to side on it, pivoting this way and that while his feet remained planted firm on the floor below. His eyes scanned across the pictures hanging on his study walls, seeing visual reminders of a long, accomplished life. A landscape of Britain reminded him of where he had been born and the painting of Austria served as a recollection of the first nest he oversaw. Prints of Romania, Hungary, and Germany each placed markers on one rung after the next up the political ladder. Mitch turned to face the large windows overlooking Portland, Oregon, seeing the lights of downtown from his posh penthouse. One step further, and he would be a king.

If the current one ever abdicated, that is.

A cold, cruel grin curled the corner of his mouth while Mitch's thoughts ran wild of further conquests and loftier titles which might await. Granted, the current monarch had only ascended to the throne a few decades prior and kings and queens could retain their power for centuries if they could manage to beat back the long list of rivals who often amassed. Assassinations were commonplace, but Mitch feared none of that. He knew how to force his opposition to crawl before him, was ruthless enough to demand they lick his polished black dress shoes. For years, he had managed to keep his bloodline underground despite the explosion of the Internet into the public consciousness. It was his idea to employ human hackers in the quest and other kingdoms knew by now they had him to thank for remaining underground.

Needless to say, it would prove to be useful when he made his next vie for power.

A phone rang, breaking Mitch from his thoughts and directing his attention to the black piece of plastic situated at the corner of his desk. Reaching for the receiver, he lifted it and brought it to his ear. "Mitchell," he said simply, the only greeting he ever offered those who called.

A shaky breath preceded the sound of the caller clearing his throat. Mitch resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Nothing annoyed him more than the sound of a nervous mortal. "Um, Mitch," a male voice said, "This is, um, Len... Len McAlister. I... uh..."

"Len, would you care to inform me why you are on the phone with me rather than doing the job we are paying you to perform?"

"Well, that's just it, I..." Len paused. He sighed and cleared his throat again. "We have a situation you should know about."

Mitch glanced down at his free hand, focusing on his fingernails. Idly, he picked at a piece of dirt under one of them. "I'm waiting, Len," he said, not bothering to mask the irritation in his tone of voice.

Len failed to respond. Mitch summoned a mental image of a deer caught in the headlights and fought the urge to be the one about to hit the pitiful creature with the full force of a Hummer. "Uh, well, we have a video," Len finally said. "A video w-which is giving us a little bit of a problem."

"When the fuck did I become technical support?" Mitch asked. "If you have a video, pull the damn thing from the Internet. Did you wake up this morning with a diminished IQ?"

"Well, that's just it." Len's voice gained more confidence. "We've been trying to pull it, but it had a bitch of a firewall protecting it and... and Phil, you see, he tried a DDoS, but apparently it's not just on one server, or two for that matter. This website's being hosted on several servers and the video's already been up for longer than a few minutes."

Mitch sighed. "Would you care to translate that into something other than your confounded techno-babble?"

"Basically, this fucker's not going down without a fight."

"Then bring it down, Len." The cadence of Mitch's voice remained cool; unaffected. "Fight or no fight."

"But... um... what if it's already been downloaded, Mitch? What the fuck are we supposed to do, then?"

"Well, I would hope for your sake it hasn't, but it is only one video." Mitch grinned. "Your kind are ignorant little ants who hate anything interrupting your menial marching orders. Get rid of the video. Destroy it and the little ants will think whatever they watched was nothing more than a hoax."

"Well, alright, but you should know something about this video, Mitch."

Mitch raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. "What would that be?"

Len drew another shaky breath. "It's high definition. Better quality than any video I've ever pulled down from the 'net before. A-a-and it's of an attack. Two of you guys feeding on a woman with it pausing as she screams. As far as ugly videos go, it's pretty bad."

"Which sounds like little more than a well-produced horror movie," Mitch said, but he couldn't control the downward turn of his facial expression. A fledgling form of dread knotted his stomach and for a moment his ironclad resolve sustained a wave of turbulence. Mitch recovered, speaking his next statement as much to himself as to Len. "It doesn't matter what they captured or how well, your kind want to believe it is a hoax and this is precisely how it will be taken. That being said, I want it removed immediately. And heads will roll if it isn't."

Mitch hung up the phone without so much as a goodbye and reclined in his seat once more, but the frown remained a fixture on his lips. They were used to dealing with amateur photography - grainy pictures taken from cell phone cameras or jostling video captured from the shaky hand of a mortal, with cinematography reminiscent of the Blair Witch Project. Mitch himself reviewed every video pulled from the Internet and none of them ever impressed him much.

A high definition video refusing to be plucked from the public eye? Something was rotten in the state of Denmark about this one.

The phone rang once more. Mitch nearly jumped at the suddenness of this one and whipped the receiver into his hand while barking out his traditional, "Mitchell." So help him if this was Len again. He would tear the mortal's limbs off himself.

"Mitchell..." The moment his name resonated in his ears, Mitch closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. Queen Cassandra's voice could only be described as the sound of condescension in its purest form, bottled and poured into every word she uttered.

Mitch brought his hand to his forehead. "Yes, your majesty?" he asked, sighing. One more rung and she would be the one licking his shoes.

"Not pleased to hear from me, darling?" She huffed a chuckle. "Consider the feeling mutual. Would you care to explain to me what the hell is happening?"

"If I had the foggiest idea what you were..."

"There are videos flying around the Internet and every other monarch in this area has been calling all night asking if you fell asleep at the switch. I don't have to remind you, do I, that our position is due greatly because the other kingdoms offer us money for their continued protection? They want to know if one of my dukes has somehow become impotent."

Mitch's eyes flew open. He furrowed his brow. "Videos? Plural?" He laughed. "There's one video I'm aware of and we have a team of people working to bring it down from..."

"There are videos. Multiple. Don't insult my intelligence, I know because my email exploded with forwarded emails containing links to these damn things. Perhaps if you could take a break from having your pet mortal give you a blowjob, you might see this for yourself."

Mitch blinked. Turning his focus toward the laptop at the center of his desk, he slid a fingertip across the touchpad and watched his email pop onto the screen. A page's worth of new messages screamed at him, each sender marking the subject line with some cry for help, often in all-caps. Mitch clicked on one. His eyes scanned the body of the email, then settled on the link to a video directly following the frenzied message. Directing his cursor there, he pressed a button and watched a browser window load.

"Mitchell..."

"I'm looking now," he said. His eyes remained fixed on the screen as an unfamiliar website loaded and the video began to autoplay. A female vampire filled the small box, grinning in high definition clarity at a man lost in her thrall while she circled him. Her fangs glistened, the tips stained crimson while the mortal drew haggard breaths throughout the course of her examination. Mitch brought his hand to his mouth, leaning his elbow on his desk as he watched.

"Drop to your knees," the vampiress said, holding out her hand and pointing toward the ground. Her eyes never left the mortal man.

He did as directed, crashing to the concrete below, matching her gaze measure for measure. Mitch noticed the fang marks on his neck, weeping blood onto the collar of his shirt.

The vampiress grinned. "Very good, little boy. Now, beg me to keep you alive."

At once, the man burst from the glamour, indicating the vampiress herself had to have broken it to allow the man to comply. A sob rose from his throat, his eyes becoming glassy with tears as he commenced a fevered plea for his continued existence. Mitch frowned. His kind could be cruel, as he himself admitted, but those times were few and far between as they often preferred the taste of lust in their victims' blood to the potent scent of fear. It seemed the type of video one would take for blackmail, although he couldn't figure out for the life of him who would release the damning evidence first without issuing a demand.

"There's something wrong about this," Mitch said, speaking for the first time in minutes.

Cassandra groaned. "Yes, darling. It's still on the fucking Internet, that's what is 'wrong' about it."

"No, no, there's something more." Mitch hit stop on the video and pivoted his chair away from the laptop. Switching the receiver from one ear to the other, he sighed, using his now-freed hand to rub his eyes. "This is the kind of thing I'd expect to see if we failed to pay somebody off. Have there be any attempts at blackmail?"

"Do you think I know?!" The queen's voice raised a few octaves. "I certainly haven't seen any on my desk and you know how we handle such nonsense."

"Then somebody else has a debt." Mitch scowled. "I'll kill the bastard myself when I get a hold of them."

"You have bigger fish to fry. Pull these videos immediately before somebody gets the idea they might be real. We can deal with whoever is responsible later." The line went dead as Cassandra hung up and Mitch sighed before lowering the receiver back onto its cradle. His eyes returned to the monitor, his elbow resting on the desk's surface again as Mitch rifled through the remainder of his inbox. Watching each video linked to in each unique petition for assistance, Mitch swallowed past a lump forming in his throat. These videos were all too bloody consistent.

All of them were crystal clear and all of them showed the Lamiae at their worst. Bereft of those times when the vampires would pleasure their victims or only drain a sip or two before erasing the memory of their encounter, they were all gristly caricatures of his brethren, indulgence which contradicted how careful to remain inconspicuous most vampires of his bloodline were. The quality of the video diminished only when security cameras capturing feeds in parking lots or at the back door of some establishment found themselves the featured pieces. Too many all at once. Something wasn't right about this, indeed, and Mitch had lived long enough to recognize an attack when he saw one.

Surely it couldn't be the...

Mitch cut off the thought the moment it surfaced. For nearly twenty years, the Lamiae had been in talks with their offshoot bloodline, young upstarts fashioned only a millennia ago who looked just like their elder compatriots with a few distinct features. They couldn't be photographed; had no reflections and often got themselves into more trouble than they were worth. Mitch couldn't deny, though, these were brothers and sisters and when their battle with a group of mortal spellcasters spilled onto the Lamiae's doorstep, two bloodlines who often ignored each other to the point of downright ignorance started sitting at the table together. Mitch himself attended one conference in particular and worked with a coven master before being summoned to the United States.

"Are you bastards selling us out?" Mitch murmured underneath his breath, his frown becoming more pronounced. One portion of his brain knew this to be ludicrous, while a much more paranoid segment of his mind feared it could be possible. His eyes shifted to his phone again as his hand raised to close the lid to his laptop. His fingers settled on the receiver for lingering moments before lifting it again.

He punched out a number from memory and listened as one ring followed the next. It had to be close to dawn, if not past, but the fortunate thing about somebody like Simon was that his bloodline were not dead to the world the same way the Lamiae were. Mitch sighed while waiting for somebody to pick up. After several rings, the line clicked over to voice mail.

Mitch listened to the message being rattled off in German and switched his thoughts from English into Simon's native tongue. As the tone sounded, Mitch spoke with a flawless accent, "Simon, das bin Mitchell Livingston. Bitte, rufen Sie mich schnell. Ich benötige Ihre Hilfe. Danke."

With a sigh, Mitch hung up the phone and reclined back in his chair. Shutting his eyes once more, he touched the side of his face and attempted to clear his thoughts, not wanting to believe either his bloodline could be so stupid as to anger the wrong people or the other bloodline would be so foolish as to cross the Lamiae. Still, something didn't add up each time he attempted to solve the riddle. Perhaps a piece was missing and perhaps there was an angle he hadn't considered. Whatever it was, Mitch knew two things for damn sure.

For one, the first shots had been fired in a full-scale war.

And secondly, Mitch would come out on top somehow. However he needed to manipulate this, Mitch planned to have his position intact and his political aspirations just as firmly footed, possibly with the coveted kingship he wanted landing on his lap when all was said and done. He opened his eyes and indulged a deep, steadying breath. Nobody made a fool out of Mitch and lived.

His eyes drifted toward the doorway to his study. A cold, calculating smile surfaced on his lips once more. "Oh, Katie?" he called into the other room. The tips of his fangs descended, making his grin appear all the more wicked. "Come here, please. Master is hungry again."

Description
Mitchell Livingston had been born during a time when the abacus still defined the technology of modern computing, in an era before cars and trains dotted the landscape of the country he was raised in. His short, black hair slicked back with a widow's peak perched atop his forehead, he appeared to be the consummation of Count Dracula himself, sharp fangs slumbering in a sea of white. His dark, cunning eyes could cut through men with the simplest of scowls. Nobody liked to anger Mitch. The results often proved fatal.

The evening started as most did for him. After a shower and a fresh change of clothing, his fingers raked through the hair of the woman he kept as a pet. Her gaze met his expectantly - a pretty little blonde thing he picked up in Texas (fuck, but those women were feisty before they were broken) - and a sharp moan punctuated the prick of his fangs into her throat. Mitch only stole a few sips from her, but he knew the day was coming soon when he would have to end her. Her large, brown eyes indicated the lights were on, but the resident was vacating the building.

With a sigh, Mitch settled into his chair, noting how quickly it seemed those pets met their expiration date. The vampires of his bloodline - the Lamiae, according to the Supernatural Order - often supplemented kills with quick feeds and the keeping of pets. The problem being that feeding from a human too often eventually reduced them to a mindless zombie. Granted, he had held onto this one longer than her predecessor, but even the strongest of mortals could not avoid the inevitable. And Mitch had no desire to blood bond with her to keep her rational beyond a few additional feedings.

Other than that, things seemed to be quiet. Mitch reclined his leather office chair and oscillated from side to side on it, pivoting this way and that while his feet remained planted firm on the floor below. His eyes scanned across the pictures hanging on his study walls, seeing visual reminders of a long, accomplished life. A landscape of Britain reminded him of where he had been born and the painting of Austria served as a recollection of the first nest he oversaw. Prints of Romania, Hungary, and Germany each placed markers on one rung after the next up the political ladder. Mitch turned to face the large windows overlooking Portland, Oregon, seeing the lights of downtown from his posh penthouse. One step further, and he would be a king.

If the current one ever abdicated, that is.

A cold, cruel grin curled the corner of his mouth while Mitch's thoughts ran wild of further conquests and loftier titles which might await. Granted, the current monarch had only ascended to the throne a few decades prior and kings and queens could retain their power for centuries if they could manage to beat back the long list of rivals who often amassed. Assassinations were commonplace, but Mitch feared none of that. He knew how to force his opposition to crawl before him, was ruthless enough to demand they lick his polished black dress shoes. For years, he had managed to keep his bloodline underground despite the explosion of the Internet into the public consciousness. It was his idea to employ human hackers in the quest and other kingdoms knew by now they had him to thank for remaining underground.

Needless to say, it would prove to be useful when he made his next vie for power.

A phone rang, breaking Mitch from his thoughts and directing his attention to the black piece of plastic situated at the corner of his desk. Reaching for the receiver, he lifted it and brought it to his ear. "Mitchell," he said simply, the only greeting he ever offered those who called.

A shaky breath preceded the sound of the caller clearing his throat. Mitch resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Nothing annoyed him more than the sound of a nervous mortal. "Um, Mitch," a male voice said, "This is, um, Len... Len McAlister. I... uh..."

"Len, would you care to inform me why you are on the phone with me rather than doing the job we are paying you to perform?"

"Well, that's just it, I..." Len paused. He sighed and cleared his throat again. "We have a situation you should know about."

Mitch glanced down at his free hand, focusing on his fingernails. Idly, he picked at a piece of dirt under one of them. "I'm waiting, Len," he said, not bothering to mask the irritation in his tone of voice.

Len failed to respond. Mitch summoned a mental image of a deer caught in the headlights and fought the urge to be the one about to hit the pitiful creature with the full force of a Hummer. "Uh, well, we have a video," Len finally said. "A video w-which is giving us a little bit of a problem."

"When the fuck did I become technical support?" Mitch asked. "If you have a video, pull the damn thing from the Internet. Did you wake up this morning with a diminished IQ?"

"Well, that's just it." Len's voice gained more confidence. "We've been trying to pull it, but it had a bitch of a firewall protecting it and... and Phil, you see, he tried a DDoS, but apparently it's not just on one server, or two for that matter. This website's being hosted on several servers and the video's already been up for longer than a few minutes."

Mitch sighed. "Would you care to translate that into something other than your confounded techno-babble?"

"Basically, this fucker's not going down without a fight."

"Then bring it down, Len." The cadence of Mitch's voice remained cool; unaffected. "Fight or no fight."

"But... um... what if it's already been downloaded, Mitch? What the fuck are we supposed to do, then?"

"Well, I would hope for your sake it hasn't, but it is only one video." Mitch grinned. "Your kind are ignorant little ants who hate anything interrupting your menial marching orders. Get rid of the video. Destroy it and the little ants will think whatever they watched was nothing more than a hoax."

"Well, alright, but you should know something about this video, Mitch."

Mitch raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. "What would that be?"

Len drew another shaky breath. "It's high definition. Better quality than any video I've ever pulled down from the 'net before. A-a-and it's of an attack. Two of you guys feeding on a woman with it pausing as she screams. As far as ugly videos go, it's pretty bad."

"Which sounds like little more than a well-produced horror movie," Mitch said, but he couldn't control the downward turn of his facial expression. A fledgling form of dread knotted his stomach and for a moment his ironclad resolve sustained a wave of turbulence. Mitch recovered, speaking his next statement as much to himself as to Len. "It doesn't matter what they captured or how well, your kind want to believe it is a hoax and this is precisely how it will be taken. That being said, I want it removed immediately. And heads will roll if it isn't."

Mitch hung up the phone without so much as a goodbye and reclined in his seat once more, but the frown remained a fixture on his lips. They were used to dealing with amateur photography - grainy pictures taken from cell phone cameras or jostling video captured from the shaky hand of a mortal, with cinematography reminiscent of the Blair Witch Project. Mitch himself reviewed every video pulled from the Internet and none of them ever impressed him much.

A high definition video refusing to be plucked from the public eye? Something was rotten in the state of Denmark about this one.

The phone rang once more. Mitch nearly jumped at the suddenness of this one and whipped the receiver into his hand while barking out his traditional, "Mitchell." So help him if this was Len again. He would tear the mortal's limbs off himself.

"Mitchell..." The moment his name resonated in his ears, Mitch closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. Queen Cassandra's voice could only be described as the sound of condescension in its purest form, bottled and poured into every word she uttered.

Mitch brought his hand to his forehead. "Yes, your majesty?" he asked, sighing. One more rung and she would be the one licking his shoes.

"Not pleased to hear from me, darling?" She huffed a chuckle. "Consider the feeling mutual. Would you care to explain to me what the hell is happening?"

"If I had the foggiest idea what you were..."

"There are videos flying around the Internet and every other monarch in this area has been calling all night asking if you fell asleep at the switch. I don't have to remind you, do I, that our position is due greatly because the other kingdoms offer us money for their continued protection? They want to know if one of my dukes has somehow become impotent."

Mitch's eyes flew open. He furrowed his brow. "Videos? Plural?" He laughed. "There's one video I'm aware of and we have a team of people working to bring it down from..."

"There are videos. Multiple. Don't insult my intelligence, I know because my email exploded with forwarded emails containing links to these damn things. Perhaps if you could take a break from having your pet mortal give you a blowjob, you might see this for yourself."

Mitch blinked. Turning his focus toward the laptop at the center of his desk, he slid a fingertip across the touchpad and watched his email pop onto the screen. A page's worth of new messages screamed at him, each sender marking the subject line with some cry for help, often in all-caps. Mitch clicked on one. His eyes scanned the body of the email, then settled on the link to a video directly following the frenzied message. Directing his cursor there, he pressed a button and watched a browser window load.

"Mitchell..."

"I'm looking now," he said. His eyes remained fixed on the screen as an unfamiliar website loaded and the video began to autoplay. A female vampire filled the small box, grinning in high definition clarity at a man lost in her thrall while she circled him. Her fangs glistened, the tips stained crimson while the mortal drew haggard breaths throughout the course of her examination. Mitch brought his hand to his mouth, leaning his elbow on his desk as he watched.

"Drop to your knees," the vampiress said, holding out her hand and pointing toward the ground. Her eyes never left the mortal man.

He did as directed, crashing to the concrete below, matching her gaze measure for measure. Mitch noticed the fang marks on his neck, weeping blood onto the collar of his shirt.

The vampiress grinned. "Very good, little boy. Now, beg me to keep you alive."

At once, the man burst from the glamour, indicating the vampiress herself had to have broken it to allow the man to comply. A sob rose from his throat, his eyes becoming glassy with tears as he commenced a fevered plea for his continued existence. Mitch frowned. His kind could be cruel, as he himself admitted, but those times were few and far between as they often preferred the taste of lust in their victims' blood to the potent scent of fear. It seemed the type of video one would take for blackmail, although he couldn't figure out for the life of him who would release the damning evidence first without issuing a demand.

"There's something wrong about this," Mitch said, speaking for the first time in minutes.

Cassandra groaned. "Yes, darling. It's still on the fucking Internet, that's what is 'wrong' about it."

"No, no, there's something more." Mitch hit stop on the video and pivoted his chair away from the laptop. Switching the receiver from one ear to the other, he sighed, using his now-freed hand to rub his eyes. "This is the kind of thing I'd expect to see if we failed to pay somebody off. Have there be any attempts at blackmail?"

"Do you think I know?!" The queen's voice raised a few octaves. "I certainly haven't seen any on my desk and you know how we handle such nonsense."

"Then somebody else has a debt." Mitch scowled. "I'll kill the bastard myself when I get a hold of them."

"You have bigger fish to fry. Pull these videos immediately before somebody gets the idea they might be real. We can deal with whoever is responsible later." The line went dead as Cassandra hung up and Mitch sighed before lowering the receiver back onto its cradle. His eyes returned to the monitor, his elbow resting on the desk's surface again as Mitch rifled through the remainder of his inbox. Watching each video linked to in each unique petition for assistance, Mitch swallowed past a lump forming in his throat. These videos were all too bloody consistent.

All of them were crystal clear and all of them showed the Lamiae at their worst. Bereft of those times when the vampires would pleasure their victims or only drain a sip or two before erasing the memory of their encounter, they were all gristly caricatures of his brethren, indulgence which contradicted how careful to remain inconspicuous most vampires of his bloodline were. The quality of the video diminished only when security cameras capturing feeds in parking lots or at the back door of some establishment found themselves the featured pieces. Too many all at once. Something wasn't right about this, indeed, and Mitch had lived long enough to recognize an attack when he saw one.

Surely it couldn't be the...

Mitch cut off the thought the moment it surfaced. For nearly twenty years, the Lamiae had been in talks with their offshoot bloodline, young upstarts fashioned only a millennia ago who looked just like their elder compatriots with a few distinct features. They couldn't be photographed; had no reflections and often got themselves into more trouble than they were worth. Mitch couldn't deny, though, these were brothers and sisters and when their battle with a group of mortal spellcasters spilled onto the Lamiae's doorstep, two bloodlines who often ignored each other to the point of downright ignorance started sitting at the table together. Mitch himself attended one conference in particular and worked with a coven master before being summoned to the United States.

"Are you bastards selling us out?" Mitch murmured underneath his breath, his frown becoming more pronounced. One portion of his brain knew this to be ludicrous, while a much more paranoid segment of his mind feared it could be possible. His eyes shifted to his phone again as his hand raised to close the lid to his laptop. His fingers settled on the receiver for lingering moments before lifting it again.

He punched out a number from memory and listened as one ring followed the next. It had to be close to dawn, if not past, but the fortunate thing about somebody like Simon was that his bloodline were not dead to the world the same way the Lamiae were. Mitch sighed while waiting for somebody to pick up. After several rings, the line clicked over to voice mail.

Mitch listened to the message being rattled off in German and switched his thoughts from English into Simon's native tongue. As the tone sounded, Mitch spoke with a flawless accent, "Simon, das bin Mitchell Livingston. Bitte, rufen Sie mich schnell. Ich benötige Ihre Hilfe. Danke."

With a sigh, Mitch hung up the phone and reclined back in his chair. Shutting his eyes once more, he touched the side of his face and attempted to clear his thoughts, not wanting to believe either his bloodline could be so stupid as to anger the wrong people or the other bloodline would be so foolish as to cross the Lamiae. Still, something didn't add up each time he attempted to solve the riddle. Perhaps a piece was missing and perhaps there was an angle he hadn't considered. Whatever it was, Mitch knew two things for damn sure.

For one, the first shots had been fired in a full-scale war.

And secondly, Mitch would come out on top somehow. However he needed to manipulate this, Mitch planned to have his position intact and his political aspirations just as firmly footed, possibly with the coveted kingship he wanted landing on his lap when all was said and done. He opened his eyes and indulged a deep, steadying breath. Nobody made a fool out of Mitch and lived.

His eyes drifted toward the doorway to his study. A cold, calculating smile surfaced on his lips once more. "Oh, Katie?" he called into the other room. The tips of his fangs descended, making his grin appear all the more wicked. "Come here, please. Master is hungry again."