Chapter 30: The Hunt Begins
Steam rolled through the brothel bathhouse in thick white clouds, clinging to skin, wine mugs, and half-heard laughter.
Four men and more than a dozen women filled the room. Some were bathing. Some were drinking. Some were doing what men and women did when they believed the night belonged to them.
The hunters had chosen the place precisely because it felt far from duty.
For once, they were celebrating.
Not a victory.
A reunion.
For years the old keeps had drifted apart—some fallen, some starved, some reduced to little more than names whispered over campfires. But the sudden rise of the Vampire Guild had changed everything. Hunters from broken lodges, forest keeps, border houses, and forgotten bloodlines had begun gathering again.
Rovena was poor land. Thin mines, weak rivers, little sorcerous ore, and no great treasures buried beneath its soil. That was why few vampires, sorcerers, and other powerful bloodlines ever settled there.
But vampire blood itself?
That was a resource worth crossing seas for.
A man dressed in bright women's silks shoved open the steam-room door.
"Damn it, Pinky Toes," growled the broadest of the men without looking up. "I said no disturbances until midnight."
That was Asite.
Scarred from forehead to ankle, thick-necked, and ugly in the way only old killers could be. His hair was braided back from a face marked by too many battles to count, and even half-drunk he looked capable of strangling a horse.
"I'm afraid this cannot wait, Asite," Pinky Toes said.
That made them all look up.
Pinky Toes—who had earned the name for reasons nobody ever told the same way twice—was not easily shaken.
Tonight, he looked sick.
The youngest hunter in the room, Yorin, lowered his mug first. "Is it business?"
"No," Pinky Toes said quietly. "Worse."
Brann, the one-eyed hunter lounging in the corner with a woman over his lap, shoved her aside and sat up. "Then spit it out."
Pinky Toes held out a folded strip of parchment.
"A raven came from Wilder-East."
The room went still.Asite took the parchment and read aloud.
"To Asite:The Keep is under attack by a vampire. It claims to be Pecundo's grandson, Leno of Ennox. Our leader has fallen at the hands of this monster."
No one moved for a few breaths.
Then Asite rose.
Water ran down his scarred body as he stepped out of the bath and reached for a towel.
"Get the horses ready," he said.
Yorin stood too quickly and nearly slipped. "We're hunting already?"
Asite wiped his face and looked at him with flat eyes. "Boy, if Wilder-East has fallen, then we are already late."
A woman near the wall whispered, "Pecundo?"
That name still carried weight.
Especially among hunters old enough to remember what his betrayal had cost.
Brann spat into the bathwater. "Should've gutted that bloodline when we had the chance."
A new voice came from the doorway.
"You mean when your keep still had the men to try?"
Everyone turned.
A tall woman stood there in dark traveling leathers, a frost-gray cloak hanging from one shoulder. Her hair was braided with silver rings, and three hooked chains rested at her hip beside a crescent-bladed knife.
Velka of Frost Keep.
One of the foreign hunters.She had arrived in Rovena only two days earlier with others like her—hunters from harsher lands, richer keeps, and blood traditions Rovena had nearly forgotten.
Brann glared at her. "You talk too much for someone new to our soil."
Velka smiled faintly. "And you talk too much for a man missing an eye."
Asite cut through the tension before either of them could push it further.
"How many came with you from Frost Keep?" he asked.
"Five," Velka replied. "And two from Red Hollow joined us on the road. More are moving south."
Yorin frowned. "All this for one half-vampire?"
Velka looked at him the way one might look at a boy who had brought a stick to a siege.
"No," she said. "Not for one half-vampire. For a bloodline."
That quieted him.
Brann took the parchment from Asite and read it again, slower this time.
"Pecundo's grandson," he muttered. "If that's true, then we're not hunting some feral gutter-spawn."
"No," said Asite. "We're hunting a mistake that lived too long."
He turned to Pinky Toes. "Wake the others. I want every saddle tightened, every weapon checked, every dog fed blood-salt. No one rides soft."
Pinky Toes nodded and hurried off.
The women in the room had gone silent now, sensing that the mood had changed from lust to violence.
Velka stepped deeper into the steam.
"If the report is true," she said, "then Wilder-East did not merely lose men. It lost face. Every keep in Rovena will react."
"Let them," Asite said. "The more hunters riding, the less room that monster has to breathe."
Brann gave a humorless chuckle. "Unless the Guild gets to him first."
That drew another silence.
Because that, too, was possible.
The rise of the Vampire Guild had dragged old things into the light. It had drawn vampires out of hiding, stirred sleeping bloodlines, and forced the hunters to unite before the world changed without them.
Asite grabbed his clothes.
"No Guild," he said. "No elves. No foreign keep lays claim to this one before we do."
Velka's eyes sharpened. "You think this is about pride?"
"It's always about pride," Brann muttered.
"No," Asite said, dressing now with brutal efficiency. "It's about proof. If Pecundo's blood still walks, then the old failure is ours to correct."
Velka said nothing to that.
But the look in her eyes said she had not crossed half a continent to let Rovena's starving hunters claim the prize alone.
Far from the brothel, somewhere deep in the woods, a man sat skinning a rabbit when a raven landed on his shoulder.
At first he tried to shake it off.
Then he noticed the tiny pouch tied to its leg.
"Oh," he murmured. "You're a carrier."
He set the rabbit aside, wiped his hands on the grass, and opened the pouch.
Inside was a folded message.
"To Craig:The Keep is under attack by a vampire. It claims to be Pecundo's grandson, Leno of Ennox. Our leader has fallen at the hands of this monster."
Craig stared at the message a long while.
Then he looked at the skinned rabbit beside him and sighed.
"So much for a good meal."
He gathered wood in silence, arranged it carefully, and poured black powder at the center before setting it alight.
Green smoke rose into the sky.
Emergency smoke.
It would burn for two full days.
Hunters miles away would smell it and know that blood had been named.
Craig tucked the letter beneath a rock, gathered his things, and disappeared into the trees.
"My apologies, Your Grace," said the old elf, bowing his head. "A raven has arrived from Wilder-East."
King CaPreva was at dinner with his wife, his twin children, and his mother, Queen Est'Chamali.
His wife frowned. "Can it not wait until morning?"
"I'm afraid not, Your Grace."
The king held out his hand.The old elf placed the letter in it.
CaPreva read it once.
Then his face turned pale.
His mother noticed first. "What is it?"He handed her the letter.
"Uran," he said to the old elf, "take the twins to their chambers. Post guards outside. No one enters without my word."
The old elf obeyed at once.
Queen Est'Chamali read the message and exhaled slowly.
"Oh dear," she murmured. "So it is true."
The king drank from his cup, but his hand was tense around it.
"I knew the boy was not human," said the queen mother. "But I did not expect this."
CaPrevà leaned back in his chair.
"Pecundo's grandson," he said. "I should have expected nothing simpler."
His wife looked between them. "Then what do we do?"
The king's expression hardened.
"General Bushi is no longer our immediate concern," he said. "If Wilder-East has been breached and a half-vampire walks free with that bloodline, then we cannot afford hesitation."
His mother folded the letter carefully. "Or we could stay out of it. If he is wise, he will flee. If he is foolish, the hunters will kill him."
CaPreva shook his head.
"You know little of Wilder-East if you believe that. If he truly broke their defenses and killed their leader inside their own keep, then our border guards will not stop him."
"Then send men," said his wife quietly.The king nodded.
"Not men," he said. "Elites."
His mother studied him. "To kill the boy?"
"To make sure he does not become what his blood allows."
No one at the table spoke after that.
Because each of them understood the same thing.
This was no longer about one wandering blacksmith.
This was about what could rise if he survived.
By nightfall, ravens crossed Rovena in all directions.
Green smoke rose from lonely woods.
Hunters saddled horses in ruined keeps and roadside inns.
Elven scouts took to the trees.
Foreign hunters checked silver chains, blood-salt, rune hooks, and weapons forged for creatures that did not die easily.
And somewhere to the south, unaware of how fast the net was tightening, Leno of Ennox rode toward the coast with the whole land beginning to turn against him