Chapter 140: The Blood God Ritual!
"My lord. We've found Deacon's location."
Dragonetti's fist hit the table as he stood up. Something cruel had found its way onto his face.
"Good. Good. Found him." He let the word settle. "I want that bastard to answer for what he's done."
If Deacon had kept his ambitions under control, the clan wouldn't be in a position where every hand was raised against them.
"Where?" Dragonetti's eyes were on the servant.
"My lord, Deacon is at the Temple of Eternal Night."
The Temple of Eternal Night was a vast structure the vampire ancestors had built together in a distant age. So distant that most of the records about its purpose had been lost. For as long as any current member of the Council could remember, it had served as a monument to something no one fully understood, a display piece, nothing more.
But Dragonetti knew Deacon's ambitions well enough to know that if he was there, he wasn't there to admire architecture.
Had Frost actually managed to learn what the temple was for?
Something felt wrong. "Who else is at the temple?"
"My lord, the other eleven members of the Pureblood Council are also present."
"Eleven." Dragonetti's eyes narrowed. "Ash and Ligaru as well?"
"Yes, my lord."
He was quiet for a moment.
Those elders had spent years treating Frost as an inferior: made vampire, no pure blood, no standing. The contempt in the Pureblood Council ran deep and in one direction: pure-bloods looked down on the made, who looked down on humans. It was foundational. It wasn't the kind of thing that shifted on its own.
And only days ago those same elders had been calling for Frost to be gift-wrapped and delivered to the human authorities.
Why would they go to him voluntarily now?
Something about this wasn't adding up.
He was still turning it over when the noise started outside the chamber door. Shouts. Something hit the floor. One of the guards' voices, demanding an explanation: "How dare you walk into the Pureblood Council without permission!"
"Get out—"
BANG.
The voice stopped. Footsteps replaced it, growing louder.
The door opened. A figure walked in with a dozen armed vampires at his back.
The servant moved to intercept. A boot put him on the floor.
"Out of the way. Nobody asked you."
Dragonetti recognized him. "Quinn."
"Your employer sent you?"
Quinn's expression produced something that might have been a smile if you were charitable about it. "Right in one. No prize, though."
He accepted the shotgun one of his people passed him and leveled it at Dragonetti's head.
"My employer heard you've been looking for him. He sent me to extend an invitation."
"You can decline, of course."
"The consequence of declining is that I put a pure-silver round through your skull."
"I'm told even a pureblood doesn't come back from that particular injury."
Dragonetti looked up at the barrel without moving. His fist closed until the knuckle popped. "This violates every rule we have. Even you know that."
Quinn looked like he'd heard something genuinely funny.
"Rules." He let the word sit. "Afraid of what? The scorn of other vampires?"
He spread his hands. "Let me describe what your rules have accomplished. Less territory every decade. Hiding. Constant hiding. Follow them long enough and you won't have anyone left to keep them."
He glanced at the door. "Don't consider stalling. We cleared your security people before we came in, which is why we walked in like we owned the place."
"So." He gestured toward the exit. "After you."
The Temple of Eternal Night.
When Dragonetti was escorted in, Frost's face broke into something warm.
"Look at that! Would you look at who it is!"
He walked forward with both arms out, the performance of someone greeting a long-lost friend.
"I hear the Council has been blaming me for the current state of affairs."
"A somewhat heavy charge, don't you think?" The playfulness in it was genuine.
A female elder cut in before Dragonetti could respond. "You started this. You provoked Umbrella Corporation, you triggered the chain reaction that followed, and now you're asking why the clan is in this position."
Frost smiled and said nothing.
Moral arguments pressed against someone who had no moral framework simply didn't land. Frost had no framework of that kind, and he knew it, which was why the accusation didn't register at all.
"Regarding the deaths of our kind, I am genuinely grieved." He said it smoothly. "But the good news is that I've found the way to expand our clan at scale."
He looked at the ancient structure around them, something alive in his expression. "And the means are right here. In this place. And in each of you."
He turned to Dragonetti. "Chairman, I have spent considerable time on this. I have fully translated the Book of Erebus. I know how to summon the Blood God."
"The conditions are specific: twelve pureblood vampire souls as sacrifice, and the blood of a Daywalker."
"Once the ritual is complete, I become the Blood God's vessel. The blood tide will sweep the world. Every human will be converted."
He paused, letting it land.
"The vampire clan will be great again."
"So. In the service of restoring our kind to what we should be." He brought his hands together in a single measured clap.
"I'll need each of you to offer your lives."
At the sound, two vampires brought someone in from the shadows.
Eric Brooks.
More widely known by his other name.
The Daywalker.
The final piece of what the ritual required.
Elsewhere, a SHIELD notification arrived on Matthew's phone.
[NEW MISSION: Interrupt the Blood God summoning ritual.
Location: [coordinates]
Target structure confirmed. Unidentified energy readings are spiking rapidly.
MISSION BRIEFING: We have just received communication from vampire hunter Eric Brooks.
He passed on intelligence regarding an active covert operation within the vampire population.
At the target location, Deacon Frost, the architect of recent vampire activity, is conducting a ritual capable of converting the entire human population. He refers to it as the Blood God Ritual.
Given the extreme danger level and global threat scope of this mission, SHIELD is dispatching a team of elite operatives to assist your company.
Stop the ritual before it reaches completion.]
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