In the sleek confines of his asymmetrical, enclosed fighter, Vorteth deftly maneuvered out of ceespace. The sudden brightness of the nearby orange star flared in his visual sensors, leaving him temporarily blinded to the dark, looming planet ahead of him.

A string of blaring beeps heralded a successful link to one of the beacons in orbit, flooding his monitor with textual messages and some missed calls, notably one from Turk in the form of a prerecorded holo-message. Annoyance and trepidation both etched themselves upon Vorteth's angular features as he cycled through the prompts while awkwardly grappling with the daft control yoke.

With the sharp whine of his engines, he brought the ship down through the vapid, violent atmosphere of Renalus IV. The planet’s unnatural tilt had doomed the majority of the surface to an eternal darkness plagued by an endless electrical tempest. The sudden onslaught of turbulent gale force winds made it incredibly difficult to maintain his trajectory.

He despised flying. It was a tiring task he often left to subordinates whenever possible.

Arcs of incandescent, amethyst lightning split the sky with an almost rhythmic staccato of thunderous booms. Each deafening crack was loud enough to wake the dreaded dead. And despite his mounting displeasure, Vorteth couldn’t deny that it was one of the most beautiful phenomena he’d seen anywhere in the galaxy.

But its dangers were not to be underestimated, especially if one was unfamiliar with the finer particulates of in-flight shield modulation. An over-tuned and improperly adjusted shield frequency would draw the lightning…all of the lightning and render a foolish pilot down to his very last atom. It was a natural, unnatural defense mechanism that was a fittingly dramatic aspect of his coven’s home planet. 

The brimstone-black clouds parted as he finally cleared the bulk of it and leveled out, his ship’s nose aimed precariously at the distant horizon. With a few clicks on the monitor, he brought the message from Turk alive.

Wearing her usual scowl, her tall form paced in front of the recorder lens, her crimson robes flowing behind her as she moved. “As per your orders, our men report no unusual behavior from either Aarons or Soren in your absence. It appears Soren and the human woman, Tina, or whatever the stars her name is, cracked the code for Zahn’s emergency beacon just last night. Seems they hope to draw in some wolves for the good doctor and her cronies to study.”  

He paused the footage and the slightest hint of repugnance made his lip curl. Not at what they had done, that was a more than sufficient stratagem for the moment. But the very thought of that insolent wolf doing anything besides choking on his own blood, sometimes agitated him beyond reason. The fact that the boy was also a frustrating enigma did little to dissuade his homicidal inclinations towards him. 

At first, Vorteth simply surmised that Soren had sought out a vampir elder at random, blindly searching their many OmniGraft facilities in the hopes of running into one. But as time went on, the more he suspected that he had sought him out specifically. For what reason, besides needing starting capital, he still did not know; if anything it would’ve been smarter for him to avoid Vorteth given their history.

It also begged the question of why he’d come to his sworn enemies, and not one of the many banking entities in the galaxy at large. There were certainly more than a handful of institutions of legal and illegal nature that would have accepted the terms of his collateralized lending.

Alongside flying, Vorteth also despised not knowing. And that made the inability of his best spies to gather any actionable intel on the boy’s doings before pairing with the human, all the more enraging. It was unlike him to allow anyone to get under his skin, but Soren had managed to purposefully do so at every turn. It was either a desperate subconscious plea for assisted suicide or maybe he was every bit as stupid as he had initially estimated.

Either way, he couldn’t wait to crush his spine into dust.

His destination grew closer by the second, a far off silhouette carved out of an ebony cliffside, camouflaged by the jagged rocks of the closely clustered escarpments. Vorteth aimed his nose down and began his landing approach through the tight and tenebrous cavern.

The silhouette’s form further materialized, a structure reminiscent of a dark castle from ancient European lore. Defensive turrets mounted strategically along the crevasse, automatically turned to regard his vessel, their barrels ominously swift and menacing.

Vorteth, unconcerned by the potential danger, resumed the holo-message as the landing tower fervently confirmed his identity codes.  

“On another note, even though our fellow covens have agreed to convene on the shipment of products you selected,” Turk continued, and bit at her lip as she usually did when she was thinking. “Unspokenly, they seemed incredibly worried that even with the proper precautions, the basic principles of the technology, if released, could finally allow the humans to catch up as they say.”

Although he usually saw the other covens as overly cautious, that was one concern he actually shared. But as old as Vorteth was, he knew that human ingenuity would eventually find its way around their carefully crafted monopoly on cybernetics. So he saw this opportunity to gain a greater foothold in the nearly impregnable Directorate well worth the risks. While the Magistrates’ collective territories were limited in scope, their technology made the government a rising power in the galaxy. Without a change in structure or a fundamental shift in their technological progress, within a few short centuries the Union would no longer be able to match its might. 

Tani, or Tina as Turk so wonderfully misnomered, seemed capable and shrewd. But already he could tell that at her core she was idealistic and compassionate. Two among many weaknesses that Vorteth had been exploiting in human-beings since time immemorial. After they arranged for her peers' well-timed accidents, he would make a point to keep her young mind firmly under his thumb. But he would have to be careful to appear as an advisor, a balm, a friend, not the puppet-master he intended to be.

Quickly lining up his fighter as he stopped to hover above the fortress, a barely perceptible door split open as he gently descended and released his landing gear. The ship hydraulics bobbed as he set down in the dark cavern below, made even darker by the door shutting above him with a stony thud. His eyes adjusted quickly and the fuzzy infrared signatures of the hangars crew formed around him.

Vorteth unsealed the opaque cockpit and stood up to take in the familiar air around him. Even after all these years, sometimes the very sensation of breathing felt strangely foreign.

It hadn’t been a necessity for him in a long time.

The smell of sweet human blood nearly overwhelmed his powerful olfactory organs and sent a tingle running up his spine that was beyond simple elation and was quickly approaching full blown titillation.

“My Lord?” The dockmaster asked, Zar was his name if his own recollection was accurate.

“Yes?” Vorteth asked as he reigned in his visible sensory excitement.

“Turk has asked that you find her in the meeting chamber, she’s prepared to call the coven leadership when you arrive.”

Vorteth took in another deep breath as the crew began refueling and maintaining his ship. “Very well. Have a few drinks brought to the chamber, I am absolutely famished.”

“Yes, my Lord,” Zar waved off some of his subordinates to accomplish the task as he helped guide Vorteth down the dismount stairs. “Glad you have returned to us safe and sound.”

Vorteth wasted no time in making his way towards the meeting, his powerful, unerring stride made many a passerby tuck in submissively against the walls or duck back the way they’d come entirely. Even though he appreciated the occasional hesitation and fear in his subordinates, he was glad to see that not all cowered at the very sight of him.

The vampirs bold enough to hold their ground moved with relatively silent efficiency, their generally robed forms, sleek and agile, navigated the shadows with the ease of creatures genetically predisposed to complete darkness. Their eyes aglow with various shades of crimson, bronze, and saffron. 

The sparse, dim ambient lighting barely illuminated the intricate carvings adorning the walls on either side, depicting scenes of historic vampiric lore and myth. Each vignette was a colorful tribute to the eternal night and to Noctalis. He who had wrapped his arms lovingly around his proud children like a warm blanket. In return, they gave selflessly back to him in blood, blood shed by the blade.

And Vorteth gave gratefully every chance he got.

The doors to his destination snapped open as he arrived. Turk shot to her feet, having been seated at the other end of the long, onyx, antique table situated in the center of the room. Two rather large goblets of blood had been placed at either end.

“Sorry I’m late, getting off the Isle of Man in all that heavy outgoing traffic was interesting to say the least. There’s way too many damn humans in this galaxy.” Vorteth said as he removed his sword, carefully setting its sheathed form down upon the table with reverence. Then he whipped off his outer robes and draped them around the chair he’d chosen contrary to Turk.

“It must be Opposite Day if you’re apologizing to me, my Lord.” She said slyly.

“Opposite Day, Opposite Day?” He pondered it for a moment as he sat down. “Sounds self-explanatory, but it doesn’t quite ring a bell.”

She smiled. “I’m sure you were worried about more important things in its heyday. Now, the others said they would be available for another twenty minutes or so. Do you think that will be sufficient, or should we reschedule?”

Vorteth cracked his neck and took a much needed sip of the delicious red tonic in front of him. “I didn’t come all this way to not speak, call them now.”

If the paranoid fools had been comfortable with a transmission from the space-station, he’d still be there.

Turk aptly pressed at the controls built into the table, a small door opened at its center to reveal a holo-emitter. The device began to weave an intangible web of  light that slowly weaved around the room, painting a vivid picture of the twelve other coven leaders sitting around the table. Each lounging in their respective chambers. Some were seated on thrones of bone, others reclined in luxury furniture behind obnoxiously large desks. But the coven leader he found the most interesting was Talia, who was nude, being fed grapes while resting on a large pool of blood.

They certainly were a dramatic bunch.

The meeting room suddenly felt pedestrian in comparison. Perhaps he should have conducted this meeting in a more theatrical section of his compound? Like the slave pens, or the blood pits, or maybe even his bathroom tub?

“Vorteth, how are you?” One of them called out, the speaker’s relatively small stature, and youthful face belied his incredible power.

“Adrian, how was your trip to the tropical springs of Carsis?”

“Your spies serve you well. But it was wonderful, since you ask. Beautifully unique beverages, both alcoholic and blood alike. A bit too hot to be covering up all the time though, which made going out at night more preferable. Unfortunate that it wasn’t as beautiful as it was during the day.”

“I’m surprised they even allowed you to consume alcohol. Tell me, did anyone try to scoop you up and place you into a childcare service again?”

Adrian smiled with just a hint of maliciousness. “That was one time Vorteth, when will you let that go?”

He looked over at Turk who was trying her best to repress her amusement. She wasn’t beholden to the other elders, but it wasn’t wise to needlessly make an enemy of one as an inferior. “Just as soon as you graduate high-school.”

“Enough, I don't have the time for the usual pleasantries, I thought you were in a hurry to discuss this proposition?” Talia interjected.

“You’re right, I could not resist the urge, apologies Adrian. Now, regarding the topic of discussion, a request for additional cybernetics is a part of one of my…colleagues requirements. There’s a lot of money and power to be gained and since we all have an equal controlling investment in the company, what say you all to a limited, controlled release of 2,000 units of our second latest generation of designs? Each will ship with the highest level of software restrictions.” 

“Software can eventually be figured out, you know how incessant humans are.” Akpan spoke up, his elbow pressed into his knee as he brooded on his throne of skeletal remains.

“I do, I also plan to install additional countermeasures to deny reverse-engineering, and each unit will also be fitted with a tracking device capable of pinging off a variety of beacons and other information systems. I do not take this undertaking lightly.”

Talia’s men helped raise her from the pool and she walked closer to the camera while wiping the blood from her slender, incredibly pale form. “All the security precautions in the galaxy are great, but how are your colleagues going to pay for this? I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of our price points on even our third latest designs.”

Vorteth smiled as he leaned back in his seat. “Turk, you brought some of their collateral with you, you want to take this one?”

A flash of surprise flashed in her bright aurous eyes, but she quickly contained it as she stood. “Of course, My Lord,” She walked over to a crate situated at about chest height at the back of the room. “For all of the flaws in this unconventional alliance my Lords, believe me when I say that the benefits far outweigh the risks.” Turk opened the lid of the crate, and as sure as Vorteth was that it hadn’t, the metal inside appeared to glow, to illuminate the room. The crate was filled to the brim with head-sized chunks of jagged, unrefined silver.

The reveal made the heads of the other elders perk up, the minor interest they’d expressed before had noticeably risen exponentially.

“It can’t be real…I myself am a collector, and I only have a few trinkets left. There hasn’t been a reliable vein of silver anywhere since we came to the Draco galaxy…and going back to Earth isn’t worth the risks.”

Vorteth smiled as he rose and walked to inspect the bullion himself. “It is very real I promise you. As grating as the young traitorous wolf has been, the boy does have access to some incredible resources. With the amount of silver he’s showcased so far, I’d dare say his wealth could potentially rival ours, individually of course.”

“Oh, I’d forgotten all about the werewolf, tell me Vorteth, why have you been so open about this little group of yours, you’re usually much more reserved?” Akpan asked.

Vorteth frowned with contempt. “Usually? Only just today did you all reopen your arms to accept my people at the table. So I beg the question, what does usually mean?”

Akpan sneered. “We’ve been rather cordial so far…so let’s continue to do so.”

His eyes bored into Akpan, eager to meet a further challenge, but he gradually relented. “Fine, but to answer your question, I’ve chosen to reveal these plans because we all know trying to hide them from you all is moot, plus, I need these cybernetics, and for that I need you.”

“Perhaps..” Turk started and waited for Vorteth to nod his approval. “Perhaps, this is an opportunity for our respective houses to once again fully reunite under a single purpose, historically we’ve always been strongest together.”

“Well of course we’re strongest together little girl, who isn’t?” Adrian spat, although it didn’t sound nearly as condescending as Vorteth would have expected. “But for what purpose? We have everything we need now.”

A sharp smile opened upon her stunning visage. “We could use this opportunity to further cement ourselves as a true power in the galaxy. This Directorate leader, she may be a point to focus our political aspirations. Back on Earth, we had our hands in everything. Politics, the world economy, global social movements. We controlled whole world events from the shadows. Now it seems that we just hide in them, my Lords.”

Vorteth laughed genuinely, drawing the slitted glances of the rest of the elders. “Her words ring true, we’ve undeniably stagnated. And now the question is, what are we prepared to do about it?”

Talia finally covered herself and sat down in a large, ornate chair. “You really think that this halfcocked plan is our way into greener pastures? Adrian’s right, we’re already rich, we have some political power, and we’re all perfectly content. Why should we follow you, what can you promise us?”

“All I can promise you is an opportunity for great change. At the moment, humanity has fooled itself into believing that it has no true natural predators besides itself. They’ve grown fearless, powerful, and they’re everywhere. One day it’ll be too late, the traversable universe too immense for us to control. This woman the General has so graciously introduced us to is our in, I can feel it in my bones.”

“You seem so sure.” Talia said, her tone deadpan.

“If I am right, we all gain, and if I’m wrong, only I lose.”

They exchanged glances and to outside eyes their faces were expressionless, but he’d known most of them for over a thousand years and he could see the scheming wheels turning in their ancient heads. Plotting out what they could gain over the table, and what they could possibly sneak underneath it. They’d already voted without saying a word.

Eventually, they all looked to Adrian expectantly, he was the eldest. And while they had given up on any one of them leading a long time ago, age was still respected in a conciliary capacity.

Adrian sighed. “A thousand units, and if your hilding colleagues don’t like that they can take it up with me. We’ll see how successful that initial shipment is implemented and move forward…cautiously. We can discuss more of the finer details at a later date.”

Vorteth nodded ponderingly. He’d expected they’d opt for a lower number, but a thousand he could still work with. “Excellent. Does anyone else have anything to add?”

“What of the wolves?” A raspy voice asked.

It was Ceres, someone who hadn't spoken yet. He was a tall, but thin man known for his silence and social invisibility. But when he had something to say, it was usually well thought out.

“They are of little consequence, they’ve grown increasingly unorganized over the years, less disciplined. At this point they’re just a run of the mill mercenary group, not the arch-nemeses they once were. Zahn’s former leadership at best was simply a focal point, keeping them loosely clustered together. I personally have little interest in them, but Soren seems to have quite the malicious machinations in mind for them.”

“True, they are but a shadow. But unlike that mutt, you’ve fought against the wolves time and time again for a millennia, you know how they get. In the past, when we’ve put too much pressure on them or backed them into a corner, they’ve lunged out like the godless animals they are. In those darkest days they’ve frustratingly risen to the occasion time and time again.”

Vorteth tilted his head inquisitively, but said nothing.

“My only point is,” Ceres continued. “Be cognizant of how he goes about dealing with them, because we may accidently make them a larger problem than they are now or have ever been.”

---

“My Lord, my Lord, my Lord!” Turk screamed in pleasure as Vorteth thrusted upwards into her, his hips a blur of invigorated sexual prowess as he pressed her against the stone wall at her back.

“You know what I want to do?” He asked as he continued his good work.

“What’s that my Lord? Shit!”

“I want to fuck you over Soren’s corpse!”

Turk laughed in between moans, the pale, gray flesh of her face almost blushing. “His eviscerated corpse!” She gripped the wall tighter before repositioning her arms around his neck.

Every fiber of his being was excited, the very thought of the sheer ecstasy of the impromptu coitus was making him harder and harder. Even more so than neutron-treated durtanium. The coldness of her body and the sensual pace of her bated breath only served to further arouse him.

“I’m going to cum!” She shouted happily, her blindingly bright blonde hair matted to the sides of her beautiful face. The warm essence of her womanhood suddenly enveloped his penis in pure, primal satisfaction and she gripped even harder around him, the bliss of it forced him to shudder.

Even though she was finished, he was not. Vorteth continued inserting himself over and over and over. The ferocity of his thrusts increased second by second, moment by moment until finally he too erupted like a violently unstable volcano. A momentous ejaculation that immediately drained his body of some of its strength, and his mind of excitation.

Turk gently steered his head and shoved her tongue down his throat, a gesture of epicurean gratitude for once again pleasing her far beyond the measure of her previous lovers. 

She was the closest thing Vorteth had to a relationship in many, many years. Her capabilities as his number two, her attractiveness and skills as a combatant had made her stand out among the drooling masses. 

He’d fuck her until the stars went out.

Setting her back on the ground gently, their tongues continued to dance around each other's mouths for a few passionate moments longer.

“I forgot to ask, are our men in place yet?” Vorteth asked as logic and reason gradually replaced his base sexual instincts.

“Most of them, my Lord,” Turk controlled her breathing as she fixed her robes. “Getting beyond their borders was no easy task, but they shall all be in place within the next few days.”

“Good,” Vorteth slowly tore his gaze from her and looked around at his guards posted about his spacious chambers. “Bring us some more drinks, so we can replenish our energy,” He glanced disinterestedly at the trio of fully drained human cattle lying dead at their feet. “I’m afraid these have run a little dry.”

“Yes, my Lord.” One of them responded as he hurriedly exited the room to do as he bade.

Vorteth sheathed his still erect penis, Turk’s fluids transferring to his hand caused him to dry himself upon his sleeves. “I need you to return to the Isle of Man, I need someone with your attention to detail present and focused on our allies' doings. The children need a babysitter and I want to ensure that Soren’s trap succeeds.”

“I’ll leave as soon as you wish my Lord. And what will you do?”

Vorteth eyed her curiously, with just a hint of indignation.

“I didn’t mean to—.”

“I know. But since you ask, I’m going to coordinate the shipment and also take the time to get some personal affairs into order.”

“Of course,” She brushed a hand through her golden hair as she walked to sit at the edge of his ornate bed. “Even though I can’t wait to see what chaos Soren’s little virus unleashes, how can we be sure this isn’t all an elaborate attempt to simply boost their recruitment numbers. Maybe he doesn’t want them dead at all?”

Vorteth meandered to his workstation positioned in front of a lavish window in the center room. “I’ve considered that possibility. But trust me when I say that the hatred in our mysterious werewolf is genuine. That fact and that fact alone is the only reason I didn’t kill him where he stood when he first made himself known to us.” He ran his fingers along the keyboard, bringing up a string of colorful interfaces that displayed different metrics and statuses regarding the operational state of the compound.

“You know best. But his intentions aside, can we be sure it can truly be contained? The last thing we want is a bunch of ferals running a muck on actually important worlds, it sounds terrible for business.”

“Every preventable measure for the virus will be and is being taken. Both from a dispersal and design perspective. I’ve studied Dr. Anand’s work and know it in and out.”

The guard returned, another set of blubbering humans trailing behind him on a short chain, their desperate please muffled by their muzzles.

“Besides,” Vorteth smiled as he closed the gap between the workstation and his newest beverages. “You worry too much.”