Damien ran his tongue around the inside of his perfect mouth. He touched his perfect face. He didn’t hurt as he sat up, and his first thought was that he wanted it to hurt. He wanted the wounds to still be there.

The VanGarrett Mansion was unusually quiet, so he climbed out from under the covers and saw his clothing was still caked in his own blood, but there wasn’t a scratch on him. He crept barefoot out of the room and slipped down the hall. Usually the halls were littered with people passing in and out of rooms like a busy dorm or hostel, but all was still, and there wasn’t a person in sight.

Damien turned down the maze of hallways and tried to swallow the panic and hallucinations rising up within him. The halls were red, yes. But, it looked nothing like the halls of Tartarus. He was trying to find vampires, not run away from demons and hellhounds.

He found Alec’s study, which he had been in before, and from there, he navigated his way to the grand staircase. He could begin to hear Alec’s satin-smooth voice ringing out from the ground floor below. As he crept further, he could make out some of the words, the tone empowered, excited. Alec was giving a speech. Damien wanted to listen but didn’t want to be caught doing so. He thought if he inched any closer his heartbeat and breathing might give him away, so he stayed put.

“I remember Victor saying to me, ’Take the high road,’” Alec said, and there came an audible groan from Alec’s audience. “He said, our humanity is what elevates us above demon kind. Yet, demons hold all the power. Yet, the actions which put Victor on the proverbial throne were not humanitarian. They were demonic. Life feeds on life. Having power means consuming power-”

A voice whispered in Damien’s ear. “Whatcha doing?” He jumped to see an amused Josanna giggling at his fear.

Damien caught his breath and rested against the wall. “What’s it look like? I’m eavesdropping.”

“Why?”

“Because, I don’t want Alec to know I’m listening.”

“Why?” She wiggled.

“I... don’t know. My intuition said so.”

She crouched down next to him as if to be his accomplice. “What’s he saying?”

Damien sighed. “You tell me. You have better hearing anyway.”

She squinted and said, “You know you can turn up the volume? Use your magick, silly.”

Damien nodded and pressed his lips together because, of course, he hadn’t thought of that. He closed his eyes and amplified the noise.

“-they knew Victor himself, and his pacifist ideology, would keep all of us at this level on the food chain. So, now is the time to rise up from the grave Victor Devereaux dug for us. We have all lived in this world long enough. We know. We know that to get out of this paupers’ pit, we must claw our way out, and we must do it together!”

There was applause.

“But, not just us. Not just vampires, but werewolves. Witches. Ghouls. Us citizens of the Netherworlds who were born as humans. We fought, and we evolved then as we will now. The powers that be don’t want us to rise any higher. So, they use Victor, and others like him, to suppress our demonic natures, and now it’s time for them to pay for their sins. For them to see the monsters they made. We are just like them. They should be such proud parents.”

There was a light chuckle.

“I foolishly tried to get them to see this before. I entered their world. Attended their lavish parties. But, I was not welcomed there. As most of you know, I waited six months sometimes for an appointment with the elites. Grim Enterprises. Shmeaglebobenzoar. The Xypheruses... Christopher.”

Alec paused for another light chuckle from his audience.

“I tried to tell them about the vast opportunities our market had to offer. I tried to persuade them to invest in magickal technologies. They were simply not interested... because of Victor. He slandered my reputation, our reputation, as reckless rebels.” This time, Alec laughed, “But, I don’t give a damn what they think about me. They have it all wrong. Weare a dynasty in the making.”

The applause was brief, because the audience, and Damien, wanted to hear what he was going to say next.

“And as it turned out... We didn’t need their help anyway!”

This time, the applause was raucous. Alec didn’t wait for the applause to end. He cried over it, “We’d rather die again than do it their way! Am I right?”

The noise only grew louder.

“Because, with this portal, we are going to get their attention! We are going to be legends!”

The audience roared.

“Oh no,” Damien said aloud.

“So,” Josanna twirled her hair and looked off into the ceiling. “Who do you think is going to be more pissed off? My brother or your dad?” He turned to glare at her, and she was sporting her knowing smirk. “Oh,” she said. “So this was why you were eavesdropping?”

“Apparently,” he said matter-of-factly. Damien bit the tip of his tongue and thought what his next move needed to be. He heard his uncles echoing in his head. Tell Thanatos now, later, or never? Should he stay, or should he go?

Josanna stood and said, as if she were reading his thoughts, and maybe she was, “Alec will be happy to see you.”

He glanced up at her through his lashes. For a moment, his mind replaced her with a different woman in a similar Victorian dress. The woman’s good intentions had ripped him apart a long time ago, and he wondered if that was about to happen again, if that was why he was seeing her ghost here.

He stood and walked shoulder to shoulder with Josanna down the stairs. She was about his height, but he was a bit taller. Damien felt the high contrast of his lush surroundings with his bare feet, jeans, and bloodstained white button-down. But, he usually did feel in contrast to his surroundings. He always felt photoshopped in, like one of those picture puzzles where you have to pick out the item in the clutter that doesn’t belong. It came from aeons of being displaced in time and space, but it seemed like something he would never be able to shake. He was certain this was a feeling that would continue to follow him for the rest of his unending life.

Josanna led him into the music room, where Alec was still talking about the portal to his remaining audience. They were beginning to break off into small groups across the expansive music room. Damien saw Alec’s eyes recognize him walking in with Josanna, but this didn’t slow Alec or distract him from his conversation. Alec actually looked like a Vampire Prince that day. He was in a steampunk, red velvet, swallowtail jacket with a stiff, embroidered collar. A style, Damien remembered, that was very similar to what Victor wore to the Yuletide ball.

Damien began to ponder the psychological reasoning for such an imitation, but Josanna began to take a turn around the room, so Damien strolled alongside her. The music room was fashioned in the same tone as the rest of the mansion, but there was an arched picture window, before which was a slick, black grand piano. On the opposite side of the room was a cozy seating area stationed before a fireplace, and not too far off was a beautiful harp. Damien noticed most of the harp strings were broken, and the wires were twisted and sticking out at odd and dangerous angles.

Damien glanced back at Alec, who turned out to be glancing back at him. Damien scrunched his brows as Alec seamlessly slipped back into conversation with his admirers. Alec met his eyes once again, and his eyes were smiling. But, they were smiling in a way that made Damien’s heart flutter with fear. It was the kind of smile the sly house cat gives to the caged bird, a keen smile, which accentuated that both parties knew it was just a matter of time. The issue was that Damien had been painfully unaware that he was a caged bird in Alec’s eyes. But, someone crossed over Damien’s vision. Some girl he had never met before gave him the same look.

Josanna began to giggle and whispered to a person who wasn’t there, “Do you think we should tell him?”

He turned to her. “What?”

She put her hands behind her back. “You’re Little Robin Redbreast.”

Damien looked down at his shirt and saw the dried blood. He realized that’s why Alec and the vampires were eyeing him in that way. He made it vanish, blushing a bit and feeling foolish for having walked into that room covered in blood.

"Catch me if you can," Josanna quoted from the old nursery rhyme.

“And all of you could catch me... if I ran.” Damien counted the exits.

“Oh! Would you? Vampires love to play tag.”

Damien scrunched his brow. Imagining what a game of tag with a bunch of vampires would result in, after he had just walked into that vampire-filled room with a heartbeat and a bloody shirt, he said, “Nooo,” shaking his head.

Josanna huffed. “You played ball with the people at the bar.”

“Well... yeah. I did, I guess. I didn’t want to feel the shame anymore.” He cleared his throat and thought of the words she said to him when he was tripping on slug. “It does feel better to feel the pain on the outside, but, here I am again... ashamed.”

Josanna nodded. She asked, “Can I hold your hand?”

Damien was dumbstruck for a moment. He stopped their turn around the room to look back at her.

She held out her pale slender hand. Her long and delicate fingers, poised in the air, like that of a dancer. But, in his mind her fingers began to ember and char. He shook the vision away and took her hand. She gave it a small squeeze and a tug to start him walking again. She moved her thumb up and down the back of his finger. It was comforting, but electrifying. At times, he couldn’t breathe, and he wanted to pull away, but he didn’t. He melted instead. The whole ordeal probably only lasted forty seconds, but Damien, being a nervous wreck, felt that every second lasted a year.

She led him up to Alec and dropped him off. She trailed her fingers away from his, her gesture sending him right, and she parting to the left. She gave him one last look through her curtain of black hair before slipping into the crowd like a ghost.

Damien’s eyes moved from where she vanished up to Alec, whose smiling eyes pierced back at him. The difference between her and her brother was jolting. It gave Damien some whiplash.

Alec said out of the corner of his mouth, like it was a secret, “I heard you got into a tussle at one of my night clubs.” Alec sipped from his goblet.

Damien involuntarily shrank at the firm tone in the Vampire Prince’s voice. He cleared his throat, gathered his persona and said, “I got my ass thoroughly handed to me. That’s what happened.”

“Why?” Alec’s firmness didn’t waiver.

Damien thought it was probably the jacket that was imbuing Alec with this suave confidence. He decided to respond with endearing, and squinted in a guilty, Loki-like fashion. “I ordered straight whiskey.”

Alec sighed, but it was caught short by an involuntary laugh.

“Hey, you said you wouldn’t give me anymore guff.”

“My apologies. If I had been there, I could have informed them of our agreement.” He laughed again. “I haven’t seen you since you vanished last night after sampling from my private collection.”

“Yeah.”

“I even thought about being worried about you...”

This threw Damien. Alec’s tone implied he was lining up for a joke, and Alec didn’t typically joke.

“What stopped you?” Damien asked, because that was what Alec needed to deliver his punchline.

“Your father,” was his punchline. “I didn’t think he’d take too kindly to my men questioning him about his son’s whereabouts.”

“Aw. You’d do that for me?” Damien exaggerated flattery.

“If it weren’t for your father. Ah- This is my man who rescued you.” A tall, thin man with a head of brown curls approached. Alec said, “Damien, this is my little brother, Gabriel.”

Damien recognized him as the youngest Vampire Prince who welcomed him and Loki into the Devereaux mansion two days ago. “I know you.” Damien said, “You were at Victor’s the other day.”

“Yes, that’s how I recognized you at the blood bar.” Gabriel blushed and glanced around to see who would hear. He mumbled, “I still live with the old man. It’s good to keep an eye on the enemy.”

Damien examined him, not sure who Gabriel considered to be the enemy- Alec or Victor. He wondered if Gabriel liked to sit on the fence until the odds cleared up which side he should be on. “Well,” Damien fumbled, “thank- I appreciate your swift rescue.”

“It was no trouble. Alec has mentioned you many times. If he hadn’t been talking you up, I wouldn’t have batted an eye if they were lapping your blood up off the floor.”

“Well, actually, they were... lapping.”

Gabriel smiled up at Alec and added, “Alec will be a good friend to have when the old ship goes down. Excuse me. There’s a dame over there I haven’t yet met.”

He put his hand on Damien’s shoulder to pass by him. Damien squinted at him, a touch repulsed, and moved away from his hand.

Alec grinned and mused, “You don’t like him.”

“Er... He’s, uh, well, I owe him.”

“No. You don’t. He only aided you to get into my good graces, as he so plainly mentioned.”

“Because you’ll be a good friend to have when the ship goes down?”

“Precisely. The rats are all fleeing my way. It’s a good feeling.” Then Alec added, “You healed up quite nicely.”

“I was surprised to see that when I woke up.”

“Vampire blood. It can cure and heal any ailment.”

“Physical, non-magickal ailment,” Damien corrected to Alec’s surprise. “I’ve known other vampires besides you, your Highness.”

Alec grimaced. “I’d rather you not refer to me as royalty. I am a business man who is trying to distance myself as far away from King Victor as possible.”

“I wouldn’t distance yourself too much. Don’t underestimate the powers of nostalgia and familiarity. Change is scary. You’re offering a world of change. Give your rats at least one life preserver to hold onto. It will ease the shock.”

“I love this little thread of darkness you have woven within you. I’m curious to see how deep it runs.”

“It’s not darkness. It’s just... reality.”

“I know darkness when I see it, Damien,” Alec gave a self-satisfied sigh and drained his goblet. “I think you and I could work wondrously together. The future of Vampire and the future of Grim Enterprises.”

Damien gave a sharp and bitter laugh. “I have no interest in running Grim Enterprises.”

“Even better, then. You can work for me.” Alec patted him on his shoulder and swanned away.