Wolves and Men

Kenneth sat in his chair, thinking, fuming, and contemplating. There was a puzzle under his feet that for the first time in his life, he had no idea how to go about solving it. She had resisted everything he had tried. He had resisted his domination, his dream world, his own charm and seduction; she had risen above all he had tried.

He looked over at his wall as he drank deeply the wine from his glass. The clock said 3:34 AM. The night would be gone soon and he had gained nothing, and worse, done nothing. That woman who now took up residence beneath his feet was so infuriating he had to fight the impulse to throw his wine glass across the room. His mental powers were not a match for this woman, it seemed, and that was what grieved him the most.

How could any half animal abomination be able to resist him? He had broken over forty humans; sluts, muscle men, scientists, police officials, and the occasional politician, though those were usually the biggest waste of his time. Politicians did have their uses, but he would rather use money to procure their services. After all, after they left office, they were less than useless, such a waste of his talents.

His Talents.

He was a god compared to those he chose to walk amongst. They had no idea the power he wielded, and he knew that Alessandro had forgotten as well. There was something to be said about dealing through back doors when their kind was bargaining from the position of weakness of numbers and resources. But now? They ruled this entire city! No one crossed them. Their clubs and farms were spaced throughout its concrete sprawl. Alessandro and the other House Heads ruled their servants and the humans who in turn served them. They could take over the entire continent and be thanked by the masses for returning order and prestige to the great United States.

Alessandro was a fool and so were the rest of them. He had no real desire to kill every House Head. No, all he needed was a voice with them. One man couldn’t hope to topple the secret empire that the vampires had built meticulously over the years. He was still young, but even he had seen the rise of their power. Why couldn’t the rest of them?

They were close to eradicating the only real threat left to them and the woman down stairs was the first step in their utter destruction. And if he was able to do what he was planning to do, then who better to bring the Vampires back into the light of dominance then the one man who destroyed the werewolves? All he needed to do was find out where they were hiding.

He had been so close, so close! Only a few months ago there had been a golden opportunity and his people had blown it. They let William Setford get away!

Suddenly the wine glass in his hand exploded.

He cursed to himself and stood up to get a clean towel to brush out the stain and wine on his clothes before it had time to set. He couldn’t be seen walking around with soiled clothes; that simply would not do.

The thought of that reminded him of one of Alessandro’s first lessons. The ability to maintain the good graces of the upper class, the ruling class, was to always look the part. The ruling class was where the power was, not some farmer who didn’t know a Merlot from a Pinot Nior. Always look the part and doors would open for you. That advice had served him well here in the Americas.

He left the shards of the wine glass on the Persian rug; he would get Cassandra or Jessica to clean it up later. The wine stain would be hard to get out, but not impossible. He had nowhere to go and he found his feet carrying him toward the door that would lead down to his basement. To her.

He opened the door, walked down the stairs into the basement proper and found himself in front of his work bench. He idly ran a finger lightly along it’s surface and looked up at the wall adjacent to it. The tools that hung there were made explicitly for extracting information. The tools themselves were crude and blunt. That’s why he had them hanging on the wall. There brute force and crude angles gave them a beauty which he found few people actually appreciated. His eyes slid down the shaft of a simple rod. Most of the cruel curves of the blades, or the spikes, were only for show, he would never dream of using them on actual people. His methods were elevated far above those of simple human minds anyway.

He stood in the gloom of the partially lit basement. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply the scent of what had transpired there over the last few years. There was the glorious smell of human blood. Those smells always made him smile. That was from people he wanted to practice on. They hadn’t had any real information and were of no real use for him, but a tool not used soon blunts itself.

He inhaled the smell of wolves. The wolves had been so central to his early machinations. They might still prove useful in the future but that part of his project had been completed.

And then there was her. He knew that she was aware of his presence. They had been locked in this bitter struggle for so long he was sure that they would never be truly apart from each other. He couldn’t let her go on that slim chance though. She had blocked him at every turn and even managed to turn his own thoughts and plans back onto him. It had been a close thing, but Natalia had seen to it that she hadn’t succeeded. He could smell her sweat, her scent mixed with the earthiness of this place, which mixed with the blood scent and wolf hair. The smell of this place was a cacophony of smells that wrapped his senses in ecstasy.