NAOKO OPENED HIS eyes.

He didn’t awaken gradually.

He came fully, completely, entirely awake.

Memory flooded his mind.

Images arose within that linear narrative––a long, tensed arm encased in a black coat, a snarling, bloody face, white-blond hair matted with blood, cold, chalk-white fingers gripping his throat like metal.

Adrenaline, or some vampire equivalent, flooded his blood, his very mind. Naoko’s palms found the hard surface where he lay, ready to shove himself up from where he lay on his chest and belly, to bring his body back vertical, back to a fighting, running, maneuvering pose.

He pressed down, throwing his weight up and back––

And let out an involuntary sound of shock.

Something pinned him to the hard floor.

Naoko stopped, briefly, staring around at the wooden planks.

He lifted his head as far as he could manage, then tried to crane it around, to look at his shoulders and back.

He glimpsed something vertical, something metal, that protruded higher than his own skin. He stared at it, then lowered his head back to stare around at the floor. He assessed his position, his body, the limits of movement.

His legs were free. His arms were free.

Whatever it was, it impaled him to the floor by his body alone. The whole thing was metal. Metal. Sharp. Maybe three inches wide, only a few millimeters thick.

Likely a sword.

Whatever it was, it went through his chest, piercing his breastplate, holding him to the floor.

He should be able to pull it out.

Why couldn’t he pull himself out of the floor?

He was stronger than the wood planks. He’d glimpsed the hilt of it, if it really was a sword. He could see and feel it, as well as the blade all the way through his body. The hilt should give him the leverage to pull it straight out.

“I bent it,” a voice said from above.

Naoko looked up, turning his head to stare at the opposite side of the room, his palms still pressed to the floor on either side of his chest.

He stared up at the vampire sitting there, folded into an antique couch.

The couch was Victorian in style, with an elaborate back made of cherry wood, all carved in roses and the faces of cherubs. The green upholstery of the couch contrasted with the vampire’s white-blond hair, and the dark blue pants and white dress shirt he wore.

Despite his modern clothes, Dorian looked perfectly suited to the couch.

He also appeared to know how to sit in it semi-comfortably, something Naoko had yet to figure out, even though the damned thing was in his room when he moved in here.

Naoko turned over the other vampire’s words.

“You bent it?” he said warily. “The sword?”

Dorian nodded.

Naoko couldn’t help noticing with some satisfaction that the other male’s face still held evidence of their fight. The bruises had mostly faded, but cuts were still closing on his cheek, at the bridge of his nose, on his chin, and near his hairline.

Naoko’s mind returned to the problem of the sword.

If the metal was bent where it pierced the wood, he should still be able to break out.

He would just wait until the vampire left.

“…I also encased it in cement,” Dorian added. “The other end of the blade. And most of the ceiling below you.”

Naoko looked up.

He found the vampire watching him.

That flat, empty look had returned to his dark-red eyes.

Dorian tilted his head as Naoko watched, as if studying an animal he’d put in a cage. His expression never moved.

“I would not suggest trying to tear yourself free of it,” the vampire added, his voice as flat as his face. “The thickest part of the blade is notching part of your heart, so it is unlikely you could move it sufficiently to free yourself… not without killing yourself.”

Naoko blinked, staring up at him, then turned his eyes and head to peer at the hilt sticking out of his back. He focused his attention on his heart, on the parts of his own chest where he felt the sword’s blade, verifying what the vampire just told him.

“It’s a Scottish claymore,” Dorian added. “Brick was none too pleased I destroyed it, as it was an original, but it was the only blade we had that was long enough… and strong enough. And since it belonged originally to a man I killed, I supposed I had the right.”

Dorian pursed his lips, inexplicably glancing up the wall and towards the ceiling.

“…luckily, unlike his predecessor, Brick does not generally grow very attached to ‘things,’” the vampire added, his scarlet eyes still trained up the walls. “Even so, I shall have to find and gift him something comparable, since he was fond of that sword––”

“What the fuck is this supposed to do?” Naoko spat. “Scare me?”

Dorian paused, looking down.

He surveyed Naoko’s face. His lip lifted in a faint smile.

The smile never reached those scarlet eyes.

“Humble you?” he suggested.

Seeing the scowl that twisted Naoko’s mouth at his words, the vampire grunted, his smile growing visibly.

“Perhaps not,” he said.

He rose gracefully to his feet.

Naoko watched him, still scowling, now hissing at him audibly, reaching for him with an outstretched arm as Dorian clearly made ready to leave.

The blond vampire strode casually past his prone form, past the burning fireplace to Naoko’s right, past Naoko’s arm and clasping hand, past the rug that had been rolled up and placed against the wall adjacent to the stone hearth, past the antique chairs that matched the Victorian couch.

Dorian didn’t give the vampire pinned to the floor by an authentic Scottish claymore, made sometime in the 1400s, so much as a glance.

“Perhaps I thought you needed time to think, friend,” he said.

Even in saying that, he didn’t look back.

Rage blinded the vampire on the floor.

“Fuck you, you albino piece of shit sociopath––”

Naoko’s words were deadened upon the firm closing of the door.

Realizing at once the vampire wasn’t coming back, at least not anytime soon, Naoko let out a furious howl, writhing against the hard edges of the blade locking him to the floor.

No one came to the door.

No one seemed to hear him at all.

DORIAN WENT FOR a leisurely hunt.

He took all night.

He called back to the apartment a few times, mostly to hear from the guard he’d posted at his new pupil’s door. Nairobi assured him that apart from angry hisses and growls, it had mostly been silent on the other side of that door.

The next day, Dorian didn’t go inside the room.

He passed by the outside a few times.

He remained in the house, and in the process relieved Nairobi of guard duty, but did not stand there, outside the door all day, as she had for him the night before. He worked with Brick instead, monitoring events in the United States, helping his king to organize the clans across Europe and South America, most of which were already in some state of preparation for war.

Moving on North America was inevitable now.

When Brick released him at nightfall, Dorian left the apartment building.

He hunted that night as well, just as he had the first.

He left Nairobi at the door again.

That time, each time he called in, she said the room was utterly silent.

She said it was so quiet, she grew concerned the newborn may have escaped. She climbed around to the outside window a few times, to make sure he was still inside.

He was there, she told him, impaled to the floor, just as Dorian left him.

Dorian thanked her for checking on him.

Even so, he checked through the window himself, breaking into his hunting routine to reassure himself that Naoko was, indeed, exactly where he’d left him. He checked the sword as well, both that night and several times throughout the next day, and the day previous.

It remained undisturbed where he’d driven it through the vampire’s chest and through the floor and ceiling below. The concrete he’d used to encase the bent blade was completely unbroken. No cracks showed on the gray-white surface. The apartment was intact, both from the outside and from the walls to either side. The building was old, but the crawlspaces were narrow.

Dorian knew this. He had checked.

There was nowhere for his charge to go.

There was certainly nowhere for him to go without detection.

Even so, checking all of these things reassured Dorian that he had missed nothing.

At the end of the second full day, he went on a shorter hunt.

By then, he was curious to see how his pupil fared.

He doubted Naoko would be sincerely repentant after only a few days.

He doubted he’d cowed him much at all.

Still, progress might be visible by now.

Perhaps Naoko’s predicament over the past few days had calmed him down enough that he might listen more rationally, with more of a respectful ear.

He would be hungry.

He would be weaker, and hungry, and likely more malleable as a result. Young vampires didn’t have the discipline or stamina to go without blood for long. Moreover, they couldn’t handle the mental stress.

They had no idea how long they could survive without blood.

To them, being hungry was as if literally watching themselves die.

Most thought they would die, if they went without for more than a few days, a mental state that made most beings more amenable to negotiation.

At the very least, Naoko would pretend to cooperate, if only until he got more blood. He would try to convince Dorian to let him hunt. He would likely promise to do whatever he asked, if only Dorian would let him hunt and feed.

Young vampires also felt the need to hunt at a keener level than older vampires.

Dorian didn’t intend to give him either of those things, though––not yet. He didn’t intend to give him anything without a few real concessions in return. He fully expected that to take a few more days, at least.

Those days didn’t need to be spent in isolation, however.

Dorian could begin to teach him, while those days passed.

Some of it might even start to sink in.

He relieved Nairobi at roughly two o’clock in the morning.

Motioning for her that he would take over for now, he stopped her only long enough to murmur in her ear that he’d left several gifts in her room for the favor.

He didn’t tell her what they were, but he knew they would please her.

She knew they would please her, too, and smiled up at him in gratitude, squeezing his arm with one pale hand.

Dorian didn’t squander when it came to presents.

He also took favors seriously, and repaid them in an appropriately serious manner.

Therefore, he left her two gifts, one for each full night and day she’d spent guarding his charge. One was a male human he’d gone to a fair bit of trouble to acquire.

She had a weakness for aristocrats, so he’d made the effort.

With the young Earl, who he’d considerately dressed for her in full uniform, tied and kneeling on her floor, a gag in his mouth, Dorian left her an emerald and diamond necklace that had belonged to the Earl’s now-late wife, displayed on the mantle over her fireplace.

Still smiling faintly as she imagined what Dorian might have brought her, Nairobi padded down the corridor towards her room.

Dorian watched her go.

Then he reached for the door handle to Naoko’s room.

Twisting it soundlessly, he opened it.

He’d ordered Nairobi not to enter the room for any reason.

He’s specifically told her to check on him by using the windows if she had any questions or concerns about his wellbeing, or whether he was still in the room. She could check on him in any manner and as many times as she saw fit, as long as Naoko never felt or heard her enter the room, as long as that door never opened.

The newborn was to feel himself totally alone in there.

The seclusion contained a message, as much as the sword.

Dorian knew Nairobi would follow his instructions to the letter.

He also knew she would have checked on Naoko through the windows more times than she’d specifically told him, out of fear of disappointing him, if nothing else, but mainly out of pride. She would never allow herself to lose a charge on a watch to which she’d been assigned. Never. Nairobi simply wasn’t wired that way.

For that reason, as well as his own precautions, Dorian knew Naoko would be inside the room, more or less exactly how he’d left him.

He’d known Naoko would be there.

He’d expected to see him lying there, shirtless, on his hardwood floor, a sword impaling him to the floor to the hilt. Even so, actually seeing him there, pale and vibrating with energy, his head half-raised in alertness as he heard Dorian walk in, gave him a soft thrill of pleasure. He allowed himself a small smile, crossing the threshold and closing the door behind him.

The young vampire looked positively magnificent, even now.

That smile was still on Dorian’s face as he took another step––

––and immediately knew something was wrong.

His stare darted sideways.

His vampire eyes took in the thin, metal pole as it bounced up in a whip-like arc, aiming for the top of the high ceiling. Dorian didn’t see the entire motion. A loop of wire cinched his ankle, yanking him up off his feet in a millisecond, pulling him sideways and up even as he twisted, midair, fighting to reach for his trapped foot.

He found himself swinging, midair, his ankle hanging from the wire.

Hissing, he struggled with the wire breaking the skin of his ankle, realizing only then that it had been sharpened on two sides, making it like a razor.

He stared up at the ceiling in disbelief, still swinging wildly back and forth, twisting from where he hung from the now straight pole.

Not once did he stop his attempts to free his foot.

Before he could finish digging his fingers under that razor-like wire, he felt the air move over his face and the bare skin of his arms, in a way different than that caused by the swinging wire. This motion felt directed, non-random.

It raised the hairs on his skin like an electric charge.

He turned, hissing, fangs extended, swinging in the air, his fingers still hooked on the wire around his ankle, bleeding down his leg as he tried to free himself.

The smiling face of Naoko appeared over him.

Blood covered his chest, his face, his arms.

Before Dorian could speak a single word, strong hands wrapped around his head…

And everything went dark.