Preview Of:
Seed
The Reaping Book I
My name is Kazimir DeElysia. I am four thousand years old, well, just shy of four thousand, but I am told that mortals prefer rounded numbers, and I am closer to four thousand than thirty-five hundred. I hardly look a day over two thousand, I have been told.
I was twenty-seven when I was captured, taken to what you know as Crete, and then turned into a vampire. My turning was consensual, though I did not quite understand what she had offered me. Partly because of a lack of knowledge, partly because there was a language barrier between us. I knew immortality and hunting the night, but my Maker was little more than a fledgling when she turned me.
That is the term that mortals are familiar with, correct? ‘Maker,’ as if we create toys and set them loose in the world, as if the one who turned me could be summed up with such a hollow title.
I called her ‘Love’ then, and through most of history.
Maker... no wonder the vampiric world is so weak and pathetic.
They have a name for me, you know. They whisper it to one another and fall silent as I pass by. Few see me these days, as I am a wanted man. I keep a territory in the name of my matriarch and thanks to modern advances in technology, I have been able to keep track of those trying to sneak into my city. There are some few who I employ or have employed in the past, but, for the most part, my city remained empty of vampires.
Because I do not like their faces, and they cannot be trusted to not to be catty and run back to the Council to tell them who owned the city.
I reside outside of Council control. I always have. The Council and I simply do not see eye to eye on so many important topics of conversation.
Such as the place of a child in the life of their ‘Maker.’ The Council views all as free agents, a ridiculous belief. Some have made children only as a blood bag, or weapon, or whore. That is their only use. Just as not all humans are leaders and ‘go-getters,’ not all vampires are meant to be left to their own devices. There is a place in our world for each of us, and a Maker should always turn with that place in mind. A child without a place will cause problems.
Only an heir might come and go as they please, and only one heir is needed. All other children are only there to serve the will of their Maker.
Yet these are the same people who believe a vampire should be destroyed if that vampire does not meet their very strict requirements. If they’re too young or too old, if they aren’t perfect upon turning.
Not even the hermaphroditic are welcome amongst Council lands any longer. One must be male or female, nowhere in between.
Oh please, like you believe every fantastical tale they tell you about honesty and equality, about being the great saviour of mankind? The Council does not believe that. They believe in only one thing: control.
And they will gain that control by whatever means necessary.
I suppose some of you might be eager to hear how I have spent my four thousand years on this planet. Well, too bad. I am not going to ramble like dear, soft Quintillus about my daddy issues.
My father and mother raised me to be a fighter, a warrior among my people. For that reason, when I was captured, I was sold. Perhaps to be a guard, or perhaps they knew to whom they sold me, knew what would happen to me. The reason why no longer matters, I was sold into slavery and turned. That’s about as much of my history as I’m willing to share with any mortal soul.
Do not take me to be a pathetic loner just because I live outside of Council lands. I have made my way and lived in factions before. I know how to ‘play nicely’ as Elysia would say, though only ever for her.
Whatever my dear Elysia asks for, I try in earnest to deliver. She has kept me sane all these years and given me a reason to do more than simply be.
So, when Elysia picked up the book of the Prophet, hot off the presses as it were, and she became interested in such narrations and their effects on the mortal world at large, I agreed to take up the task.
But only for her.
Oh, who is the Prophet you ask?
Well, dear reader, just because you have seen the vampire world through Quintillus’s eyes, does not mean that you have seen the whole world. He always had a knack for knowing just a little too much, has happened to slip into town as I was just getting comfortable.
But we have never met face to face. He does not know what I look like. Besides seeing him in passing, covered in blood and a mask, I had not seen his face until his televised interview last year. I simply know the man by reputation and knew to stay out of his way as much as he knows to stay out of mine.
Most vampires ignore the obvious, their little minds too shallow to accept the whole truth, but it’s paying attention to those details, following the interviews and reading the books that the Council expects other vampires to ignore, that has given me such a keen edge.
They call me the Warlord.
If only they knew how appropriate the name was.