the shock and surprise registered on DeHaviliard’s face
before he dissolved into dust.
The child had been forced into death and its subsequent
immortality at the tender age of nine years old; stolen from
the streets, transformed into a weapon and dispatched on
a one-way mission to destroy his master’s enemies. He was
never expected to survive. He should never have been
created. He was an abomination, and he believed now that
his survival could have only one purpose. He embraced
Petbe’s discarded duties.
He discovered a particular brood of vampires skulking
amid the more run-down brothels in the back alleys of
Amsterdam. They were using emaciated children to lure in
the more despicable elements of the trade. Upon these,
they fed.
Watching the brood, he stood in the open doorway of
their hovel, the streetlight behind him, illuminating his
silhouette in red. Five vampires lived in the residence, two
males and three females. The Mistress of the brood, an
ancient vampiress, was now too crippled to hunt, forced to
live on the blood harvested by her brood. Her blood
supply no longer fresh, she was beginning to lose some of
her power to time. Nonetheless, she sat in a throne-like
leather chair, her two familiars, an old man and his
daughter, at her feet. Two small boys and a small girl,
wearing simple shifts, torn and dirty, sat on the floor, just
inside the door. The four remaining vampires split into
pairs, two sitting at a table by the fire and two standing
near the stairway.
40