The door boomed shut behind Lochlan Martra the instant he was clear, the sound final and absolute, sealing him in.

For a moment, there was only darkness and the rapid, frantic beating of his own heart in his ears.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

“This IS a shitshow,” he muttered to himself.

Then, a single gas lamp sputtered to life on a wall nearby, casting a weak, jaundiced glow.

The voice, that dry rasp, spoke again, now from directly beside him. “Of some kind, yes.”

An older man was seated in a high-backed wing chair that Lochlan could have sworn was empty a second ago.

He was long and gaunt, his skin like pale parchment stretched over bone. He wore an old-fashioned smoking jacket, a burgundy colored cane, and a glass that didn’t seem to have wine in it. His eyes were blue as winter sky, and they held precious little warmth.

“You are a *vampire*,” he said, the word hanging in the air between them like a verdict.

Lochlan looked him up and down. “You mean like, emotionally? A rude way to start a conversation.”

The faintest smile. The man was at least aware of the *concept* of wordplay. “As in, you’re one of the damned.”

“I’m not sure that’s true.” But as Lochlan said it, he felt his blood growing… colder.

And then something else. A pressure behind his eyes, like someone pressing thumbs against the inside of his skull. The room tilted fractionally—not physically, but in some other dimension he didn’t have words for. He heard a voice, distant and familiar, speaking in a cadence that made his teeth ache.

“You could never be grateful. You could never pay attention. I always told you that you should pay *closer attention.* Threads pulling. Little details that shouldn’t be there, but always were.”

His mother. But not a memory. This was *present***—her voice threading through his consciousness like smoke through a keyhole. She’d been dead for almost a decade now. Schizophrenia, the doctors had said. Threw herself off a bridge talking about “the world coming undone.”

Lochlan’s breath caught. The voice faded, leaving only the echo of its wrongness.

“I can feel my blood. I can see my reflection in the mirror,” he finished weakly, the words feeling hollow.

“Don’t be a fool.” Grimaldi’s ice-blue eyes narrowed fractionally, studying him with the focus of a jeweler examining a stone for flaws. “You would be a fool to rely on what you *think* you know about vampires. Your experience now will be a unique one, I assure you. And you felt something else.”

“Felt what?”

“Your blood recognizing itself. You’re Malkavian.” He said it like a diagnosis. Clinical. Final. “The madness is already there, coiled in your veins like a parasite. The question is whether you’ll learn to use it or let it devour you from the inside.”

“I’m not anything right now.”

“You heard a voice just now. Someone who shouldn’t be speaking.”

“A lot of people hear voices.”

Grimaldi tilted his head. “Do they?” I can see it in your eyes. That particular glaze of someone listening to a frequency the rest of us can’t hear.”

Lochlan’s jaw tightened. He wanted to deny it, but the old man’s certainty was unnerving. “My mother. She’s been dead for years.”

“And yet she speaks.” Grimaldi took a slow sip from his glass. “The Malkavians call it the Cobweb. A network of insight, prophecy, and madness that connects your entire bloodline across time and space. Some of you drown in it. Others learn to navigate its threads and pull truths the rest of us can’t see.” His smile was thin, predatory. “You, Lochlan Martra, are either about to become extraordinarily valuable or catastrophically useless. I’m here to determine which.”

“That’s ominous. How do you know my name?”

Grimaldi set his glass down and produced a very narrow wallet with the kind of casual precision that suggested he’d lifted it without Lochlan even noticing. “Quick hands.”

He tossed Lochlan the wallet and steepled his long, pale fingers. “Your Sire was the one who held you as you died, who fed you their vitae, and who brought you across the threshold into this half-life. They are your creator, your closest relative in this new world… and they’ve put you in considerable trouble with the Nightmare’s court.”

“The Nightmare?”

“Yes. The Nightmare. Or the Prince, if you’re very old fashioned. He holds dominion over the supernatural affairs of the city of Ravenna.”

He leaned forward slightly, the lamplight carving deep gullies of shadow into his face. “Making new vampires without permission is cleanly in the territory of capital offense. Given the current political climate.”

“Political climate?”

“A period of recovery for our kind. We’ve come to depend on the Collective.”

“Collective?”

“Both all of vampire kind, and this current system of things. We’re in a state of very fragile leadership. To abandon a childe to the streets—”

“Is it against the law?”

“It’s against tradition.”

“Vampires didn’t just do what they wanted in the olden days?”

“It’s a tradition that’s just starting,” Grimaldi said with a measure of impatience. “Which means we take it more seriously. This is an act of unparalleled arrogance… or sabotage.”

His icy eyes scanned Lochlan up and down, as if appraising a weapon. “And the blood in your veins is potent. Old. I can taste its echo from here. Your Sire is no mere alleyway leech. Which means their crime was deliberate. They have made you a pawn in a game you do not understand, and they have not even bothered to teach you the rules.”

“Do you know who my sire is?” Lochlan asked, the question coming out sharper than he intended.

Grimaldi’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered behind those winter-blue eyes. Calculation. Weighing risk against reward.

“I have suspicions,” he said finally. “But if I’m wrong, telling you could get us both killed by the wrong people asking the wrong questions. And if I’m right…” He paused, his gaze turning distant for a fraction of a second. “Then you’re in far more danger than even I anticipated. The kind of danger that doesn’t announce itself until the knife’s already between your ribs.”

“You’ve been relentlessly ominous, and given almost no real answers.”

“Yes,” Grimaldi agreed, his voice soft and cold as frost on glass. “But it’s the answer you’ll get tonight. Survive your presentation to the Prince. Prove you’re worth the investment. Then we’ll discuss your lineage.”

He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled again. “But I’ll tell you this much: your Embrace wasn’t an accident. Someone chose you. Someone with enough power and foresight to know exactly what kind of chaos they were unleashing. Whether you were chosen as a weapon, a sacrifice, or something else entirely…” He smiled, thin and humorless. “That’s what you’ll need to discover. If you live long enough.”

“You’ve had a very strange night,” he continued. “You must present yourself to the Court of the Nightmare and normalize the situation before it becomes a scandal that requires rectification.”

“Is this person a monarch, or a dignitary, or closer to a President? You mentioned checks?”

“The Nightmare,” he said, the title dripping with formal weight, “is not a hereditary monarch. Although this one does have a famous relative.”

“Vhat is he?” Lochlan said smugly. “Son of Dracula?”

“Maximilian Strauss is a direct descendant of Lord Dracula,” Grimaldi said with grave seriousness. “So don’t do that cereal mascot voice unless you’re looking to embarrass yourself, and me by proxy.”

“Direct descendant of… Dracula?”

“Yes, Lochlan. *The* Lord Dracula. Vlad Tepes, the Impaler.”

“Can I – realistically talk him down?”

He raised his eyebrows. “The path is realistic in the sense that it is your only path. Is it safe? No. It is a gamble with your undying soul as the stake.

Strauss could see you as a potential asset, a new piece on his board. In that case, you will be assigned a sponsor, taught the basics of our society, and given a territory to hunt in. You will owe him your allegiance and some small portion of your influence in the mortal world.”

His eyes narrowed. “Or, he could see you as your Sire’s intended mess: a bomb left on his doorstep. In that case, he will likely have you destroyed without a second thought to deny your Sire whatever chaos they intended. Therefore, you must be contrite and controlled.”

“It would be an anticlimactic way to die.”

“You wouldn’t be the anticlimactic death I’ve seen.” He gestured to Lochlan. “And certainly not the best dressed. You look rather like shit, going into a criminal case. In our world, you’re adding problems to your problems.”

He rose from his chair with an unnatural, fluid grace. “Here’s my proposal. I will provide you with suitable attire. I will teach you the words to say. I will offer you this patronage. In return, you will owe me a boon, to be called upon at a time of my choosing. Do we have an accord?”

Lochlan quirked an eyebrow. “A handsome young man gets patronage from a vague and possessive old stranger. A tale as old as time.”

“Power gets very exclusionary at the top. So it is in many stories.”

Lochlan paused. “It’s a great deal for you, mister. I guess I’ll take it.”

The old man’s lips peeled back from his teeth in something that was most certainly not a smile. It was acknowledgment of a transaction now complete and settled.

“So astute. It is an excellent deal for me. But also, and this is critical, it’s the only one you are being offered.”

He didn’t bother to deny it. His gaze lingered on Lochlan, assessing him with the cool detachment of someone examining a chess piece before deciding where to place it on the board.

“You remind me of someone I knew once,” Grimaldi said quietly, his voice losing some of its sardonic edge. “Another fledgling. Malkavian, like you. Abandoned by their sire like you, thrown into the court with no preparation, no allies, no understanding of the rules.” His expression went distant, something almost human flickering behind the cold mask. “They didn’t survive their first year. Tore themselves apart trying to sort truth from madness. By the end, they were begging for the sun.”

“Comforting,” Lochlan said flatly.

“It should be.” Grimaldi’s focus snapped back, sharp as a blade. “Because I’ve learned since then. Times have changed and we don’t have vampires to waste. I know how to identify which fledglings will break and which will bend. Which will drown in the Cobweb and which will learn to weave it into something powerful.”

He stepped closer, his presence suddenly oppressive, the air around him thick with age and authority.

“And you, Lochlan Martra, have the potential to be very useful indeed. Your blood is old. Your mind is already threading connections most vampires will never see. And whether you know it or not, you’ve been placed at the center of something far larger than a simple Embrace.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Grimaldi said, his smile returning – a cold, thin, and predatory one –
“that someone desired for you to be a part of this world. And I intend to find out why. Before they collect on whatever investment they made.”

“I am called Magister Alistair Grimaldi. You will refer to me as such.”

“All three of those things?”

“Well. At least one.”