Chapter 118: In hindsight

••• When Caius opened Arlette’s office door, her hand stretched out through the gap he had made and pulled him in before he could even walk through the doorway himself. "Hey..." Caius said with a little chuckle at the eagerness of a level she had never shown before. His chuckle and whatever else he was going to say were smacked shut when Arlette pressed their lips together. Caius just barely managed to close the door behind himself when Arlette was pushing his back against it to press her front against him as she deepened an already passionate kiss. His arm went around her slim waist, embracing her and keeping her close. They remained like that for fifteen minutes. Kissing and exploring each other’s mouths with their tongues as well as humping their lower halves against each other. A hardness against a moistening center. When they pulled back, Arlette’s grey eyes were looking intensely into his purple eyes. "So I take it you were worried," Caius said gently. "What gave it away?" Arlette asked in a slightly joking voice. And then her expression became a tad bit more serious as she placed a hand against his chest, "What exactly happened?" They found their way to her sofa then. Caius lay down, Arlette lay on top of him, her back to his chest so her wonderful ass was placed very close to his groin where blood kept rushing to his cock, increasing its hardness. Caius had an arm around her waist and his other hand cupped one of her breasts and kneaded through the material of her gown—the only barrier to touching the skin directly—and always alternated between both wonderful tits throughout the minutes he spent recounting the events of two days ago. Unlike with his father, he told Arlette everything. Including the ’Rite of Noble Ascension’ which turned out to be the most surprising detail of the entire tale because it was the one time Arlette interrupted him with a brow raised. "The what?" "The ’Rite of Noble Ascension’. A ritual where a Vampire Lord’s Noble Title is stripped and given to someone else." "That’s a thing?" Arlette asked. "It is," Caius answered easily. He didn’t find it surprising that Arlette didn’t know. She had shown herself to be quite knowledgeable about Vampires and what made them tick, but Vampiric Nobility was too niche a subject. Hell, his father didn’t know about it. At least, not in the sense that it required a Ritual to be taken. Lucian Von Helsing thought it worked the same as human nobility; Just something a select few used to hold themselves to a higher status by blood or just stark pomposity. Only a Vampire could truly feel and understand what it meant to be and not be a Noble. The distinction in status due to the authority that Nobles held was only felt by their fellows and not by humans. As far as humans were concerned, Vampires were all the same. The fact that some seemed to have a superiority complex made no difference. Lucian hadn’t even been able to tell that Caius was a Vampire Lord because the son hadn’t exerted the Authority that came with that title in his father’s presence. It was probably the first time since Caius had ’arrived’ in this world that he had truly been able to hide things from his father by not mentioning it. That and all his debauchery in the academy probably. But we digress. "And you had this Rite done to you?" Arlette asked. "Yes," Caius said, "As of less than seventy-two hours ago, I am now a Vampire Count." "Congratulations," Arlette said. "Why thank you very much," Caius said with a smile and a particularly hard squeeze of the breast in his hand. "I feel honored. I’ve never been in the presence of a ’Vampire Noble’ before," Arlette said with a sigh and leaned her body even more against Caius’ chest than it already was. "I suppose you haven’t. There must not have been any in ’Ophiuchus’," Caius said gently before planting a kiss on the top of her head. Arlette froze as she listened to his words. A topic they had both skirted for a while seemed to be rearing its head. "No," she answered after a minute passed, "Not as far as I knew." A criminal organization with multiple bases of operations all over the Acheron Empire, operating completely in secrecy with dealings with major Noble Houses and a hand in almost every political strife that had ever happened for over Five Centuries, ’Ophiuchus’ had Vampires. It had a bunch of them actually. "How many did you meet?" Caius asked. "Hmm?" Arlette asked, confused. "Vampires," Caius clarified, "How many Vampires have you met belonging to ’Ophiuchus’?" Arlette stiffened and then she let out a long sigh as she began, "A dozen maybe. They come and go. Most members are humans just like me. We make up the bulk of the Organization, I believe. Do a bulk of the dirty work. Actually, it felt a lot like we worked for them. The Vampires, I mean. They were the Overseers of our bases and we listened to their orders. We—" Arlette said and stopped, realizing she had slipped so easily into explaining things she shouldn’t have been explaining. "Yes?" Caius prompted. Arlette pulled away from his chest then and turned around so she was looking into his face as she said, "We hunted for them. Our targets were humans of various ages. Mostly at the First to Third Circles. Easier to get. Whenever we gave up our prey, we never heard from them again. Of course, it was obvious what was happening to those we brought in; They were being fed on. At least that was what we believed. Reality was more cruel than that..." "The victims were being siphoned," Caius interjected here, "Their blood drained from them and sealed in Canisters to be delivered elsewhere." Arlette was searching his eyes now and she asked a question she had asked once before, "Just how much do you know about ’Ophiuchus’?" Caius smiled lightly. "Possibly more than you do, dear," he answered, "Did you ever wonder where the blood was being delivered?" Arlette shrugged. "To another Vampire who needed it? I don’t know. There’s scarcely anything instilled in us during Initiation more important than the one iron-clad law; Obey all orders and ask no questions. It makes us efficient mercenaries for the Organization’s cause." "Also makes you easy to manipulate," Caius said. Arlette smiled lightly. "I gave up my right to not be manipulated the moment I joined up." "How did you join up?" Caius asked. Arlette raised her head then and let out such a heavy breath that her shoulders sagged. For a minute, she said nothing, and then when she spoke, her words were tinged with melancholy. "Who knows? Maybe some things happened in my life to make me more predisposed and easier to convince. Maybe I already served their ’cause’ before I even knew what or who they were. And maybe, to put a final nail in the coffin that was my initiation, I pissed off powerful people when I served that ’cause’ unknowingly and was left in a tight spot where I either joined or was caught in the middle of a tiff and done away with. I chose to join. I’ve never regretted it. I’ve received many benefits since. ’Ophiuchus’ is very generous about its allocation of resources. Thanks to them, I dare say I’ve advanced my Enlightenment faster and better than my peers. And when I’m not dirtying my hands for them, I’m studying the Arcane Codex. Trying to better myself even more than their resources allow..." In hindsight, knowing what he knew about ’Ophiuchus’, Caius decided he should not have been all that surprised that Arlette had known so much about his Vampirism. Not that she deduced that he was a Vampire (that was still fairly impressive and involved a lot of guesswork and coincidental theories) but rather that she was not all too surprised to learn he had an Evolutionary Trigger. That’s something Vampires don’t really divulge and it’s another one of the things about them that humans don’t always know. Mostly because it doesn’t matter. The General objective is to avoid getting bitten by a Vampire. That it needs to make you happy, sad, or angry before feeding on you to become stronger is a tad inconsequential to the larger goal of survival. "Have you ever wondered who leads ’Ophiuchus’?" Caius asked. "No one does. Not overall, anyway. Various Bases have their Leaders and they all keep each other in check for... balance..." Even as she said it, repeating what she had been fed for decades, Arlette knew she didn’t believe it. And didn’t know why she had even said it. With what she knew of their desire to dominate, there was no way so many Vampires were ’banding together’ and kept each other so easily in check to have not had a power struggle in centuries of coexistence, and have not blown the secrecy of the Organization to the high heavens. Caius smiled at that understanding look in her eyes. "It’s just as you think. There’s someone at the head of it all. There usually is in matters such as this. But here’s the fun part; This weekend, you and I will be paying them a visit."