The Corpse And The Crazy

Caesura

Matthias is a scalpel, an instrument to get precisely what you want without hurting anything around it.

 But even the sharpest knives need honing. 

I was surprised to hear of his misstep. To let an alarm go off is an amateur's mistake, certainly not something that someone of his calibre would do. And then to get caught by that very amateur? Pitiful.

And to top it all off, he needs to call in the help of Winston to finish off some scientists? Pathetic.

It has been some time since I've been in the field, but time doesn't exactly affect me. I'm a vampire, after all. 

'Yasmine, would you be so kind as to make sure that everything runs smoothly here? I have to go and run some errands,' I say, swinging by her suite. One of the many pros of owning a hotel chain, you can simply house your partners and employees wherever you want. 

Yasmine looked up from her laptop, she had been trying to figure out how to face-time her seventeen-times-great-grandchild or something. For a woman who is so skilled in the art of espionage, she really needs to learn how to work a computer. 'Sure, honey, you need anything else?'

'No, that'll be all.'

Yasmine is one of the best investments I have ever made. I met her while on a trip to my Persian business partner, while she was spying for him. 

Her mission was to get intel on me, mine was to befriend the Persian king. I wasn't the Duke back then, just another soldier sent by the former Duke. I was young and thought I'd be able to convince her to help me instead. 

It didn't quite go like that. After a couple of very interesting days in the capital, I had given her every piece of information I had about the Duke. I only realised what had happened when I woke up the last morning and noticed that there was a note where she had laid. 

I don't remember exactly what it said, but it was some proverb about never trusting a cat to catch a mouse when your balls looked just as tasty or something. 

Needless to say, I was almost executed for treason, so I overthrew the former Duke. The first thing I did when I rose to power is ask Yasmine to join my organisation. 

And the rest is history. 

I walked down the corridor, passing by the red wallpaper and the paintings I purchased from a widower. I try to dodge the most squeaky planks in an effort to not wake the freshly turned vampires that reside here. They tend to be a bit cranky when woken up this late in the morning. 

And with cranky, I mean that they'd attack the nearest moving thing, and given that the fans are turned off, I would be that target, and I'm not planning on ruining a perfectly fine three-piece suit.

When I arrive downstairs, I check if Winston has already returned to the residence, but her motorcycle isn't parked in the garage. This must be one big problem to take her this long. 

When I drive out of the garage, I ask the man guarding the fence, Aimo, to text me when Winston is back.

'You are going somewhere, sir?' he asks with a thick Finnish accent. 

'Yes,' I reply, 'there are some hiccups in a sensitive mission, nothing that concerns me.'

He frowns, 'you sure? The last time you said that Miller had killed most of the newbies.'

'It's nothing bad. Like I said, just some hiccups,' I assure him. But he's right, I don't get out on the field that often, and when I do, it's usually when things get dangerous. 

He remains silent for a moment, and then asks, 'Sir, what does concern you?'

'Good question,' I say before driving away. 

Time to hone a knife.