Chapter 302: The Face of a Mistake III
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Raka gestured once toward the back rooms. "You will get food. Water. A place to sit. No one here touches you unless I say otherwise."
He turned his head toward his men and spoke more coldly. "And if any of you drunks pick another fight with something Big Boss sent, I will beat the stupidity out of you one tooth at a time."
That one they believed instantly.
The lesser vampire stayed calm through all of it.
Interesting creature, Raka thought.
No swagger.
No waste.
No whining about respect after winning.
He could work with that for one night.
The rest of the hall shifted after that. Not back to comfort. To acceptance. Men reset benches. Someone dragged one of the worst-off drunks away to a corner where he could groan in peace. Water appeared. A basin. Clothes. Someone else retrieved Raka’s discarded blade and wisely did not hand it back to him right away.
The rest of the night settled into something lower and stranger than either side had expected.
Bonding, in its rough underground version.
Not emotional. Functional.
The men did not start speaking openly until Raka and the lesser vampire moved into the back room. Even then, their voices stayed low, the kind of low that meant no one wanted the vice leader hearing exactly how surprised they were.
"That thing is rank three," one muttered, staring toward the room’s inner door. "No. Worse than rank three. It moves wrong."
Another man rubbed his jaw and said, "I saw Scar-face swing first. He should have landed at least once before getting folded."
Scar-face, already nursing his pride with both hands, snapped, "Shut up."
One of the younger men leaned closer and whispered, "Did you see the eyes? Bright red. Not drunk red. Not beast red. Proper red."
A third swallowed. "I thought Iron House sent a killer. Now I think Big Boss had sent a nightmare."
That earned a few ugly snorts.
Someone farther back muttered, "If that token was real, then Big Boss Sekhmet is making monsters now."
Another replied, "Wasn’t he already one."
No one laughed at that.
One older thug scratched his beard and said, "Our Leader fought him seriously. Did you see that? No playing. No testing after the second exchange. And he still got his face beaten into a funeral painting."
A silence followed.
Then one of the men said quietly, "If that thing really serves Big Boss, maybe we should stop calling him Big Boss. We should call him something else."
That made the others glance around uneasily.
Scar-face spat to the side and muttered, "I said from the start the token looked real."
Three men turned toward him at once.
"You said it was fake."
"I said it might be fake."
"You said he was from Iron House."
Scar-face folded his arms and glared. "And now I say none of you repeat that to the Leader unless you want your ribs corrected."
Meanwhile, Raka had the lesser vampire seated in the back room nearest his own, not out of affection, but because keeping unknown blood close was better than letting it wander through the outer den. The two of them talked while men moved around them pretending not to listen.
Raka asked what Sekhmet wanted in the morning.
The lesser vampire repeated that he had only been told to bring him.
Raka asked whether Big Boss had fed him personally.
The lesser vampire did not answer directly, which was answer enough.
Raka asked whether he remembered his old loyalties.
The lesser vampire said yes.
Raka asked whether he regretted this.
That one took longer.
Then the lesser vampire said, "Regret is less useful than obedience."
Raka sat back after that and studied him with his one good eye.
There was something almost comforting in hearing a line that cold from someone else for once.
The men at the edge of the room, meanwhile, kept throwing glances at the stranger. Some were fearful. Some are curious. Some are calculating in the hopeless way lesser criminals calculated around stronger predators and called it survival.
The drunk fifteen stayed very quiet.
More useful that way.
By the middle of the night, the base had accepted the lesser vampire’s presence enough to stop gripping weapons every time he shifted his shoulders. Raka did not become warm toward him. He was not a man who did warmth cheaply. But the misunderstanding had burned itself out under proof and violence, and what remained was practical coexistence.
At one point, Raka tossed him a fresh cloth and said, "You hit hard."
The lesser vampire, who had not bothered cleaning the split skin on his own knuckles because his body had already started handling it, caught the cloth and said, "You fight well for a man who refuses to listen."
That nearly made Raka laugh through his swollen face.
"Careful," he said. "I may still decide to hit you again for that."
The lesser vampire’s expression did not change. "You can try."
That one did make Raka laugh. It was brief. The laugh was very painful for him.
He regretted it at once because his face hurt like hell.
The night passed.
Not quickly.
Not badly.
And when the first gray hint of morning finally touched the upper edges of the market world above them, Raka stood from his chair and stretched once.
His face looked terrible.
One eye swollen dark.
The other bruised around the edge.
The jaw was not much better.
His men noticed and looked carefully elsewhere because men who laughed at a leader’s face rarely kept enough teeth to regret it twice.
The lesser vampire stood as well, already ready.
Raka looked at him. "You still know the way."
"Yes."
"Good."
Then he turned toward the room and barked, "Up."
That one word moved through the base like a thrown knife.
Men rose. Weapons were checked. Coats pulled on. Boots kicked into place. Those not fully awake were woken by men who had no tenderness in them before breakfast.