Lothaire awoke to a piercing pain in his gut. His umber colored eyes blinked open to the pitch-dark of the room, and he sat up in his broad, sumptuous bed. Looking down the edges and valleys of his muscled torso to the focal point of the pain, Lothaire gritted his fanged teeth. It had been a century and a half since that Confederate ball had found him on the battlefield of Antietam, and though his immortal gifts had long ago healed his mortal wound, the pain still ghosted across his flesh every night at the moment of his waking.
The healers called it "The Reaper's Stigmata." It was a common phenomenon for vampires that were turned moments before a wound or illness was about to rob them of their mortal life. Vampire lore claimed that the pain remained as a reminder to the saved vampire that the Reaper, who had been robbed the chance of freeing a mortal soul from its body, would one day return to collect on his slighted bounty. Lothaire thought the notion to be grimly poetic, albeit gallingly painful—a small price to pay for the gift of eternity.
As Lothaire continued to glare at where the ball had struck him, the pain began to quickly subside. In mere moments it was once again nothing more than a smoky memory, repressed until the following night's awakening. With an exasperated grunt, Lothaire flung the sheets from himself, and stood.
Lothaire's bare feet padded softly across fine South African mahogany floors as he made his way towards the bathroom. The room was yet shrouded in total darkness.
"Open shutters," he said, scratching his fingers through his long hair.
Instantly the computer controlled louvered shades that covered the floor-length windows of the east wall, twisted open with a dull whir of electric motors. Light from the rising moon combined with the artificial glow of the still bustling city, flooded into the room. The modernly appointed interior of the Covenarch's Suite was illuminated brightly in the glow of the young-night, and Lothaire had to squint to shield his keen eyes until they adjusted. In the west, the sun had just set, and the green of Central Park was still verdant from the suite's vantage point just across the street, and twenty stories up.
Once inside of the large bathroom, Lothaire stripped off his shorts, and came to stand naked in front of a full-length mirror. He gazed upon himself intently, twisting his figure to and fro in the warm glow of the bathroom's artificial lights. For the next fifteen minutes he inspected every inch of his body. He looked through his thick hair to his scalp, behind his ears, on his eyelids, below his tongue, down his neck, and on and on, until there was no surface he had not seen.
It was not vanity that drove Lothaire to this intense scrutiny. This daily addition to his waking routine had only just come about over a month ago. He was not searching for any natural flaws, or blemishes. It was the mark that he sought to find; The Tattoo that denoted the first signs of the Sol Blight.
The deadly disease was said to begin as a small swirl, or series of black dots upon the skin, usually at the side of the neck, or upon the upper chest. As it progressed, it would quickly spread across the afflicted vampire's body until the skin appeared to have been decorated with a black tattoo of morbidly beautiful filigree. These markings were universal, and every documented case of Sol Blight bore the accompanying black lines.
Lothaire let out a breathless sigh. He had found no mark.
With his personal inspection finished, Lothaire was free to complete the rest of his nightly ritual. He showered, trimmed his short beard, polished his teeth to a gleaming white, and dressed.
Smelling subtly of sandalwood, and clothed in a charcoal suit, a white dress shirt open at the neck, and black leather wingtips, Lothaire stepped from the Covenarch Suite into the Great Room. The expansive, and luxurious space was dimly lit with only a few lamps and wall sconces, as the electronic shutters were yet closed over the windows. When opened, they too would allow a prized view of Central Park, and the skyline of Eastern Manhattan.
The Sanguinoso Covenus owned the entire block along Central Park West between W 101st Street and W 102nd. It was a complex of handsome mid-rises, covered in a façade of polished limestone and granite, complete with beautiful Roman-style statues at the top corners, and stone columns flanking the entrances. To the mortal world, The Hamiltonian, as the complex was called, was a combination office building and residence for some of the most mysterious and exclusive people in Manhattan. It was a popular site for tourist photo-ops and cheesy selfies, as the distinct set of buildings had been a unique feature on the island since before the Civil War. The Hamiltonian even had a highly reviewed bar, that strangely enough was closed to the public as oft as it was open.
What the public did not see was that the Hamiltonian was a veritable fortress, designed to keep out any unwanted guest, as well as every shred of sunlight. The entire complex was controlled by a cutting-edge security system that managed everything from the temperature, to the false images displayed on the outside of the windows to hide the interior, to the UV sensors that kept the window shutters locked until the sun set. It was also guarded by a select few human security personnel, most of which were members of trusted mortal families that had served the coven for generations.
Lothaire's suite, and the Great Room in which he stood, was in the tallest of the Hamiltonian buildings, and the central hub of the coven. Most of the vampires that were a part of the Sanguinoso Covenus lived within the many custom rooms of the Hamiltonian. Each member was given a space of their own upon joining the coven, and they were free to modify it to suit their tastes.
With a quick word, Lothaire opened the shutters to the Great Room. As before, the distinct light from the city that never slept filled the space as the electronic louvers spun. The interior lights automatically adjusted, bringing the room into a warm equilibrium.
His hair still wet, and slicked back across his skull, Lothaire wove his way through plush chairs and tables covered in books. The path he took led him to the "kitchen" which was nothing more than a large wet-bar in the center of the room. It held taps for blood, as well as a vast assortment of spirits.
Priorities, Lothaire thought with a smile. Even in death, one can't do without good liquor.
As he was still the only one in the Great Room, Lothaire picked up the day's copy of the The Times, and folded it under his arm before pouring himself a tumbler of blood, as well as another glass with a finger's worth of Grey Goose vodka.
With a glass in each hand, and the paper under his arm, Lothaire intended to make his way to his favorite chair beside the windows. What he saw when he turned, however, made him stop in his tracks. There, lying upon the floor, silhouetted in the light of the windows, was the figure of a woman. Her body was contorted and frozen in the throes of agony. Through her open mouth, fangs were visible, as well as black char that seemed to crawl its way upwards from her throat. Her eye sockets were hollow and burnt, and the hair on her head looked brittle and straw-like.
Lothaire recognized instantly she wasn't a member of the Sanguinoso Covenus; he knew every one of his coven-mates on sight. This was an unknown vampire, and a complete stranger to his recollections. How she had gotten inside of the Hamiltonian, Lothaire couldn't begin to explain. But what he did know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, made his body quake, and his dead breath catch in his chest.
There, crawling up the flesh of the vampiress' neck, and running up her jaw to curl over her sunken cheeks, was an elegant and stunning array of twisting black lines.