The Five Houses Tribunal

The suffocating air beneath Manhattan was nothing like the skin-flaying cold of the snowy Blackwood mountains. It was thick air, heavy with the smell of thousand-year-old damp moss, crumbling limestone, and dried cloves rising from ancient bronze censers.

Sanctum Silentii — the Half-Moon Hall of the Council of Five Houses — lay 650 feet underground, beneath skyscrapers teeming with human traffic. There was no sunlight here, only hundreds of tallow candles set in tarnished bronze candlesticks, casting flickering, ghostlike streaks of light up the soaring stone vaults.

Eighty years had passed since Victor last set foot in this room.

He stood alone at the very center of the stone chamber. His dark maroon brocade robe fell to the icy stone floor. His hands weren't shackled, and no iron chains bound him, yet five invisible waves of pressure radiating from the five black granite thrones around him weighed on his shoulders like mountains. It was the combined authority of five primordial Pureblood aristocrats — beings who had manipulated human history since the 11th century.

On five thrones upholstered in deep black velvet sat the House Lords, in ancient ceremonial robes embroidered with gold thread. Their faces were hidden behind dull gray stone masks that revealed only eyes of red or charcoal-violet glowing in the dark.

And on the third throne to the right — the seat reserved for the representative of House Dumont — sat Seraphine.

She wore a deeply slit black brocade gown that showed off her flawless snow-white skin. Around her neck hung a necklace set with a bloodstone the size of a quail egg. She idly swirled a glass of dark red liquid in her palm, her plum-painted lips curving into a smile that was sweet but full of poison.

"Victor Blackwood," Seraphine said. Her voice was clear and echoed under the stone vaults like an ancient harp, carrying the most proper honorifics of the aristocracy.

"Duke of Ashborne, Warden of the Snow Valley, Silver Hand of the Council of Five Houses. For 800 years, your House has been the strongest shield protecting the purity of our vampire blood from the filth of the mortal world. Your presence today does this hall great honor."

Victor didn't answer. His blazing red eyes were sunk in the shadow of his brow, and the straight line of his nose, carved from stone, didn't so much as twitch. He knew this ritual well. The prettier the words, the sharper the knife behind your back.

"And yet," Seraphine said with a sigh, a fake sigh full of the deepest regret. She gently opened her black-brocade-gloved hand.

Thump.

A stack of files bound in dark brown human leather dropped onto the stone table in the middle of the hall. Fourteen files. Records of blood types, dried blood stuck fast to the edges of the covers, and the white lily wax seal of Aldric's vassal family.

"Fourteen mortals. Fourteen labeled bags of blood drained right under the vault of Blackwood Castle," Seraphine said, lowering her eyes to look down at Victor, her voice as soft as a lover's whisper, yet every word she spoke was a death sentence.

"Under the Fourth Sacred Canon of the Five Houses, carved into this stone wall in the 11th century: any Pureblood house that tolerates, conceals, or directly organizes the unlawful harvesting of human blood within its territory... shall suffer marrow-flaying and exile from the bloodkin."

She paused, tilted her head, and looked at Victor, her charcoal-violet eyes flashing with utter cruelty:

"The Law of the Five Houses doesn't care whether you did it on purpose or by accident, Your Grace. The law only looks at the result. Do you have anything to say in your defense before the Council orders the sentence carried out?"

The stone chamber sank into a deathly silence. The pressure from the other four House Lords tightened around Victor.

Victor shut his eyes tight. He knew the truth perfectly well: Aldric had bought that blood to keep him alive, and he had carelessly looked the other way. But before the Tribunal of the Five Houses, any explanation about a "secret transit route" or "the butler's lies" would be nothing but the feeble excuses of a defeated man. The Law of the Five Houses allowed absolutely no leniency.

He slowly clenched his fist under the brocade. He had lived 900 years in solitude, and maybe this was the ending he had always tormented himself looking for.

"She's telling half a lie."

A voice rang out from the dark corner of the passage leading into the hall.

The voice carried none of a vampire's crushing authority, none of that deep, thousand-year-old rasp; it was a mortal voice — calm, steely, and cold as a blade just drawn from its sheath.

All the killing intent in the hall suddenly froze.

All five House Lords turned their heads at the same time. Between the rows of flickering candles at the door of the hall, Vanya walked slowly out. She wore her fitted leather assassin's gear, and the two silver blades at her hip knocked lightly against each other with a small, dull clack. Her pale gray eyes — the color of a winter sky before a storm — swept across the five stone thrones without a trace of fear.

A human. A mortal assassin standing before the High Council of the Five Houses.

Seraphine faltered for a beat, then burst out laughing. Her laugh was bright and brittle and echoed all through the stone vault, full of the deepest contempt for a lower creature:

"A mortal prey animal? What corner did this little insect crawl out of? Who gave this filthy creature permission to set foot in Sanctum Silentii?"

Without waiting for an answer, Seraphine raised her long, slender hand. Her eyes blazed with an eerie violet light. She unleashed a terrifying wave of compulsion and psychic pressure — a power that could easily blow apart an ordinary human brain or force the bravest warrior to take a knife and cut his own throat on the spot.

The invisible wave shot straight at Vanya and blew back the ash-colored strands of hair falling over her forehead.

Victor's face went pale, and he tightened his hands, about to step in front of her: "Vanya—!"

But Vanya didn't back away. She didn't even blink.

The deadly wave of compulsion from a Pureblood vampire hit her mind like a wild ocean wave smashing into a thousand-year-old reef. It shattered into countless harmless fragments. The unique structure of her brain — its complete resistance to magic and immunity to compulsion — wiped out all of Seraphine's power in an instant.

Vanya was still standing there, back straight, her face calm without a single ripple.

Seraphine was stunned. Her hand, raised in midair, trembled slightly. She couldn't believe her eyes. For the first time in 500 years of existence, her mind-control magic had completely failed against a mortal human.

On the five stone thrones, the other four House Lords began to stir and murmur. Vanya's immunity to compulsion was an extremely rare phenomenon, and under the laws of the Five Houses, someone who couldn't be compelled was someone who could not be magically forced to lie.

Vanya took three more steps forward and stopped right beside Victor. She didn't look at him; her pale gray eyes were locked on Seraphine:

"I'm Vanya, a senior operative for the Aegis assassin network. For the past 18 months, I've been quietly setting traps, watching, and working undercover at the Blackwood mansion under the cover of a hunter."

Seraphine narrowed her eyes, and the smile vanished from her lips: "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Those 14 files bound in human leather," Vanya said, pointing a gloved finger straight at the stack of documents on the stone table.

"You're half right. It's true that those 14 laborers went through the vault under Blackwood Castle. But the one who really ran them, bought them, and turned them into labeled bags of blood... had nothing to do with Victor von Blackwood. It was the Dumont Holdings group, with your own family standing right behind it."

"Insolence!" Seraphine leaped up from her stone throne, her black brocade gown swaying. Her face had gone gray-green with rage.

"Slander! Defaming a House Lord could get you torn limb from limb!"

"I have proof," Vanya cut her off, her voice cruelly calm. She was perjuring herself like a true professional, mixing 50 percent truth with 50 percent lies to build a perfect front.

"Those 14 laborers were originally escapees from Dumont Holdings' underground farms. Aldric the butler only used that route to rescue them, but Dumont's intelligence network intercepted them the moment they crossed to the other side of the snow mountains. All the encrypted transactions, the logs of hidden money transfers, and the list of Dumont's facilities for draining mortal blood are sitting on Aegis's secure servers right now."

She turned to look at the High Lord seated on the center throne:

"A mortal who can't be compelled, like me, has no reason to protect a vampire. I'm here to expose the criminal empire of Dumont Holdings. I request that the Council postpone its verdict for 30 days so I can decrypt all of Aegis's data and present it to the Tribunal."

"Aegis hunts our kind," said the Lord on the far left throne. His stone mask was carved into the face of a sleeping man, and his voice came out of it dry and old, like pages turning. "It has hunted us for a century. Why should this Council take the word of one of its knives?"

"Because I'm the only one in this room who can't be made to lie," Vanya said.

"She could be lying of her own free will," Seraphine said lightly. "Mortals do it constantly. It's practically their national sport."

"I could," Vanya agreed. She didn't look away from Seraphine's violet eyes. "So could you. But only one of us has 14 files sitting on that table with her family's money all over them."

A soft sound moved along the thrones, not quite a laugh. The Lord on the second throne, a woman whose mask was carved with closed eyes and a mouth sewn shut, tilted her head toward Seraphine.

"Dumont Holdings," she said. "Is that name familiar to your House, Lady Seraphine?"

"Holdings are held by many hands." Seraphine smiled. "I can hardly be expected to know every one of them."

"You knew the name of every one of these 14 mortals," the woman said mildly. "You recited them to us at our last session. In order."

For the first time, the smile on Seraphine's plum-dark lips went still.

The hall fell into a silence stretched tight as a harp string.

The four House Lords looked at one another. The fact that Vanya was immune to compulsion had given her words a staggering credibility. In their eyes, a human assassin would never cover for a vampire unless she was on a mission to expose a major crime.

The High Lord slowly raised a granite staff and slammed it down on the floor of the hall.

BOOM!

"By the authority of the Tribunal of the Five Houses," the ancient voice rumbled like rolling stone.

"The verdict for Victor Blackwood is postponed for 30 days. During this time, an order freezing the assets of Dumont Holdings will be considered. This court is adjourned."

Seraphine ground her teeth so hard they squeaked. Her violet eyes were webbed with bloodshot streaks, boring into Vanya as if she wanted to eat her alive. But in front of the Council, there was nothing she could do except turn on her heel with her pride intact and walk away.

She passed within a foot of Victor on her way out. She didn't look at him, but her lily scent brushed his face like a hand, and her voice, pitched for him alone, was almost fond.

"You always did have a weakness for strays, darling."

Victor stood beside Vanya. He looked at the slender but unyielding shoulders of the human woman who had just overturned a death sentence for him with her own hands. In his blazing red eyes was a deep shock that no words could express.