18
Long Live The King
“Areyou ready to end the war?” Lorien asked the question with a huge grin. Maddox sighed. He was not ready. The one thing he had never wanted was high vampire office. He preferred to be a solo agent operating intermittently with humans and vampires alike. Thanks to Lorien, that life was over.
He had avoided this place like the plague, not wanting to be anywhere near the seat of vampire royal power. Now he couldn’t avoid it anymore. The Library was his domain and he was expected to pretend he cared about it.
The Library, like almost every New York building of note, was surrounded by buildings of no particular note at all. From the exterior, there were striped brown and red bricks running in horizontal lines. In the very middle of the building was a large, round window in an octagon pattern surrounded by a molded arch, both marked with multiple inscriptions. There were smaller windows either side, and statues atop them. Maddox had always considered the place to absolutely scream vampire, but nobody seemed to notice. The base of the building was covered in bold graffiti, and a metal roller door barred the general public from entering most of the time. It was, as so many things in NYC, a mixture of elegance and decadence, history, and rot.
The interior, however, had not been allowed to succumb to the same street influence. Once upon a time, this building had been at the very core of the new settlement of New York City. It had perched at the edge of the island of Manhattan as a beacon of elegance and stability. Now it was like almost everything else that had once held meaning, surrounded by mediocrity, its fortune left to the waning interests of human trends.
The twins had turned the lower floor into an incredibly tacky nightclub, but the upper floors remained what they were always supposed to be: a library. Carved shelves ran from floor to ceiling across five stories, containing books detailing the entirety of human and vampire history alike. There were tomes in this collection which, if released to the general public would certainly — well, probably — be ignored, but in the past, when people still read, would have changed humanity’s understanding of existence.
Maddox, Lorien, and Will were in the upper turret, a place where kings could hold private audiences, and prepare themselves for the rigors of public audience. Also in attendance, Alonzo Fabrice, aide-de-camp and master of ceremonies.
“During this ceremony you will take the throne and be crowned, my liege,” Alonzo explained.
Maddox was attempting not to show complete disinterest in the entire proceedings and not being very successful.
“Really, a crown?” Maddox sighed. “How gauche.”
“Give your subjects what they need,” Lorien said. “Get down there. Give them a show.”
The second, third, and fourth floors were more or less open, surrounded by spiral staircases and an open floor where all the local lords were in attendance. Like Maddox, most of them had been disinterested in the war, but a few of them no doubt harbored bitterness at having lost to someone who had not lifted a finger to fight. The place hummed with the energy of New York’s most powerful, most refined, and oldest vampire lords. Maddox knew all of them. All of them knew him. If they were human, it would have been a very congenial affair, but they were vampires and all of them would have rather been somewhere else.
“Come with me, boy?” Maddox offered Will his hand.
“As myself, or do you want the spectacle of having a wolf on a chain?”
A smile twisted Maddox’s lips. A lesser vampire might very well have insisted on Will taking his wolf form at his coronation, but Maddox had lived long enough to learn that it was better to let one’s strengths be mythic rather than overtly flaunted. Tales of the wolf were already widespread and becoming more exaggerated over time. “Let’s reserve that little power of yours for life and death situations only. I’d prefer not to torture you senselessly to death.”
“That’s as close as you’re going to get to a grand declaration of love,” Lorien muttered. “Enjoy it.”
Maddox proceeded down the spiral staircase with Will behind him and Lorien taking up the rear. All eyes were on them as he strolled to the thrones vacated by the twins. Now, though there was only the one king, nobody had thought to remove the second throne. It was fortunate, Maddox mused. He had a place for his pet wolf, somewhere as elegant and elevated as he deserved.
“Sit, boy,” Maddox indicated.
There was a general kerfuffle of confusion at seeing a human on the throne. Will was the only human present, a fact every vampire was aware of by merit of his scent and their senses. Still, the king could do as he pleased and nobody was in the mood to question his choices. They were all hoping the ceremony was over quickly and peace restored to New York.
“This is weird as fuck,” Will murmured.
“Agreed,” Maddox replied. Hundreds of powerful vampires bowing to him was weird as fuck. But it was what had to be done to stop the war. Someone had to take the throne. Someone had to bring peace. And that someone was him — for now.
Off to the side of the dais, it did not escape Maddox’s attention that Lorien was smiling like the Cheshire cat. Nobody else in the room suspected it, but by his reckoning Lorien was truly the most dangerous vampire in New York, bar none. Sadistic, manipulative, charming. Everything a potential king needed to be. Perhaps more than a king. Perhaps an emperor. There was ambition in those sparkling green eyes. And though he was yet young, he had already set leviathan events in motion that would continue to echo throughout time.
He would need to be kept close. Very close.
“Hey.” Will nudged him.
“What?”
“They’re trying to put the thing on you.”
Maddox glanced over to see that Alonzo was, indeed, trying to put the thing on him. Alonzo had been turned when he was in his seventies, and so he had a natural venerable appeal which leant itself to moments such as these. It was fortunate that someone did, for the entire ceremony was lacking a certain amount of what might be considered excitement.
Alonzo’s tone was imbued with serious weight and majesty made more evident by Maddox’s absolute disinterest in the proceedings.
“With this ancient crown, forged in history’s fires and worn only by those who have true claim to power, I mark you as leader of our kind, and bestow upon you this symbol of our collective fealty. May your reign be eternal.”
Will snuggled up to Maddox over the arm of the throne as the crown was presented first to the crowd, and then placed upon Maddox’s head.
A cheer of obligation and general relief went up around the room, tinged, of course, with bitterness and envy, as might be expected at any coronation.
It was done.