Steal the Night (Thieves #5)(57)

I could see how that would be very helpful to a vampire. He could have his dinner and leave the victim alive after persuading the person nothing had happened. “So how do you know who’ll be important and who won’t?”

Marcus thought about this for a moment, obviously trying to find the best way to make me understand. “I see patterns. Some people would call it seeing the future, but it’s nothing so interesting. I see the needs of the world and somehow I manage to find the person who can fill those needs.”

“Like Daniel?”

The vampire’s smile was rueful. “I knew Daniel was important the moment I laid eyes on him. It’s why I fought to become his mentor. I knew he would need me if he was to become what the supernatural world needed. I’ve found that when a true need arises, somehow, some way, the right tools show up.”

I turned to my host. It was long past time to get some answers. If he wanted to use Daniel, I needed to know what happened the last time he had met a king. “If Daniel is supposed to stop the threat Marini poses, then what was the last king supposed to do?”

The gondola glided gracefully across the water as Marcus turned to me. “What you have to understand, Zoey, is that Louis has not always been as he is today. I’ve counted him as my friend for almost two thousand years. When I rose, it was Louis who turned me. He gave me my first blood. He became my master.”

“Then I’m sorry for you, Marcus. He told me he hates the fact that he cannot treat Daniel as a master should,” I said bitterly.

Marcus shook his head. “But, Zoey, he was a kind master. His own master had been terrible to him, and he vowed to never treat another vampire in such a manner. This is what I’m trying to explain to you. Time weighs on him. Immortality changes you. You see so much, watch everything change so quickly, that it all seems temporary. If everything around you becomes temporary then nothing is meaningful. It happens to many vampires. It has happened to Louis. He believes he’s the only thing on the planet worthy of ruling because he’s the oldest of us. That is why the last king rose.”

I nodded because I understood what he was trying to tell me. “So inevitably the Council becomes corrupt.”

“Yes. It was about a thousand years ago. The Council was made up of ancients, true ancients. These were beings that had walked the earth as humans were evolving. It was the Dark Ages and we were being hunted. The Council made a deal with the demons to build great armies to subjugate the human threat. We still needed human blood to survive, so the plan was to kill the strong and make slaves of the weak. There was no mass media in those days, so it was easy to take over a territory and never have the neighboring villages know what was coming for them.”

“And the last king put a stop to this?” I didn’t quite understand why they needed to execute him. He sounded like he’d done something good.

Marcus shook his head. “He was not Daniel, Zoey. He was a hard man. He was power hungry. When he rose, he killed the Council members without a thought to the fact that the act plunged us into civil war. Without a strong Council to guide us, the vampires sought out their own territories and the bloodshed was…I’ve never seen the like. The demons took advantage and joined the king in trying to force the remaining vampires to do his bidding, which included giving their own companions to the king as tribute.”

“Louis and the old king have a lot in common,” I muttered, thinking about the conversation we’d had about Daniel owing him. Marini believed he deserved whatever companion he wanted because he was the head of the Council.

“More than you know, cara,” Marcus replied enigmatically. “Niles, Elof, and I were relatively young vampires. Niko was older and more on the same level as Louis, but we banded together. We were sick of the war and thought we could do better. Niko talked about the ancient Greeks and their views on government. My own Roman upbringing had me believe that people should have rights. It wasn’t democracy as you know today, but it formed the roots of it. The king was a bit more feudal. Might made right in his eyes. We had to stop him.”

“How did you do it?”

“We did the only thing we could. He was stronger than all of us combined so we relied on being smarter than him.”

“You came up with a plan.” It had to be Marcus.

His eyes were grave as he nodded. “I did.” He was silent for a while and when he began speaking again, I could hear the many years in his voice. “I’m not particularly proud of what I did, but there was no other way. I didn’t have a companion at the time but Louis did. She was a beautiful, strong woman from Brittany. The king had decided to take her. She loved Louis and came to me asking how she could kill the king and save her master because she worried Louis would attempt to defend her. I knew an alchemist. He was an intensely talented man. He could liquefy silver in such a way that it was ingestible.”

“Like colloidal silver?”

“No, Zoey,” Marcus said, his teeth biting out the words. “Colloidal silver doesn’t kill in small doses. Marie had but hours to live when she went to the king and let him feed from her.”

“Oh my god,” I breathed, thinking about the woman’s sacrifice. “She must have loved him.”

“It was a different time and Louis was a different person. In the end, it did not kill the king.” Marcus’s voice turned academic now. “It did, however, weaken him to the point that we were able to get him into a prison.”