Page 93 of Vampire Kings Box Set

“Don’t do anything stupid. Please.”

He winked and left. No promises.

Lorien and Chauvelin were playing cards together. This was a common vampiric activity to pass the time. Vampires knew every card game humanity had ever invented. However, there were a few that held greater significance to them as a species. Lorien had decided to teach Chauvelin his favorite of them all.

“Do you have any fives?” Chauvelin asked the question after having inspected his hand for a good two minutes at least.

“Go fish,” Lorien said.

“You never have any of the cards I choose.”

“It’s a matter of luck.”

“I don’t believe in luck. Everything can be controlled when you want to control it bad enough.”

“Now you sound like Maddox.”

BAM! BAM!

A pounding knocking at the door interrupted them.

“Were you expecting someone?” Lorien asked Chauvelin.

“No, but then again I’ve never expected any of the visitors I’ve gotten here. Something about this place encourages people to just…”

“HELLO!” A male voice called out from the foyer.

“… walk in,” Chauvelin finished.

Lorien and Chauvelin left the parlor, which was currently furnished with a couple of crates and a bit of carpet snagged out of a recycling truck and proceeded to the foyer where they met a man who was not wearing a shirt, or shoes, and barely qualified as wearing pants because he was in the process of taking them off too.

“Sorry,” he said. “I hate wearing clothes inside. Just feels wrong.”

Lorien and Chauvelin exchanged glances. The guy was hot in a filthy homeless animal sort of way. Lorien had never met him before, but something about him felt immediately familiar. The guy finished getting naked and strode between them, swinging in the breeze without any sense of shame.

“I’m here for my meat, meat,” he patted Chauvelin on the head on the way past.

“You must be Will’s father,” Lorien deduced. “Ivan, is it?”

“Yes. Need a place to stay, you offered this one once, remember, short stuff?” Ivan turned back to Chauvelin, who was too busy trying not to stare at Ivan’s sculpted, muscular ass.

“Ye… yes. I remember,” Chauvelin stammered. “There are still a lot of free rooms. Take your pick.”

“I’ll just sleep by the fire,” Ivan said, going into the parlor where their cards still sat. “Oh, cards. Cool.”

“I’m Lorien,” Lorien introduced himself. “I’m the prince of New York.”

“I’m Ivan. I’m the emperor of I don’t give a fuck.”

Lorien laughed. “You and your son are really cut from the same cloth.”

“Yeah,” Ivan agreed. “And it's only a matter of time before everybody knows it.”

“So you still want him? Even after everything he just did? That’s why you’re staying in New York, I take it?” Lorien was immediately curious. He’d left just after Will turned up and was greeted like the second coming, but he’d heard all the nonsense about the father.

“Family is family,” Ivan shrugged. His eyes alighted on a bottle Chauvelin had scavenged from somewhere. “Is that whiskey?”

It was whiskey. And that made it a party.