Lucas Monaco fights for an MC&D internship.
November 2, 1996
Lucas Monaco had long been aware of Marshall, Carter, and Dark. Not by specifics, faces, or deeds, but by the shadows cast by those names alone.
He knew them by the rare reverence with which his father had referred to them; one surname or another would occasionally cross his desk, signed upon documents that always seemed to carry more weight and power than gold.
He knew them by the fear and hate they inspired amongst Wanderers; his old acquaintances in the Library would have slit his throat if they knew of his ambitions. Not that they’d ever been overwhelmingly fond of him there—just another rich kid getting his teenage fix of magic and socialism to piss off his parents before surrendering himself to the altar of almighty capital.
He knew them by the wax-sealed parchment that appeared in his mail one autumn afternoon.
Dear Mr. Monaco,
We have taken note of you and your work and have determined you may be a suitable candidate for our 1997 internship programme. We are writing to formally invite you to interview for this esteemed position.
Enclosed, you will find a vial of ink and another of holy water. If you are interested, please sign your name, douse this parchment with the water, and proceed to incinerate this letter between the hours of midnight and 3:00.
Should you perform these rites, we will be in touch.
Regards,
Marshall, Carter & Dark, Ltd.
December 10, 1996
Lucas held his own gaze in the bathroom mirror, preparing himself for the fourth round of interviewing, internally cursing the overkill of it all.
The first set had brought the typical inquiries into his background and general fit. They grilled him on every aspect of his life, combing through his past on paper before subjecting him to disappointingly mundane asks regarding his greatest strengths, weaknesses, motivation for the job, and so forth.
After that, there were the aptitude tests. They examined his technical knowledge of financial models, capital flow, and the mathematics that made a business truly function. He knew he passed with flying colors, leaving even his interviewer impressed, despite her reluctance to show it.
The third was similarly bloated by asinine questions about magick, all of which he would have been able to confidently answer since childhood. The only moderately difficult part had been when they’d asked him to reverse engineer an elaborate ritual for stock manipulation, which turned out to be a delightfully engaging puzzle for the seventeen minutes it took for him to solve it.
So why a fourth? The fact that the communique from them this morning had been a callback rather than an acceptance might as well have been a slap to the face.
Did his prospective employers truly see fit to waste so much time?
It’s not their time they’re wasting. They’re outsourcing this to people who have nothing better to do.
Were they testing his resolve, then?
In an attempt to vent his frustration, he took to restless pacing, which soon evolved into his methodically cleaning every room in the manor. When he reached the library, he looked for something to read, hoping to get his head back on straight. Instead, he reorganized two bookshelves before realizing he hated the new arrangement, prompting him to fix it back.
All the while, he thought of nothing but that gilded role. Nothing but those three damn names.
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet, he reminded himself, then recalled the axiom’s origin with some reproach. One of the few sensible things Rousseau ever spouted.
His neurosis had kept him awake all night, though that was a common enough occurrence. By midmorning, he hoped his gnawing disquiet might be sated as if it were simply physical hunger in disguise.
Perhaps this process is taking so long because the competition is just that close, Lucas considered. The notion of anyone his age being on his level made him laugh, the bitter sound passing through clenched teeth as he descended fourteen spiraled steps into an oppressively humid cellar. Coolers preserved meat, but the heat aided in blood flow and muscle relaxation.
The hardwood floor was covered by an ivory tablecloth, making it easy to clean up any resulting mess from his meal. In center of the room, surrounded by a workable collection of fine wine bottles, a chained man hung from the ceiling.
Still turning his thoughts over and over in his head, Lucas made no effort to acknowledge him as he approached. He clicked open one of the steel manacles, bringing the chafed wrist to his mouth.
The act was ritualistic in its routine, his teeth puncturing bruised flesh and drawing out warm blood. His lips made a vacuum seal around the wound, his consumption a clean process. If his brunch struggled, he barely noticed.
Lucas understood, of course, why this was such a gatekept position, but hadn’t they reached out to him first? How dare they treat him as some desperate, grasping applicant? Did they not see how qualified he was? Born of one of the oldest vampiric families on the continent, seven years in a Swiss boarding school, a flawless record in the years he had so far completed at London’s School of Economics and Political Science—
He pulled back from the pallid body, the heady sensation ebbing into clarity as he realized he'd gotten carried away.
Even with temperance and good practices, humans scarcely lasted longer than a season or two. Vampires simply drained blood faster than a single human could typically replenish it. Lucas knew of kin who kept a select few humans on rotation for much longer periods, but that had always seemed like too much trouble, especially given the relatively meager size of his cellar compared to what he’d grown up with.
He left the corpse in its chains, as he handled neither disposal nor sourcing. Sure, it would have been an easy enough thing to go hunt the streets of London; no one would miss a body vanishing in the night from some unlit corner in Camden. But since starting university, he'd decided it was hardly worth interrupting his studies and social life to do what he could pay other people to do instead.
Father would say London's made you lazy, Lucas thought sardonically, and he'd almost be right.
December 13, 1996
Lucas' interviewers brought him into an empty room and told him to wait. The door sealed with a click, leaving him alone with beige walls, boring art, and the smell of cleaning chemicals.
A minute later, he heard a hiss. Glancing up, he watched and smelled the gas spewing from dispensers fixed to the high ceilings.
Immediately, Lucas stopped breathing. After all, he could comfortably go for about fifteen minutes without passing out, so there was no rush.
Control yourself. And what you cannot control, analyze.
One option was to throw his full strength at the door. He assumed that doing so would have probably blown him back from the force of the runes and thaumaturgical locks they'd likely implemented to keep him from succeeding in such a panicked endeavor.
Perhaps he could reach the spigots in the ceiling, but then what? Get a full face of the stuff, then collapse all the way to the floor when it succeeded in knocking him out?
Rather than make a fool of himself, Lucas took a careful breath to determine what he was facing. Instantly, his head spun with staggering effectiveness. This alone won't kill you, though.
Just to be certain of his predicament, he walked up to the door and tried to let himself out. Locked. The haze grew thicker, tickling his eyes and the inside of his nose.
Just accept that you're not supposed to get out of here.
Lucas ground his teeth, but finally resigned. He took a seat on the floor before inhaling, gracefully passing out on his own terms.
Dreamless sleep peeled away, leaving Lucas clawing for scraps of awareness as the world bled back into focus.
I’m missing my watch, he noticed, which he soon realized was a trivial detail compared to the fact that he was without a stitch of decency.
Despite an oppressive sense of ambiguous ailment, Lucas immediately forced himself to his feet and took stock of everything wrong with his situation.
For one, his surroundings were not those of an interview room. The space was circular, smelled of damp stone, and was lit just enough by some unseen source to barely illuminate the mirrored glass wrapping the walls. Lined by silver, he guessed, based on the fact that he couldn’t see his own reflection, nor that of the competitor to his left.
There were five others. All men, it seemed, and one woman. They were still waking up as Lucas registered a pile of metal in the center of the floor, equidistant from them all. Crowbars? Even with the two meters of distance separating him from the pile, the hairs on his neck raised as he became intuitively aware of their pristine purity.
He smelled the air, trying to determine if it was silver or iron. He was inclined to think it was the former, but it was hard to tell over the musk of wet dog coming from someone in the room.
The most alarming sensation in his body was a blanket suffocation that felt more esoteric than physical. Likely due to the pure metal, if not some other method for deliberately stifling local magic.
He and his competition have been stripped not just of their clothes, but of their tricks and advantages—left simply as animals to fight over the one piece of meat they all craved.
Lucas took a single step toward the pile before a spotlight illuminated a balcony far above the ring, separated further by a layer of glass. He narrowed his eyes against the light and discerned the silhouette of a man in a well-tailored suit.
“Greetings, all. My name is Amos Marshall, and I would like to formally welcome you to the final stage of your interviews,” he drawled in a refined London accent. “All of you have demonstrated an excess of competence and qualification. Alas, there are six of you and one open position for this internship. This is the part where you sort it out amongst yourselves. May the best of you succeed.”
Lucas did not have to wonder what was meant by ‘best’.
May the most ruthless win, the most rapacious. Victory belongs to he who draws first blood and does not stop until everyone else has been bled dry.
The boy across from him was still in the middle of protesting the injustice when Lucas pounced upon him.
Shit, I’m moving slow, he thought, though he was still quick enough to catch his opponent by surprise. He’d snatched up a crowbar on his way, convincing himself it didn’t scorch his palms.
The boy screamed, twisting just in time to keep from being impaled. But the leap back put him off balance, and all Lucas had to do was hook a foot around the back of his ankle to knock him to the ground.
From there, Lucas kicked. Once, twice, three times, all to the head. The boy must not have been human, or else his skull would have split open like a melon, even given Lucas’ reduced athleticism. No matter—human or not, he didn’t survive the silver bar shoved clean through his jugular.
One down, four to go. He saw two others trying to fend off attacks from the girl, then spotted the fourth just as he launched out of Lucas' blind spot.
Catching a glance of his snarling face, Lucas was fairly certain he recognized him. Hadn't they met once on a ski trip?
The boy shouted, trying in vain to jab his crowbar through him. Lucas almost laughed as he identified the practiced motion.
These poor kids…falling back on fencing lessons and self-defense instruction as if it meant a damn thing. How quaint, he thought. Frankly, he could have beaten them in a fencing match all the same.
But this was to be no match. Not even a hunt—simply a slaughter.
This was a case of silver-spoon children left to fend for themselves against someone—something—for whom failure was not even a consideration.
Lucas suddenly became very appreciative of all the lengths he’d been put through to ensure that, for all the luxuries and etiquette of his youth, he grew up to possess neither soft hands nor a weak stomach.
Once, when Lucas was thirteen, his father took him to their estate in the Alps for a hunting trip. The old bastard had dropped him off amidst the frozen woods and told him to come home with dinner.
As he’d trudged back to the manor, dragging a red deer—as he'd been unable to find a hiker—across the snowy terrain by its horns while trying to evade the things in the wild darkness that would have appreciated his catching their meal for them, Lucas had hated him for it.
But that night, sitting in front of the fireplace with his kill roasting on a spit, his father had told him: "When everything is stripped away, humans are but animals, as are we. The difference is that without all our bells and whistles, we’re still natural predators."
That memory came back as Lucas let his opponent lunge forward, hitting with his full weight. Lucas went with the momentum, letting it take them both to the ground. Given his sturdier build, he’d probably liked the chances of wrestling with Lucas on the ground.
Lucas locked their crowbars together in the moments before they fell, wrenching them both to the side in time to keep metal from going straight through his stomach. Both crowbars clattered out of their grasps, hands instead occupied with grasping and punching and clawing.
He’s going to headbutt me, Lucas thought with violent clarity. It might knock me out, it might not.
Not keen to find out either way, Lucas’ teeth found his throat. Any strength or advantage his opponent thought he had drained from him in the span of heartbeats.
Blood pumped hot and metallic from the wound. Lucas had no time to drink more than three large gulps before he began to shake his head back and forth with the neck in his jaws until the fat and muscle ripped.
He threw the corpse off. Two down.
The girl, he saw, had dealt with the others. How considerate of her.
They stood warily on either side of the ring, each catching their breath.
Lucas held up a bloody index finger as if to tell her “one moment” before he picked up a discarded bar and, using both hands, jammed it down into the fresh corpse’s sternum. Ribs crunched, muscles tore, and he went through the motion twice more just to make certain.
The girl didn’t interrupt—hell, her loss. Lucas would have.
“Never can be too careful,” she called out in a melodic voice. Sure enough, she’d administered the same treatment to her two victims.
Lucas said nothing, already sizing her up. She was a few inches taller than he was with a great deal more width and muscle mass. Whereas he flipped his crowbar idly around his non-dominant hand, she passed her weapon between her left and right. No matter their coping method, it was apparent that neither of them had a pleasant time keeping in contact with the silver.
Speed is your friend, he decided. Let her throw her weight, then make her dance.
“I know what you are,” she said, her black eyes boring through him, no doubt having already noticed his lack of reflection in the surrounding mirrors.
“How clever you are. Would you like a gold star?"
Surprisingly, though, she just tilted her head and remarked with unjustified familiarity—"You were in my microeconomics class.”
“I’m not sure. I usually skipped,” he confessed. “You were in econometrics with Professor Lecarde, though.”
He noticed her muscles tensing and straining under her skin, her body hair unusually dark and wiry. Still, whether due to the excess of pure silver or to whatever other spells their interviewers had restricted them with, it was clear her body could not complete the full transformation it desperately wanted to. Ah, he knew he’d smelled dog.
“Ugh, yes! What a bastard,” she said, then in an altogether too-friendly tone, added—"I’m Diana, by the way.”
“I know,” he said. “Vilkas, right?” She seemed delightfully shocked, almost flattered.
“You remember? What a gentleman!” Lucas rolled his eyes, but did not shatter the illusion by admitting that any name and face he’d ever matched during roll call had been preserved in a steel-trap memory.
“Well, now you have to tell me your name!”
“No, I don’t.”
“Pretty please?” She asked mockingly, and he realized he would like for her to know, even in her last moments.
“Lucas Aurelio Monaco.” Oh, how her face fell. Her expression quickly cycled from shock to contempt.
“Of course you’re a fucking Monaco,” she sneered.
“Yes, of course I’m a fucking Monaco,” he drawled with infuriating impassivity. “And I’m officially bored with this. Get over here and try to put me down, pup.”
Rather than launch at him, though, she just frowned.
“Don’t you think it’s kind of shitty they’re making us do this?”
“Hmm, a bit late for objections,” Lucas said, gesturing toward the corpse behind her, the straighter side of a crowbar stuck through its gaping mouth, sticking out of the head at both ends.
“Some of us need the money,” she shrugged, and he let a cruel laugh leave him.
“Yeah,” he said smugly. “And some of us just really fucking want it.”
That finally did it. Thank god, as Lucas was getting irritated with her barking.
Powerful legs pushed her forward faster than he’d anticipated. In better health, he’d have done a better job dodging. As it was, she put him on the back foot and caught his face in a clawed hand, nails slicing his face.
To let him so close to her wrist was a folly, though. His fangs sank into her radial artery. Yet, before he could start draining or tearing, she yowled and slung him off like a ragdoll.
Though he took a chunk of her flesh with him, his body still went flying into the mirrored wall, shattering glass. The pure silver backing sent fire through his nerves, and he spasmed involuntarily before hitting the ground, barely managing to keep his bare feet beneath him.
Even as the world throbbed with white, he could smell the damage he'd inflicted. Hot blood flowed freely from the fresh wound, her usual regeneration doing her no more favors than his own here.
“What’s got you laughing?” Diana drawled, trying to keep her voice even. “You batty or something?”
Lucas hadn’t even realized he was laughing, but her attempt at a pun only intensified the fit. He licked the blood off his teeth, the taste downright awful. Werewolves were already unappetizing, but this one had a drinking habit, he thought as he swallowed the afterburn.
“You've got three minutes before you bleed out, you know."
Whether or not it was true, it sent her flying at Lucas in a panic to get this over with. Summoning whatever speed remained in his body, he snatched his crowbar off the floor, along with the one dropped by the second body.
With his right hand, he threw it at her, javelin style. Despite his good form, it wasn’t a very aerodynamic spear. Still, deflecting it gave him the window to launch at her.
She caught the second silver bar just before it pierced her chest, but he’d already gone low.
People often forgot about the femoral artery, but it was responsible for most of the blood transport in the lower body. She yowled as Lucas sank his teeth and claws into the front of her thigh, throwing her further off balance.
In order to dodge being impaled with either silver weapon in her hands, he dove the rest of the way through her legs, ripping open her inner thigh on his way.
Oh, how she howled, how she cried. She was already dropping to a knee when Lucas sprang on her back.
I’ll put you down by a thousand cuts if I have to, bitch. Lucas thought, his nails gouging deep lines into her face as he brought his teeth down into her neck, the blood curdling on his tongue.
He gouged and spat, again and again, his face a nightmare painted crimson. Even when she swung the curved side of the crowbar behind her and dragged its silver teeth from his bottom rib up to his shoulder, he did not quit his feral assault.
His nails slashed open her other wrist, sending the bar clattering to the ground. Moments later, Diana followed suit, both of them crashing into the blood-slicked stone floor, bathed in viscera.
Lucas didn't register the wave of nausea until it broke upon his shores, causing him to vomit up chunks of undigested flesh, the better part of her trachea smearing down his chin.
It didn’t matter that he was sick, because she was dead. She and the four others who thought they had a chance of surviving between him and something he wanted.
Not done yet, Monaco, he told himself as he staggered to his feet. Not yet.
When Amos Marshall returned, Lucas was still using the edge of the crowbar to hack off her skull. The tool was not made for it, and with each strike, he worried his body would fail him. Nonetheless, he wanted his bosses to know he was not the sort to let a job go unfinished.
Amos said nothing as Lucas threw the crowbar aside and—through a combination of slicing, biting, and pulling—managed to sever Diana’s head from her body. With the werewolf certainly taken care of, Lucas at last gazed up at that balcony.
He would have very much liked to see the look on his face, but between the distance, the light, and the general distortion of his vision, Lucas would never know how Amos had reacted to the carnage.
“We look forward to seeing more of you, Mr. Monaco,” came his voice through the speakers. “Please refrain from attacking the medical staff.”
As if he had any strength to do so, Lucas thought. Still, upon hearing confirmation of his success, he flashed the cockiest smile he could muster and remarked:
"So long as they bring me a change of clothes."
August 25, 1997
Beneath the setting moon and the piercing blue eyes of a snake that would surely one day devour the world in its unbound avarice, Lucas Monaco was unmade.
Every muscle in his lean body spasmed, as if every centimeter was straining to hold the force flowing into him, through him. Not magic—no, that has always been part of him. That which blessed him now—and oh, how he savored the bastardization of that word—was sheer power.
He met a glacial stillness, a finality, an inevitability. All was silent, save for the wind rushing through the Alps, the lazy lapping of aqua waves against Mediterranean beaches, the raging furnace-cores of distant and dying stars. To the mountains, the sea, and the sky, he was naught but a blink in time. To his fellows, if ever he had any, he was an individual bound to serve the flow and accumulation of that which is the blood of the world: capital.
Then, as black suns crashed together and choirs of unholy angels sang in every language he knew and a thousand more he did not, shattering the silence with an impetus that undulated through his flesh and rattled his bones, Lucas heaved just once.
As the geometry of heaven and hell, of wealth and industry, all unfolded beneath his freezing skin, he ground his teeth and remembered that this was exactly what he had been waiting for, starving for all his life.
He was a creature of the night, but the man standing before him was the Darkness itself, that cosmic fabric that weaved through the insatiable abyss and over the souls of men.
As reality found its way back through the shadows to find purchase in his senses, Amos Marshall offered him a hand. Lucas stood without taking it.
He wiped the bile from his lips in distaste—to his credit, there wasn’t much. Ugh, not much to be done about the healthy coat of wine stuck to his skin and clothes. Cocking his head, he sniffed his hand, then licked the tiniest bit of red off the back of his thumb.
“That’s a very nice Chianti you’ve wasted on me,” he said sardonically, his voice leaving him in a rasp.
The man who introduced himself earlier as Ruprecht Carter broke into laughter. Lucas turned to look at him, only for his eyes to be drawn almost against his will into Percival’s. The ambient light glinted off his razored smile as it spread in a stunning white slash across his elegant face.
“Not a waste at all, Mr. Monaco,” he replied with unfettered pleasure. “Welcome aboard.”
Lucas smiled, and—for once in his life, for this one monster who made every other one in their fantastical world quake in the night and cry to their mothers—brought his arm over his stomach and bent into a low bow.
The initiation ritual itself and its necessary preparation hadn't been pleasant by any means, but he was never under the impression it would be. It couldn’t be, he reckoned—power was not that free.
Still, he was glad it was over. At least, he thought it was, until Ruprecht gleefully informed him of the party waiting upstairs.
To his disdain, he was not allowed time to change out of his ruined suit before stepping into the lift—then again, witnessing the vulnerability and filth of new employees no doubt brought great pleasure to those who had endured the same commencement.
Lucas vowed to afford them no such pleasure. Alongside his new bosses, he strolled into the afterparty wearing a visage of unstirred confidence.
Although his head still spun on half a dozen axes, he shared golden smiles and handshakes with his new colleagues. He noted there was even a celebratory feast waiting for him. Up until that point, the thought of eating had scarcely occurred to him. After all, what was three days without sustenance to one of his kind?
Regardless, the spread was impressive, featuring delicacies ranging across the magical and the mundane, and all in absurd quantities. Yet, he did not rush to gorge on it like some mannerless animal given mercy at last, even if it would have given him an excuse not to talk to everybody.
Though he was no stranger to lavish events, he had never quite liked working rooms, even in better states. Besides, he had met most of these people already through his internship, and so rather than introductions, he faced an onslaught of civilities and small talk. For that alone, it reminded him of those annoying networking events he was forced to frequent in school.
Percival relieved that pressure when he set a hand upon Lucas' stained shoulder and said conspiratorially: “I have something for you.”
As they walked away from the concentration of people, Percival waved over a nearby servant who, like any good help, had thus far gone gracefully unnoticed. He provided a glass of red wine for each of them.
“I’ve tried every pairing under the sun,” Percival told him as he took the crystal chalice by its stem, “but I’ve found this to be the best.”
Lucas couldn’t help a quick laugh as he sniffed the drink. “Pairing? With what? There’s every food under the sun.”
Percival grinned, like he’d been hoping he’d ask exactly that.
“You expect that after all that strife and tribulation, I would reward you with only empty calories?”
Lucas prayed that Percival meant what that implied. When he turned and continued out of the room without a word, Lucas naturally kept step, glad for the exit.
He did not process how horribly bright the ballroom had been until they descended thirty-two steps into the dimmer corridors, the scent of old marble and fine cologne enveloping him, the stone quickly muting the party upstairs.
“You know, I don’t typically like immortals,” Percival said frankly. “Vampires make spectacular customers, of course—old money, well-educated, refined tastes…But oh, how quickly that complacency sets in. I have no need for languidity or contentment in my ranks.”
"The product of long, lavish lives of leisure, I suppose," Lucas mused. “But no industry survives without young blood coming into it."
“Precisely,” Percival purred in agreement. “What a delight it is to bring you into the fold while you’re fresh, Mr. Monaco.”
Before he could reply, they reached a door at the end of the hall. Percival set a gloved hand upon the entrance and continued:
“I thought about putting her in the center of the party, covering her in fabric for some great reveal. While discomfort might build character, I saw no reason to make you take your meal with an audience. I know I prefer my privacy, anyway—”
The door opened inward, revealing a cell entirely empty save for someone tied to a chair at its center. Before him was a girl—short, plump, and terrified. Her strappy silk shift hugged her form and left her arms and neck completely exposed, depending on his preference. His mouth was watering even before Percival added—
“AB negative, virgin, and fed on nothing but bison steaks and spinach for the past week.”
“Oh, Madonna,” Lucas said to himself, almost laughing. Standing at the entryway, his body remembered its hunger with a vengeance. Still, he did not—could not—cross to her.
He looked to Percival with unguarded delight and gratitude as the latter raised his glass in toast. Their cups clinked, and both took a sip of a heavy-bodied red so richly spectacular that even Lucas could not place the origins.
“She’s all yours. Go inside.” With that invitation, Lucas stepped through the threshold. He quickly realized that Percival didn’t intend to leave, but that didn't bother him.
He turned his back and got to a knee beside the girl, setting his glass down gently on the floor. She had been sobbing persistently, though the irritating cries had been courteously muffled by the fabric jammed into her mouth. The sobbing turned to delightful, useless screams as Lucas told her—
“If you’re lucky, I’ll be in such a good mood I’ll kill you tonight.” He picked up her squishy wrist, almost tenderly tracing a single sharp nail down the blue vein beneath her inner arm. “If you’re not, I’ll have you boxed up and kept alive until you’ve given more blood than the Red Cross.”
He said it just to scare her, just so her fear would make her blood pump that much harder. He set his thumb atop her pulse and lost all restraint. Her body seized as he brought her wrist to his mouth and let his fangs find their mark.
A shudder of pleasure shot through him, and Lucas Monaco drank to his triumph.
