Eternal Night

(I) Chapter 19: Miss Chase Takes Charge

"Where did the vision take place?" Frankie asked, leaning forward a bit on the bed as she watched her friend access the private cloud-account she and Rémy often used to store encrypted alliance-related data.

"I was on my way home when it hit me," Lyra began. "Augustine was in what looked like an office – most likely in the palace, but something felt off about the place; it was abnormally dark and cold. There were five other people present."

"Did you recognize any of them?"

"Most of them, yes," she replied, nodding as she swiped and tapped her finger a few times on the screen of the tablet before showing Frankie the faces she had seen. "Four of them were council members. It took me a moment to identify this one, as he's new and I'm apparently way behind on my current events. This is Councilman Jósef – newly appointed replacement of Bartos. He's been put in charge of overseeing the city's law enforcement and Augustine has him tracking rumored alliance circle members – the Dannys, Carmens, and Rémys, basically. The good news is that they haven't properly identified anyone except Rémy, although it's in name only – so at least your brother has that going for him. But they've also been watching Carmen's old place, hoping for a lead."

With a swipe of her finger, the image changed to another face.

"Then there's Councilman Ildar. According to the vision, Augustine's private army now stands at five thousand and there's plans to double those numbers, though they didn't discuss timeline. But they've all taken the blood-oath of fealty."

"Five thousand? How did he even manage to find that many within the city?"

"I've been picking up rumors from a couple of old sources that say it's connected to some of the disappearances we've been seeing since Dracula went into stasis. I've also heard that he may be outsourcing... or blackmailing. Probably both."

"God help us."

Lyra swiped to the next image.

"Councilwoman Sonya. Augustine put her in charge of not only reestablishing the blood banks so he can black-market dhampir blood again – I think that's how he's funding his army – but he's involved the Spider now. I think he's trying to create some kind of formal coalition with Basilio, as he controls so much of the east-district."

"Poor Rémy won't be happy when he hears that."

"There was a factory we raided a couple of months ago before Rémy woke you up and according to the vision and Sonya's report, it's been replenished with twice the security as before. Although Augustine didn't state as much, I have every reason to believe that those dhampir disappearances we've been hearing about leads back to this."

Frankie cursed softly under her breath.

"And last but certainly not least, Councilman Krisztian Sokolov."

"How is my least favorite sadist?"

"Apparently still in charge of keeping an eye on the alliance."

"Glad to hear he still has it out for us," she answered sarcastically.

"No shit. But I recently came into some intel that he may have spies within our organization and we should probably talk about a potential purge at some point. I've already told Rémy and he agreed."

"What did Krisztian have to report?"

"Nothing, thankfully, and neither did Jósef. Who knew needing to relocate would be such a blessing?"

"You said there was a fifth person there," Frankie reminded her and Lyra placed the tablet onto the bed so she could remove a piece of paper from her pocket.