Far away from Quinn’s mansion, Damien was in a small hut with his hand and legs tied where he sat on the ground with Kreme. While Damien sat there in ease, Kreme, the human who often accompanied Damien looked at the black witch who ate an animal without cooking it. She tore the hind legs of the animal and dug her teeth into making him cringe.
How did they end up here? Asked Kreme to himself without making a noise. His thoughts went back to the start of the dad in the council.
He was completing his errands which were handed down by the head council, one after another early in the morning until Damien arrived at the council.
“How is your day going, Kreme. Any hot news?” asked his senior councilman and by hot it meant if he had snooped around by eavesdropping what other councilmen were speaking in the council.
Before joining the council, Kreme had looked at the council like white shining heaven that provided justice. A place where the people worked together harmoniously with each other for a greater good and peace of the four lands. He had looked forward to working in the council before the exam he took up, hoping to make a difference by doing something great to the public.
His exams had gone easy and it hadn’t been hard. He had rumors on how hard the earlier exams were to make sure only the best of the best could join to work with them but everything always turned to be rumors. But it was only after he met councilman Damien did he find what had happened. The first time they had met, the pureblooded vampire had commented,
“What is a weak prawny looking man doing here in the council?” Kreme had pushed up the round glasses he had worn, puffing his chest to say,
“I succeeded in both exams,” like many he had been told the tales of how the exams in the council went and he was proud of himself that he had got through both the paper exam and also the physical exam. Kreme hadn’t gone as far as to speak against the man as he could clearly see that the man in front of him was a pureblooded vampire.
“Hmph,” harrumphed the councilman Damien to say, “Don’t look so happy and proud about it. Your stars were apparently lucky.”
“I wrote the exams and passed it by myself,” Kreme cleared the man’s words, thinking he was pointing if he had cheated his way through influencing people at the top.
“Who is speaking about that, peasant?” The man gave him an annoyed look at first before something sinister came to fall on his face that had Kreme take a step back subtly, “You should count your stars lucky because you didn’t take part in the last exam of the council. I am sure you would be found in one of the pits. Dead.”
It only later did Kreme find out that in the previous exam, though hardly nine to ten people passed through the first exam, in the second exam only two passed while the rest of them had not only failed in the exam but had been killed.
His thinking had been changed after that not because he wanted to think that way but it was because Councilman Damien also went by as Master Damien to him being a second-generation pureblood vampire and a night creature who came from a high standing family, people usually didn’t cross paths with him. Another reason being his attitude.
Kreme had struggled to work under Damien as the man had made him do things which he would have never imagined or considered it to be unethical. One of the examples being going to eavesdrop on people. According to Master Damien, his words were- ‘If one values their life, one must know what is going on around them.’
Thinking back again about the morning, Kreme had given out the details to his senior and they had been summoned by the head council for another help and work.
Headcouncil Reuben said, “There is information regarding the creation of a new potion. Right now it is just a rumor as the news is faint but I need you both to find out where this is coming from and stop it.”
“What does the potion do?” asked Councilman Damien.
“Apart from paralyzing a person momentarily for a few hours, I don’t know what else it does.”
In Kreme’s eyes, if there was someone who would question without a fear it was his senior councilman. The man didn’t care if it was a senior or a junior who was talking to him or he was talking to. Usually, the councilman got on work without a question and he would have done too.
When they were out of the head council’s room, Kreme asked, “Master Damien, you are so courageous to ask the head council what the potion is about,” there was a shine of admiration as the young human looked up Damien.
Kreme tried to keep up with Damien’s long steps to hear Damien say, “He is a vampire, not God to be scared. Besides if we don’t know what the potion is about we might end up bringing something else back here without the proper information,” the councilman looked at Kreme who nodded to say, “You have so much to learn.”
“Yes, Master Damien,” Kreme had replied back upbeat without losing motivation, hoping one day he would turn just like Damien Quinn. Maybe not this eccentric but a lot more mellow but then again if he wasn’t eccentric he wouldn’t be councilman Damien.
Stopping in the middle of the corridor, Damien said to him, “Go get the carriage out. We will be leaving now.”
“Time is the essence, Kreme. You need to sacrifice your appetite at times for work,” Kreme nodded, believing that is what one had to do while working in the council and then Damien said, “I will go get some blood to drink for me while you go pull out the carriage,” and the pureblooded vampire left.
When they got on the carriage, thankfully his senior had shown him pity by bringing a bun from the council pantry.
Kreme and Damien had left the council to go to the black market first that day as it was where one of the information came from. What he and his senior were supposed to do was to find if the information was right and destroy the source of the potion.
