Dark Studies (Arcaneology) by C. P. Foster Read Free Book Online

around him, one in front, and two on either side. He paid them no attention.
     
     
     
    Doctoral studies took a backseat as Angie considered the decision she had to make. She concentrated on learning everything she could about Steffen Scott.
    Being Lord of the province in which she lived gave him a certain celebrity among local humans, so she found plenty of material. He had come to Seattle over a hundred years ago, when Western Europeans first began to congregate in the Puget Sound area. The population was small at that time, and he’d brought only a few other vampires with him. During the city’s early years, he and his enclave had lived quietly, and historians speculated that their little group might have had a hand in the city’s success. The humans of their feeding ground prospered, and there were no reports of unexplained disappearances or attacks. This began to change as the population grew.
    From old news articles, Angie saw a pattern develop: episodes of violence would occur, then abruptly stop. New vampires were probably moving in to take advantage of the larger food supply, and someone was bringing them under control. Was he just a good gamekeeper, tending his hunting ground by keeping the game healthy and defended against poachers? Or did he actually care about the well-being of the humans who lived around him? If the historians were correct, he had done far more than necessary in order to keep his people well fed.
    All that was just conjecture, though. The historians had valid reasons for their theory about his part in the city’s success, but there was no definitive evidence. What he did shortly after World War I was another matter.
    In 1919, an investigative reporter wrote a series of articles for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about vampires in the region, full of lurid tales of survivors and blurry photographs of alleged attacks. Law enforcement officials began to talk about developing weapons and strategies for exterminating the predators among them. For the first time, Steffen Scott stepped into the limelight. He and the mayor of Seattle held a joint press conference introducing Scott as Lord of the Puget Sound vampire province and announced his commitment to negotiate a peaceful coexistence with humans. It was the first time a vampire sovereign publicly entered into a dialog with human authorities. The effects of this groundbreaking action sent ripples through all the vampire nations in North America. Less than three decades later, the Covenant was formed.
    She knew he was a member of the Covenant, but Angie hadn’t realized what a key role he’d played in its foundation. She’d met him when she was still Sarah Miller, before she understood anything about the Covenant or even about vampires in general other than the ones who’d enslaved her. In the years since, the Covenant had divided the North American vampire world into opposing camps: those who believed it was necessary for vampires to start treating humans as equals versus those determined to keep the old ways alive. When the Covenant began enforcing the new laws it had introduced among its member nations, polarization resulted. In independent nations, a leader who talked about joining the Covenant faced varying degrees of opposition, sometimes enough to pose a serious threat. One such nation was the Northwest Territory.
    The Puget Sound Province was isolated on the edge of the Northwest Territory, an area that included Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and part of Montana. Its Monarch, Amelia Astor, sat on the fence between joining the Covenant and remaining independent. Her territory stood on the brink of civil war, divided almost evenly between those who supported the Covenant and those who despised it. Two leaders within the territory, one on each side of the conflict, were openly gathering forces intent upon a coup. Whichever won would decide whether the territory joined the Covenant or opposed it, and the outcome would either add to the