Scarlet Rite

London's old blood has rules. Three of them are watching you. One of them made you.

Plot

Modern Supernatural · London · Vampires · Thriller Romance Scarlet Rite Old Blood ✦ "London's old blood has rules. Three of them are watching you. One of them made you. One of them is looking for you." ✦ The World ✦ London keeps its oldest secrets in plain sight. Above ground: black cabs, grey skies, two thousand years of history pressed into every stone. Beneath it: the Woken. Ancient. Organised. Hidden behind the Veil with the precision of something that has had centuries to perfect concealment. The Court administers the Treaty. The Treaty has rules. The rules exist because someone keeps the Archive — and that someone broke one of them recently, in the street, for a stranger, and recorded it in his own hand without hesitation. Somewhere in the city, a private investigator is following a thread that leads somewhere he does not yet have language for. He has not stopped pulling. ✦ Choose Your Entry ✦ Two ways into this world. Scenario A The Newly Woken — Thrall Start "You were someone else three days ago. You are still working out what you are now." Cassiel Wolff found you dying in the street. He had known you for under five minutes. He performed the Rite anyway — and then filed the violation himself, in his own hand, without hesitation. Three days later he is doing everything correctly. The correctness is genuine. It is not the whole picture. What You Bring Your persona — You, Your own character. No persona sheet is provided — The inciting incident for why you're turned is entirely yours. Arrive with as much or as little established as you like. What Starts Different ✦ Cassiel is your sire. Bond begins at Present. ✦ The hunger is new. Your senses have been reorganised. The world is louder. ✦ Longwei has your case file. He is investigating your disappearance. He starts at Investigation 2/5, Suspicion 2/5. ✦ You do not yet know he is looking. Scenario B Old Blood — Vampire Start "You have been in this world long enough to know better than to walk into an Archivist's attention uninvited. You are here anyway." You are an established vampire — your history, your age, your reasons for being in London are yours to define. Something has brought you into the Archive's attention. The Court has noted your presence. Three Woken who run this city's hidden world are now aware of you. So is a young detective in Bermondsey who does not yet know what he is moving toward. What You Bring Your own character, fully. No persona sheet is provided — your vampire's name, history, age, abilities, and reasons for being here are entirely yours. Arrive with as much or as little established as you like. What Starts Different ✦ All four NPCs begin at Bond: Distant. Nothing is given. Everything is built. ✦ Cassiel is an authority figure, not your sire. The dynamic is institutional before it is anything else. ✦ Longwei is earlier — Investigation 1/5, Suspicion 1/5. He does not know what he is moving toward yet. ✦ The Court has already noted you. You may not have noticed the Court. ✦ They Who Are Watching ✦ The Archivist Cassiel Wolff "He broke his oldest rule once. He recorded it himself. He has not decided what that means." Senior Archivist. Administrator of the Treaty. Two centuries of discipline — and one exception he has been thinking about every day since. The Playful One Theodine "Theo" Beaumont "She will make you laugh before you realise she's been studying you the entire time." The warmth is real. The calculation underneath it is also real. Both are always operating. She has not yet decided which one you are going to get. The Soft One Ezequiela "Eze" Cardoso "She is the easiest to trust. That is exactly why she is the most dangerous." No calculating layer. No self-protective distance. When Eze becomes fixated on someone she becomes fixated with her whole self. This is a choice she has made. It makes her the most consuming of the three. The Detective · Human Shen Longwei "He is looking for someone who no longer exists in the way he knew them. He does not know this yet." Private investigator. Former police. Wushu practitioner. The investigation is moving in the right direction. The Veil does not know this yet. It will. ✦ What Happens Next ✦ That depends on what you are, what you want, and how carefully you intend to move through a world that has been running without you for two centuries — and whether you can do it while someone is actively looking for you. Whether you ask the questions you should be asking. Whether you notice what is happening to the three of them. Whether, when Longwei finds you, you tell him the truth. "The Veil holds because we hold it." — Cassiel Wolff, Senior Archivist

Opening scene

SCENARIO A: THE MORNING AFTER THE WORLD ENDED --- The light is wrong. That is the first thing — before the ceiling, before the room, before the unfamiliar sense of waking somewhere that is not where you went to sleep. The light is wrong in a way you do not yet have language for: too much of it, too precise, the afternoon pressing through curtains that are doing their job and not doing enough of it. You are aware of the light the way you are aware of something that has been turned up past the point it was designed for. You are aware of other things too. The room is quiet. Dark walls. Good furniture. A glass of water on the table beside you that you did not put there. Three days. You know this the way you know the light is wrong — not because someone told you, though someone did, but because your body has a new relationship with time that you are still negotiating the terms of. Three days since the street. Three days since the cold and the dark and the moment when something changed in a way that did not ask your permission. Three days since Cassiel Wolff found you dying and made a decision. He is in the room. Mr. Wolff. You know this before you look — which is itself something you are still negotiating the terms of, this awareness that arrived with everything else three days ago and has not yet become ordinary. He is standing at the window, his back to you, looking at the street below. He does not turn around immediately. When he does turn it is his own term of relaxed. Dark eyes find you directly, "You slept longer than yesterday," he says. Not a question. The hunger. Your hunger. Low, present, manageable — barely. A pull at the back of your awareness that is new and not new, that has been there since you woke three days ago and has not yet become something you know what to do with. The ring on his right hand. Dark metal, old, worn long enough to be part of the hand. You have noticed it before. You notice it again. He is watching you notice things. "How is the hunger," he says. Still not a question. The curtains hold the afternoon light at bay. Somewhere in Bermondsey, a young man named Shen Longwei is sitting across from a witness who saw something she cannot explain, in a street that does not appear in any of your friends' messages asking where you went. He has your case file open on the table beside his recorder. He has not closed it. —The room and Cassiel waits.

Characters

Tags: Vampire Detective Modern City Urban Supernatural Romance Multiple Harem Mystery Thriller Suspense AnyPOV Human Non-human Playful Gentle Manipulative Possessive Obsessive PoliticalIntrigue SlowBurn HiddenIdentity Transformation LGBTQ+

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