Dragomira strode through high stone halls. The buildings driven into the rocks in Gothic splendor were nearly deserted. Here and there a few people in black hooded cloaks walked around but then that was it already. The subterranean halls and corridors formed the headquarters of the assassin organization Night Dagger that was famous and notorious in the empire and the five kingdoms if not even beyond that. Eight hundred years had passed since this society of assassins had been founded. Founded in the little mountain village Pascolomonte not far from the Northern border of the Sacro Imperio to the kingdom of Sucellie, the organization had grown enormously in the underground not only concerning its members and branches but also its headquarters, to some extent even literally. And yet the inhabitants of the village Pascolomonte above ground mostly didn’t know anything about it that the headquarters of the infamous organization Night Dagger was located in or rather beneath their drowsy herdsman village.

Dragomira who wasn’t veiled by a hood at the moment – why should she, was the headquarters the place she called her home after all – was the assassin being involved the longest in the present Night Dagger. That she looked like seventeen belied her merits and true age. In fact she was an over two hundred years old vampire who had spent the majority of her immortal or rather undead life as an assassin. Accordingly the contract killer was a figure younger assassins reverently looked up to. But not only were her skills first class but also her appearance. The vampire completely dressed in black was of a slim but athletic build, with attractive long legs in men’s trousers. A narrow nose and a blood-red pair of eyes characterized her pointed face that showed a pale complexion like the rest of her body too. Her figure was completed by long auburn hair bundled into a ponytail.

The undead planned to hand in the proof for her last successfully completed mission to the organization’s own scribes in charge of that, and then to withdraw to the little chamber that was her private room to then devote herself there to the maintenance of her weapons, especially of the poisoned dagger she used as a rule. Dragomira’s room was nothing special. A plank bed, a footstool, a narrow workbench, a clothing chest, a water bucket, and as light source an oil lamp. That was already all. But the vampire was also satisfied with few things. After she had finished her duties she stretched herself out contentedly on her bed. Although the bloodsucker could sleep practically everywhere but nowhere else she felt so save and secure as here. Even when the most members of Night Dagger were humans, they didn’t hunt her as a bloodsucking monster but even inconspicuously supplied her with fresh blood. In return the vampire assaulted nobody but people approved for it.

Suddenly it knocked at the stone doorframe to Dragomira’s chamber. The doorway itself was covered by a floor-length curtain like practically everywhere in the subterranean headquarters. It was like this so the assassins could at all times storm out of their rooms in shortest time in case of an emergency. Even the moment it took to open a door could already cost a life in case of doubt. Of course there were also ordinary doors in the stone building complex but they were limited to storerooms, archives, prison cells, and other restricted rooms.

“Yes, what is it?” the vampire asked, sitting up and quickly neatening her hair.

Then a completely cloaked figure came in. His continuously grey clothing characterized the visitor as an intern messenger from Night Dagger. Many assassins began their career as messengers or similar handymen before they rose to assassins and finally could wear the much longed-for black assassin attire.

“The leader summons you.” the messenger declared.

“Understood.” the assassin replied.

The messenger retreated as fast as he had come.

Not bad. Dragomira thought to herself The boy has good prospects if he passes the aptitude test. But what does the leader want of me again? Then she stood up, obviously annoyed, and set off. Even the vampire whose successes exceeded those of all the other assassins by far couldn’t oppose the leader’s order. The leader – his correct title read “First and Foremost of the honorable assassins of the unyielding Night Dagger” but because of the length it was frequently abbreviated to leader – was the highest authority in the whole widely branched assassin organization and had unconditional sway at his disposal although he rarely made use of it. Even the council of elders, the second highest authority in Night Dagger, had to grovel in the dust in front of him. Barely anybody had ever seen his face or heard his voice. That applied to many of the elders as well as the messenger before who likely had been given his order in written form. Dragomira belonged to the few who had had personal contact to the leader – and on top of it so regularly that she saw him several times a year. This unparalleled honor didn’t seem to delight the vampire though but instead to downright bother her.

“Dragomira here.” the vampire announced herself. She had been allowed to pass without objection by the leader’s guards who were interestingly all of female gender. Too common was the coming of Night Dagger’s best assassin for somebody to still object it.

“Come in, come in.” a seductively low voice called. Dragomira, however, cared little about it and without any ceremonial and any excitement she stepped through the cloth covered archway that to the end still had separated her from the leader’s private chambers. Whatever the ordinary members might imagine about the leader and his realm, for instance an old man of unspeakable age completely cloaked in black velvet who lived in a grot like an ascetic, produced new poisons with alchemic devices and wrote down his memoirs at a writing desk sparsely illuminated by a twilit tallow candle, or a brawny muscle man who lived for fighting and the maintenance of his weapons alone – none of this could be any further from the truth. In fact the leader’s private chamber was lavishly illuminated by beeswax candles and not a trace could be seen as well of a writing desk or glass equipment. Yes, there was nothing like writing tools or chemicals, never mind something other which had to do with the work of the organization. Weapons or training objects one would possibly have expected for a master of fighting also couldn’t be found. Instead the room was nearly completely filled with a gigantic bed covered with velvet and silk. On it a superhumanly handsome man with an athletic build covered with nothing more than a transparent silk blanket over hips and legs stretched out contentedly. His blond hair shone like pure gold in the candlelight, his spotless skin seemed to be made of marble or ivory, and his dark eyes appeared like two bottomless ponds in which everybody sunk who caught sight of them.

“How nice that you have come.” the Adonis said with a beaming smile that showed his pearl-like teeth.

“Enough empty phrases, Barbiel.” Dragomira replied harshly. It couldn’t be said that the assassin held the leader in high regard. Rather the contrary seemed to be the case. “Tell me what you want from me so that I get away from here as soon as possible.”

“Oh Dragomira!” the leader complained with a bitter smile that would have deeply grieved all women and likely quite a few men too. All except for Dragomira. “You know that you are the dearest for me, don’t you?” he continued “You are the only companion who hasn’t left me in the last two hundred years.” Barbiel too, the leader of Night Dagger shrouded in mystery, wasn’t actually human. No, he was an incubus, a demon who fed on the life substance of his victims through intercourse. For reasons only he himself knew he had come from hell to the world of mortals a long time ago and had stayed here. In fact it was Barbiel who had founded Night Dagger eight hundred years ago and had watched over the organization as the leader ever since. The assassins who he selected as his guards at the same time served as his partners in bed and thus also as food source. In return for their life essence of which the incubus took even the last drop, an incomparable pleasure was in store for the women. Only Dragomira was able to defy the demon’s seductions, for she admittedly had no life force the incubus could take from her. Instead she herself was a robber of human life essence which she took in with the blood of her victims.

“Yeah, I know.” The vampire replied snappily “It just remains a mystery why.”

“Because you are the only one who doesn’t go and dies so quickly.” Barbiel answered with tears in the corners of his eyes that made absolutely no impression on his opposite though.

“That could be because I’ve been dead already.” she said unmoved.

“Dragomira, you’re so unromantic!” the leader complained. That only achieved to coax a scornful “Ha!” from the assassin.

“Pray tell, what do you want from me?” she demanded brusquely.

“Dragomira, I want… you!” the incubus declared with a seductive smile.

“Out of the question!” the vampire warded.

“But I wait for more than two hundred years already!” Barbiel whined. In the presence of the undead he had not even a touch of the dignity he essentially should possess as the leader of Night Dagger. With no one else he was so much himself like with the bloodsucker.

“Then you can wait well even more than two thousand years.” Dragomira decisively explained. That she didn’t want to have amorous adventures couldn’t be held against her though. Even if she could no longer remember much from her previous life as a human including her former name, she could remember too well though that she had been raped in the cruelest way in the night before she had met that man who had turned her into a vampire. That put her thoroughly right off intercourse even still centuries later.

The incubus, himself well-informed about the bloodsucker’s tragic past, didn’t want to wait any longer though. With a speed that overwhelmed even the superhuman reflexes and senses of a vampire he appeared in front of the recusant beauty and threw her on his bed. He pressed the struggling vampire into the sheets and whispered into her ear: “I promise you that I will let you forget all your bad memories.” Then he sealed her lips before she was even able to utter a word of protest. About that what happened further we shall now cast the veil or rather the transparent silk blanket of silence.

After that night nothing was like before. Dragomira was able to get over her trauma of the past and she visited Barbiel in future with increasing regularity and even willingly from herself. After twenty seven years she vanished as suddenly into thin air as the legendary founder of Night Dagger before, and the vampire assassin became a legend that should be told in the assassin organization even centuries later. Barely anyone knew that the leader had a hand in it because the incubus turned out to be a surprisingly possessive lover who didn’t want to risk losing through a failed mission the bloodsucker whose heart he had won only lately and with many troubles. Dragomira too was fallible after all. Demon and vampire should spend many centuries if not millennia together in their love nest, and the undead hadn’t to worry about a stock of fresh blood, her significant other had already taken care of that. But Barbiel too got to experience many a surprise, just like that his beloved was surprisingly jealous of the women whom he deprived of their life force for diet through intercourse…