47

The pain is too great to bear," the servant moans as his body is wracked with spasms. He doubles over and coughs; when he sits upright again, the floor below is speckled crimson. A bestial part of you roils with Hunger. You push instinct away as you notice Qui once again visible in the shadows beside you. He stays silent, but his eyes flicker and shift around the room with the unnerving calm of a man slowly piecing together a puzzle.

"You're dying," Jordan says, suddenly visible in front of the servant. "We're going to keep you alive—just tell us what they did to you so we can help!"

"What do you think you're doing?" Qui asks as you slash your wrist and bring it to the old man's mouth.

"Curing him so we can get answers," you say as you try to force the dying man to swallow your vitae.

The servant tries to force your wrist away and struggles to speak. "We cannot undo what has been done in her name. I'm dying; there is no helping it now." A white froth comes to his lips and he hacks and coughs before he's able to speak again. "We took the poison," he slurs. "Like we were told. Will she smile on us in Heaven?" His breath stops and he shudders as death takes him.

"We were too late," Jordan mutters dejectedly. "But we should be able to help Vivian, right?"

Qui steps over the old man's cooling corpse and examines the macabre display. "The stake would only paralyze her. The rest is for show. Pageantry." He gestures toward the door and removes a compact camera from his pocket. "Step back. I need to document this. The Primogen Council will require answers." He gets to his knees in front of the servant's body and looks him over. "At least we were quick enough to hear him speak. It's not much, but it's something."

Over the next fifteen minutes, the Sheriff photographs the crime scene from every angle while you and Jordan check from room to room, searching for additional evidence. You find four more bodies in servant's clothes, each of them collapsed to the floor with a residue of white foam on their lips. Poison.

You can feel Jordan grow increasingly uncomfortable as you go on. "Why would the killer poison them?" she asks. "When they could have just killed them like the butler downstairs?"