Chapter 11: The Four Hosts of the Bloodborn World

Wren glanced at the sky and said reluctantly, "I should head home. Walk to school together tomorrow? I'll wait for you at the Elderrow intersection." Without waiting for his answer—treating a yes as given—the bloodborn girl waved and flitted off, chirpy as a little bird.

Nathan hesitated a moment. He didn't really want to walk to school with the bloodborn girl—but just as she was leaving, she glanced back with a radiant smile, her pretty face blooming like some exotic flower, so beautiful it made you a little dizzy, and he never got the words out. By the time Wren had vanished from sight, all Nathan could manage was a mutter to himself: "Never knew Wren was that pretty. If she looked like this at school, who knows how many guys would be falling over themselves for her."

Nathan wandered around the courtyard for a good long while before, reluctantly, he took out the bronze key and got ready to open the ashwood gate and go home. Then a roar like thunder exploded outside. The wicker fence shook several times—somebody had blasted a huge hole clean through it with brute force, broken wicker scattering across half the courtyard.

Nathan had spent the whole day with Wren. The Greyhaven Wardens' Office had been about like a human government agency, only more efficient; Lord Warden Aurelius, for all his rank and unfathomable power, had been perfectly amiable; Elderrow was peaceful and calm. So he'd been laboring under the illusion that bloodborn were all pretty friendly, no different from humans. Now he just stood there frozen for a beat, with no idea how to react.

The guy outside who'd blasted through the wall didn't press the attack—just took one long stride inside. He was a towering, powerfully built hulk of a man, tall as Shaq but with ten times Shaq's muscle, a ferocious look all over his face, plain aggressive. That mug alone could play the big villain in a Marvel movie without any effects makeup.

Behind the fierce hulk followed a scrawny, sinister-faced middle-aged man who looked like bad news at a glance, wearing a battered army-surplus jacket.

The fierce hulk glowered at Nathan and went heh-heh, his voice like a bell booming in a jar, so deep it numbed Nathan's ears a little: "We just got word the Yggdrasil Line's been awakened, so we came to recruit you. Join our Raging Gale! A world vast beyond all horizons will be waiting for you. A little nowhere like Elderrow is no place for you to slowly grow old and die."

The hulk's presence was second to none, but what Nathan was thinking was: "Is this dude's brain broken? Who's gonna go run with bloodborn-world gangsters who look like certified bad news on sight?"

Though he was griping internally nonstop, he didn't want trouble with people like this, so he asked carefully, "Who are you people?"

The fierce hulk chuckled heh-heh again. "You've never even heard of the Raging Gale? The bloodborn world's Four Hosts are the only power that can stand up to humanity's Eighteen Towers and the Hidden Order lineages—they're the pillars of the bloodborn world. Our Raging Gale is the strongest of the four. Unlike a certain Concord that loves groveling to human magi, joining us will be your supreme honor."

Nathan honestly couldn't bear to look directly at this guy's IQ. He hesitated a beat and said, tactfully, "I won't be joining any club before college. You two should head back!"

The hulk gave a cold heh-heh and bent slightly forward, his muscles bulging and rippling as if coming alive, brimming with explosive power.

Nathan didn't have any kind of scanner, but even going by eyes alone, he knew this guy's strength was in a different universe from his. As for bond-power and spells... his black-light vitae could do nothing except phase through walls; in a fight it would definitely be useless. He couldn't resist backing up a step, his voice shaking: "What are you going to do?"

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The sinister middle-aged man in the old army-surplus jacket behind the hulk suddenly stepped forward and said in a low, rasping voice: "I've looked into your file. You awakened the Yggdrasil Line not long ago—and you're a GREAT atavistic case on top of it. You probably don't know what that means yet. And nobody at the Greyhaven Wardens' Office brought it up with you either, right?"

Nathan nodded. Sure enough, nobody had brought any of this up with him.

The sinister man in the old uniform flashed his teeth in a grin and drawled, in a voice like grinding teeth: "Because they all want you to become the next Granny Rowan."

Nathan asked, uncertain, "Granny Rowan? Who's that?"

The sinister man in the old uniform kept up his dark smile. "Bloodborn need their own residential zones—pockets of space-time split off from the ordinary human world, called the Between. To get your hands on a pocket of space-time like that, you need a first-rate keystone. Granny Rowan is the keystone of Elderrow—sealed in place for three thousand years now. Become the Between's keystone, and your true form gets sealed. Even if you regret it later, there's no leaving. You just bitterly keep watch over one street until you die of old age—and if you get old and don't die, it's even worse. You really want to be a bloodborn who can never, ever leave one particular Between?"

The fierce hulk cut in: "Becoming Greyhaven's nineteenth bloodborn residential zone—that's the future you want? Next to a residential zone of your own someday, the so-called benefits you're getting now are worth jack squat! The Concord is just conning you with pocket change."

Nathan honestly had never imagined the truth was anything like this. His instincts told him that even though these two looked like villains straight out of central casting, they weren't lying.

Nathan stayed silent a good while, then said firmly all the same: "Either way, I won't be considering joining the Raging Gale. You two should head back!"

The hulk gave a cold snort, stepped forward, and boomed: "You think you still get a choice? No one—no one—has ever refused the Raging Gale's invitation!"

The threat in those words was thick. Under the stress, Nathan let his vitae loose—his whole body shrouded in black light, eight streams of it writhing like monstrous pythons, which honestly made for quite the imposing sight. Never mind that his vitae, apart from the old "black-light wall-phasing," was good for absolutely nothing.

With both sides squared off, about to throw down, a shrill voice suddenly screeched out a weird ka-ka-ka cackle: "Daring to throw hands on Granny Rowan's turf—did you two think through the consequences? A couple of little bloodborn barely a century old apiece, and what fat guts you have!"

Both the fierce hulk and the sinister man in the old army-surplus jacket tensed up. The sinister one said in a lower growl, "We're the Raging Gale. Granny Rowan, even with the Concord behind you, what can you actually do to us?"

Granny Rowan's voice stayed as shrill as ever, cackling ka-ka-ka: "You two? You think you can bring the Raging Gale down on me? Since when have the Four Hosts had the guts to face off against our Concord head-on? I'm the Between keystone of one of Greyhaven's eighteen residential zones. If the Raging Gale dared lay one finger on me, they'd be the ones sweating the Concord's revenge."