Chapter 280 The Campaign
POV: Callum | Rookeries, various locations
The seventh succession vote has been running for six months now, and I should be used to the pattern. There are always three candidates—two from the lunatic fringes and one poor bastard stuck in the middle who actually decides everything. I learned that the hard way during the second vote, back when I actually thought elections were about picking between two different visions instead of watching which way the swing voter jumped.
I've voted in every election since then. You'd think I'd stop being surprised.
Elena Voss is our candidate—mine and Alteroni's. We've been running this coalition for five years now, long enough that I don't have to pretend to support her. I just do. She's young by our standards—only a hundred and fifty—and she still thinks like someone who had a life before Parliament got its teeth into her. That sounds obvious, but most vampires her age already sound like the regulations they grew up reading. Elena actually believes in things. The end of the thrall system, actual equality instead of the conditional shit we're supposed to be grateful for, all of it. She wants to change what supernatural London is, not just manage the mess we've got.
That's why she needs this seat. That's why we need the majority.
On the other side, Ravenscroft's running his son—Renwick II, two hundred years of never having a single original thought because he never needed to. His entire platform is "let's go back to when vampires mattered more than everyone else," which would be funny if his family didn't have the money and the history to make people listen.
And then there's Lord Thaddeus Crane, sitting pretty in the middle at three hundred, waiting to see who offers him the better deal. He's not moderate—he's just expensive.
I've been open about backing Elena because the math isn't complicated. My pack needs a reformist Parliament the same way the Rookeries needs to keep its autonomy. The traditionalists win, we lose our legal recognition. We lose our recognition, they can do whatever they want to us. Simple as that.
What I didn't need was the confirmation that True Pack feels the same way about their guy. They've gone public supporting Ravenscroft II, which is the first time since the split that both packs have lined up on opposite sides of something this visible. The leadership fight's bad enough. Now we're advertising that we're enemies in Parliament too.
I was thinking about what that means—about how hard it makes everything—when Jack's message came through. Jack doesn't waste words. Never has.
Elena Voss. Attack at eleven this morning. Silver poisoning, significant exposure. Survived. Campaign disrupted.
I read it twice. Three times.
I shouldn't have been surprised. We'd talked about it happening, Elena's team and mine. The traditionalists were getting desperate, the polls were shifting, and silver's easy to hide if you know what you're doing. I'd prepared for this.
Preparing doesn't actually help when it happens anyway.
Survived. I held onto that word like a lifeline.
Jack hadn't written who did it. He never guesses—only reports what he knows for sure. But I knew who benefited. Everyone would know. Ravenscroft's people had the motive and the history and the complete lack of moral constraints that made this kind of thing inevitable.
I was already moving toward Isla's place before I finished reading the message a third time. Parliamentary medicine wouldn't touch this—their doctors ask too many questions, fill out too many forms. Silver poisoning needs doctors who don't file reports, and Isla's network is the best I've got.
Fourteen weeks until the vote. Fourteen weeks is enough time to recover from silver if you have the right help and enough money. We had both.
I kept walking, fast enough that humans on the street probably thought I was late for something. I was calculating margins in my head—six months of campaigning, Alteroni's coalition, the three undecided votes that everything hinges on. An assassination attempt makes people nervous. Nervous undecideds don't vote reformist. Nervous undecideds look for the safe option, and the safe option is usually the one with the biggest guns and the longest memory.
Unless Elena handled this right.
Unless she came back stronger.
I pushed through the door to Isla's building and let my eyes adjust to the dark. The campaign was disrupted. But disrupted wasn't destroyed, and Elena was alive, and fourteen weeks was a lifetime in politics.
I just had to make sure she got them.