Cate began living at the Vesta Hotel. She spent her days seeing the beauty of the city and interacting with the many supernaturals living in the hotel. There was great food and the best wine possible. The hotel was very large with hundreds of rooms and many more workers.
All who could afford to enter this place were wealthy and powerful supernaturals. There were a few humans in the hotel, most of whom were servants to the supernaturals. There were also humans who served as blood slaves to the vampires in the hotel.
Cate learned that these humans were not actually slaves in the real sense of the word. These humans were paid for their services by the vampire, and they could quit their job at any time. The vampires were also not allowed to kill these humans on top of treating them with respect.
In the lounge, Cate sat at a table with a few friends she had made over the past few weeks she had been in Rome. There were two vampires, Svyatoslav and Agrafena. Svyatoslav was a tall, fit man with long blonde hair and blue eyes. Agrafena was female, and her appearance was simply the female version of Svyatoslav.
These two were twins born long ago into one of the vampire clans of Russia. The two were so close to the point that Cate had known them for weeks now, and yet she had never seen either one of them without the other. They ate together and slept in the same room. They shared the same blood slave and spoke with the same accent. They barely disagreed, and they easily completed each other's sentences. "This is what happens when you live with the same person for centuries," Cate had thought.
Cate met these two vampires at a nightclub, and instead of eating them as she had begun doing to most vampires she met, Cate befriended the two. At the moment, Svyatoslav and Agrafena were seated on a couch with a blood slave seated between them. They had their teeth in the human woman's neck. The young woman seemed to be enjoying being fed on by two vampires. Her skin had reddened, and she smelled like sex.
This was all due to the vampire toxin making its way through her blood. Most humans ended up addicted to this toxin, meaning that very few blood slaves ever chose to quit their jobs. On the couch next to the vampires was a middle-aged man. The man was heavily built with muscles that stretched the simple black shirt he wore. His long red hair fell over his shoulders, with his ruby red eyes giving him the appearance of a dormant volcano ready to shake the world.
This man was Cate's target. He was the reason she had chosen to stay at this hotel. This man was called Galeazzo Staranse. Cate had befriended the two vampires so as to get them to connect her to Galeazzo Staranse. Galeazzo Staranse was famous in the current supernatural world. He was a powerful mage from the noble Staranse clan, but this was not what most people knew him for. This man enjoyed partying and chasing after women. In short, he was a spoilt young master with an aloof time on his hands.
As a supreme mage, this man had a life span of hundreds of years. He had yet to live through even half of that. He was still young if one considered his life span. After making the two vampires her friends, they naturally led her into Galeazzo Staranse's circle. The man did not fully trust Cate, and she knew it. This was why she had been doing everything she could to earn the man's trust. Through this man, Cate hoped to enter the Seamless Realm, home to the Staranse Mage clan.
"I heard that you are from the Sorcerous Danescu clan," Galeazzo said. It seemed like a simple comment, but Cate understood that it was a probe she had to pass perfectly if she wanted this man to trust her. Agrafena and her brother stopped sucking the human dry and looked between Cate and Galeazzo as though waiting for a good show to begin.
"You heard right," Cate answered as she took a sip of her red wine.
"Since most of that once mighty clan has been killed off, you must be the daughter of the two crazy magicians who tried to collect the Chaos keys," Galeazzo said as he sat upright. His red eyes seemed to glow brighter at this moment.
Cate did not fear this man's power, but she also had to be very careful. This was Rome, home ground for the Staranse clan. If she were to fight him right here, Cate would have to face suppression from the Vesta hotel and reinforcements from the Staranse clan. She could end up dead if she were not careful. "They were indeed my parents, but I do not see how that is any of your business." Cate wanted the man to trust her, and being too humble would not get her there.
The few supernaturals who could overhear the conversation looked at Cate. They all remembered her parents, Ilarion and Smaranda Danescu. Two dark sorcerers who had turned the world upside down in their hunt for the keys. They had killed countless supernatural beings and created seas of blood debts.
Within the hotel right now, there were more than ten supernaturals who wanted revenge against the dark sorcerers, but they could not get it since Cate's parents were killed by Avalon long ago. The only way for these supernaturals to get their revenge was by demanding it from Cate. "Is this what he wanted?" Cate thought.
The moment her name was made known, she felt more than a few people look at her with hostility. She was sure that the moment she stepped foot outside this hotel, these supernaturals would take action against her. "Yes, I am from the Sorcerous Danescu clan. I am the 27th head of this ancient clan..." After that, Cate continued her chat with Galeazzo, who seemed to have a lot of questions. Cate answered everything without blinking an eye. She even admitted that she was now the master of the infamous Wandering Palace.