The Table Meeting

Julien Sinclair frowned at the wall in front of him.

“This is insulting.”

He picked a hammer up off the floor.

He did not rear back; he had no intention of taking the entire wall down.

The hammer met the wall with a high-pitched thwack. Concrete and mortar crumbled away, revealing a dinner plate-sized area of original Romanesque limestone, each block hand-cut and fitted together like a puzzle only medieval masons knew how to solve.

“You know how to use a hammer?” Lachlan Sullivan’s accent had long ago stopped bothering to decide if it was Scottish or English.

Julien had overseen many renovations and demolitions during his two hundred and thirty-three year existence, but never actively participated. Manual labor was beneath him, but this building was special. It was to be his most prestigious venture yet: a club for all vampire society, not just the elite.

Julien swung the hammer again. And again. “The philistine who covered these walls with concrete should be tarred and feathered.”

“Sadly, tarring and feathering went out of style centuries ago.” Aldéric Rousseau waltzed into the room, peeling his gloves off one finger at a time.

“Not sure it was a style thing so much as a legal thing.” Lachlan kept a wary eye on the hammer in Julien’s hand. He’d known Julien long enough to know the hammer was not in safe hands. “Torture becoming illegal and all.”

“That’s exactly what I said, dear Lachlan. Torture went out of style.” Aldéric flung his gloves onto a table, disrupting the dust that had rested on its surface for years. “Such a pity, too. There are crimes still deserving of inhumane punishments.”