Episode 35: Betrayal
Written By Karl White
A human’s brain is wired for routine, we face ingrained psychological behaviors, and have difficulty overcoming emotions. In other words, change is hard. The saying "A tiger can't change its stripes”, goes beyond inherent nature, to one’s character, especially those with a proclivity for bad.
Juan is reborn as the vampire Victor Monfret - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
With Juan de Anglería no more, the newly created Vampire Underling renamed himself, Victor Monfret. He served as Rah’s liaison to the monarchies hungry for coffee and sugar. Rah had no patience for politics, man’s masquerade of dominance and submission, so turning the role over to someone fluent in Europe’s ruling systems only strengthened the plantation.
It was an easy call for Rah. He believed Juan had the ability to redeem himself from his past indiscretions, as Victor. He was patient and compassionate towards his new Underling. Giving Victor a long-leash to navigate life in the shadows. Tasking him with business dealings, an enrichment, knowing the former human found fulfillment in trade and commerce.
Still, Rah kept a watch on his thoughts and hungers, making sure the path bent towards atonement. For Victor, it was the long con of a lifetime. Selling a reinvention was second nature. He embraced the role, behaved, learned the ropes of being a Vampire and a broker, and he was good at both.
But buried deep in his subconscious, would be a growing plan for his own gain. Rah’s blood was only the beginning. It signified real power Victor could use to his advantage...but he had to be patient. The rest of his strategy would ripen with time.
In the meantime, Victor’s first order of business was to renegotiate every contract the plantation held. No one was shocked, Rah had signed most accords fifty years earlier, and the crowns were taking cane and coffee for a pittance. Victor’s presence tripled profits almost overnight. He was proving himself. Rah, feeling secure, turned more attention to his other Brood. And within a few years the estate swelled, more land, more crop, more output, all under Victor’s meticulous hand.
Victor renegotiates contracts for the good of the plantation - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
While Rah was impressed, he still kept Victor segregated from the rest of the family. Too much human contact, too much temptation. Like introducing a wild animal into captivity, it could shock the ecosystem. Rah had seen things go wrong before.
So he openly shared with Victor that the time wasn’t right and he was not quite evolved enough in his Vampire life to be homogenized with the rest of the family. It was a practice of nature versus nurture...But Victor nodded along, outwardly content. Inwardly, the slight fed the furnace. The soft rejection, good, but not good enough became more fuel for a scheme of epic proportions.
Another thing driving Victor was plain and simple...money. In his life as Juan, he’d despised his employers, convinced he deserved the riches he wrung from others. As a Vampire running Rah’s affairs, he knew the true worth of the plantation, the land, and the power one could wield with it.
He secretly detested Rah’s neglect in making money in favor of the humanitarian pursuits with the Brood. Victor pined for what Rah was wasting. But he knew if he wanted to stand atop the mountain, like all of the other privileged people in the world, he’d have to take the Vampire’s empire from beneath him...but it wouldn’t be easy.
Freedom of movement gave Victor his opening. He began a quiet, vicious project -- building a Brood of his own. Not Rah’s careful selection of “best and brightest,” but he'd choose criminals, thugs, and lowlifes. Quantity over character, muscle over mercy. He also began sharpening his skill to Tune, Sight, and Read others. Providing the groundwork for a manipulation of Rah.
Victor would report to Rah with a mind free and clear. Filled with a script of devotion and assignment. By day, as the master slept, Victor was able to Tune to Rah’s dreams, quietly influencing, softening suspicions, warming affections, lacquering over doubt. Painting a calming picture of himself in Rah’s head...And over time, it worked, as Rah began to Read Victor much less frequently, trusting him above all others. This would free Victor to move on to the final stage of his strategy.
Victor stalking Rah’s mind - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
In the humid summer of 1664, a wet heat clung to the walls...and in the waining hours of night, as dawn waited just below the horizon, Victor seized his opportunity.
A single lantern in a window, was the signal. His drilled Brood, waiting in the cane, surged through the estate in a sudden, silent rush. Rah’s household, raised for peace, not war, was caught flat-footed, no time to rally or resist.
Victor, with some of his strongest Minions at his back, cornered Rah in his chamber, as the ancient Vampire made ready for sleep. And while Victor was pulling off an act of ultimate betrayal, Rah admitted a secret.
The betrayal of Rah - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
RAH: I could Read your treachery. I could feel each of your Minions born.
VICTOR: Lies. You stand before me defenseless. There’s no way you would allow yourself to be deceived. Admit, I bested you.
RAH: Long ago, I saw potential in your kind. A gentleness of mind and spirit. A consciousness with no limit for good. But you wrestle with the animals lurking beneath your skin, an instinct you refuse to outgrow. My hope hinged on you...but you proved man is as much a parasite, as my kind.
Harsh words, but the truth...as given an opportunity as Victor, he couldn’t progress past the lying, scheming, deceitful Juan.
Despite eons since giving up the ways of killing, Rah was older, faster, and more capable of savagery than Victor would ever be. He could have fought free. But chose not to. He had renounced violence long ago, and he didn’t resist death.
The blade found his heart. Rah, one of the oldest minds on the planet, was brutally murdered in his own chamber. An unfitting end for a unique and complicated creature. His name and his work, among the most meaningful in humanity’s long climb, slipped beneath the surface of history would be forever lost to the ages.
In the moments following his death, Rah’s Brood felt his undoing, but there was little that any of them could do. Surrender was the only option. Any of those Victor Read who opposed him, were killed on the spot. Others who had been smart enough to clear their thoughts, were spared and forced to declare allegiance to their new master.
Rah’s Brood forced to declare allegiance to Victor, 1664 - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
By 1699, Victor, unfathomably wealthy and with an iron gripped control of his Brood, sold the vast plantation to the imperialistic British and moved to America –- having much bigger plans on that horizon.
TO BE CONTINUED…