Prologue

An excerpt from an article titled "Blood Bride Ring Busted: Grim's Priest Arrested On Charges of Imprisonment And Sale Of Sentient Beings" by Bob Sasini published in The San Francisco Light:

Yesterday, at approximately 7PM EST, authorities of the Department of Citizen Protection raided a small crypt in Moorseville, North Carolina and arrested four people on suspicion of running a blood bride trafficking operation. One of those arrested was High Priest Mitchell Hoyer, a vampire who ran the crypt and its attached funeral home for close to ninety years. Four others were arrested as well, including acolytes and employees. A handful of suspects, including a woman known as the matron, are currently being pursued and are expected to be apprehended in the next 24 hours.

According to a credible source close to the investigation, the Neutral Zone's CPD has been surveilling the Mooresville crypt for years, mostly for workers' rights violations and money laundering. It was a tip-off from an insider that propelled the investigation into its active phase with the CPD's vampire task force. The insider claims agents discovered several rooms within the crypt that suggest several people were living there off the record.

"I can't share any details," the source told us in a quick phone call last night, "but investigators have been able to track down a few brides already by tracing some of the money. There might have been ten vampires in the crypt at one time, but there were probably a lot more in and out over the years. The rumor is that most of them have been there since they were kids."

When asked why no one reported any suspicious behavior, the source claimed that the captives were dressed and trained as acolytes of the goddess of death herself. They worked in the funeral home and tended the temple within the crypt. "No one would have known by looking at them," they said. "They looked just like every other acolyte."

But they weren't just devotees to Grim. They were blood brides, and they lived in plain sight, ready to be sold to the highest bidder whenever the time came.

For San Franciscans and other citizens of the Elvish Protectorate who might be unfamiliar with it, blood bride is a gender-inclusive term that refers to a venom neutral vampire mated — or intended to be mated — to another vampire. Normally, two vampires could never feed on one another or reproduce, since their venom and blood is fatal when ingested by one of their own kind.

Due to a rare genetic quirk, a bride can act as an anchor — a vampire's mate — in exactly the same way another being can. They have no trouble producing vampiric offspring, which has made them a target of vampiric bloodline purists for centuries.

The blood bride trade has been in business for a very long time, and Grim's acolytes, known for their commitment to the dead and worship of the goddess through celibacy, have historically denounced it and supported it in equal measures. Vampiric culture has also changed its level of tolerance toward the practice many times.

Today, it's mostly seen as the domain of zealots, criminals looking to legitimize their bloodline, and the most vulnerable — those who are forced to give their children up to be brides, either for money or simply through the inability to protect them, and those who volunteer themselves for similar reasons.

The trade has been outlawed in most countries for at least two-hundred years, but there are enormous amounts of money to be made from wealthy vampires seeking to add prestige to their bloodlines. The EVP has strict laws against the practice. However, due to the territory's incredibly low vampire population, it's a rare case that makes it to court. Most blood bride trafficking happens in the Neutral Zone, where the largest number of vampires in the world resides.

The penalties for trafficking blood brides are steep, which is probably why, when High Priest Hoyer got wind of the upcoming raid, he allegedly acted swiftly to sell off the brides in the crypt's possession. "There were at least six just a couple weeks ago," the source said, his frustration evident. "But now they're all gone. I really hope the investigators can track them down. Or else the gods only know where they'll end up."