Joseph could practically smell the fear in the room as the other servants looked upon him and Master Alexi. In a sense, he might have been setting a bad example for some of the newer slaves, questioning the master in front of them, but he always made it clear to the other servants that he was the only one who was allowed to ever do that. As the head butler, he instructed the other workers to come to him with any questions, concerns, or complaints, and he would either address them himself or approach Alexi with them. There were some minor advantages that came with having raised the man you now called 'Master,' and the ability to occasionally question, even on rare occasions, was one of them.
But he had needed to speak up in this case. The moral implications of 'hard breaking' were not to be ignored, and in truth, he was concerned for his master's safety. After all, he was practically a father to the boy. Unfortunately, Alexi's cryptic response left much to be desired, like a real explanation of what the human meant to accomplish with all of this, apart from simply having another servant. He wanted to know, to understand, to protect Alexi from his own insanity. However, something about the tone of his master's voice, kind and gentle as it was, made it quite clear that no more argument would be acceptable.
So, just as he had done for over five centuries, he bowed low and replied, “Yes, Master Alexi. It will be done,” and exited the room.
These days, most of the “tools” Alexi wanted were easy enough to come by. Joseph made a few calls to the mansions “personal” suppliers and had the chains, potion, and both (donated) human and animal blood delivered to the mansion within the next few hours The speed required made these implements considerably more expensive, but Joseph knew that Alexi would care little about that. He simply added it to the financial spreadsheet for the household for the month of April and uploaded the updates into the household cloud storage.
Then for the next few hours, he requested the help of two other slaves, Gerald and Irina, a werewolf and a nymph, respectively, and moved the requested furniture into Alexi's room, set up the rigging for the chains, and then proceeded with the rest of his usual chores for the evening. When the items were delivered, he merely rigged the chains as his master had requested, and then set the potion and the blood inside Alexi's bedside table. Given the size of the room, this was well outside of the reach of any chained person on the other bed, and he would gladly move them if the prisoner was left unchained and unsupervised.
And just like that, all was ready for the arrival of this “completely wild vampire.”
~*~*~*~
The tranquilizer that took Erik out worked quickly enough that he hardly noticed the prick before he had fallen to the ground unconscious. He had no idea that the mission had fallen apart and only five of the ten men and women with him had gotten away cleanly. The humans in the Resistance would be comparatively fine, but the other creatures would be likely tried and executed for their crimes, or sold into servitude by the state.
All Erik knew when he awoke was that the mission had gone horribly wrong, and that he was in some kind of opulent looking mansion. The bed he was chained on was the most comfortable bed he had slept on in his life, but the fact that he was chained to the wall, with a human leering at him... well that put a damper on things.
“What the hell am I doing here?! What happened to my people?! Why am I chained like this?” he demanded, looking up at Alexi for answers. He recognized the chains as binding chains, and it was not difficult to surmise that he was in someone's house to be broken as a slave; he had certainly heard enough horror stories. He struggled against the chains, but that only seemed to make him weaker, quite apart from the fact that it was beyond useless. So the clank of the chains finally stopped, and he looked up at his captor, seething and demanding an explanation.