by J. K. Beck
“That’s all ya got?” the girl asked.
“Come back tomorrow, bitch. Now blow. I got other business to do.”
She went, her steps uneven, her demeanor meek. The male smirked, then pulled out a wad of bills and started riffling through them. Satisfied, he shoved them back in his pocket and started to walk away. A second later he stopped, blocked by the two vampires who’d moved into his path with exceptional speed.
Here we go. As Colin yanked the male toward him, Serge crouched, ready to spring to the ground. Ready to save the human and feed the beast.
He didn’t get the chance. A heartbeat later Colin turned to dust, a small pile on the ground topped with a wooden arrow.
“Holy fuck!” The drug dealer’s words echoed Serge’s sentiments exactly, and he scoured the shadows, looking for the shooter.
“Are you an idiot?” A female voice burst from the darkness. “Run.”
The male didn’t hesitate. He took off down the alley, leaving the shooter to contend with Mitre, whose initial expression of surprise had contorted into one of pure, furious hatred.
“Goddamn little bitch.”
The woman had shifted position, bringing her into the dim ambient light, and for the first time in centuries, Serge felt knocked over by the sight of a woman. She was tall and curvy, and managed to look both feminine and tough in black jeans, a black mock turtleneck, and a battered black leather jacket. She had a square face with a strong jaw and a wide, beautiful mouth. She moved with power and confidence, but there was something about her that seemed vulnerable, making him want to reach out and touch her. It was, he finally realized, the gleam in her eyes. A lonely, pained light that seemed to cry out, as if she was on a desperate quest, and was suffering under the weight of the knowledge that it might never end.
None of that, however, lessened the impact of the woman as a warrior. She held a crossbow in her hands, and it was aimed right at Mitre. “I’d tell you to run, too,” she said, “but I’m not interested in a chase. All I want is to see you turn to dust.”
“Bitch,” he said, spitting the word as he lunged forward. Serge tensed, ready to jump into the fray, but the woman had it under control. She released an arrow, causing Mitre to howl in pain even as he slammed into her. He rolled over, and Serge could see that the arrow had landed square in his chest—but not in his heart. In seconds Mitre was back on his feet—ready to kill the woman and use her blood to heal.
Well, shit.
Except once again, the female impressed him.
As Mitre turned toward her, she tossed the crossbow aside and pulled out a stake. Almost simultaneously she scrambled to her feet and rushed the vampire. Serge didn’t expect it any more than Mitre did, and the vamp lashed out clumsily, protecting his heart and catching her hard across the jaw. She stumbled, but kept on coming. Mitre reacted instinctively, kicking out hard and fast. His foot slammed into her gut, and she fell backward. He leaped on her, but she was ready, and with a flick of her wrist she shot another stake out of her jacket sleeve, using some sort of concealed spring-loaded device. Once again it missed his heart, but even so Serge wanted to applaud. Whoever this girl was, she knew her stuff. Knew especially that the first rule of vampire hunting was to stay alive.
“Keep on coming, vampire,” she said. “I know I will.”
For a second Mitre seemed to think about it. Then he turned and raced down the alleyway. Serge rose, intending to race after him. Despite the pleasure he’d taken from the impromptu performance, he hadn’t forgotten that he’d come out tonight to feed.
A small sound of pain held him in place, though, and when he looked back, he saw that the woman had stumbled trying to get to her feet. She held a hand to her head, and he realized that she’d hit it hard on the pavement when Mitre had knocked her down. She’d put on a good show for Mitre, but if he hadn’t decided to run, he’d have surely destroyed her. That she’d managed to pull off such a blatant bluff impressed Serge all the more. He stayed still, watching her, afraid that her injuries were serious. One minute. Two. And then finally she squared her shoulders, gathered her things, and marched unsteadily in the opposite direction that Mitre had fled.
Serge sprinted silently along the rooftops, keeping her in sight until he saw her pause by a Ducati motorcycle. She winced as she slipped on a helmet, then straddled the thing and fired up the engine. A moment later she was gone, and Serge was left with an odd sense of loss.
Ridiculous, of course. That sense of loss had to be because of Mitre, not the woman. Mitre. The goddamn rogue was not only still out there, but wounded, too. That meant he needed to heal. That meant he needed blood.
And that meant he needed to kill.
Shit. While Serge had been fretting about the woman, he’d let a killer slip away.
The thoughts were still swirling in his head when he backtracked to the scene, leaping down to the alley floor so that he could catch Mitre’s scent. With luck, he’d find the bastard on the next block. With even more luck, he’d find him before he killed a human.
Luck, however, wasn’t cooperating. He tracked the vampire easily enough, but the trail ended abruptly in a parking lot. He doubted that Mitre would have used his dwindling strength to transform into mist. Which meant that the rogue had made his escape the old-fashioned way—he’d left in a car.
Goddamn modern world. It was a hell of a lot easier to track a few centuries ago. And now someone was going to die because Serge had been too damn slow—and too damn distracted by a woman.
Derrick Gregorck stood on the balcony of his penthouse apartment, a finger of single-malt Scotch swirling in the fine crystal he held in his hand. Below, traffic moved at a crawl along Wilshire Boulevard. Cars, not buggies or horses.
It still amazed him.
He lifted the glass to his lips and tossed back the drink—at least Scotch hadn’t changed over the last 150 years. The world, though … that had changed dramatically, and it pissed him off that he’d missed seeing these wonders unfold.
That bitch of a sorceress … Those fucking Dumont men …
It had primarily been the males, of course. But if Derrick hadn’t drained Tomas and then gone in search of the witch he wouldn’t have been in the cookhouse when the men returned. Bad luck all around. Worse luck that they’d entombed him rather than staking him through the heart. They’d captured him with nets woven from thin strands of hematite, a metal that sapped a vampire’s strength. Then they’d pierced him through with metal stakes. The heart. The gut. He’d bled and bled and bled until he was nothing but a dried-out shell withering on a cold stone floor.
But still he’d been alive. Alive and as helpless as an infant, unable to move. Lost inside his own thoughts, a perverse miasma of images and emotions. He’d been too weak even to order his mind, and he’d floated in a dream state for days, weeks, years. Had anyone found him, they would have seen what appeared to be a mummified corpse. But of course he wasn’t found. Those Dumont bastards had planned their revenge well, and he’d been well hidden in their private cemetery, tucked away in a secret room beneath the family tomb.
Derrick still didn’t know what had finally initiated his return to consciousness. Insects, maybe, finding a home in his mouth. Dying and rotting and attracting rats. Perhaps the creatures had fought. Fought, and then bled.
It was the blood that was key, of course. Somehow, a few drops of blood had entered his mouth. And then a few more, and then more still. At first, those drops brought only torment, for the amount was insufficient to infuse his body with life. They merely made him more aware of his hellish condition.
That was when the months ticked by at a painfully slow pace. No longer was his consciousness swirling with no conception of time. Instead, he felt the turning of the earth. Saw the shift of light in the dim seams of the ceiling above him. The light was odd, and he realized later why—it was streaming in through the stained-glass window of the family crypt beneath which he was trapped. Just as well. Had he been bathed in a full sunbeam
, he would have truly met his end. Most days, he wished for exactly that.
Slowly, though, his strength grew. Worms and leeches and all manner of disgusting creatures nested within him, and though their bodies gave him no relief, when there was blood it added to his strength. After a time, he was able to move his jaw and his tongue, and that victory. allowed him to snap down upon the creatures. He could kill, and he could feed. And because their rotting carcasses remained in his mouth, more scavengers would come to meet their demise, and nourish him in the process.
Over a century passed with Derrick trapped inside his own head, his daemon roaring and unable to hunt. His mind spun, full of fury, madness kept at bay by the simple act of plotting revenge. Even that happy thought was ultimately defeated. By the time Derrick had regained his senses and could move his weakened body enough to slide out into the world, the Dumont men were long dead, entombed above the very crypt where Derrick had suffered his long imprisonment.
He’d made his way to the house, setting out at dusk and arriving only an hour before dawn, so slow was his progress. Once there, he slit the throat of the first person he found, and drank his fill of fresh, flowing human blood. Ah, the glory. The power.
Not even close to sated, he drank again from the next human to pass through the back door. Only then did he look around and note the changes to the world. Strange enclosed buggies that moved under their own power. Lights that burned without gas or wood. He marveled at these things—but even such wonders could not keep him from his goal. Stronger now, he accosted the next person he encountered—a female who arrived in one of the metal carriages. She quivered in his arms, said that she was only the maid and didn’t know where the family kept its money. He assured her it wasn’t money he was after, and asked the name of those who lived in the house. Her reply—“Dumont, sir”—sent great shivers of joy through him. His tormentors may have already passed from life, but Derrick could still feast upon their heirs.
Once he learned that the family was asleep upstairs, he feasted upon the maid. Not because he was still weak, but because he’d wanted to quash her humanity. Humans had tormented him, and now humans would pay. Starting with the Dumonts, of course, but he had no intention of stopping there. They thought they’d beaten him? Trapped him and bound him? Perhaps for a time, but they were nothing but food for the worms now, whereas he had been resurrected, much like their God. Hell, he was a god, and it was by his hand that they would live or die.
He’d crawled from that wretched tomb almost fifteen months ago, and had spent the last year meting out his own justice against the humans, rallying other vampires to rise up against them, too. What was the point of being a god if you allowed the baser creatures to bind your nature? Why did the PEC punish those vampires who acted in accordance with their natural urges and fed off humans? His race was becoming weak, and it disgusted him. And he had made it his mission to bring as many of his kind as possible around to his way of thinking—in the process thinning out the humans, even while growing stronger on a diet of their rich, delicious blood.
Tonight, he’d invited two of his most impressive protégés to join him in his penthouse at dawn. They were young vampires, still able to go outside during the day, and he intended that they would talk throughout the daylight hours, then hunt together once the sun dipped below the horizon. He enjoyed conversing with young vampires, who were able to give him insight into the changed world much faster than his own observations could manage. Of late, though, these tête-à-têtes served an additional purpose—they helped him gauge the level of fear within the community.
In Chicago, where he’d settled for a few months before coming to Los Angeles, the vampire population had been deservedly arrogant. Derrick had gathered them around him, shared his views, and christened those who agreed as members of his League, just as he had in the other cities he’d stopped in during his trek from New Orleans. They’d hunted, they’d killed. They’d known their proper place, and their actions had shown it.
Here, though, something heavy hung in the air. A hint of fear. A tidbit of trepidation. The League was still supreme, and Derrick was rightfully proud of the influence he’d had on the local population, but there was no denying the truth. Some of their number were disappearing. Staked, Derrick believed, so that nothing was left but ash.
That was bad enough. What was worse was the fate of the unluckier ones, a fate that Derrick couldn’t even think about without shuddering in revulsion and being bombarded with memories of his time in that despicable tomb. Four of his best men had been found desiccated. Shriveled and dried out like Derrick himself had been. Yet these vampires had been beyond reviving. Blood had no effect on them whatsoever. Derrick’s spies within the PEC had told him as much. They were dead and gone—and no one understood why. Had they been infected with some unknown agent? Attacked with an unheard-of weapon?
It was a mystery Derrick intended to solve. Unfortunately, though, he didn’t even have an inkling where to start, and while the young vampires he’d recruited were as eager as he was to learn the truth, he had yet to encounter one who felt like an equal rather than a student.
How he longed for a worthy partner. So much so that one of the main reasons he’d come to Los Angeles was the rumor that Sergius was here. He missed the company of his old friend. More than that, he missed Serge’s ruthlessness and the dark vision they’d both shared. Serge was an equal, an ally. And he would be an asset to the League.
When Derrick had first crawled from the tomb, he’d assumed that Serge had suffered a similar fate. Either that, or the witch had staked him. Then he began to hear rumors that Sergius was alive. Alive, and wild. A thing possessed, literally. Strange, disjointed stories. Some said that Serge had been cursed. Others, that his daemon had finally gotten the better of him. All agreed that he’d killed. And not just anyone—Alliance representatives. The very shadowers Derrick had fast come to despise. The very ones who kowtowed to humans, protecting the insignificant creatures through the Covenant and treaties and an unspoken acknowledgment that the plight of the shadowers was to fade into the background while humans infected the world.
As soon as he heard a whisper that Sergius had been sighted in Los Angeles, his decision was made for him. He’d come to reconnect with his friend. So far, he had yet to find him.
A sharp rap at his door pulled Derrick from his thoughts. He drew out his pocket watch—a souvenir of the last Dumont man he’d killed—and frowned. Mitre and Colin were late, and Derrick had no patience for tardiness. He moved to the door in long, liquid strides, then opened it smoothly, letting no sign of his irritation show. He knew how to handle men, and how to dole out recriminations. But what he saw when he opened the door surprised him. Not Mitre or Colin, but Jonathan, looking as frazzled as Derrick had ever seen him.
“What’s happened?” he demanded, stepping aside to let Jonathan stumble past him.
“Colin’s gone—staked—and Mitre’s a fucking mess. He called me. I was at the Z Bar, and I went to him. Told him I’d help him hunt, but he was out of his head. Said he’d get his own damn blood and then he’d kill the bitch if it took him a lifetime to find her.”
The words spilled out, but Derrick understood. Some female had staked Colin and injured Mitre, who was now on the hunt, searching out healing blood.
“Mitre said she was good. Trained. I gotta think maybe she’s the one who’s been—”
“Giving us all the problems,” Derrick finished for him. “Yes, I’m inclined to agree.” He turned away from Jonathan for long enough to school his expression into one of calm control. It wouldn’t do for one of his men to see how deeply the news had cut him. When he turned back, he knew that the younger vampire would see nothing but a veneer of determined strength. “Mitre will be in touch once he feeds. And then we’ll have him take us back to the place where the woman attacked him. We’ll find her scent. We’ll track her. And then I will personally make sure that she understands why it was a very bad decision to go meddling in the
affairs of vampires.”
Alexis winced as Leena pressed an ice pack against the knot on the back of her head. “Thanks,” she said, then reached up to hold the pack in place. “I appreciate you being here, but you should have gone home. You look wiped.”
“Bet I don’t look as bad as you do. Besides, I wanted to wait and see how it went. I’m glad I did. You got hurt because of me.”
Alexis had been inspecting an abrasion that ran down the side of her thumb and over her wrist, but now she looked up into Leena’s face and saw the guilt and regret in her friend’s eyes. “That is such bullshit. You don’t have a thing to be sorry about.”
“How many vamps have you staked since I told you the truth? You’ve been training like a … well, like an I-don’t-know-what, and you’ve nailed almost a dozen now. And this one you miss? Not once but three times?”
“Thanks so much for reminding me.”
“I shouldn’t have told you. It messed up your concentration. Got under your skin.”
“Conversation over,” Alexis said, because Leena was right. But no way was she going to admit it.
“Want to talk about it?”
“I just …” She trailed off, glancing at the diamond-shaped scar on her wrist as she tried to gather her thoughts. “What if I don’t get the chance again?”
“You will. That’s why you came to LA. To find the vamp who killed your sister. And you’re not even certain that the one who got away was the guy. Maybe you did dust him.”
Alexis shrugged. Leena was right, of course, but until she knew for sure, the thought was cold comfort. They’d known only that the vampire who’d killed Tori was in that alley. They didn’t know which one he was.
“You’ll get him,” Leena said firmly. “We’ll get him.” She gave Alexis a stern, motherly glance, ironic since she was the younger of the two. After a second she reached for her cane and stood. “Coffee or ibuprofen or both?”
