"Is it dead?"
"I believe so."
Morgan kicked the rat back into the trash. Already fleas were abandoning the cooling body. Good deed done for humanity, he leaned against the opposite wall. His lighter flared in the dark, briefly illuminating the facets of his face with odd shadows as he lit a cigarette.
"Nice." She put her hands on her hips. "Didn't think you were the type who'd hang out in places like this."
"You would be surprised," he said. "Find some of my best people in these places. Probe for their weaknesses, then make my deals."
Julienne caught the undercurrent. "So in a way, you blackmail them?"
He gave back a brooding, half-lidded stare. "Only if they have the talents I need."
She glanced toward the wino.
"They say the devil can quote scripture for his own purposes." And now I've gone and made my deal with him. Am I any better or worse off than that man?
His free hand lifted to his eyes, rubbing hard. "I do what is necessary and what benefits me."
"Well, at least you're honest about using people." She caught his move. "Headache?"
His hand dropped. "No."
He took another drag, threw back his head and blew smoke into the air. His narrowed gaze warned her to watch herself. She was probing into a place that was none of her business.
She knew he was lying.
In the last few days, Morgan had begun to absent himself from the manor, disappearing for entire nights. When he returned at dawn, he would speak to no one. Instead, he stalked off and concealed himself from all eyes.
He was pushing himself at an insane rate, while she was just getting used to the idea of what he was, of what he had to do. She would have to learn that he would be gone for long stretches of time and that he would be in no mood for any sort of company when he came back. She had the sense that he was slipping away--she could feel him growing more distant with every passing day.
Still, her grief over what was going on with him had less to do with him as a person than with what he had come to represent to her: comfort and security. She need not feel guilty--she loved him, even if he did not return that affection with an equal depth.
Julienne gritted her teeth and shivered. Not because of the cold, but of the chill hunger sent through her body. Five days had passed since she tasted blood and found the wine of life acceptable sustenance. Tonight, Morgan had come out of his shell long enough to sense her growing need and offered his.
She had refused--she would take no more from him. Instead, she insisted he take her where she could hunt among the legions of mortality for her food. Just as she wanted to learn to use her legacy, she also wanted to learn to fend for herself.
"I'm not human anymore," she'd argued. "I have to learn."
Surprisingly, he had agreed.
"There's nobody worth finding here," she said. "Where in the hell are we, anyway? I swear, I hate to travel this way. How do you know where you'll end up?"
He killed the cigarette, appeared to consider lighting another but didn't.
"Your mind is still too unfocused to perceive the depths of the dimensional veils. To your eyes it is all a haze. Experience will help you see it as it really is."
She pursed her lips and regarded him through narrowed eyes. "Fine. Where are we?"
He shrugged. "I will not swear to any specific place. My concentration was mostly upon seclusion."
His gesture of disinterest caused Julienne to grind her teeth. Her tension was growing.
"I don't want to hang around here all night."
"Let me see."
He pushed away from the wall and passed her to take a look outside the alley. Julienne moved to stand behind him. Her hands were clenched at her sides, and like the rat's, her eyes glittered feverishly. Her heart pounded, beating against her chest, in her throat, at her temples and ears. She felt as if all the air had been sucked from her lungs.
"Well?" Her tone bore new urgency. Her hunger was becoming unbearable.
Morgan pointed. A path opened through the murk at his gesture. "There."
Julienne saw several furtive figures dart around a far corner. A minute later a police cruiser passed down the street on its perfunctory cruise of the slum district. Abandoned by even lower-class blacks and Hispanics, the neighborhood now belonged to teenage gangs and aging winos. The law left them alone, hoping the winos would poison themselves on cheap liquor and the gangs would kill each other off or overdose on the heroin they peddled.
At any rate, the night was slow. The patrol car turned. The cops would go down and hassle the drunks staggering out of the bar districts to pass the time.
"Others seek to conceal themselves in the night, their deeds less honest than yours," he said. "I will catch one." He made a move to depart.
Julienne grabbed his arm. "No. I want to do this myself. I won't let you hunt for me."
Unconsciously, she moved a stray lock of hair out of her face with a slender finger. She slipped around him, and her figure cut through the white fog.
The hunger took over, consuming her mind, guiding her actions, a beast on the prowl.
She moved swiftly. No sound betrayed her when she vanished around the corner and out of sight. The beast inside worked independent of her will.
* * *
Morgan watched her go, his eyes on the sway of her hips. Her figure was long, lithe and sleek. She curved in all the right places, and the sexy sweater and slacks only served to highlight her pert breasts and round, shapely rear. It made him very conscious of being male; he would have liked to grab her and make love to her--except this damn headache pounded in the back of his head. A thick bolt of pain hit him squarely behind the eyes, beginning a slow war-dance around his temples.
He sank back against the brick wall. His pain a persistent throbbing never out of his consciousness. The migraine was gearing up, getting ready to attack full throttle. It was going to be a bad one. Bad. Really bad. The kind of bad that threatened to make a mindless idiot out of him, this pain was akin to a giant swatting a gnat. Concentration was damn near impossible, and pushing himself nightly to hunt and kill in Sclyd was not helping. Having a finite well of patience, he did not admit he was as much on the edge from his own malady as Julienne was from hers. Enviously, he wished he could satisfy his own demon so easily. The little blood he had lost to her hunger was not enough. He was going to have to slow down and pace himself better, or he would soon be lost in a full migraine attack.
Digging into his pocket, he gave each direction a guilty glance before extracting his flask. He hated it, but he was drinking again. Though alcohol further aggravated his migraines, it was a crutch he could not entirely abandon. The vodka was one hundred-fifty proof, harkening back to the days when he could still find respite from the demon living in his mind. He could already tell that the rest of his night was going to lead to a long losing battle with the booze.
Julienne was unaware he was back on the liquor, hence his reason for drinking vodka. Suspecting something, however, she had questioned him. He'd evaded answering directly--he wanted to shield her from his disintegration for as long as possible. He felt his control was not going to last much longer.
"You lookin' for some action, baby?"
Lowering his flask, Morgan gave the woman standing before him a jaded look. The pounding in his skull, echoing in his ears, had silenced her approach.
He took another drink, decided she was not worth saving. In less than thirty seconds, he had made a connection with her mind and knew her whole life, backward and forward. She wasn't a woman at all, really, but a mere girl of sixteen.
Her name was Gini. She was a Cholo gang member and working whore. She was dressed in a tight zip-up leather dress, garters, hose and scuffed high heels. Her black hair was cut in an unflattering punk buzz, and amateur tattoos of her gang's logo adorned both of her needle-tracked arms. Her brown eyes were ringed with mascara and blue eye shadow, her lips and fingernails painted wild cherry red. She wore a
roach clip for an earring and had a pack of cigarettes and a lighter stuck in one of her garter straps.
Standing five-seven, she was thin and wiry, a hardened veteran of the streets. She was also a crack addict who owed the dealers a lot of money. She needed cash, fast. She didn't care whom she scored it from, and this nicely dressed man looked like a perfect mark for robbery.
Morgan's eyebrows went up just a bit, and the barest trace of a smile played at the corners of his mouth.
"You believe you have something I desire?" he bit off dryly.
"Sure, I got lots to offer." Gini smiled and reached to finger his coat, moving her thin body closer.
"I bet you do." He took another drink. Flashing into her thoughts again, he knew Gini hadn't expected to find anyone on the streets tonight except old Deke, the wino. It was the first of the month, and the old man always stuck the cash from his disability check into his sock. Regular as clockwork, she rolled him for the few bucks his woman let him keep out of his welfare check. With his money gone, Deke would be back to collecting aluminum cans from the trash for enough change to buy his beloved wine.
"Lotsa ladies where you come from?" She smiled in her best imitation of a flirt. "Bet I could outdo them all."
She was being careful, wording her tease just within legal limits in case he was a cop. She kept glancing over her shoulder, as if she were being followed.
Morgan did not betray the threat behind her. He was beginning to feel irritated by this little chit. He did not suffer fools gladly, certainly not wasted pieces of humanity such as this whore.
"I think not." With his flask he indicated over her shoulder. "But she can."
"No way, man! Trying to trick me! I'm no fool. The cops done made the rounds tonight! You can't be bustin' me."
* * *
Gini felt her presence then.
Behind her, the fog grew thicker; and a silent figure glided from within its center. The whore turned to run, but it was too late. A light laugh of delight tinkled in her ears. Rough hands clamped down on her shoulders. She screamed as a hand clamped over her mouth and effectively silenced her, the viselike grip of fingers digging deep into soft skin. She struggled but could not move; she was trapped by the woman wrapped around her like a giant spider.
* * *
Julienne wrenched back the whore's head to bare her neck, watching her brown eyes widen in terror.
"You were right about dishonest deeds." She dipped her head down. "When I saw this little tramp come this way, I followed." She nuzzled, her tongue tracing a burning line along the whore's jugular. "Don't struggle," she whispered. "I won't hurt you."
Her hand clamped down. The spikes from the twin rings punctured the vulnerable vein in the girl's neck, bringing forth a satisfying stream of blood.
She began her feast. As she fed, her fingernails impaled brown flesh. The whore's body convulsed; unconsciousness came quickly, the surrender of the street urchin as silent as the fog swirling around her limp form.
Julienne lowered the girl's body to the sidewalk. Kneeling, she kept her head down as she wiped away the blood dripping from her mouth. Looking at the liquid staining her fingers, she was struck with a stabbing remorse. She touched the teenager's forehead, then her neck, the terribly marred skin. Glazed eyes stared back at her in unseeing accusation.
The girl was dead.
Not from loss of blood.
From fear.
"I'm sorry!" The cry broke from her throat as the mutant's will cleared from her mind. "Oh, God! What have I done?" I killed her. She swallowed and heard a sob in her throat. I didn't mean to!
Forgotten in the frenzy of her feeding, Morgan stepped forward and pulled her to her feet.
"Calm down," he said, more aware than she was that they were still in danger of discovery. "You made a choice to hunt tonight, now you must face the consequences. It is easy to forget how fragile humans are when you are no longer one yourself." He tried to turn her away from the corpse.
Julienne yanked herself out of his hold and stared at him in frightened bewilderment. "Excuse me for having feelings enough to mourn!" Her words were as icy and unforgiving toward him as her expression. "I guess I'm just not the killer you are!" The moment the words left her mouth, she knew it had been the wrong thing to say. He could not easily forgive her for throwing that up in his face.
Patience vanishing, he pushed her back against the wall. He cupped her chin in his hand and lifted it. His grasp was not painful, but it was not gentle, either. His forbidding gaze bore straight through her.
"They will always be the weaker ones," he said, sounding resigned and slightly wounded. "You have to learn to put your survival ahead of theirs. Every time you feed, there will be risks." He pointed to the girl's body. "This is what you are now. Some of them have to be sacrificed toward your survival, Julienne. We cannot save them all. It is impossible."
Unable to meet his eyes, she slowly lifted her hand and stared into her palm, at her bloodstained fingers. Her gaze swept over the prostitute's body. She flinched from the memory of the hunger burning in her gut, the single-minded desire she'd had to taste again the rich, warm liquid that would take away the pain, bring satisfaction.
He's right, she thought, feeling an unwelcome churning sensation deep in her guts. I'm not human anymore. These are no longer people to me. They're food.
It was a bleak, rather frightening feeling.
A tight, airless sensation banded her chest and her blood hammered in her temples. "Oh, God," she whispered, the words falling from numb lips. "I never realized--" A deep shudder of tension shook her body.
She suddenly resented him, resented him because he was right. She could not afford to be weak.
They sometimes have to die if I want to live.
Morgan closed his eyes for a moment in an obvious struggle for patience and shook his head. "It was a mistake to bring you over." His words were steadily spoken cutting through her senses like lightning. He turned and began to walk away. "You are not strong enough, like Cassandra was not strong enough…"
Watching him go, she felt sick because she'd once excoriated Morgan about his refusal to protect her world from the Sclydian entities that would come for mortal victims. Was she any better now? She was the predator, humans the prey. She also felt ashamed because she had enjoyed her victim's fear, the taste of her blood. Grief sounded inside her like a bell tolling in the far away distance.
She squared her slender shoulders. She would have to be careful the next time she hunted.
The next time.
The idea loomed in her mind, a black specter.
She could only despise herself for such thoughts, for she realized it was up to her to carve out her own destiny.
"I'm not weak," she whispered. "I'm not my mother.".
Chapter Thirty
Xavier stood before the troll king's council in the great meeting hall of Asl, god of fire.
He wore crimson, his robes embroidered and imprinted with cryptic symbols denoting his caste and rank. The heat in the huge recess carved near the heart of an active volcano was sticky, coating him in a layer of sweat that made his clothes cling to his skin. Smoke issued from minute crevices in the rock, a smog that choked up all but the strongest of lungs.
He was flanked by two of his bria-thar, the low cenobites serving within the third caste. Azoroath and a second man paced with silent gravity a couple of steps behind him. They were alert lest he be attacked.
"Why come you among us, sorcerer of the Dragon?" King Ha'rak asked. In his chair carved of hard volcanic stone, he gave the visitors wary scrutiny, as if he were awaiting some trick.
"I wish to make an offering." Xavier made a certain sign with his hand, forehead to heart, one that said he had come in peace.
"Why make an offering, iarog?" Iarog. Evil one.
Xavier's features went rigid with displeasure, but he ignored the insult. He knew Ha'rak did not altogether trust him, but he had no wish to make an enemy in so high a place as the
troll king currently occupied. If he took what he wanted by force, members of the witches' council who did not entirely sanction the alliance might be tempted to break away into a splinter group and rejoin Morgan. That he could not yet risk. Not now.
"I am on a pilgrimage to Ula'dh," he replied gravely. "A humble servant on a holy mission." He must maintain the guise of quiet humility to show that he honored the treaties.
Ha'rak's face betrayed his suspicion; his orange eyes were narrow, thick lips stern. "Why would you wish to go to the city of the dead?"
"I am on a mission, serving Ouroborous."
"As if we would care about honoring the Dragon," Ha'rak sniggered.
Xavier indicated the chest two of his slaves bore. With a quick wave of his hand, he bade them come forward and set down the wooden box. Azoroath flipped open its cover. Gold coins gleamed in the fire lighting the chamber, the metal's brilliance undimmed by the smoke.
A murmur of disapproval sounded through the chamber. The king hushed the noise with a sharp clap of his hands.
"Silence!" he commanded, pounding his hand against stone.
"You can hardly refuse me. We are at peace." Xavier smiled, masking anger. "I wish to continue to honor that."
A hint of derision flickered in his heavy-lidded single eye.
A deep, threatening thunder of hissing voices rolled.
"We remember his deceptions," the masses said.
Another roll of echoing voices. "He is still an untrustworthy enemy."
Ha'rak looked out over the assembled trolls, taking his time in quelling the voices of his council. His eyes seemed to seek out every face, head cocked to hear every word. Finally, he raised his hand. Silence ruled.
He nodded approval, then spoke with ceremonious formality.
"Last time you came to Gidrah, you took from us what you wished. Your ravages of my people knew no bounds. I trust your motives as little as I trust those of the witches' council."
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