“Because…oh. Wait. Is that what you are?”
“Yes, but you won’t remember that. You’ll just remember a kiss.”
“A smokin’ hot kiss,” she corrected with a sigh.
“Mmm, indeed it was. I will not forget it.”
“Neither will I,” she murmured.
“I will allow you to remember it. But only that. Everything after that, including this line of questioning, you will forget. I thank you for what you have given me tonight, beautiful. I hope to see you again quite soon. You are most…intriguing. Good night.”
He pressed his mouth to her lips, the kiss warm and comforting to her. Then he was gone and she was left to drift off into a dreamy sleep.
Chapter 4
Rafe left Renee’s and walked back toward his SUV. It was dark and cold and snowing like crazy, but he felt none of it. His body was humming, alive with the satiation he felt in the wake of feeding off Renee.
From the moment he had met her he had known she would be compatible with him. He had only needed to look at her to see the overwhelming life force that emanated from her. She was very present in her life. Very aware of the world around her and her place within it. It was quite compelling. Plus, she led a clean, healthy lifestyle, very aware of what she put into her body. It all made the perfect storm for the perfect meal. Oh, the food they had eaten had been passable, but the company she had provided was infinitely more captivating. She was engaging and witty, confident and gorgeous. Still, it wasn’t like him to seduce his food.
He always chose women as his food source; although he was perfectly capable of overpowering men too, using hypno to overcome their strength. It was just that he preferred female energy. He was a heterosexual male and taking a being’s energy was like a sexual high.
He often asked his targets out to eat, knowing they would need the calories to help them recover from his using them as a meal, but he did not usually kiss them. Renee was simply hard to resist. Her kiss had wiped out all memory of any that may have come before her. Her mouth had been so lush, her kiss so invigorating and energizing even before he had begun to feed.
It had been a while since he had felt this way. Renee tugged at something inside of him.
And she’d been so delicious. She had an abundance of energy that had seeped inside of him, revitalizing his starving tissues and blood. Sure, he could eat food, but it gave him little sustenance. It was life energy that fed him and Renee had it in spades. It was like that with some people. They had an excess of what he needed. It was a rare find though, and he wouldn’t be willing to give it up so quickly.
But she could only tolerate being drained so often. As it was she would sleep for a very long time. Perhaps for days. It all depended on the person and how quickly they regenerated their energy. She had just eaten, so that would help. Burning calories was usually the best way to revitalize oneself after a drain.
As the snow fell around him, the night was quiet. Everyone had hurried inside to wait out the storm so there was almost no one on the street. His steps squeaked in the freshly fallen snow.
No. Not just his steps.
He halted and listened, his keen hearing sorting through the sounds of the night and seeking deeper. He reached out with preternatural senses to feel the energy of everything around him. He had been so famished before Renee that he would not have been able to do this a half hour ago. It had been a dangerous state for him to be in. He’d had ulterior motives for following Renee and he had not intended to feed from her initially. But he was glad that he had. Now he was flush with ability and strength and he was once more able to protect himself. He had been very lucky to have not been caught out before this.
“I can feel you out there,” he said aloud to the night. “I can feel your heart beating and the sourness of the energy you steal.”
“Just as you stole from that girl.” A voice crept out of the alley toward him. “We are not so different.”
Damn it. He had been watched. That never would have happened if he’d been at full power. He would have sensed the thing following him long before this.
“That girl is pure. You don’t care where you get your energy from. You hunt around in the gutter for it,” he said. He threw in an intonation of intimidation to boot. It couldn’t hurt, although depending on his age the sycophant he was dealing with might or might not be affected by it. It also depended on when the sycophant had last fed.
Rafe stepped into the alleyway. The streets were empty, but it was best for all involved if this took place in the dark, away from eager eyes.
“Come. Show yourself, sycophant,” he invited the base creature. Rafe then went for the long knife strapped to his ankle, crouching down low and ready for the attack. Sycophants were blitz attackers. They tried to overwhelm you by rushing at you with force. This sycophant proved to be no different.
A wall of pure energy crashed into Rafe so hard that, had he been standing straight it would have bowled him over. But by being prepared for it he managed to keep his feet. The energy of the attack crackled and snapped all around him, fingers of visible electricity jumping along the edges of the trash that cluttered the alleyway.
Rafe was much more conservative. He wasn’t going to blow his entire store of energy in one reckless attack. He would be more thoughtful, more methodical. He started off by shaking his head to clear it of the energy that blinded him then searching the alleyway for the physical form of the sycophant.
But this sycophant was more powerful than expected. Even after his huge expenditure of energy against Rafe, he was still able to remain in an energy state, making it impossible for Rafe to use a physical blow against him. Rafe swore softly. The sycophant was going to force him to use power he would rather not waste. Still, he couldn’t just sit there and let the phant take potshots at him all night.
Rafe transferred the knife to his off hand, gripping hold of it tightly as he opened his right hand and focused on gathering up a ball of electrical energy within it. He was quicker at it than most, and it was extremely powerful. He tracked the alley for the phant, looking for the telltale warble of the air that gave it away, and then let loose with the ball of energy. It struck like a bull’s-eye and the phant screamed as the energy Rafe had thrown crackled and snapped through him. The attack worked ten times better than Rafe had hoped for or expected. The phant became solid and Rafe leaped onto its back as it tried to run away.
“Oh no. You started this, you little lowlife,” Rafe hissed in his ear. “You’re sticking around so I can finish it.”
“Mercy!” the phant squawked when Rafe put his blade to his throat and pressed hard enough to cut a thin line along the flesh covering the delicate arteries and veins beneath.
“Give me one good reason why I should show you mercy,” Rafe ground out as he glared down into the phant’s hollow, watery eyes. The phant was pale and thin, its sallow skin having a jaundiced tinge. It had knobby joints and lackluster, dirty brown hair. Its looks came strictly from its diet. It fed indiscriminately, on both the healthy and the sick. The phant didn’t care how toxic its mark was, it only cared for what it could get. Energy.
Both Rafe and the phant were energy vampires, but there were miles of difference between the two of them. For example, Rafe did not kill when he took the energy from a mark. Phants were often so zealous in their taking that they showed no concern for their mark. To the outside world it would look like the mark had suffered a heart attack, a disruption of the electrical circuits of the mind or some other natural causes, when in truth they had been sucked dry of their life force by an indiscriminate phant. Marks like Renee…
Dread sank low in his gut. Had the phant followed him to Renee’s house? Had he been able to see the abundance of life force and energy she had? It was sometimes the case that a phant would follow more discriminating vampires and target their marks, letting the clean vamp do all of the hard work of finding a clean source of energy.
No. He could not let the phant go. He could not risk pu
tting Renee in danger. The urge to protect her at all costs came over him like a wildfire roaring across a dried forest. He couldn’t explain it, but he heeded the feeling just the same.
“I am not as bad as most,” the phant babbled. “I don’t kill.”
“No. You only prey on the weak. The sick. The elderly. Children,” Rafe hissed into its face. “The world will be a far better place without you.”
“No please!”
But Rafe showed no mercy. He grabbed the phant around his chin and shoulder and yanked in opposing directions. The phant’s neck broke cleanly and he went immediately limp. He sagged to the ground and Rafe let him fall. Then he kicked the phant over onto his stomach, knelt down in the snow, and plunged his knife into the back of his neck where it met the top of his spine.
Electric energy crackled and Rafe made sure to pull away as quickly as he could. He didn’t want to accidentally absorb any of the phant’s poisoned energy. He stepped back and watched as the phant’s body jerked and spasmed, the energy released from within consuming it until finally the body disappeared in a crackle of electric blue light.
Rafe took a moment to scan the alley for witnesses. There were none that he could see. Which was good. He would not want to use hypno when it wasn’t absolutely required. Using it to feed was a necessary evil, but using it elsewhere was unnecessarily dangerous. Leaving blank spaces in people’s minds often allowed them to fill it with nightmares or wild dreams. Dreams that could plague a soul. He did not want to subject anyone to it if it wasn’t necessary.
Rafe cleaned his blade in the snow, removing all traces of blood. He then returned the blade to his ankle sheath. With the prevalence of phants in the world, it was necessary for him to always be armed. With his role in their society, it only doubled the need.
Rafe straightened up and quickly made his way out of the alley. This time he was more alert as he walked the cold, quiet street. Sometimes phants traveled in packs of three or four. In that case he would be sorely outnumbered and would be in a fight for his life. He did not think that was the case in this event, but he couldn’t be too careful.
He rounded the corner to where his SUV was parked and unlocked the doors and started the car before he even reached it, using the key fob in his pocket. Just before he reached the car he took out his phone and began to scan through the many messages that had been left for him. All of them were text messages, no one had tried to call. However, many of the texts were requests that he call them. He recognized every number save one. There was no name in the message, only a direction that he call the listed number. Could this be Renee? No, he decided instantly. She was asleep and would remain so for hours, if not days. No one could regenerate that quickly, not even someone with such an abundance of energy as she had had.
Rafe wondered at himself and his eagerness to hear from her. He should have taken her number, kept the ball in his court. He didn’t like not having control of a situation. He found he wanted to see her again—and soon. Not only did she intrigue him, but he could use her as a source of energy for a while, cutting down on his need to seek out other clean, new targets. It took effort to find a clean energy source he was able to feed off. Americans had such terrible diets and such unhealthy styles of living. But she was active. Healthy. Perfect.
He was looking forward to her call. He told himself this was because then he could easily plan his next transfer of energy, but part of him knew this wasn’t the case. She was independent, strong, and adventurous. Not many women would have gone out on a date with a total stranger. But she had confidence in her ability to take care of herself. To judge other people. Although, in his case she had judged him somewhat wrongly. Not that he was a danger to her…but he was a dangerous person capable of killing.
And, he supposed, he was using her. Staying close to her in order to glean information on just what the cops were aware of concerning the murder that morning. It had been a careless and vicious phant that had killed the man in the alleyway. Attacking in broad daylight and leaving witnesses—it risked them all. It was highly unlikely that the cops would make the intuitive leap that there were actually vampires in the world, but one couldn’t be too careful.
But as for Renee herself…
Yes. He wouldn’t mind spending some time getting to know her even as he used her. He would enjoy his interlude with her and then he would leave her when it was time. It would be a short acquaintance, but it would be an enjoyable one—for them both. Of course, he could always keep her number once he got hold of it and use her as an emergency resource in the future. He could see himself maintaining a pleasant relationship with her—provided she didn’t expect too much from him. But he could not fixate on her. It would be too dangerous for her. And not just because he would wear her out if he took too much energy from her. He had enemies. A great many. A great many who would take great delight in exploiting any imagined point of weakness. An attachment to a human woman would definitely attract attention eventually.
Besides, it couldn’t really go anywhere. He was an energy vampire—an e-vamp as the younger set liked to joke. She was human. They were from different worlds.
Rafe got into his car and settled behind the wheel. He looked around the area, trying to stay aware of his surroundings. He had a great many things he needed to be doing but instead he sat there and thought as he turned on the wipers, both front and rear, to brush away the accumulation of light, fluffy snow.
He had not been lying when he had said he was a liaison for his people. The e-vamps were segregated into many city-states. Almost all e-vamps lived in crowded metropolitan areas. Like New York, London, and Tokyo. They did this because that was where food was most abundant and most varied. Also, it allowed them to feed as anonymously as possible. Sometimes a feed could look like a mugging to someone who had the bad luck to witness it. An e-vamp could always lose himself in a crowd quickly in the event of someone raising some kind of an alarm. But, of course, the ideal thing was to be as discreet as possible. To use hypno to keep a target calm and avoid witnesses. But the fact was, some e-vamps were more efficient and skilled at feeding than others were. And then there were the sycophants, an indiscriminate bunch of lowlifes whose dangerous methods of feeding threatened to expose the e-vamps to the human world.
Often it was left to the bounty hunters like Halo and the cleanup teams led by other righteous e-vamps to keep them under control. But it wasn’t easy. The sycophants were organized like a crime syndicate or gangs, running in groups. It was rare to find a solitary phant like this one had been. But he was grateful the phant had been alone. Rafe was powerful and capable, but even he was subject to the math of many versus one.
Rafe shook his head. He was also grateful the phant had waited until he was alone to attack him. Yet, it also unnerved him. How long had the phant been tailing him? How long had he gone being so unaware of his surroundings that…
He shook his head again. No sense giving himself recriminating lectures now. The problem was dealt with. The phant was history and Renee was safe at home. He would simply have to be more vigilant in the future.
For now he had to get to Simone and give her an accounting of the action he had taken against the phant. If phants were following those of the upper echelon, it must be reported. Sure, this could be an isolated incident, but there was no need to take any chances. He also had to report the fact that he hadn’t made any real headway in tracking the investigation by the human police into the phant killing on Park Avenue.
Rafe turned down the quiet street and headed into the city.
With traffic virtually nonexistent, he made good time into the city and into the parking garage beneath the building that housed the energy vampires’ ruling class and central government. The building acted as both the business headquarters, with large offices taking up more than half of the skyscraper, and residences occupying the top part of the skyscraper. The building had recently been retrofitted to meet all the needs a modern vampire could have and it was an honest pl
easure to work and live there. The windows were wide and large, allowing as much sunlight in as possible. Unlike the vampires of mythology, e-vamps thrived on solar energy. The more the better. The only problem was that the energy of the sun was not sufficient to keep them sated and alive. And even in a building with so much glass and so many windows, the center of the building was dark and windowless. True, the building was designed to allow light from the windows all the way to the elevator banks, but it was still darker toward the center of the building. Thus, every few months workers were rotated so that sun-filled desks were circulated to those who had been in relative darkness. Of course, offices like his were not a part of that rotation and were light-filled all year-round, give or take bad weather.
The residences were equally dynamic. With broad walls of glass and views of the city that were incomparable, living there was a pleasure and a privilege. Not all of the e-vamps could claim a residence there. Many were scattered throughout the city and the five boroughs, but the higher echelon lived in that building and enjoyed the luxury that went with it. The penthouse was reserved for their queen, but the rest of the upper building was broken up into luxurious apartments occupied by their government and its most important workers.
Rafe parked and made his way to the elevators. He rode the elevator up to the fortieth floor where he had to switch to a second elevator that took him up the rest of the way. He didn’t go straight to his residence, opting instead to go to the penthouse apartment where the queen would be at this time of night—provided she was in and not hunting. But he seemed to recall her having hunted last night and she shouldn’t have a need to hunt for a few days in that event. With the storm brewing outside, it made sense to expect her to be in. As he got closer to the penthouse floor, his sixth sense told him he was right and she was very much at home. In fact, she was entertaining, and he recognized the energy signatures of many others of the higher government order.
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