“What’s going on here?” I asked.
Luc shook his head. “I do not know.”
Could Loupgarin have unearthed the Council? Was he part of the reason we’d been brought to this city? There wasn’t any way for us to know because the Council, as with all their deviousness, wasn’t sharing.
A new chapter began in our vampiric lives, one we would not have chosen for ourselves, but one we were unable to deny. Death waited, but for whom and why?
Chapter Sixteen
As large and wide as Chicago was, the demands of the Vampire Hierarchy began to take its toll. A steel and concrete trap encircled me. Being a hierarchical flunky was not a collar easily worn. My beast growled, raising its head, seeking to be sated, to slake its hunger. It ached for the hunt. Lucius had purchased large apartments in the downtown area close to where we could feed, but also where we’d maintain our privacy. We could sleep undisturbed and relax in the safety of our sun-protected rooms, secured with handpicked guards. If only I could find a way to lose myself.
*
Midsummer in the Midwest was hot and sultry, the air like a red-hot kiss even near the midnight hour, it made me irritable, uncomfortable in my own skin. Worn jeans, a black tee-shirt, scuffed boots were my costume this evening, the perfect camouflage. The necessity for the hunt stole over me, and my beast roared to life in a primal sort of way. I hungered … no other way to explain it … for an appeasement, to calm the thing trapped inside me.
Speed, exhilaration, and annihilation, my drugs of choice, and my beast relished them all. The Mustang made my palms itch with the need for a quick fix, but I headed to the old Jeep. The top came off with greater strength than I meant to exert, and I hoped it wasn’t damaged. Lucius would be pissed to have to replace it for a third time.
I climbed behind the wheel, my gaze found the rearview mirror where wildness looked back at me. With my foot to the floor and my head flung back, my blond hair flowing out behind me, I sped through the night, looking for something, anything—a diversion.
My answer came in the area deemed safe as the vampiric hunting grounds. It was a coarse place, gray and dirty except for the colorful graffiti staining the decrepit buildings, walls, an overpass in the distance. The humanity existing in the vicinity mostly forgotten, the human police avoided the locale—as likely to lose a life as to save one. It was a place of evil and disdain, nearly lawless—except for the equalizer inside me.
With no fear of the boys hanging out by a long defunct bus stop, I left the car. But I couldn’t help myself, and at the last moment, I swung around. My beast winked at them, and they scattered like bugs in the beam of a flashlight. I wouldn’t need to worry about damage to the Jeep either. I tipped my head back and thundered a laugh. It was good to be undead.
My distraction was found as I continued into a rundown tavern, stinking of sour liquor, stale smoke, and unwashed bodies. If my beast couldn’t be appeased with a hunt, at least this hellhole would relieve the anxiousness creeping through my body. I wasn’t looking for a fight, just hoping one would find me. My shoulders rolled with the tension and I climbed onto a rickety bar stool.
“What’ll ya have?” a bartender with a lit cigarette dangling on the edge of his lip asked, ash spilling off its end.
“Beer, anything on draft.” I sniffed the rancid air as he slid the foaming amber liquid in front of me. I threw a twenty on the bar, and he snatched it, nodding his head, eyes squinting through the cigarette smoke.
“You been here before?”
I shrugged. “Maybe,” and gave him a look. He turned to fill another glass, losing interest.
At the end of the bar sat a man, cruelty etched into his features. Even twenty feet away, the smell of blood and death permeated the atmosphere. Its coppery scent flared my nostrils, I don’t know how my human companions missed the odor, and I realized, they didn’t care. My beast purred and stretched languidly, like the lion before the attack, stalking through the concrete jungle, hidden in plain sight.
My conscience screamed to alert the authorities, but my beast lazily said why bother? Where were the police now? Would they choose to investigate? And how did I come by the information? Was I going to say I took a trip through his thoughts? I could almost hear their laughter now. Who would they take away first? My beast snapped its jaws, licked its parched lips. He’d make a tasty morsel, enough to keep its fervor contained. So, my beast got its way. Injustice once again found me.
I touched his mind to find him lost in his latest atrocity. He was reliving the recent murder of a young prostitute, the feel of her smooth, chocolate-brown skin, his high as he impaled her body. And then he reached inside her to hold her still warm heart, his ecstasy. It cut through me like a knife. He was a contagion, reviling and grotesque. My beast zeroed in on its target. My prey may have thought of himself as king of the jungle, a tour de force—he was wrong. In truth, he was a mere wart on the face of humanity.
As I leaned on the filthy bar, disgorging this thing of its memories, I discovered his victim was not his first, nor would she be his last. He already sought another. The question was, which beast would win the hunt first, his sick one or my fastidious one? And, the true hunt began.
For a handful of hours, my beast observed the man, watching and waiting. He went from one lowly night spot to another seeking his next mark, preying on that part of society no one would miss, the lost kids, prostitutes, anyone who might fall through the societal cracks. Until he settled on a singular location, and my beast stalked the man as he eyed his quarry. It wouldn’t be much longer now. I could feel his need growing to appease his misguided God. His anxiousness to be done with it, to serve up his own form of justice, to clear his conscience. With evidence of his foul desires, my beast restlessly growled, pacing within me like a caged tiger. It was almost time.
He homed in on a young man who was as pretty as any girl. He was thin to the point of anorexia, his ribs visible through the papery fabric of his T-shirt. His body bore bruises, his was a hard life. The stench of drug corrupted the blood flowing through his veins.
The man approached the boy. “What’s the charge for a blow job?”
“Depends. You’re not going to want any of that freaky stuff, right?” The boy looked the man over, brushed against his chest, and the man bristled away.
“Nah, just want to take care of business.” He inched away from the boy.
“Yeah. Okay, then. Fifty bucks.” The boy held out his hand and the man grumbled, pulled out a thick wallet, and handed the cash over.
“Come on around back.” The boy grinned with a wink, quickly shoving the money in his pocket.
He pierced the boy with his deadly stare, growing lust in his eyes. He followed willingly, the sounds of cars roaring by the only music and the fragrance of exhaust fumes the perfume.
The boy led him into a darkened alley where the man’s needs were to be met. He let the boy finish what he’d paid for, bellowing his release. But, instead of freeing the boy, the man retrieved a blade from his belt.
“Damn you, look what you did … What you made me do … See what your evilness brought? See what your sins forced me to do? Now I gotta kill you. Now you gotta die!” The boy squatted on the ground, dread filling his eyes. His death at hand.
Instantly, the boy went from performing the requested service to begging for his life as he knelt before the man on his hands and knees. “Come on, man. I did just what you wanted. Here, have your money back.” The boy dug into his pocket. “You don’t gotta cut me, I’ll never tell nobody.” Tears streamed down the boy’s face. The man’s pants remained unzipped, his face flushed.
I rounded the corner at that precise moment refocusing the man’s attention, and he shoved the weapon at me. “Who the fuck are you?” he screamed, his foul breath washing over me. I’d interrupted his plans, and for this he thought to make me pay.
“Now, mister, you don’t want to do that. You don’t even know me.” I cajoled the murderer, hands raised in a harml
ess gesture. “What’re you doing with that knife?” I pointed toward the boy, who continued to cry, sitting in the dirt. “Did you … What’s going on here?” I let the horror of it all taint my voice.
“Please mister—” the boy started, “—he’s gonna—” But before he could finish his thought, the man backhanded him, knocking him sideways. That brought me between the man and the boy.
“Get out of here, this ain’t none of your business!” Spittle flew with his shout. The man continued to shove the blade in my direction. He acted menacing and powerful, but he hadn’t seen true danger yet. My beast demanded its freedom, pleaded to set upon the man, to threaten him as he had the others who’d met his justice.
“Why don’t you let the boy go and we’ll talk about it?” I reasoned with the psychopath.
The boy glanced up, taking the hint, and I emptied a wad of cash into his hand, my gaze never leaving the blade. “Go, get out of here. Get some food or better yet, call your parents, tell them where you’re at.” Then my stare drifted to the boy, and my voice deepen. “No. Drugs. Go. Home.”
The boy stayed trapped in my glare for a moment longer before shooting up, running as if the devil was at his heels. The man stood with disbelief in his eyes then he turned to chase the boy. But I grabbed his arm, halting his momentum.
“Look, you piece of shit, get out of my way or I’ll kill you next.” He was scared, afraid the boy would tell … not only about the blow job … but that he’d failed in his purpose, the boy had gotten away. He tried with the knife again, but I danced out of reach, and his anger came to a boil. He jabbed out, then again. “You’re a dead man,” he whispered and I almost laughed out loud.
The boy was long gone, out of sight, and I sighed, relaxing into the fight, not doubting whose beast would be the best. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into …” I warned in a soft voice. I was even beginning to enjoy this play of hunter and hunted. Only, the man didn’t know he was no longer in control. He’d become the prey.
He slung out with the knife one more time, and my fingers extended out to claws, swinging back, and grazed the soft skin on his well-developed abdomen. He gurgled, backing away, slipping to his knees. I eyed him and brought the bloodied points to my face to inhale the coppery scent. My tongue flicked out, licking the droplets away.
Holding his insides within his body, he finally managed to raise his bulging eyes to mine as understanding gave away to disbelief. “What are you? You ain’t human. You’re an abomination before God!” He scraped against the rough wall of the building, pulling himself up and moving toward the neighboring shadows.
Ignoring his words, I stepped in closer, sniffing the air, my eyes closed. The coppery scent was like a panacea to my senses. “If I were you, I’d be running.” It was almost a whisper. Lifting my nose to the air once more, eyes still closed, I inhaled more deeply than before. “Not that it’ll do you any good. Tonight is your last night as the taker of the lost.”
“You’re a freak!” he screamed as he hobbled toward the blackness of the night, his feet barely able to carry his weight.
“Yeah, I’m a monster like you’ve never seen,” my beast breathed into the eerie glow of the moonlight enveloping our bodies as he scurried like a half-mashed beetle.
He glanced around, gaze seeking, but just as help didn’t come to his victims, no one offered him safety either.
My long dormant muscles stretched and his escape became an impossibility. My beast teased him, letting him believe in his flight, before bursting to life, bolting the man to the ground. I jerked him into my body, yanking him backward into the same alley where moments before he’d screamed with both elated pleasure and unrepentant anger. His scent was repugnant, stinking of putridness and the rotting stench of death.
But the richness of his blood was just as enticing as his odor was foul. My beast brutally twisted his neck, baring the soft flesh of his throat. My fangs found their entrance and I drank until his life was only a glimmer, soon to be lost. Gazing down at the prey my beast had consumed, I sealed the wound, dropping him into the garbage of the alley. With the same blade he’d used many times before, gouges gashed him from wrist to elbow. What remained of his life, spilled on the ground. A light rain began to fall, cleansing the palate and the stain of his life. It pounded harder and harder.
“Never bring a knife to a fight with a vampire.” His heartbeat weakened, then stopped, and I left him like I found him, weapon encrusted with the blood of others clutched tightly in his hand. His pants loose and undone, the packed dirt of the alley as his bed, alone in his death.
I wiped the moisture from my face, heading to the Jeep, replacing the top. Damn, it was torn, and the seats were soaked, but I didn’t care. I stretched, beast and hunger sated, and all in all a good night.
The next morning, the papers claimed the serial killer dubbed “The Night Stalker” had been found, dead by his own hand, though the lack of blood proved to be a curiosity but without enough interest to investigate. The police said it was an apparent suicide committed with the same weapon he had used on at least ten other victims. The boy involved never came forward, and in my visits around the city, I haven’t seen him since. Maybe my influence stuck, and he called his parents, escaping the city and the drugs. It was my fervent hope.
Did vampires have nightmares when humanity became expendable? The vampiric sleep equated to death, dreams or nightmares of any kind—lost. Our family grudgingly accepted the yoke of governing, harnessed and uncomfortable in its new role. But I would not and could not ignore injustice. I might not be able to stop it, but in our little piece of the world, I could control it. The Council may have brought us here, surely watching our every move, but I was compelled by my own sense of right and wrong.
*
Lucius found me at the next evening’s end. “A problem’s been brought to my attention. I need someone to look into it. I could assign one of the guards, but I’d prefer your assistance, at least until we know what’s going on.”
“No, the last thing we need is the Magistrate looking over our shoulders. Leave it to me.” We’d been careful in our sentry selections, but we were new to the city and the Magistrate was not, neither were his spies. And Loupgarin might be somewhere in the vicinity, and somehow, the Council was involved.
“Good.” He clapped my shoulder.
“What’s the situation?” We started for the sun protected rooms of our apartments, dawn nearly upon us.
“We’ve had reports of a rogue vampire in one of the rural areas. Do you think you can take care of the problem?”
“Location?”
He looked away for a moment, and then back. “The reports say to the south, near the central part of the state. You’ll need to take rooms somewhere in the area. Would you like Isabella to set something up?”
“No, I’ll manage. Just tell me where I need to go.” Gathering myself for the day to come, I turned and smiled at Lucius. “Never thought of myself as some kind of law officer. Guess it’s going to take some getting used to.”
He scrubbed his large hand across his face. “Never thought I’d be a politician either. How did we get into this mess?”
“Beats me, but the Council’s up to something, I know it. I can almost smell it.”
Lucius grimaced at the truth of my words. “By the Gods, what have we stepped into?”
Chapter Seventeen
With night’s end, my mind began to turn over Lucius’s problem. A rogue vampire? How odd that the Council was unaware of the problem, sending us here to certain trouble? Or were they hiding something even more sinister? Did they know and purposely put my family in danger?
Others in the area reported the location of the attacks to be spread over a wide area. Either the work of a rogue, unhappy with the Council decision to place the Draco family in charge of the Chicago area or something else altogether. Was I looking for a Belagos or Sangreet not pleased with the outcome of Council justice? On the next evening’s rising, I l
eft the city behind, heading into rural Illinois where the evidence led, to see if my assumptions were correct. Either the Council had set us up or someone was undead and unhappy.
*
The exact location of the attacks started close to Rantoul, Illinois, about twenty miles outside of Champaign in downstate Illinois, and spread over a large area. My hunt would start there and, if necessary, head to the heart of the downtown city and the University district. Impossible to figure out—if not for the vampiric nature.
With my senses on high alert, my predator on the track of a tantalizing odor, I scouted the area. Buildings and boulevards in various stages of renewal, the old airbase, moving further from the small town and outward. My gut was telling me I was in the right place. The rogue wouldn’t hunt too close to home, but near enough to avoid the sun’s deadly rays.
On my second night in the area, I picked up the coppery aroma of blood like a whisper on the wind. Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply and began to follow the scent away from the University and into the outlying area, closer to Urbana than Champaign, at least the University of Illinois remained untouched.
The fragrance became stronger, fresher—with an underlying putridness of something old and long dead, and it triggered the memory of the battle where I’d nearly lost my undead life. Loupgarin? Or merely another ancient? No, a hint of the weed, valerian … Loupgarin. How was it possible?
I lifted my face to the air and inhaled again, letting it out with a sigh. Whoever was behind these deaths was close by.
Moving in and out of yards where better days had been seen, I crouched down, bringing a handful of the tired soil to my face. The stink was everywhere now, making it difficult to centralize in an exact direction. I did a three-sixty, circling around.
When I raised my face to the darkness, a pair of glowing eyes stared back into mine. I jumped to my feet, blurring into motion. I’ve only seen eyes that color once before, in Paris the night we’d taken care of Isabella’s attackers. Could our rogue vampire be a rogue skin-shifter instead? The bodies had been mutilated like an animal attack, but perfect for concealing vampiric feeding.
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