• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Not tonight,” Lucan growled, “not in my city.”

“Your city?” The rest of them sniggered as the Rogue in the lead spat on the ground at Lucan’s feet. “This city belongs to us. Won’t be long and we’re gonna own it all.”

“That’s right,” added another of the four. “So, looks like you’re the one trespassin’ here.”

Finally, the human had gathered his wits and started to make a break. He didn’t get far. Moving with incredible speed, one of the Rogues lashed out a hand and grabbed the man by the throat. He jerked him off his feet and held him aloft, letting the human’s black hightop sneakers dangle six inches off the ground. The human grunted and squirmed, struggling wildly as the Rogue squeezed harder, slowly strangling him with his bare hand. Lucan stared, unfazed, even as the vampire dropped his twitching prey and tore a hole in the man’s neck with his teeth.

In his periphery, Lucan saw Dante creep up silently behind the Rogues. Fangs bared, the warrior licked his lips, eager to get busy. He wouldn’t be disappointed. Lucan struck first, and then the street erupted with the clash of metal and the crush of breaking bone.

Where Dante fought like a hell-spawned demon, malebranche blades flashing, war cries splitting the night, Lucan maintained a cold control and deadly precision. One by one, the Rogues fell to the warriors’ punishing blows. The kiss of titanium-laced steel sped through the Rogues’ corrupted blood systems as poison, accelerating death and bringing on the swift stages of decomposition characteristic of the Rogues’ demise.

With their enemies dispatched, their corpses reducing from flesh and bone to fine, drifting ash, Lucan and Dante surveyed the other carnage in the street.

The human was unmoving, bleeding profusely from the tattered wound in his throat.

Dante knelt beside the man, sniffing at the savaged form. “He’s dead. Or will be, in another minute.”

The smell of spilled blood reached Lucan’s nostrils like a fist slamming into his gut. His fangs, already extended in rage, now throbbed with the urge to feed. He glared down at the dying human in disgust. Although the taking of blood was necessary to him, Lucan despised the idea of accepting Rogue leavings, in any form. He preferred to draw his sustenance from willing Hosts of his own choosing whenever he could, although those meager tastes only staved off the deeper hunger.

Sooner or later, every vampire had to kill.

Lucan didn’t try to deny his nature, but on the occasions when he killed, it was by his choice, by his own rules. When he sought prey, he took primarily criminals, drug dealers, junkies, and other lowlifes. He was judicious and efficient, never slaughtering simply for the sake of it. All of the Breed adhered to a similar code of honor; it was what separated them from their lawless Rogue brethren.

His gut tightened as another whiff of blood trailed into his nose. Saliva surged into his parched mouth.

When was the last time he’d fed?

He couldn’t recall. It had been a while. Several days, at least, and not enough to last him. He’d thought to curb some of his hunger—both the carnal and the systemic—with Gabrielle Maxwell last night, but that idea had taken a quick turn south. Now he was shaking with the urge to feed, and too far gone to consider anything but the necessity of his body’s basic needs.

“Lucan.” Dante pressed his fingers to the man’s neck, feeling for a pulse. The vampire’s fangs were extruded, sharp from the battle and the physiological reaction to the scent of pooling crimson life. “If we wait much longer, the blood will be dead, too.”

And no use to them, for it was only fresh blood, pumping through human veins, that could quench the vampires’ hunger. Dante waited, even though it was obvious he wanted nothing more than to drop his head and take his fill of the human who had been too stupid to flee when he had the chance.

But Dante would wait, even to the point of wasting prey, for it was an unwritten protocol that later generation vampires did not feed