The atmosphere was perfect. Perfect for me.
I stood at the edge of the alley, my fingers trembling, my blood humming in excitement as the woman I had been watching staggered into the darkness that camouflaged me.
She chuckled to herself, murmured words the stars would never understand, stumbled over an empty can of red bull, and swayed to the left, bracing her hands on the wall.
Christ, she was a fucking mess. I hoped she wasn’t too drunk to scream when I would make the first cut, when the first drop of blood would soak into the cracks in the cobblestone.
God, I hoped she would scream for me.
I flexed my gloved hands once, twice, very slowly as I savoured the image of her mangled frame in my head.
‘Come on, come on, come on’.Impatience and hunger nearly drove me absolutely insane.
I glanced at the smart watch around my wrist. I had less than two hours left. Two hours in this body before the owner would take full control. I needed to kill, satiate this hunger and clean up good.
Callan must not meet his body covered in dirt…or worst, blood. He always ended his little notes with, ‘please try to clean up.’But every time. Every damn time, I always got carried away hunting, and before I would reach home and think of shower, my time was up and my impatient brother was ripping through my skull, needing out.
“Bloody hell! Get out of my way.” The woman paused to glare at the discarded bottle of beer she tripped over. Then she began to stumble toward me again,closer,closer. She was almost here. I could nearly perceive her vanilla and citrus scent, the stench of booze on her giggling mouth, the smell of her blood soaking into the earth.
One more step.
Just one more step-
The phone in my pocket suddenly vibrated with a text message.
Damn it. Fuck me. Fuck the fucking universe.
No one would send a message at nearly midnight unless it required my urgent attention. Why? Why now? My kill was just before me, right up in my face, begging to be my last meal.
Slipping my hand into my black combats, I fetched my phone, tapping the screen for the light to come on.
There it was. A message that made my jaw harden.
Takharnov:There’s an urgent council call at the Raskov Keep, Marshal. They said your attendance is mandatory.
I stared at the screen until the light went off, my hand clenching tightly around the device enough to shatter it into pieces.
I glanced behind me as the click of heels drifted away. There was my prey, slipping right past me, turning the corner…disappearing, saved by bureaucracy.
“You got lucky,” I whispered to the air, my voice rough with the weight of my frustration. “But I didn’t.”
I worked my jaw, slipping the phone back into my pocket, and retreating to my car that was packed a few blocks away.
Hunger and dissatisfaction churned within me. I felt like I left a part of me behind, an important job half done. It took everything to not bolt back to the alley, searching frantically for a new prey, whichever form they came in, even if it was a supreme being…a goddamn god.
But the council needed my attention. And when the council called, you just had to listen.
The night stretched around me as I drove, not with the speed of someone going for an urgent meeting, but with the madness of someone hungry, desperate, unsatisfied, needing a means to channel his energy.
I didn’t have music or radio on. I didn’t need any of that static nonsense. The sound of tyres against tarmac, the loud hum of the engines, the rhythmic tap of my gloved fingers against the steering wheel was enough to teeter me towards sanity.
Whatever be the reason for this meeting, it better be worth starving me tonight.
???
The Circles’ major meetings were always at the Raskov Keep, an old manor crouched on the edge of Glenfallow. Once a monastery, but gutted and rebuilt when the Raskovs arrived and started buying lands, estates, and rebuilding the city.
The Keep had been renovated every year for the past hundred years. Now carrying the atmosphere of a contemporary edifice with marbles and surveillance, it still looked haunted, like a castle hosting ghosts that never rested.
