Two mortal males and a frightened dryad, all attempting escape through passageways bored in stacked rubbish. The soldier struck again, plucking the speediest contestant—the mortal who had been on a rooftop with a sniper rifle earlier, easily distinguishable from the sound of his hammering pulse. This specimen’s blood was a little sweeter than the others’, lingering on the edge of cloying since the pancreas was having difficulty.
Diabetic. At least you are spared a lingering decay.The soldier was long past the age of sympathy for any prey, yet a subtle pang went through him. Did little Leila know of her companion’s illness?
Not that it mattered. Now there was only his lovely one left, and the male who had held her against a wall.
The soldier was forced to revise his opinion of their group slightly upward, for they had clearly drilled in escape. The male was in the lead, breathing harshly, his glands emitting bursts of acrid terror familiar from any battlefield. It was the scent of defeat, of rout, of hearing Pan’s shriek or the clatter of the goat-god’s hooves, and perhaps that was how he gained enough speed to outpace even a divine creature.
“Pete for God’s sake,” she cried, a lost, lonely sound, as the stocky fellow nipped through a heavy iron side door. It banged to just before a clattering—something outside fallen, perhaps deliberately placed to block the exit. The darkness was near total, though no difficulty for sanguinant eyes, and the soldier realized she was about to cast herself upon the sealed exit in an excess of terror, possibly gaining some injury.
Which could not be allowed.
One last time he plunged, hawklike, his arms closing carefully upon tender rose-musk salvation. She screamed, the sound cut in half as thequietussnapped about her—peculiar psychic pressure used to keep a fledgling’s prey from wriggling,honed and strengthened for many other uses when dealing with mortal authorities or witnesses, and even though the soldier was well-practiced in the art she still managed a startling amount of resistance.
Then again, she was leman. Exquisitely sensitive, a marvelous combination of strength and delicacy, precisely calibrated to shatter the calcified prison of a sanguinant dying by inches. His true teeth ached, attempting to free themselves; the soldier denied them, rising swiftly, shattering a section of the hovel’s rotted roof.
Never,he promised silently.You will not suffer such filth again. I will not allow it.
Yet this was the easy victory. Much more difficult to keep what he had taken—and there was the problem of Father, as well. The patriarch would not like this turn of events.
He would like the soldier’s next moves even less.
More of the terrible numbing ossification broke away, sheets of dusty apathy shaken loose by deep lungfuls of that wonderful, dizzying fragrance. Successive future challenges were even somewhat pleasant to contemplate, despite the sudden, novel, pulse-clenching feeling of having something to lose.
The soldier bore his prize swiftly through sultry darkness starred with electric light, and found, with a sharp wonderful burst of surprise, that he was smiling.
He would have liked to be in a location where he had personal resources, so to speak, but every mortal city eventually accumulated certain places catering to the demimonde. Finding one was simply a matter of looking for a few nearly invisible signs. Not that much searching was necessary in this case; therewas a giant glass-sheathed hotel in a slice of downtown very near where he had first scented his new leman.
Very convenient indeed.
A modicum of mental pressure secured all requirements, and the capacious pockets of his trousers—a modern fashion he had nothing but admiration for—also held a pair of cellphones, a wallet full of plastic cards, plenty of the current imperium’s cash, and a few other small items. He could travel very lightly indeed, but his nymph might…
Well, she certainlyrequired, as mortals did. But she might alsoprefersomething other than a march to the next destination, digging camp, orders given, objectives achieved, breaking camp, another march.
Just what her preferences might consist of, the soldier could not begin to guess. Once the reasonably large pink-and-white suite was secured and invisible seals set, he was forced to admit himself… well, not quite at a loss.
But for the first time in a very long while, actually uncertain.
Solicitously laid upon the wide, flower-patterned bed, his nymph was a vision indeed. One small hand lay loosely, palm-up, gently cupped; the other rested against her breast, fingertips touching her heartbeat. Her braid had unraveled, a skein of blue-black silk tangling deliciously across pillow-hills of patterned fabric. Breathing scarcely audible even to freshly sharpened sanguinant ears, pulse slow and regular, her restlessness was neither physical nor visible. Yet thequietusswelled as she sought to wake, perhaps with terror still echoing in her fragile, beautiful bones.
Her throat was enticingly bare, and his mouth was full of sweet numbing anticipation. He could sink his fangs in, loaded with change agents to trigger the initial stages of the Gift. It was best to do so swiftly, yet the soldier hesitated.
He stood at the bedside, head cocked, watching.
Dullard. The sharp slap of corrective harshness, necessary for training. Yet this was not combat—or was it?Will you let the prize slip through your fingers? Take her now.
She was utterly defenseless. Even with the Gift she could not hope to hold off one such as himself, old and strong, but he did not move. Something was… not right.
The instinct was one he had felt a handful of times over the centuries, and it halted him surely as a brazen trumpet calling vespers. The texture of his clothing was unbearable, every inch of him newly sensitive and the mating-thrall dark wine in his veins, pushing and prodding. He was desperate for relief, to sink his teeth into that soft, enticing pulse, to rip the irritating fabric from both of them and bury himself in what had to be glorious relief.
And yet.
What is known? Start there. Her group had been hunting his own personal quarry—not entirely surprising since Esgard the Varangian had become extremely sloppy, enough to attract the attention of mortal authorities. Father had decided it was time to expand the borders of his own rule in this direction, and the soldier had been dispatched to once again do his duty.
The stacks of paper upon their flimsy table, and the name attached to the picture—Nemesis, a title the entire demimonde knew to fear, bestowed upon the soldier by the patriarch himself. Now mortals had heard whispers of it as well.
Is that who I am?What he had become, with the stone-layers of years rising, thimbleful by thimbleful, to drown him?
It had been so very long since he thought of himself as having a name at all. No need for such things when his existence was so blessedly simple, move and countermove dictated by laws of warfare—endless variations, but only a few simple themes at their core. Strategy and tactic both could be used to stay alert, either in complexity to stave off the temptation of glut and bood-craze—the bane of fledglings—or in direct brutal sensation to batter away the languorous killing-sleep which took so many elders.
