Chapter one
Saiden
He’d only been awake for an hour and already had a chunk of vampire flesh in his mouth. Bits of gore and bright red blood were splattered across the white shirt he should have known better than to wear.
It was going to be a good day.
Two. He had gotten two in one go. Baylin’s intel had only confirmed one rogue vampire nesting in the old Seattle bread factory, but to get a second at the same time? Fucking progress.
Saiden spat the rancid flesh from his mouth and pulled a bottle of water from the pack he’d dropped by the door upon entering the warehouse. Rinsing the coppery taste from his mouth, he looked around the decrepit space. He’d been busier than usual the past few years with the population of rogues on the rise, but he knew neither of the decapitated bodies at his feet were responsible. They were so young they had barely put up a fight. And living in this fetid squalor? Definitely babies who’d never been taught how to survive among humans.
He tipped the bottle over his head and let the water wash away the worst of the remnants that lingered in his hair. It helped, but he wouldneed a proper shower sooner rather than later. Nothing stank worse than rotting vampire flesh.
Personal hygiene would have to wait though. As the prime enforcer for the West Coast, finding any information in this awful place about who made these rogues or where they came from had to take priority.
Saiden ripped off his ruined shirt and tossed it onto the pile of body parts he would burn before leaving, then made his way deeper into the warehouse.
His nose warned him what he would find in the back room before he even opened the door, but despite hundreds of missions, he was still never prepared for the sight. He kept reminding himself that was a good thing. If he ever became so numb to the carnage of his job that a pile of mangled, desecrated corpses didn’t make him feel sick to his stomach… Well, that would be the day he would ask the cadre to add his own body to the pile.
The acid churning in his gut told him today would not be that day. He didn’t feel an overwhelming urge to count the multitude of body parts, but there had to be at least five or six victims. All ripped to pieces.
He shook his head. The violence was just so unnecessary, and it was a huge reason why rogues were increasingly dangerous for their kind. They were usually abandoned right after their turn with no concept of what was happening, forced to resort to their primal instincts.
Hunt. Kill. Feed.
That level of predatory behavior hadn’t been required for almost a hundred years now, and even before the invention of blood banks, it was never necessary to kill the humans. All you needed was enough restraint to take a few sips and send them on their way. No harm, no foul.
But these rogues were all about harm, andthe acrid scent of decay assaulting his nose was definitely foul.
Saiden sighed as he splashed gasoline over the corpses. The ones who committed these heinous crimes weren’t the true monsters. Not by a long shot. The one that deserved the full force of his wrath was the vampire who made them.
Made them andleftthem.
Saiden and his cadre still hadn’t been able to figure out if this increase in rogues was intentional or accidental. Either they had one very dangerous vampire that had become lost to their madness and didn’t even realize the chaos they were unleashing, or they had one who knew exactly what they were doing and didn’t care about the fallout for humans and vampires alike. Neither was fun to deal with, but Saiden much preferred the former as opposed to the latter. He would take insane over evil any day of the week.
Not that he enjoyed killing at all, but someone had to do it. And every now and then, Saiden would find one that he could save. It was how he was able to sleep at night. For over three hundred years, he’d been hunting his own kind. Carrying that burden would have been too much if it weren’t for the fact that every other enforcer operated under Kill On Sight protocols. Saiden was the only one who opted for talk first, murder later. He needed to know they were beyond saving before taking their undead life.
He often wondered what kind of man he would be if it weren’t for the fact that his own sire, Marquin, had almost become a rogue. Turned and abandoned, Marquin nearly went insane fighting his urge to kill. It was only by the grace of Lilith that he met his mate, Eliana, who was able to pull him back from the brink. One could only survive alone for so long before the pressure of eternity became unbearable, and you surrendered all pretenses of humanity.
Something Saiden felt more and more with each passing year.
A thorough search of the factory turned up little more than the ID’s of the deceased and a few personal effects that gave no clue as to who actually created the rogues. The victims were all locals—students from Seattle University and what appeared to be a couple of addicts based on the track marks he’d seen.
Poor souls. Probably just partying in the wrong warehouse at the wrong time.
The rogues gave him even less information. No ID, no wallets, no phones. Nothing to indicate if they even came from this area.
Saiden drenched the remaining scattered limbs with the last of his gasoline and lit the match. He hated desecrating the bodies even further, but he also couldn’t let the authorities find them. A mass of mutilated corpses would only lead to the press using words like ‘serial killer’ or ‘monster.’ The last thing they needed was another Montrose incident.
Part of him wanted to grab the ID’s from the victims and leave them somewhere to be found so their families could have closure, but that would appear too suspicious. This needed to seem like a wild party gone horribly wrong.
He could see the headline now;Drug Addled Maniac Murders College Students Then Lights Himself on Fire.
It was extremely unrealistic, but Tressa would handle the details with the police. She always did. She had a knack for blending fact and fiction when she wove compulsions that left only absolute certainty in her targets’ minds, regardless of the absurdity of the situation.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Saiden’s compulsions had always been shit. Not that he couldn’t compel, it was just that he never practiced, and it tended to be a 'use it or lose it' kind of deal.
Tressa was essentially a master painter, while he was a kid with a box of broken crayons—he could usually get his point across, but no onewould call it art.
