First Blood

Most people couldn’t smell blood until it was on the outside of a body.

But I could. Rich, metallic, and flavored with the unique essence of whoever it was inside. This blood had a tartly sweet fragrance to it, light and refreshing, like oranges. It was pumping fast, the heartbeat of whoever owned it ratcheting up as I tipped my head and tried to get a bead on how far he was and in what direction. I couldn’t hear his heart from this distance — and I knew it was he, not she, because instincts didn’t lie — but the scent intensified as if he’d flushed, his body’s autonomic responses sending his blood rushing to the surface of him and the smell of him winging straight to me.

Just for me. I had to have a taste. It’d been a while since I had fresh blood, at least a month, and I hadn’t scented anyone so appealing in years.

The town of Lancaster didn’t have any really bad neighborhoods. Run-down, yes, but not too unsafe. My boss ran a tight ship. The most dangerous things on these streets were — well, me, and my colleagues. And since the town’s monsters were all paid to keep the town quiet and orderly, and Fenwick was serious about keeping the inhabitants’ goodwill, we weren’t a problem.

But I was strolling through the seediest part of town, a warren of narrow streets on the eastern edge of Lancaster with a lot of liquor stores, some apartment buildings with more vermin than unbroken windows, and not enough streetlights. Not the place I’d expect to find something that smelled that good.

I turned down a filthy alley between a twenty-four-hour laundromat and a boarded-up business covered in gnome graffiti and did my best to slink along.

Slinking didn’t come naturally to me, ditto lurking, sneaking, or sidling. Vampires were supposed to be a lot more subtle than I was, I’d been told more than once. You’re a creature of the night. Steel-toed boots, Victor? Really? Yes, really, because those boots made it easier to kick someone who said something fucking stupid. I hated that ‘creature of the night’ bullshit. Daylight suited me just fine, thank you. I was equally deadly after dawn. And the whole vampire mystique thing was such a waste of fucking time.

At any rate, I was too tall, too broad, and too indifferent to what anyone thought to hide in plain sight. But this time, I needed at least a little subtlety, because I wanted to get a look at the owner of the orange-blossom blood before he noticed me. People tended to run like hell when they saw me. And I wasn’t in the mood to chase.

The other end of the alley let out on a busier thoroughfare, with two lanes of traffic in each direction. There were streetlights over here, and right underneath one of them was the blood’s owner.

Temporary owner, anyway. Or maybe it was more like a time-share? After all, I wasn’t planning on taking more than he could safely lose. That was another one of Fenwick’s rules, and one I agreed with. No vampire needed to drain a person. That was just greed, or sadism. A pint, or even less, was plenty.

My fangs had dropped, and saliva pooled in the back of my mouth. Hot, salty, sweet and tart…I needed him.

And there he was. Standing under one of the streetlights, his hands tucked under his arms, a mop of curly light-brown hair on top of a too-thin body. I couldn’t see his face.

But I didn’t need to. I didn’t give a fuck what his face looked like. All that mattered to me was the pale, fragile curve of his throat over the collar of his tight red t-shirt, the throb of his pulse under that delicate skin. His jeans were just as tight. No wonder he didn’t have his hands in his pockets — nothing would’ve fit in those pockets.

His breath steamed in the chill, and I wondered why the hell he was dressed like that. It wasn’t snowing, but it was coming soon, with a heavy overcast and a heavier blanket of cold settling over the town.

A car cruised by, slowing a little as it passed. My quarry stood up straighter, cocking his hips at a provocative angle.

Right, that’s why he was dressed like that. Even better. I wouldn’t have to persuade him, just pay him.

The driver hit the gas and the car sped away. Apparently whoever was in it didn’t like the look of the goods. My target slumped a little, shook his head, and blew out a big cloud of steamy breath on what looked like a sigh.

That was my cue. I strolled out of the alley, giving up on even trying to take my best shot at sneaking up on him. He wasn’t going to run, not with me so close, and not when he was looking for guys like me in the first place.

He turned his head when he heard my boots thumping on the frigid pavement.

Okay, so I cared a little bit what he looked like. And he looked like he was about sixteen, with huge dark eyes in a thin, pale, heart-shaped face. The driver of that car had probably figured he was about to be arrested for soliciting a minor and made a quick getaway.

No one was going to arrest me, of course. But my mood plummeted. Even though I only had a few moral fucks to give, feeding from desperate teenage hookers crossed that line and then some.

Those eyes went impossibly wider as they took me in. I was used to it. Unlike werewolves, the other most common supernatural assholes in the region, who ran to big and muscular, vampires were a mix of every body type there was. I wouldn’t have stood out much in a gang of alpha weres. Anywhere else…yeah, stealth wasn’t much of an option for me. The leather duster I wore didn’t help, but hey, I’d learned to lean into the tall, dark, and fucking scary thing, because when I looked as dangerous as I was, fewer assholes tried to mess with me. I hated getting in fights. I always won, and then I had to fucking clean everything.

I forced my canines to retract as I got close enough for him to see them. “How old are you?”

He shifted a little, tucking his hands in again and hugging himself, like he was trying to make himself disappear. The way his feet were poised, he was obviously fighting the urge to run away, probably knowing how pointless it would be.

“Twenty-two,” he said softly. His voice was medium-pitched and sweet, but slightly hoarse, maybe from the cold. The contrast tugged on me, blending with the smell of him and weaving into something dangerous for my peace of mind.

I couldn’t hold in my snort of disbelief. “Right.” I stopped a few feet from him, within my arm’s reach, but far enough that he didn’t have to tip his head back to look into my face. He was maybe five foot nine, and he’d have had to tip his head a lot.

If he did, and I was standing right up against him, it’d bare the whole length of that neck…

I swallowed hard.

“Seriously,” he said, with a sad little quirk of his lips that didn’t make it into smile territory. His eyes held the same wry, wary unhappiness. What color were his eyes? The streetlight washed him out enough that I couldn’t tell, even with my keen vision. Dark. Very dark brown, maybe? “I know how I look. If I was lying, wouldn’t I say I was eighteen or nineteen, which might be believable? No one’s going to buy twenty-two. But it’s true. Don’t bother asking for ID,” he added. “I don’t have any.”

Well, that I believed, since even the outline of a driver’s license would’ve stood out on the fabric of his pants.

“You look like you’re seventeen at the most.” And I was being generous.

“Yeah, well, some guys like that,” he snapped. “If I actually was seventeen, I’d play it up. I wish I was. I could charge more.” He lifted his chin, the gesture heartbreakingly brave for someone like him facing down someone like me. And he didn’t even know the half of it. “Fifty for a blowjob, a hundred to fuck me. Take it or leave it.”

For a millisecond, I considered it. He might be physically fragile, but he wasn’t a pushover, and he wasn’t weak. No one who talked back to me like that was weak.

And it stirred something in me, made my cock perk up and take notice.

But I only considered it for a millisecond. I had a rule that’d served me well over the last hundred-plus years, a rule I’d only broken once, early on — and regretted breaking shortly after. I didn’t fuck where I ate. It wasn’t a matter of hygiene, but of magic. There was no fucking way I was ending up accidentally mate-bonded, and mixing blood and sex got way too close to that line. If there was any compatibility, especially.

I didn’t want compatibility. I wanted convenience.