He needed to feed again.
It was too soon since the last time when he had taken enough blood to sustain him for a week, maybe more. That had been just a few nights ago, yet his stomach gnawed as though starving. For a long time, his cravings had been getting worse. Close to unbearable, the harder he tried to suppress them.
Denial.
That's what had gotten him through this far.
Sooner or later, he was going to reach the end of that rope. And then what?
Did he really think he was so different from his father?
His brothers hadn't been, and they'd both been older, stronger, than him. Bloodlust had ultimately claimed them both: one took his life by his own hand when the addiction became too much; the other went deeper still, turning Rogue, and then losing his head to the killing blade of a Breed warrior.
Being born first generation had gifted Lucan with a great deal of strength and power - and instant respect that he knew he didn't deserve - but it was every bit as much a curse. He wondered how much longer he could fight the darkness of his own savage nature. Some nights, he grew goddamned tired of the fact that he had to.
Passing among the evening population on the streets, Lucan let his gaze roam. Although he was stoked for battle if he found it, he was pleased there were no Rogues in sight. Only a scattered number of late-generation vampires from the area's Darkhaven: one pack of young males mixing with a giggly group of human partygoers and surreptitiously trolling, as he was now, for viable blood Hosts.
He saw the youths nudge each other, heard them whisper the words warrior and Gen One as he moved toward them on the stretch of pavement. Their open awe and curiosity were annoying, though not unusual. Vampires born and raised in the Darkhavens rarely had the opportunity to see one of the warrior class, let alone the founder of the once-vaunted, now long-antiquated Order.
Most knew the old stories of how, several centuries past, eight of the fiercest, most lethal Breed males came together as a group to slay the last of the savage Ancients and the army of Rogues who served them. Those warriors became legendary, and in the time since, their Order had gone through many changes, increasing in numbers and locations under periods of Rogue conflict, only to trail off during the long stretches of peace between.
Now, the warrior class was comprised of a covert handful of individuals around the globe, operating largely independently, and not without a little contempt from the society as a whole. In this enlightened age of fair treatment and due process within the vampire nation, warrior tactics were considered renegade, and but a shade this side of the law.
As if Lucan, or any of the warriors on the front lines with him, gave a shit about public relations.
With a snarl tossed in the direction of the gaping youths, Lucan cast out a mental invitation to the nattering human females the vampires had been chatting up on the street. Every pair of feminine eyes latched on to the raw power he was knowingly throwing off in waves. Two girls - a chesty blonde and a redhead just a degree or two lighter than Gabrielle's tresses - immediately broke away from the pack to approach him, their friends and the other males instantly forgotten.
But Lucan needed only one of them, and the choice was easy. He dismissed the blonde with shake of his head. Her companion settled under his arm, petting him as he led her off the street and into a discreet, unlit alcove of a nearby building.
He got down to business without hesitation.
Sweeping the girl's smoke-and-beer scented hair away from her neck, Lucan licked his lips, then plunged his extended fangs into the flesh of her throat. She spasmed under his bite, her hands coming up instinctively as he pulled the first long draught from her vein. He sucked hard, no desire to draw things out. The female moaned, not in alarm or discomfort, but in the pleasure that was unique to the letting of blood under the thrall of a vampire.
Blood surged into Lucan's mouth, warm and thick.
Against his will, he flashed on a mental picture of Gabrielle in his arms, letting himself imagine for the briefest second that it was her neck he suckled now.
Her blood, coursing down the back of his throat and into his body.
God, to think what it would be like to draw from her vein as his cock pumped into her heat, spilling deep within her...
Christ.
He thrust the fantasy away with a vicious snarl.
Never gonna happen, he warned himself harshly. Reality was a bitch, and he'd better not lose sight of it.
Fact was, this wasn't Gabrielle, but an anonymous stranger, just the way he preferred it. The blood he took now wasn't the jasmine-tinged sweetness he craved, but a bitter copper tanginess, corrupted by some mild narcotic his Host had recently ingested.
He didn't care what she tasted like. All he needed was to smooth the edge off his hunger, and for that, anyone would do. He drew more from her and drank it down with haste, expedient in his feeding as was always his way.
When he finished, he smoothed his tongue over the twin punctures to seal them, then backed out of the unwanted embrace. The young woman was panting, her mouth slack, her body languid as though fresh off an orgasm.
Lucan put his palm on her forehead and let it drift down to close her dazed, heavy-lidded eyes. That touch would scrub all recollection of what just occurred between them.
"Your friends are looking for you," he told the girl when his hand came away from her face and she blinked up at him in confusion. "You should go home. The night is full of predators."
"Okay," she said, nodding agreeably.