Veil of Midnight (Midnight Breed 5)

"Yes," Lex said, his voice airless in the dank, urine-soaked darkness.

He'd spared no expense on the drugs; money was of little concern to him. No doubt the lowlife junkie he'd picked up selling his body on the street had never had such an expensive high. Lex was willing to bet the young man's personal services had never fetched such a rich sum either. He'd all but leapt into the car when Lex pulled over and flashed a hundred dollars and a bag of heroin in front of his face.

Lex cocked his head and watched as the human savored his fix. They were alone in the squalid room of the abandoned apartment building. The place had been overrun with vagrants and addicts when they'd first arrived, but it took Lex only a few minutes - and an irresistible mental command, courtesy of his second-generation Breed lineage - to drive the humans out so he could conduct his business in private.

Still reclining on the floor, the junkie stripped out of his sleeveless T-shirt then began to unbutton his loose-fitting, grime- stained blue jeans. He crudely fondled himself as he worked the fly open, bleary eyes rolling in his skull, searching listlessly through the dark.

"So, you want me to suck your dick or what, man?"

"No," Lex said, repulsed by the very idea.

He stepped away from his position across the room and walked slowly toward the junkie. Where to begin with him? he wondered idly. He had to play this thing out carefully or he'd be back on the street, searching for someone else. Wasting precious time.

"You like my ass instead, baby?" the human whore slurred. "If you want to fuck me, you gotta pay double. That's my rule." Lex's laugh was low, genuinely amused. "I'm not interested in fucking you. Bad enough I have to look at you, that I have to smell your revolting stench. Sex is not the reason you're here."

"Well, what the hell then?" A note of panic edged the stale air, a sudden kick of human adrenaline that Lex's heightened senses easily detected. "You sure as shit didn't bring me here for a little polite conversation."

"No," Lex agreed pleasantly.

"Okay. So, what the fuck do I look like to you, asshole?"

Lex smiled. "Bait."

With movements so fast not even the soberest human eye could track them, he reached out and hauled the junkie up off the floor. Lex had a knife in his hand. He stuck it into the human's gaunt belly and ripped a slash across his midsection. Blood surged out of the wound, hot and wet and fragrant.

"Oh, Jesus!" the human screamed. "Oh, my fucking God! You stabbed me!"

Lex drew back and let the man fall back limply onto the floor. It was all he could do to keep himself from lunging after him in a blind thirst.

Lex's physical transformation was swift, brought on by the sudden presence of fresh, flowing blood. His vision sharpened with the narrowing of his pupils, an amber glow washing over the room as his eyes changed to that of a predator. His fangs stretched long behind his lips, saliva gushing into his mouth as the urge to feed swelled.

The junkie was sobbing now, sputtering pathetically as he clutched at the gaping wound in his belly. "Are you crazy, you fucking asshole? You might have killed me!"

"Not yet," Lex replied thickly around his fangs.

"I have to get out of here," the man murmured. "Gotta get help - "

"Stay," Lex ordered him, smiling as the feeble human mind wilted under his command.

He had to force himself to keep his distance. Let the situation play out as he intended it to. A gut wound would bleed hard, but death would come slowly. Lex needed him alive for a while, long enough for his scent to travel out onto the street and into the surrounding alleyways.

The human he'd bought tonight was merely chum to be tossed into the water. Lex was looking to attract bigger fish. He knew as well as any other member of the Breed that nothing drew a vampire faster, or more surely, than the prospect of bleeding human prey. This deep into the underbelly of the city, where even the dregs of human society rushed about in an unspoken state of terror, Lex was counting on the presence of Rogues.

He wasn't disappointed.

The first two came sniffing around the crack house in mere minutes. Rogues were hopeless addicts, as much as the junkie now curled up in a fetal position and weeping quietly on the floor as his life slowly leeched out of him.

Although few of the Breed lost themselves to Bloodlust - the permanent, insatiable thirst for blood - the ones who did rarely, if ever, came back from it. They lived in the shadows, savage, rootless monsters whose only purpose in living was to feed their hunger.

Lex slid back into the corner of the room as the two predators crept inside. They immediately fell upon the human, tearing at him with fangs that never receded, eyes burning with the color and heat of fire.

Another Rogue found the room. This one was larger than the others, more brutal as he threw himself into the carnage and began to feed. A scuffle broke out among the feral vampires. The three of them turned on each other like snarling, rabid dogs. Fists pounding, fingers tearing, fangs ripping through flesh and bone, each powerful male fought viciously to win his prey.

Lex watched transfixed. Giddy from the violence, and drunk from the scent of so much spilled blood, human and Breed.

He watched, and he waited.

The Rogues would fight one another to the death, like the base animals they were. Only one of them would prove the strongest in the end.