the hunger overtook him, and he sank his teeth into her neck. The taste of his first kill flooded his mouth, filling every fiber of his being with pleasure. Her vitality flowed into him, and he could feel his body being reborn, tingling with sweetness and warmth. The whore's final breath ebbed out over his fingers, and still he drank.
When her body had given up the last of her blood, Wash stood to his feet. He ran his tongue along his mouth, collecting the stray drops that lingered on his lips. He grinned. This new life was going to be perfect. He could kill whoever he wanted, turn them into his slaves, and bring himself to the heights of delight whenever he wished. He looked down at the whore's body. She was but the first of many, and it was time to add to that count.
"I am glad to see you have no reservations about killing."
Wash turned to see Glava's golden eyes gleaming at him from the shadows. "I didn't in life, and I ain't got no reason to change now." He offered his sire a bloody grin. "Hell, if I'd known that being undead was such a thrill, I'd have found one of you vampires to make me into one a long time ago."
"You would not be what you are now," Glava said. "Your fate would be like hers."
Wash looked at the corpse on the bed. "So why am I different now?"
"Because my needs are different," Glava said. "This town is overflowing with degenerates and hedonists of every trade, each looking for quick riches, quick pleasures, and quick thrills. They are easy to tempt and easy to trick, so I have all the necessary ingredients to build myself an army."
"Sweet, ain't it?" Wash said. "Why, the two of us will be unstoppable. Them damn lawmen ain't got what it takes to bring us down now."
"I did not turn you so you might have your petty vengeance," Glava said. "You are what you are because I have need of another nosferatu at my side if I am to defeat the hunter."
"The hunter? Who's that?"
Glava's eyes burned with hatred. "Cora Oglesby."
"That's right," Wash said. "I owe her one, too. What was it she did to you?"
"She destroyed my fledgling army ten years ago," Glava said, "and with it my most promising acolyte."
"Your what, now?"
"My apprentice," Glava said. "Had she not killed his mortal form, he would be the one at my right hand, not you."
"Guess that's good for me, then," Wash said. "Who was he?"
"Her very own husband," Glava said. "I took a calculated risk when I should not have. Years ago, she and her husband hunted our kind together. The two of them separated in my nest, and I saw my chance. Assuming the guise of the family's late butler, I lured him to me and fed on his lifeblood. He rose again a short while later."
Glava's gaze took on a distant look. "I should have made him nosferatu then, but I felt it would have been too hasty. The honor of a vampiric rebirth does not always appeal to some when their souls are first restored, and so it would have been with Benjamin Oglesby. He was a religious man, wholly dedicated to his self-righteous cause of hunting our kind. Had I restored his soul to him that night, he might have attempted to rejoin his wife, or even destroyed himself out of loathing.
"To make his transition easier, I attempted to kill Cora using his soulless body. She had fled my nest when confronted with my vrykolakas, and I figured she would quickly fall without her husband at her side. My army followed her to a nearby farmhouse, but when they attacked, she and a local priest managed to destroy them. She even brought herself to shoot her own husband in the head, something I had not believed any mortal woman could do. Soon afterward, she and the priest came to my nest, and I was forced to retreat from that place and wait for a more opportune time. I slept for many years, rebuilding my strength, letting the poisons of age and loneliness seep into her bones.
"But now," Glava said, turning his golden gaze back on his apprentice, "now my waiting is over. I have a powerful base here, and a new apprentice to train in the ways of the night. Now, I have broken her mind, and her days are numbered."