a rush. “There was this person Irene was seeing a lot but she wasn’t charging. That’s one of the things that set Mac off, not that the shithead needed much encouragement. We knew it was gonna happen, I mean we’ve all felt Mac’s temper, but Irene wouldn’t stop. She said that just being with this person was a high better than drugs. I guess it could’ve been a woman. And since she was sort of the reason Irene died, well, I know they used to meet in this bar on Queen West. Why are you hissing?”
“Hissing?” Vicki quickly yanked a mask of composure down over her rage. The other hadn’t come into her territory only to kill Eisler—she was definitely hunting it. “I’m not hissing. I’m just having a little trouble breathing.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” Debbie waved a hand ending in three-inch scarlet nails at the traffic on Jarvis. “You should try standing here sucking carbon monoxide all night.”
In another mood, Vicki might have reapplied the verb to a different object but she was still too angry. “Do you know which bar?”
“What, now I’m her social director? No, I don’t know which bar.” Apparently they’d come to the end of the information twenty dollars could buy as Debbie turned her attention to a prospective client in a gray sedan. The interview was clearly over.
Vicki sucked the humid air past her teeth. There weren’t that many bars on Queen West. Last night she’d found Phil in one. Tonight; who knew.
Now that she knew enough to search for it, minute traces of the other predator hung in the air—diffused and scattered by the paths of prey. With so many lives masking the trail, it would be impossible to track her. Vicki snarled. A pair of teenagers, noses pierced, heads shaved, and Doc Martens laced to the knee, decided against asking for change and hastily crossed the street.
It was Saturday night, minutes to Sunday. The bars would be closing soon. If the other was hunting, she would have already chosen her prey.
I wish Henry had called back. Maybe over the centuries they’ve—we’ve—evolved ways to deal with this. Maybe we’re supposed to talk first. Maybe it’s considered bad manners to rip her face off and feed it to her if she doesn’t agree to leave.
Standing in the shadow of a recessed storefront, just beyond the edge of the artificial safety the streetlight offered to the children of the sun, she extended her senses the way she’d been taught and touched death within the maelstrom of life.
She found Phil, moments later, lying in yet another of the alleys that serviced the business of the day and provided a safe haven for the darker business of the night. His body was still warm but his heart had stopped beating and his blood no longer sang. Vicki touched the tiny, nearly closed wound she’d made in his wrist the night before and then the fresh wound in the bend of his elbow. She didn’t know how he had died but she knew who had done it. He stank of the other.
Vicki no longer cared what was traditionally “done” in these instances. There would be no talking. No negotiating. It had gone one life beyond that.
“I rather thought that if I killed him you’d come and save me the trouble of tracking you down. And here you are, charging in without taking the slightest of precautions.” Her voice was low, not so much threatening as in itself a threat. “You’re hunting in my territory, child.”
Still kneeling by Phil’s side, Vicki lifted her head. Ten feet away, only her face and hands clearly visible, the other vampire stood. Without thinking—unable to think clearly through the red rage that shrieked for release—Vicki launched herself at the snow-white column of throat, finger hooked to talons, teeth bared.
The Beast Henry had spent a year teaching her to control, was loose. She felt herself lost in its raw power and she reveled in it.
The other made no move until the last possible second then she lithely twisted and slammed Vicki to one side.
Pain eventually brought reason back. Vicki lay panting in the fetid damp at the base of a dumpster, one eye swollen shut, a gash across her forehead still sluggishly bleeding. Her right arm was broken.
“You’re strong,” the other told her, a contemptuous gaze pinning her to the ground. “In another hundred years you might have stood a chance. But you’re an infant. A child. You haven’t the experience to control