"No." Hunter hesitated again. "The Dove is not like Dark Earth. It caters to those who are more lightly addicted."
I snorted softly. Addiction was addiction, and unless something was done about it, it would always get worse. But the vampire council seemed content to cater to the situation rather than cure it.
Damn it, these women weren't like the men and women I'd seen in Dark Earth. They weren't so far down the abyss of addiction that they couldn't function normally. Hell, they held down jobs, something the deeply addicted could rarely manage. They could have been helped, if they'd wanted it, and if that help had been available. So why these woman rather than those who drank from and sometimes killed blood whores in clubs like Dark Earth?
"The killer called them Kudlak," I said. "Is that another name for blood-whore-addicted vampires?"
"No. Kudlaks are something else entirely." She turned around, giving me a brief glimpse of stark white walls and a view out over the bay through ceiling-to-floor windows. She wasn't at her Directorate office. Maybe she was home—she was certainly old enough that even windows that large wouldn't be much of a threat sun-wise. "Kudlaks originate from Croatia and some parts of Slovenia. They are a form of vampire who are, at their core, evil."
"Define ‘form of vampire.'"
"Both the Croatians and the Slovenians believed them to be a form of energy vampire—someone who feeds off the emotions of others, and who does evil when alive, but who becomes an actual vampire at death."
I frowned. "But you have to undergo a blood ceremony to become a vampire. You don't just become one willy-nilly."
She smiled, though it did little to lift the darkness in her eyes. "You and I know that, but truths often get lost in the beliefs and myths handed down through time."
"So why would this man believe his victims are Kudlaks rather than plain old vampires? And why the hell would he think it's his birthright to kill them?"
"If he believes his victims are Kudlak, it is possible he also believes himself to be Kresnik."
Meaning we weren't dealing with an ordinary, everyday nutter after all, but something far worse. I rubbed my eyes wearily. "What's a Kresnik?"
"Ah, that's where this gets interesting. According to the myths, a person born with a caul—an embryonic membrane still attached to the head—is destined to become either a Kudlak or a Kresnik. It is said a person born with a red or dark caul becomes a Kudlak, but a person born with a white or clear caul becomes a Kresnik."
"And it's the destiny of Kresniks to go after Kudlaks?"
"Yes."