Thirst For Blood

hunting time

Simon pov

"You're simon right?" Raphael asked. "One of the newbies."

I didn't like that. Newbie. Whatever. "Yeah, I'm Simon But I didn't come in with the last group. I'm almost three months old."

"Pretty slick for a three-monther," he said. "Not many would have been able to leave the scene of the accident like that." He said it like a compliment, like he was real y impressed.

"Didn't want to mix it up with Jace freaks."

He nodded. "Amen, Their kind ain't nothing but bad news."

Weird. Raphael was weird. How he sounded like a person having a regular old conversation. No hostility, no suspicion. Like he wasn't thinking about how easy or hard it might be to kil me right now. He was just talking to me.

"How long have you been with camille " I asked curiously.

"Going on eleven months now."

"Wow! That's older than jace."

Raphael rolled his eyes and spit venom over the edge of the building. "Yeah, I remember when camille brought that trash in. Things just kept getting worse after that."

I was quiet for a moment, wondering if he thought everyone younger than himself was trash. Not that I cared. I didn't care what anybody thought anymore. Didn't have to. Like camille said, I was a god now. Stronger, faster, better. Nobody else counted. Then Raphael whistled low under his breath.

"There we go. Just takes a little brains and patience." He pointed down and across the street.

Half-hidden around the edge of a purple-black al ey, a man was cussing at a woman and slapping her while another woman watched silently. From their clothes, I guessed that it was a pimp and two of his employees.

This was what camille had told us to do. Hunt the dregs. Take the humans that no one was going to miss, the ones who weren't headed home to a waiting family, the ones who wouldn't be reported missing.

It was the same way he chose us. Meals and gods, both coming from the dregs.

Unlike some of the others, I stil did what camille told me to do. Not because I liked her. That feeling was long gone. It was because what she told us sounded right. How did it make sense to cal attention to the fact that a bunch of new vampires were claiming New York as their hunting ground? How was that going to help us?

I didn't even believe in vampires before I was one. So if the rest of the world didn't believe in vampires, then the rest of the vampires must be hunting smart, the way camille said to do it. They probably had a good reason.

And like Raphael said, hunting smart just took a little brains and patience.

Of course, we al slipped up a lot, and camille would read the papers and groan and yel at us and break stuff - like jace favorite video-game system. Then Jace would get mad and take somebody else apart and burn him up. Then camille would be pissed off and she'd do another search to confiscate al the lighters and matches. A few rounds of this, and then camille would bring home another handful of vampirized dregs kids to replace the ones hse'd lost. It was an endless cycle.

Raphael inhaled through his nose - a big, long pul - and I watched his body change. He crouched on the roof, one hand gripping the edge. Al that strange friendliness disappeared, and he was a hunter.

That was something I recognized, something I was comfortable with because I understood it.

I turned off my brain. It was time to hunt. I took a deep breath, drawing in the scent of the blood inside the humans below. They weren't the only humans around, but they were the closest. Who you were going to hunt was the kind of decision you had to make before you scented your prey. It was too late now to choose anything.

Raphael dropped from the roof edge, out of sight. The sound of his landing was too low to catch the attention of the crying prostitute, the zoned-out prostitute, or the angry pimp. A low growl ripped from between my teeth. Mine. The blood was mine. The fire in my throat flared and I couldn't think of anything else.

I flipped myself off the roof, spinning across the street so that I landed right next to the crying blonde. I could feel Raphael close behind me, so I growled a warning at him while I caught the surprised girl by the hair. I yanked her to the al ey wal, putting my back against it. Defensive, just in case. Then I forgot al about Raphael, because I could feel the heat under her skin, hear the sound of her pulse thudding close to the surface.

She opened her mouth to scream, but my teeth crushed her windpipe before a sound could come out. There was just the gurgle of air and blood in her lungs, and the low moans I could not control.

The blood was warm and sweet. It quenched the fire in my throat, calmed the nagging, itching emptiness in my stomach. I sucked and gulped, only vaguely aware of anything else. I heard the same noise from Raphael - he had the man. The other woman was unconscious on the ground. Neither had made any noise. Raphael was good.

The problem with humans was that they just never had enough blood in them. It seemed like only seconds later the girl ran dry. I rattled her limp body in frustration. Already my throat was beginning to burn again.

I threw the spent body to the ground and crouched against the wal, wondering if I could grab the unconscious girl and make off with her before Raphael could catch up to me. Raphael was already finished with the man. He looked at me with an expression that I could only describe as... sympathetic. But I could have been dead wrong. I couldn't remember anyone ever giving me sympathy before, so I wasn't positive what it looked like.

"Go for it," he told me, nodding to the limp girl on the ground.

"Are you kidding me?"

"Naw, I'm good for now. We've got time to hunt some more tonight."

Watching him careful y for some sign of a trick, I darted forward and snagged the girl. Raphael made no move to stop me. He turned away slightly and looked up at the black sky. I sank my teeth into her neck, keeping my eyes on him. This one was even better than the last. Her blood was entirely clean. The blonde girl's blood had the bitter aftertaste that came with drugs - I was so used to that, I'd barely noticed. It was rare for me to get real y clean blood, because I fol owed the dregs rule. Raphael seemed to fol ow the rules, too. He must have smel ed what he was giving up.

Why had he done it?

When the second body was empty, my throat felt better. There was a lot of blood in my system. I probably wouldn't real y burn for a few days.