Renegade: Vampire Outlaw

Chapter Five

Panorama Crest, Apartments

Lower Eastside, New York

Zane

Tangled sheets, a small bed, a human lying next to me. It was things like this that I never thought I'd be doing at this point in my life. I awoke with a sharp pain in my head as it radiated throughout my entire body. The pain grew immensely worse as I rolled over on my back and felt a burning, stinging sensation in the center of my abs. My eyes snapped opened to the light of the room as I glanced over towards the window and noticed that it was daylight outside.

I snapped into overdrive as I rolled out of bed and hit the floor with a mighty thud. I scrambled around on my hands and knees in search of the darkest area I could find. A streak of sunlight smacked my ass as I bit back a painful scream and made it to the bathroom. The door slammed shut as I kicked it with my foot and sighed with relief. The coldness of the tiles felt good against my damaged skin as my body worked hard to repair itself.

But the process was short coming. In order for my body to fully heal itself, I would need a fresh batch of blood flowing through my veins. Even now within the dark confined space I could see my skin struggling to knit itself back together again. At this rate it could take up to twenty-four hours before I was back to my old self. I cursed at myself for being so careless thinking that I could sleep for an hour and make it back to the safety of the club before sunrise.

Fuck! The club. Colt was definitely never gonna let me live this one down that's for damn sure. Realizing that my leather pants were back in the bedroom were Caleb soundly slept, made me think about my other options, except there were none. I was trapped in here until the sun went down and the human daywalkers that guarded the club were either too drunk or knocked out on their ass so they were in no shape to help me whatsoever.

Pressing my back against the wall with my knees up to my chest opposite the sink. I kicked myself mentally for how stupid I was to have gotten myself into this mess. Daylight was dangerous to my kind. Depending on a vampire's age, however, say if you were nine hundred years old, the sunlight wouldn't normally kill you outright. It would weaken you first then start by boiling your blood from the inside before turning one's body into a spontaneous combustion.

I closed my eyes and relaxed my body while allowing whatever good vital source of human blood I had left run its course. But while being this still, I was able to expand my vampiric powers and see beyond the paper thin walls of this apartment building. The city came to life one by one as the minutes passed. Like a flower towering towards the sky, its petals flourishing to reveal a stellar red rose in all its magnificent beauty.

But that was the city of New York wasn't it? How it thrived on social interactions, drug deals, prostitution, gang wars. Thank God for the NYPD and their mind-numbing police force who gratefully turn a blind-eye whenever there's a stack of hundred dollar bills roaming around in their back-pockets. The words "pig" and "five-O" that the humans call them nowadays have started to become second nature to us vampires.

Down on the streets below, a human walks by this very apartment building and trips over a bottle before falling to the ground, scratching his hand on the dirty cement sidewalk as I catch the scent of fresh, wet blood in the air. My mouth waters, my skin burns, my gums throb. I squeeze my hands into a fist as tight as I can to allow myself not to move as I grit my teeth together out of hunger. Thirteen hours to go before sundown. I just hope I can make it before then.

Suddenly, a knock sounded on the door as I sensed Caleb on the other side of it. I could smell his scent, his blood, even sense his emotions. I opened my mouth to speak but no words could come out of it. I was simply immobile. Fear crept up inside of me as I imagined breaking down the door and yanking him into the room just so I could tear into his neck and drain him dry in terms of my ever growing hunger.