The first two came sniffing around the crack house in mere minutes. Rogues were hopeless addicts, as much as the junkie now curled up in a fetal position and weeping quietly on the floor as his life slowly leeched out of him.
Although few of the Breed lost themselves to Bloodlust - the permanent, insatiable thirst for blood - the ones who did rarely, if ever, came back from it. They lived in the shadows, savage, rootless monsters whose only purpose in living was to feed their hunger.
Lex slid back into the corner of the room as the two predators crept inside. They immediately fell upon the human, tearing at him with fangs that never receded, eyes burning with the color and heat of fire.
Another Rogue found the room. This one was larger than the others, more brutal as he threw himself into the carnage and began to feed. A scuffle broke out among the feral vampires. The three of them turned on each other like snarling, rabid dogs. Fists pounding, fingers tearing, fangs ripping through flesh and bone, each powerful male fought viciously to win his prey.
Lex watched transfixed. Giddy from the violence, and drunk from the scent of so much spilled blood, human and Breed.
He watched, and he waited.
The Rogues would fight one another to the death, like the base animals they were. Only one of them would prove the strongest in the end.
And that was the one Lex needed.
After a whole day of waiting for nightfall, now he had another two hours to kill before he could catch his ride back to Boston. Nikolai seriously considered skipping the airport rendezvous and heading out on foot instead, but even with his Breed stamina and hyperspeed, he would hardly clear the state of Vermont before sunrise drove him into hiding again. And frankly, the idea of bunking down in some low-country barn with a bunch of agitated livestock didn't exactly have him dying to strap on a pair of Nikes and hit the open road.
So, he would wait.
Damn it.
He and patience had never been the closest of friends. He'd been just about batshit with boredom by the time the sun had finally set and he was able to get out of the mausoleum shelter.
He supposed it was that same boredom that led him into the humid tenderloin of Montreal, where he hoped to find something diverting to do while he cooled his heels. He didn't much care how he used the time, but he'd deliberately sought out the one area of the city where the odds of finding a reason to burn off steam with his knuckles or his weapons were better than good.
In this particular block of rat-infested alleys and low-rent slums, his immediate choices were limited to crack-heads, traffickers - be they dealers in narcotics or skin - and vacant-eyed streetwalkers of both genders. More than one idiot eyeballed him as he strode the block in no particular direction. Someone was even stupid enough to flash the business end of a blade at him as he passed, but Niko just paused and gave the toothless scumbag a dimpled, fang-tipped grin of invitation and the threat was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
Although he wasn't opposed to confrontation in any form, fighting humans was a bit beneath him. He preferred more of a challenge. What he really itched to find right now was a Rogue. Last summer, Boston had been knee-deep in blood-addicted vampires. The fighting had been hard and heavy - with at least one tragic loss on the Order's side - but Nikolai and the rest of the warriors had made it their mission to sweep the city clean.
Other metropolitan areas still lost the occasional civilian to Bloodlust, and Niko would have bet his left nut that Montreal was no different. But aside from the pimps, pushers, and prostitutes, this stretch of brick and asphalt was feeling about as dead as the crypt where he'd been forced to spend the day.
"Hey, baby." The female smiled at him from a shadowed doorway as he walked past. "You lookin' for something specific, or just window-shoppin'?"
Nikolai grunted, but he paused. "I'm a specific kind of guy."
"Well, maybe I got what you need." She grinned at him and hopped off her perch on the concrete stoop. "Matter of fact, I'm sure I got just exactly what you need, sugar."
She wasn't a beauty, with her brittle, teased-up brassy hair, dull eyes, and sallow skin, but then again Nikolai didn't expect he was going to be spending much time looking at her face. She smelled clean, if deodorant soap and hairspray could be considered clean-smelling scents. To Niko's acute senses, the woman reeked of cosmetics and perfumes, with an undercurrent of recent narcotic use that seeped from her pores.
"Whattaya say?" she asked, sidling up to him now. "You wanna go someplace for a little while? If you got twenty bucks, I'll give you half an hour."
Nikolai stared at the pulse point ticking in the woman's neck. It had been several days since he'd last fed. And he did have two hours of do-nothing ahead of him...
"Yeah," he said, giving her a nod. "Let's take a walk."
She took his hand and led him around the corner of the building and down an empty alley.
Nikolai didn't waste any time. As soon as they were secluded from potential onlookers, he took her head in his hands and bared her neck for his bite. Her startled cry was squashed the instant he sank his fangs into her carotid and began to drink. The woman's blood was unremarkable - the usual copper heaviness of human red cells, but laced with a bittersweet tang of the speedball she'd had before stepping out for her night's work. Nikolai gulped down several mouthfuls, feeling the blood's energy course through his body in a low vibration. It wasn't unusual for a Breed male to get aroused by the act of feeding. The response was purely physical, an awakening of cells and muscles.
That his cock was fully erect now and straining for relief didn't surprise him at all. It was the fact that his head was swimming with thoughts of a certain raven-haired female - a female he had no intention of seeing ever again - that made Niko rear back in alarm.
"Mmm, don't stop," his human companion moaned, pulling his mouth back to the wound at her neck. She too was feeling the effects of the feeding, enthralled as all humans became when held under the bite of the Breed. "Don't stop, baby."
Nikolai's vision was swamped with amber fire as he clamped back down on her throat. He knew she wasn't Renata, but as his hands skimmed up the woman's bare legs and under the short denim skirt she wore, he pictured himself caressing Renata's long, beautiful thighs. He imagined it was Renata's blood that fed him. Renata's body that responded so eagerly to his touch. It was Renata's fevered gasps that drove him as he ripped at the cheap thong panties with one hand and worked to free himself with the other.
He needed to be inside her.
He needed -