Chapter One
In the sullen hours before daylight, a thick dewy fog was settling over the deep green lawns of Central Park. A waning moon hung over the cityscape like a Cheshire cat’s looming smile. It was cold enough in the spring air that an exhaled breath became a cloud with a limited lifespan. With enough of those escaped breaths, one could trace the path of the breather as they moved through the park and into the night.
Along the edges of the famous Great Lawn, just inside a jagged forest with a dazzling array of buildings creating an illuminated backdrop on the darkened landscape, one such trail was moving with great speed through the half-naked, outstretched branches, the clouds short and anxious. Always mere inches ahead of these markers, a young woman was running for her life.
I was not the woman in question, although I was also running.
Like a fool, I’d believed I might be able to take a nice, quiet walk through Central Park that night, enjoying the heavy predawn stillness, which is almost never available in a city like New York. Typically the only solitude I’m allowed is during the brief allotments of hot water my shower provides me, and even then the pipes in my building rattle and bang whenever they’re in use. The shower is only quiet when the water runs cold.
Tonight I had wanted to be alone with the darkness before slipping away for my morning slumber, but that had been too much to hope for in the city that never sleeps. Even though a quiet night for me would involve getting harassed by a mugger or roughing up some drug addicts if they tried to scare rebellious schoolgirls, it still would have been preferable to what I was being forced to do now.
Too bad for me, and more specifically for the girl I was running after, she was being chased by something that wasn’t peaceful, quiet or even human.
Fear was radiating off her in waves that were so strong the thing after her would be able to find her regardless of how fast she ran or how well she hid. Fear had a cloying scent to it, not quite sweet, more like aged cloves and copper. I knew that because I could smell it too. And the feeling that accompanied it sent shivers reverberating through the base of my spine. There was a predator in me that related to what her assailant felt as he tracked her, the primal part deep down that could empathize with the frenzied vigor of collapsing victoriously on your terrified prey.
I could feel him too, and could finally recognize for certain that it was, indeed, a male. I wouldn’t go so far as to say man, because there wasn’t anything in him that resembled what he once had been. The shell he wore still looked human, but what was now inside that skin suit could not be described as anything other than monstrous.
All I could feel off him was his overpowering hunger. That coupled with the fact I hadn’t sensed from her any warning hints of anxiety escalating into fear. She hadn’t had time to worry. Instead she slipped immediately into a wild, blistering terror as she was chased at a perilous clip by his animal hunger. That instant fear was the only reason I was running at all. Because the girl was very human, and very vulnerable, and he had taken her by surprise, which was against the rules.
Even though the thing after her was without a shadow of a doubt dead, I knew if I wasn’t faster than him, the girl would soon be among their ranks. And once she was gone, his betrayal of the laws which governed the undead of the world would become my problem anyway, so a little preemptive interference was just saving myself and some vampire bureaucrats a lot of hassle.
At this point, I’d tell myself anything to justify the chase.
The girl broke free of the tree line and started making a wild, hobbling sprint across the Great Lawn. That was the first moment I realized I had actually passed him in our pursuit. I was still sprinting after them through the woods, holding out hope that his hunger would distract him from becoming aware I had joined his hunt. I could smell blood on the air and knew she must have cut herself somewhere in her escape.
As she limped across the field, I saw that one of her feet was bound in a broken stiletto and the other was dragging the mated shoe behind, strung to her only by an ankle strap. She was sobbing, choking out screams, and part of me swallowed those noises with deep pleasure. An animal hunger within wanted me to get to her first so I could rip her to shreds myself.
But that wouldn’t do. I had never killed a human, not a pure-blood human anyway, and I wouldn’t start tonight or any night, I hoped. I wasn’t an undead killing machine like he was. I was something else altogether, and while what I was certainly wasn’t any easier to believe in than vampires, it did allow me enough illusions of humanity to know killing people, at least those who didn’t have it coming, was wrong.
I felt like my chance was now or never, and I broke free of the trees, sprinting after her. I didn’t dodge the clever fingers of a branch sharpened by the storms of winter, and was clawed across the face with a painful swipe, but I just kept running. I ran until every muscle in my body burned and screamed, and then I ran faster. If I was human, I would have fallen down exhausted, vomited on the grass and lay defeated for an hour. But I was not human, and I could have completed a marathon at this pace if I needed to.
It took almost no time at all for me to catch up to her, but it felt like hours. He was out in the open now, following us both, and still I ran. I kept going until I reached her and grabbed her hard by the arm, dragging her behind me as I continued my pace. She was screaming and trying to shake free of me, unable to distinguish me from her actual attacker. As she clawed at me with surprising might for a girl of her slender build, I acknowledged there was only one way we were going to get out of this with her still alive.
I stopped running and slapped her hard and fast across the face. She replied with stunned silence, and we both stood staring at each other.
This girl looked so much like I would have if I had anything like a normal life. She was slender and petite, with blonde hair. But unlike me, she had an unnatural tan, acquired by spending hours in a light-box coffin, and she wore more makeup than I’d ever thought to own.