Page 18 of Silent Stalker
As soon as possible, I needed to have Emerick teach me the trick of becoming a cat, because a cat had many more sleeping options during the day than a leather-clad vampire with more stakes than sense.
“I will make certain Luca is fully calmed before returning him to your brood. If you require help settling him, I’ll bring the wife over, and we’ll have dinner with you. She has a calming influence. In this situation, perhaps common ground also applies. I suspect whoever did this wishes to undermine preternaturals in the area. They would be wise to cease their activities. My wife now knows there are preternaturals being held hostage and victimized, and she does not handle such things well or with grace.”
As I couldn’t argue with him, I kept on sipping my blood while listening to one side of the conversation.
“Of course. Call me back if you have any questions, and I will have Luca contact you as soon as he can handle the conversation. Right now, he is in a more sensitive state, so we’re focused on feeding him and making certain his body will heal from his ordeal. Have a good night.” Emerick hung up the phone, and then he chuckled. “Well, that is one happy brood master. He knew his offspring had not perished, but he had lost hope of recovery. It is fortunate we were the ones to find him. Other vampires would not have been so considerate or cautious. I am surprised you did not take your normal route with them.”
“I trusted the stakes to decide,” I confessed. “I knew I needed to rescue the kids, but something seemed weird about the whole thing.”
“Yes. You’ve never seen a truly starved vampire on the verge of final death. Another night or two without feeding and they would have perished. They were far weaker than the miscreants you are accustomed to fighting—they feed with higher frequency, so they are still strong. They hunted in a pack, which is a survival instinct, although they did not hunt efficiently as a pack. While you were malnourished, you fed frequently enough you suffered in other ways. Your mind was still intact. Theirs were not. Luca recovers the quickest, but that’s due to the influence of your stake. It suppresses the beast within.”
That was a good way to put it. Once I thirsted, I became a beast on the hunt for my next meal, aware I would end another’s life. Hunting miscreants had assuaged my guilt, although I hadn’t learned just how justified their ends were until meeting Emerick.
Life without the sole focus of hunting and staking my maker had changed me. Other futures enticed me, futures where I might find purpose or even joy if I allowed them to come to pass. No, if I chose to pursue them. The decision to make myself into something other than a hunting vampire on the streets mattered even more than the Lowrance brood’s willingness to take me in despite my associations with one of their enemies.
They transformed me from a weakness into a strength, and they saw value in me.
And, in turn, they taught me that value when the demons within whispered dark things and sought to convince me otherwise.
One day, I hoped those demons would fall silent, never to bother me again.
“Is that really my reputation?” I asked, struggling to come to terms with how not hunting vampires might hold so much sway.
“Ah, the Silent Stalker. The vexation of many a New York brood. A vampire, believed to be male, swooping into my hunting grounds and plucking profitable bounties off my board! Not acceptable. No trace, no evidence, not until months of these unexpected bounty slayings had gone by, removing dangerous threats from New York streets, all without claiming a single penny. You did truly vex me, especially at first, as I had been organizing our hunters to deal with those miscreants. I’d made such nice plans for the bounty money, too.”
I snorted my amusement over my vexations of his person before taking another sip of the Wagyu. “How cruel of me, stealing all that bounty money right out from under your nose.”
“Then for the Silent Stalker to be a lonely female abandoned on the streets by an irresponsible and cruel maker? So much vexation, so little time. But yes, your reputation truly is as such. You established it early, and when a body showed up with your typical kill method, closer care was taken to identify the vampire, learn why you’d made the kill, and evaluate the situation. You led law enforcement to closing several unsolved mysteries, did you know?”
While I remembered how my stakes had ended the lives of numerous nasty characters, Carnegie included, I hadn’t realized my work had done that much good. “Really?”
“Vampires still leave DNA evidence, especially the careless miscreants you often hunted, so the bodies often became the resolution to those mysteries. Knowing who had committed the crimes won’t bring back the dead, but the closure is important for those left behind.” Emerick stretched out his legs and returned his phone to his pocket. “I see you are not trying to guzzle the Wagyu down so it can’t rise up against you tonight.”
I regarded the bottle of blood with interest. “Maybe I’m getting used to it? I must be getting used to it. I’m hungry, though, so maybe that matters.”
“And I shall attend to your culinary needs soon enough. Is there anything you’d like in particular?”
I considered all the various options, debating what I might ask for. Understanding he would fulfill any request didn’t help. If anything, the luxurious choices lacked appeal in the same way they often lacked to provide comfort. The first thing to pop into my head might land me in hot water—or at least earn a laugh or two. “A hot turkey or chicken sandwich would be nice.” Then, realizing how insane the request sounded, I added, “It’s like being wrapped in a warm hug, but with food. With mashed potatoes and lots of gravy.”
Gravy that wouldn’t be spiked with blood, if our understanding of the situation proved to be correct.
Emerick lifted his arm and checked his watch. “Chicken can be done for certain, and it might be possible to do a turkey. I’ll find out. If you wish to have the food equivalent of a warm hug, then the food equivalent of a warm hug you shall have.”
