"Hey," I cal ed. "Are we going to hunt anytime soon? My throat's on fire here."
Diego landed on the edge of a wide factory roof and spun around. I jumped back a few yards, on my guard, but he didn't make an aggressive move toward me.
"Yeah," he said. "I just wanted some distance between me and the lunatics."
He smiled, al friendly, and I stared at him.
This Diego guy wasn't like the others. He was kind of...
calm, I guess was the word. Normal. Not normal now, but normal before. His eyes were a darker red than mine. He must have been around for a while, like I'd heard.
From the street below came the sounds of nighttime in a slummier part of Seattle. A few cars, music with heavy bass, a couple of people walking with nervous, fast steps, some drunk bum singing off-key in the distance.
"You're Bree, right?" Diego asked. "One of the newbies."
I didn't like that. Newbie. Whatever. "Yeah, I'm Bree. 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 Raoul's freaks."
He nodded. "Amen, sister. Their kind ain't nothing but bad news."
Weird. Diego 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 Riley?" I asked curiously.
"Going on eleven months now."
"Wow! That's older than Raoul."
Diego rol ed his eyes and spit venom over the edge of the building. "Yeah, I remember when Riley 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 Riley said, I was a god now. Stronger, faster, better. Nobody else counted. Then Diego 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 Riley 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 Riley told me to do. Not because I liked him. That feeling was long gone. It was because what he told us sounded right. How did it make sense to cal attention to the fact that a bunch of new vampires were claiming Seattle 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 Riley said to do it. They probably had a good reason.
And like Diego'd said, hunting smart just took a little brains and patience.
Of course, we al slipped up a lot, and Riley would read the papers and groan and yel at us and break stuff - like Raoul's favorite video-game system. Then Raoul would get mad and take somebody else apart and burn him up. Then Riley would be pissed off and he'd do another search to confiscate al the lighters and matches. A few rounds of this, and then Riley would bring home another handful of vampirized dregs kids to replace the ones he'd lost. It was an endless cycle.
Diego 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.
Diego 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 Diego 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 Diego, 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 Diego - he had the man. The other woman was unconscious on the ground. Neither had made any noise. Diego 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.