The Feeder (2 page)

Thayne

Nodding to the guy on the door, I entered the club, my eyes adjusting almost instantly to the dark interior within. The scent of blood clung in the air, the strong aroma of bleach and numerous other cleaning products failing to hide it from my strong vampire senses. Making my way through the crowd to the bar, I noticed many glinting dark eyes following my every step. I was new in town, here on business, and this was my first stop… and hopefully my last.

I was here to see Gideon, the Master vampire of this region. I needed to gain his permission to stay and hunt in this area. There had once been a time when I could travel anywhere I wanted without having to obtain permission from some big shot, but times had changed. For the better, I guess. But the new ways certainly didn’t make my existence any easier.

Gaining the barman’s attention was easy. The moment I placed my hand on the bar top he was there before me, glaring daggers. “You’re new.”

“That I am. I'm here to see Gideon.”

“Office is through there,” he said, indicating to a door on the other side of the dancefloor before heading back down the bar to serve those waiting.

It took me a while to navigate my way over there. It seemed that with every step I took, I was either stopped by a vampire wanting to know my business and if I had permission to be here, or a damn familiar would wheeze their way before me and practically throw themselves at my feet, begging me to change them. I told each and every one of the vampires that it was none of their fucking business why I was there, and as for the permission thing, if they would just get the fuck out of my way, I would have it… hopefully. As for the familiars, I never have and never will turn a human. I was a lone soul. I didn’t need a youngling following me every damn place I went.

Before I could even grasp the handle the door opened, the dark shadow of Gideon standing in the doorway. He wasn’t the largest vampire I had ever met, but neither was he the smallest. And when it came to becoming a Master vampire, size had nothing to do with it. This guy radiated power and was not someone  I wanted to piss off… yet. If I were going to pull this job off, I would need to get in this guy’s good books.

“What are you fucking doing here?”

It looks like that may be a bit of a problem.

“Hello, Gideon. Nice to see you too. Mind if we talk?”

Here’s the thing. My line of work does not make me many friends in the vampire world, quite the opposite in fact. And with the new Master system in place I was having a very hard time getting any Master to allow me to stay in their territory for any length of time. The perks of being an assassin.

“We will talk, but then you are out of here.”

Shit!

“So let me get this straight,” Gideon said a few minutes later. “You not only want permission to stay and hunt in my area, but you also want a job? Funny, as far as I was aware you already had one. Hadn’t you taken it upon yourself to run around killing your own kind?”

That I had… for a price.

“I'm between jobs right now,” I lied. “Thought I would find someplace to settle down for a while.”

“Not here you won’t. I only give jobs to people that I trust, and I have no trust in you.”

Things were so not going the way I had planned. It was highly important that I remain here, in this area, in this club. I was here on a favour, a big one. The Council of Masters didn't trust their newest member, Gideon, and as a favour for an old friend – one of the other Masters – it was my job to find out if their instincts were correct. I couldn’t exactly do that if I wasn’t allowed to remain here.

“You have twenty-four hours in which to feed and leave.”

“Now hold on. What have I done exactly to make you hate my ass? We have met a grand total of two times, and you’re acting like me being here is the worst thing on earth.” Or like he didn’t want me here to discover his secrets, which I had a feeling were plenty.

“I just don’t like murdering sons-of-a-bitches hanging around in my territory without proof that they are not here to kill one of my people,” he yelled.

“I'm not here to kill anyone. I swear.” And that was the god’s honest truth. For the first time in decades, I had a job that did not involve death – at least not by my hand. What happened when I found out the truth of Gideon’s rise to Master and handed him over to the rest of the Masters was none of my business.

“It doesn’t matter. My decision is final. If I or any of my people finds you in the area after the twenty-four-hour limit is up, you will find a price upon your own head. Is that clear?”

“Crystal.”

“I have no use for an assassin around here.”

He did, he just didn’t realise it yet. The strong scent of blood flowing from the building just proved that. This place was having problems, big problems. Problems that would only get worse if he didn’t hire someone with the experience needed to solve them.

“And by the way,” I said as I reached the door, “you need to hire better cleaners or better security. The stench of bleach and blood in this place is at an all-time high.”

Things were worse than I had originally thought. It had only been an hour or two since I had left Gideon’s office and taken up residence on the second-floor balcony – from here I could see the entire of the main floor, every dark corner – and what I had seen was not good.

Down in one of the booths a young woman sat between two vampires, completely oblivious to the danger she was in. She was talking rapidly, waving her arms around in the air as she did. Stupid drunk human. The vampire on her left was looking hungrily down at her neck, licking his lips as he inched closer. The one on the right wasn’t looking at the small human at all. No, he was glaring at the other vampire, rage pouring off him in waves. That was one guy that did not want to share.

Within moments of the first vampire opening his mouth and his fangs descending the other guy struck, grabbing the woman by the neck he dragged her out of the booth away from the other vampire, shoving her behind him. A roar left the other vampire’s throat as his victim was taken away from him.

Faced with two angry vampires, and being ridiculously drunk, the woman began to scream and lash out at everyone within reach. It didn’t help matters that her screams caused both vampires to turn towards her with their fangs on full display and their eyes pits of darkness. “Vampires!” she began screeching. “Somebody help!”

I could see the three vampires that Gideon liked to call security working their way towards the scene. That wasn't a name I would use for them. Within the last hours alone this was the eighth fight I had seen breakout, and every time they failed to get there in time to stop blood from being spilled. Nothing too major had happened so far, but the two guys fighting now seemed to have way less control than the rest.

Fists were swinging left, right, and centre, neither of them even bothering to care where they aimed their hits. The fight was truly out of control. A small group nearby quickly joined in the fight, and within moments, almost half the floor was covered by brawling men, both vampire and human alike.

Just before Gideon’s security team got there the first waft of fresh blood hit the air, sending the vampire portion of the brawl into a frenzy. The majority of the vampires here were young and not able to control themselves around fresh blood. Hell, the scent in this place alone had to be having an effect on them. 

Deciding that I’d better do something quick before the entire place descended into madness, I jumped the rail. It was time to show these guys how it was done.

Eve

I watched in amazement as the new vampire Gideon had asked me to keep an eye on – from a distance that is – jumped the railings of the balcony opposite me and dropped to the floor below, landing smack bang in the middle of the biggest fight I had seen in the place yet.

I had known that this was going to happen. All night I’d had a sick feeling that something was going to kick off. All the vampires seemed to be on edge, twitchy. Hell, even the guys that I would usually happily stand and chat with – for a minute or two at least – the ones that you could see had control down to a T were making me nervous tonight.

It looks like I had been right.

So many fights had broken out that I had lost count. I had watched over them all from above while keeping a close eye upon the vampire that Gideon had refused. It wasn’t very often that Gideon refused someone permission to stay in the area, and when he did, he usually explained his reasoning to me… but not this time. As soon as he had told me that he had refused the guy and wanted him under constant surveillance until he left the area, I had asked why.

“What is it about him that has you refusing?” I had asked, taking note of the way he kept nervously running his hand over the back of his neck. It was something I had seen him do very little over the past few years. It wasn’t very often that a Master vampire had something to worry about. What was it about this guy that was different?

“I just don’t like the bastard, that’s all. He’s nothing but trouble.”

“We deal with trouble in here on a nightly basis, and you’ve never refused any of them entry.”

He gazed at me with worried eyes, sighing heavily. “Thayne is a whole different kind of trouble. The type of trouble that we really don’t want around here.”

Well from what I could see, it looked like this whole new kind of trouble was about to kick some ass, and save Trent, Reese and Chad a whole lot of work.

The moment his feet touched the ground, he was off, moving so fast that he was barely a blur. If I didn’t know the signs to look for when it came to vampires running at top speed, I would have thought that the invisible man was real.

Bodies started flying through the air, landing almost on the other side of the room in a large heap, all of them unconscious and none of them human. All the vampires that had joined in the fight ended up knocked out while all the humans involved ended up shoved out a fire door to the left of the booths.

The pattern continued until the only ones remaining were the two that had started the fight and injured the poor drunken woman that had screamed so loud that not even the pounding music coming over the sound system had been able to cover it. She now lay in a heap on the floor, her arm at a funny angle and an open wound on her neck, which was slowly trickling drops of blood upon the floor.

Great.

There were officially no cleaning companies left in the area that we could use. After the last one quit after spending all day cleaning up last night’s mess, I had spent hours trying to find another one. No luck. It seemed that we'd been blacklisted; none of the companies I had called would even consider working for us. But looking around, it appeared that the only blood spilt was the woman’s and so far it was only a small amount. I just hoped it was going to stay that way.

The two that had started the fight seemed oblivious to everything, only concerned with taking a bite out of each other and not what had been happening around them. Thayne stood glaring at them, watching their every move as he lifted the edge of his shirt and removed something from a holster at his side. I wasn’t sure what it was, the little amount of light in here making it hard for me to see, but I did know it was shiny.

As he moved closer to the pair and raised his hand, I saw a flash of silver, before he grabbed one of the vampires and slung him to the floor hard, his arm holding the item quickly following and slamming into his chest. The next moment he had repeated the move on the other guy – who had been standing with a look of complete shock upon his face – before he had time to turn and run.

What had he done? As I looked down upon the scene, I could tell that the two vampires were dead. Truly and utterly dead.

The club quickly emptied, none of the humans wanting to remain. But I wasn’t worried. They’d be back. A lot of our breathing customers were familiars or ‘twilight’ fans. I had no doubt in my mind that they would be back the next night to spread gossip about what they had seen.

The bodies of the two vampires were removed and taken to the enclosed garden outback. It was always the first place to be hit by the sun in the mornings, so that would take care of the bodies. The woman was patched up to a reasonable standard – meaning that her neck was tidied up from where one of the vampires had latched on with his fangs during the fight – so that she could be taken to the hospital. She also had a broken arm that needed looking at from where the other vampire had grabbed her and yanked her away.

During all of this, the new guy shouted out directions to Trent, Reese and Chad, pointing out ways in which they could have gotten there earlier. When I overheard him who was in charge of cleaning and explaining how the strong scent of blood in the club had contributed to the vampires lack of control, I rushed to the office to see Gideon. I had an idea.

“Did you see what he did? How he dealt with those guys?” I panted as I flew through the door and slammed it behind me. “That guy has some serious moves. We need him, Gideon. Trent, Reese and Chad try their best, but we both know it’s not enough. This guy is exactly what we need.”

“You’re right that the guys need some training, more experience. But Thayne is not the one to teach them. He may be good at what he does, but we don’t need any of his kind around here.”

“His kind?”  What did that mean? Thayne was a vampire, the same kind of being that Gideon was. What the fuck was he talking about, his kind?

“It does not matter,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Thayne will be gone by dusk. We don’t need him.”

“You did see him stop those vamps, right? Split up the fight without any other injuries occurring, other than the ones those two guys had already inflicted upon that human.”

“You mean did I see him kill those vampires? Yes, I did.”

“With the fight on the scale it was, you would have killed them yourself once they were up for trial before you. And knowing how well the other guys responded to the fight breaking out it is plainly obvious that the woman, and probably a few more people, could have died in it.”

What I said was the truth; he just didn’t want to admit it. Whatever reason Gideon had for not trusting this Thayne, he wouldn’t tell me, but it was clouding his judgment. “We need him.”

“No we don’t!” he snapped as the door behind me was pushed open and Trent, Reese and Chad all came crashing in.

“That guy is just what we need around here,” Trent said flopping down in the chair before the desk.

“Someone with the skills needed to put this place back in order,” Chad continued, taking up his usual position at the door.

“Someone that doesn’t vanish on us when trouble hits, like that good for nothing Vince,” Reese growled as he threw himself down upon the sofa in the corner of the room.

I couldn’t help but smile. I had been fighting a losing battle with Gideon, trying to convince him of our need for this Thayne all by myself, but I wasn’t alone. Trent, Reese and Chad all felt the same. They recognised the qualities Thayne held and our need for him. Now all we had to do was convince Gideon.

“You know who he is, right?” Gideon raged, glaring at the men.

“Of course we know who he is. That is the exact reason that he would be perfect. And weren’t you saying just last night that we needed to find someone with more experience to help retain order in this place? He’s the one.”

Was Thayne someone special? Someone important? Surely if he were, Gideon wouldn’t have denied permission. Would he?

It was evident that Gideon wasn’t going to cave easily. What was his problem? “What’s a matter? Why don’t you want him around here?”

When he ignored my question, refusing to give me an answer, Trent piped up. “Is he on a job? That’s the only thing I can think of that would make you turn him away. Is he after one of our own?”

“He says he is between jobs,” Gideon admitted, his reluctance to answer the question obvious.

“Then what the fuck is the problem?” Reese yelled.

“He’s a fucking assassin! That’s the fucking problem!”

An assassin? Now I wasn’t so sure if I wanted him to stick around or not.