Leif strolled down the
crowded street with all of his senses open and alert. The cop side of him had
him instinctively looking for trouble from the human faction. His vampyre side
was searching for the signatures of the rogue's two minions. Dressed in an old,
tight pair of jeans and a torso-hugging black T-shirt, his military-cut hair
back to its natural black rather than the Aryan blonde it had been dyed for a
recent undercover job, he looked very different from the way he had the
previous evening at the club.
He had chosen the area
around the club for his first foray into finding the minions. His hope—and fear—was
that they were indeed keeping an eye on Kemp and wouldn’t stray far from the
area as a result.
Angry voices came through
the open doorway of one of the clubs and he started towards them before
realizing that it wasn’t his business to do anything. Not home, he told himself sternly. Not my job. But he did look around for the locals and saw a pair of
cops on foot patrol watching the same doorway.
Moving on, he turned the
corner onto a side street, heading to the alley that ran behind the various
clubs and strip joints. A quick glance down it showed that it was vacant of
anything that concerned him. A few loafers catching a smoke of the illegal
kind, one pair of men getting it on in the shadows of a large dumpster, but no
vampyres—minions or otherwise.
And so the night continued—long
and essentially boring—but he was used to that. At one point he’d thought he
felt the signature of one of the minions and started to track it. If it was the
vampyre in question, he vanished before Leif could get to him.
Just before sunrise he was
ready to call it a night. He spotted a young woman, a club employee he figured,
heading down the nearly vacant street towards him, probably on her way home. As
he watched her, he realized that with all he’d been doing he’d neglected to
feed. He paused, turning to look at a poster advertising a new local band, until
she came closer. He could sense her wariness and smiled at her, taking over
control of her mind as he did so. After that it took nothing to lead her to the
deep recess of a doorway and feed. When he’d finished, he wiped her mind of the
memory, healed the wound, and sent her on her way.
Afterward, headed back to
his hotel, where he called Trevor to tell him he’d had no luck. Then he sprawled
out on the bed, after making certain the heavy drapes were tightly closed and
the door locked and bolted. Soon he was deeply asleep.
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