10 Chapter 10

Dimitri's Mansion

Dimitri looked at Blanca as if she were his prey, and as he did, a recollection crept in from the depths of his mind, how he had forgotten it was beyond him.

Worse, he was the last of his kind, the last vampires to be spawned on Earth. The last one before the great supernatural conflict ended in the 17th century which killed off the vampire species, and after his father, Earl Damascus died from a vampire attack. Dimitri, a young, naive, and innocent self was so filled with anger and hatred that he hunted the monster that killed his father and, unfortunately, was bitten by one before the council of supernaturals slain the vampire. And, despite the London council's belief that he was merely a human victim, they buried him with the vampire ashes without even checking to see if he had been bitten before killing the monster. And for decades he was buried in the ground, with the ashes of the monster who killed his father, and the worst part was Dimitri was without memory and was left untouched for years to come, then centuries later he was taken by some witch's powerful coven, his blood became their nectar of youth and kept him away from prying eyes, and later buried with a lethal curse when he ended up killing the coven leader, and it was just by chance that he was unearthed by Benjamin and Barbara fifty years later after the witch's curse.

Yet something else had been creeping on his mind. He remembered now that this particular memory was somewhere in London! Somewhere between Christmas and his birthday. He recalled it now. It was in a small town. Five years ago.

*****

The fragrance of fresh blood was carried on the thin, wintry breeze. It was dull, raw, a coppery bitter scent tickled in the nostrils of Dimitri Norton, who jumped soundlessly from the awning of one dusk-shadow facility to another. Cold snowflakes fell around him like fluttering white ash, covering the town that flattened out beneath him some five stories down. Dimitri stopped at the ridge and scanned the knot of commotion in the parkways and alleyways. As one of the rogues—a small gang of feral werewolves engaged in a war against the nearby pack, the Jaguar Pack—Dimitri's main nightly fair was handling death to his enemies. He hated the ferals above all.

The ferals were responsible for the many nights of crime in the town. And here he was now trying to haunt them before it was too late, yet it was something he accomplished with ruthless efficiency, a mastery honed over more than three centuries. But he was more than a monster down to his bones. After all, he was the last of his kind. The last living vampire, and none of his kind, could resist the call of freshly spilled human blood.

He drew his lips back and drew the cold air in through his teeth. His gums tingle, a pain forming where his canines have begun to grow into fangs. His pupils narrowed into thin vertical slits in the middle of his ocean blue eyes, sharpening his eyesight beyond its superhuman clarity. The impulse to chase, slay, and nourish arose quickly in him. It was a spontaneous reaction that even he, with his disciplined, warrior self-control self couldn't stop.

One desire – physical, carnal, primitive, and otherwise – scorched the greatest. Dimitri crept along the shelf of the building, then leaped down onto the awning of another, his eyes grounded on the activity of people below, searching for the vulnerable member of the feral herd. But he didn't scour the throngs simply to persuade them of his own needs; he needed to find a human with an open flesh wound, and he knew for a fact that any werewolf rogues within a mile radius would not be far behind.

Except now that he was zeroing in on the source of the blood scent, he recognized that what he smelled had an increasingly thick, dark edge to it. It was spilled blood. It was not fresh at all, but several minutes old. Someone with the most amazing lilac scent made his monster self lust for a taste.

Dimitri's gaze was drawn to a short, little figure in a long, dark blue hooded sweatshirt who was hurrying up the main street, past the bus terminal. The person's walk was nervous, with a downward inclination of the head indicating a wish not to be spotted as it broke away from a mass of pedestrians and headed for an empty side street.

"What the hell have you been up to, little mortal?" Dimitri murmured under his breath as he tracked the individual.

He couldn't tell if he was male or female behind all that black, quilted down. In any scenario, the human would be accompanied by some undesirable company.

Dimitri caught a glimpse of the feral, the werewolf who had the audacity to wear a wolf mask, ironic really, as it emerged from hiding beside a garbage bin several feet ahead of the human. He couldn't hear what was being whispered, but the rascal's swagger and sparkling amber-red eyes told him it was taunting the human--just having a little fun before making its move. Two more scoundrels arrived from behind, encircling and squeezing the human.

'Help!'

He heard. Either it was a silent plea or a scream he doesn't care.

'Fuck it,' Dimitri mumbled, rubbing his jaw with his fingers.

He'd never been a fan of the glittering brand of honor that demanded untold acts of compassion for the humans he shared it with. After all, he was once human. Dimitri, who was not pure-blood like the rest of the supernatural, had long abandoned his desire to be a hero. He'd seen much too much death, unnecessary bloodshed, and heinous waste on both sides.

His mission, both now and for the three centuries that had passed since the horrifying torture and murder of his friends, was simple: destroy as many rogues as possible, after all, there was the reason he was made like this, or die trying. He couldn't give a damn which came first. But a part of him shuddered at the possibility of obviously unfair odds, such as the one he was witnessing on the street below.

The person with the blue blood-splattered sweatshirt was being pursued. The rascals began to close in on each other like sharks circling prey. The hooded head appeared out of nowhere, turning around to see the threat approaching from behind. However, it was too late. A single blood-lusting feral, let alone a pack of three, couldn't compete with a human.

Dimitri advanced his position and cursed his way to a lower ledge over the alleyway. At the same time, the rascal in front of the human jumped into action.

As the rogue grabbed for its target, Dimitri heard a quick intake of air — a female gasp of panic. It grabbed the front of the woman's hood and hurled her down onto the snow-covered pavement, letting out a terrible roar of delight as she fell.

Dimitri growled as he grabbed a large blade from his hip sheath. "Holy shit."

Then he plummeted from the building's ledge in a running jump, landing in a low squat on the pavement. The two rogues nearest to him split up, one taking shelter and the other screaming that they were being assaulted. Dimitri slashed the feral's jugular with his silver-edged sword, interrupting the threat in the middle of his speech.

The woman was on her stomach in the alleyway a few yards ahead of him, desperately trying to flee her assailant. Dimitri was surprised to discover she, too, possessed a weapon, but the rogue recognized it and booted it from her grasp. The feral scamp pushed his heel firmly into her spine and pressed the massive sole of his boot into the center of her back, pinning her to the ground.

Dimitri pounced on him right away. He drove the growling feral into the wall of the brick building and held it there with his forearm trapped under the feral's chin as he pushed the rogue off the woman.

"Girl! Get out of here!" he shouted at the human as she began to drag herself up off the ground. "Go! Run!"

The woman, who appeared to be eighteen years old, shot a terrified look over her shoulder—Dimitri's first glimpse of her face made him pause. His attention was drawn to a pair of large, deep, dark eyes. The woman looked at him through a blue hoodie that couldn't hide the exquisite beauty underneath it.

What the hell was going on? He was familiar with her. She looks like... Holy crap!

She reminded him of Barbara. But she died in his arms,... Who was this woman?

Impossible.

And she wasn't just any human female; she was extraordinary. What was she doing here, anyway? And who was she, exactly?

Dimitri's deadpan stare had the young woman spellbound for what seemed like an eternity. She recognized a flash of recognition in the stranger's unblinking gaze, and she felt the frigid blast of his rage coming at her from across the distance.

'You,' she said quietly, surprised to realize that it was he who had come to her aid.

"Run!" he yelled, his deep, foreign growl cutting through the blare of music still blaring in her ears from the earbuds she was wearing. "Get out of here as soon as possible!"

He paid the price for his lapse in concentration. He twisted the massive head of the feral he'd pinned to the bricks in front of him, jaws open, monstrous fangs pouring saliva. It sank its teeth into Dimitri's forearm, tearing the warrior's muscled flesh. Dimitri brought his other hand up and buried a blade in the rogue's neck without a sound of pain or anger, only chillingly quick efficiency. The infected feral collapsed, its body scorching from the silver poisoning in its tainted bloodstream.

"Fuck," he mumbled as he licked the wound on his forearm caused by the feral's bite; this would cost him his memories.

Dimitri spun around, his breath escaping from between his lips and clouding the cold air. "Goddamn it, woman-get out of here!" he yelled, as the surviving feral launched another attack on him.

The young woman was startled into action. She dashed out of the alleyway and onto the next street, sprinting as fast as her legs would allow.