LITMIR.BIZ

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at a typewriter, her face expressionless, her blood rushing steadily under her skin.

      “May I help you?” she asked. He didn’t answer. His mouth refused to form the words. He stared into her eyes until she looked away and then strode past the desk into the corridor.

      No one stopped him. The doors were all alike, but his steps didn’t falter. He knew where she was hiding.

      He paused at the end of the corridor. His tongue was swollen with thirst, his eyes like hot coals in his skull. He put his hand on the last door. It swung open soundlessly.

      She sat in a chair by the bed, her hands folded in her lap, her chin lolling on her chest. The man in the bed snored softly. Neither one heard him enter the room. He moved to the side of the bed and looked down into the old man’s face. That one was unimportant. He turned to stare at the woman. Hunger and desire gave the room a cast of black and red.

      He walked around her chair and stood behind her. He would strike so swiftly that she would never wake before he was finished.

      But he hesitated, frozen by something inside him that he couldn’t name. His hands hovered over her shoulders. He lowered his head, lips drawn back from his teeth.

      One swift bite would sedate her. Another would drain her life.

      Or make her into one like himself…

      Voices intruded, conversing just outside the door. He leaped away from the girl. There were too many humans here, too many to kill. With a snarl, he ran for the window and forced it open. He jumped through just as the strange humans opened the door and walked in.

      After that he ran. Breeders were everywhere, but the scent of their blood sickened him. He reached the waterfront without having taken a single drop.

      He charged into the warehouse and grabbed the nearest crate, tossing it across the building. He smashed the walls of his den to splinters, then tore at the blankets until nothing but shreds remained. Only when he had destroyed everything within his reach did he collapse against the wall. His muscles turned liquid, and he sank into blackness.

      When he opened his eyes, faint light was filtering into the warehouse doorway. Dorian dragged his hand across his face, swallowing the foul taste on his tongue.

      Then he remembered. The details were blurred, as if seen through a tarnished mirror, but he remembered enough.

      He pushed himself up with his hands on the wall, testing the steadiness of his legs. He was always weak afterward. It was the small price he paid for his madness. Others paid much more.

      The body lay where he’d left it, the head wrenched sideways at an impossible angle, arms twisted, throat torn. There was surprisingly little blood. Javier’s face was still unmarked, still handsome even in death.

      Dorian turned his head aside and heaved. Nothing came up. He was empty, on the verge of starvation sickness. He welcomed the cramps in his belly and the fire that smoldered under his skin. It was hardly enough punishment for the things he had done at the dark of the moon, or in all the years before.

      He knelt and closed Javier’s eyes with a pass of his hand. He would have to remove the body before anyone else discovered it. If he threw it in the river, humans would assume it was another mob hit.

      They would not be so far from the truth.

      Leaving Javier where he lay, Dorian wandered about the warehouse. Not a crate remained unbroken. Anything that could be moved had been shattered or torn or smashed. There was no sign of Walter’s bed or any of the small, precious mementos he’d collected on his visits to the rubbish bins and junkyards.

      It wasn’t the fight with Javier that had done this. Dorian had run rampant after he’d returned from his fruitless hunt, blinded by rage and lust. He hadn’t been content to find the nearest human and drop him in some alley with just enough blood left in his body to keep him alive. This time he had sought very specific prey.

      He had come within inches of killing Gwen Murphy.

      Shaking with reaction and horror, Dorian went to the warehouse door. He edged his foot into the sunlight. All he need do was remove his clothes and take another few steps and he would begin to burn. Soon his skin would crack and blister, causing excruciating pain. But it would be over in minutes as his body’s resources were exhausted, every last particle of his strigoi strength and vitality given up to a hopeless fight.

      Yes, it would be a quick way to die. Gwen would be safe from him. But even if someone else found his body before she did, she would learn of his death eventually.

      Dorian stepped back. Exposure to sunlight was not the only way a vampire could end his own life. He could shoot himself in the head or sever his own spine.

      Or he could simply stop feeding.

      Knowing he had only a limited time, Dorian put on his overcoat and hat, and left the warehouse in search of something he could use to wrap Javier’s body. He found a roll of canvas among a stack of boating supplies. Another warehouse provided a coil of rope and a length of heavy chain, which he hid under his coat.

      Javier’s body was stiff and brittle. Dorian wrapped it in the canvas, bound the bundle with the rope, and coiled the chain around everything. He couldn’t wait for nightfall to discard the body, so he dragged it out the door and scanned the docks to either side. The nearest humans were some distance away, busy loading a large freighter. Dorian carried Javier out to the end of the pier and dropped his body into the river.

      It sank beneath the surface, trailing bubbles. As soon as it was out of sight, Dorian returned to the warehouse. He started at one end and began picking up the splintered remains of crates and unidentifiable objects scattered over the floor. He piled them neatly against one wall. When the concrete was bare, he put on his hat and coat again, and left without a backward glance.

      DORIAN WAS THERE.

      Gwen searched the warehouse in growing panic, bewildered by the heap of broken crates and the utter bareness of the space around her. Everything she saw hinted at some sort of violent struggle, and yet the way the shattered objects had been stacked so neatly against the wall hinted that someone had taken the time to clean up afterward. There was no sign of the knickknacks Walter had asked her to gather, no clue as to where Dorian might have gone.

      Her heart stopped when she found the bloodstain where Dorian’s room had been. She crouched to touch the irregular circles, feeling sick. There wasn’t enough blood to suggest that someone had been killed, but Gwen didn’t doubt that the one who’d lost the blood had suffered a serious injury.

       Was it Dorian?

      But who would have attacked him? His past concealed a darkness she had yet to penetrate; he might have enemies. Yet this might as easily have been a random assault by hoodlums like the ones who had cornered her on the pier.

       If he was hurt, why did he leave? Why didn’t he come to me?

      Forcing herself into a state of rational calm, Gwen searched the waterfront. A few discreet questions gave her little to go on, though one longshoreman had seen a man in an overcoat skulking about early that morning.

      By late afternoon she was sure Dorian was no longer in the area. She caught a taxi back to the hospital and rushed to Walter’s room, where the old man was taking a sip from a glass offered by the nurse at his bedside.

      “Gwennie!” he said, trying to sit up. He looked past her toward the door. “Where’s Dorian?”

      “Mr. Brenner,” the nurse said reprovingly. “You must lie down.”

      Walter sank back, a little pale from his exertion. “Still couldn’t get him to come?” he asked.

      “I can’t find him,” Gwen said, pulling a chair up beside the bed. “He’s not at the warehouse. It looks as if something might have happened there.”

      “What?” Walter attempted to rise again, only to collapse in exhaustion. “What d’ya mean, something happened?”

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