Page 13 of Suck This

CHAPTER 4

Stalking her? I prefer the term ‘selectively watching only her.’

-Con’s secret thoughts

CONSTANTINE

I watched her run.

She was a surprisingly elegant young lady.

Her legs, although short, were lithe and quick.

Her eyes never strayed from her destination—a place I had yet to figure out—and she just ran.

Not fast. Not slow. Just a constant pace that never slowed or deviated from the mile before it.

If I didn’t know any better, I would think that she was a vampire.

Not because she was running fast, but she was running like a machine. Like a—well—vampire.

Vampires didn’t look around. They didn’t fuss or muss. Didn’t grow tired.

At least not for a very long time.

At the pace she was running, I could run for days. Weeks, even.

And that was exactly what she looked like she set out to do.

I was easily keeping pace with her, keeping a slow and steady jog about two hundred yards back from her so I wouldn’t accidentally catch her attention. Though, I was keeping to the shadows.

It wouldn’t do for a citizen to see me in my three-piece suit and thousand-dollar shoes running like I was a normal human being.

They would know with just one look that I didn’t belong.

Especially not in this shitty neighborhood.

Jesus, what was she thinking living in a place like this?

The part of the city she was in, known as the Lowtown of Austin, Texas, was one of the most crime-ridden in the entire fifty square miles that surrounded our city. And it was clear to not just me, but everyone I asked about her, that she was well-to-do.

Her brother was a vampire counsel, and he made astronomical amounts of money seeing as no other human being defended vampires.

There were, of course, actual vampires that were lawyers, but now that we were out in the open, everyone—police, judges, and the general population—regarded us with a wariness that I should have expected.

But I never, not in a million years, would’ve thought that when we came out, that people would act quite like this.

Though, I blamed the modern media for that one.

They were cruel, only painting the darkest pictures of us, and not caring one bit that they were feeding bullshit to society.

No, all they cared about was making a buck, and they didn’t care that they were ruining lives—even if those lives were the undead.

I must’ve got lost in thought, because between one second and the next, I looked up and realized that the woman I was following was no longer where I’d last seen her.

Slowing to a halt, I widened my senses and started to listen.

I could hear the televisions—all two hundred and six of them—within a four-square-mile radius. Most of them were watching a reality show—The Bachelor.