Page 32 of Taste of Blood

“Stay down.” His partner makes a move toward me, so I smile at him, letting my blood teeth drop so he knows what he’s dealing with. “You want some of this, too?”

He pulls back and shakes his head. Obviously his loyalty to his buddy doesn’t extend to getting his own ass kicked.

“You two just earned a trip to see my boss.”

“You’re making a big mistake,” he warns.

I snort as I pull out my phone and hit Dante’s number. He answers on the second ring.

“I figured I wouldn’t hear from you tonight.”

Yeah, me neither, I don’t say. “I got a pickup for you. The alley behind Giovanni’s restaurant in Brooklyn. Send a van.” No way am I putting these two in my car.

“This have anything to do with that picture you sent me?”

“It does.” I glance down at the guy under my boot, who’s looking a lot less lively now. In fact, he’s not even struggling to breathe anymore. Yes, even vampires have to breathe, though we won’t die if we don’t. It just gets damned uncomfortable. “I want in on the interrogation.”

“After what you did for me today, you can do whatever you want. I’ll have someone there in fifteen minutes.”

I hang up and slip the phone back in my pocket.

“Is he dead?” the tall guy asks, looking warily at his partner.

Seriously, who transitioned this guy? He doesn’t seem to know anything. “How long have you been in the Clan?”

“Clan?”

It dawns on me then–these guys could be unsanctioned.

Outliers.

Shit.

Outliers are vampires created outside the Clan using the old method of draining a human to death and feeding them vampire blood. Creating a vampire that way is hit or miss at best. Of the ones who survive it, half become feral and have to be put down. That’s why the Clan abandoned that method of transition centuries ago. Now they use mages and potions, and every transition has to be approved by the Black Guild, whoeverthe fuck they are. To my knowledge, no one’s ever actually seen them. Rumor is they’re so old they rarely leave their fortress of solitude in Europe.

Creating an unsanctioned vampire is a death sentence for anyone caught doing it, and a black mark on the Guild in whose territory it occurs. It’s one thing when it’s a one-off, like a vampire falling in love with a human and transitioning them without the permission of the Clan.

Unfortunately, this sounds like the opposite; someone creating their own organization of Outliers to challenge the Clan. The last time I can remember this happening was in New Orleans about eight years ago. It took their Crimson Guild a year to run down and destroy all the members of that outbreak.

If that’s what’s happening, Dante’s going to shit a brick. Finding out who’s behind this will become priority number one.

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll let me go,” the tall guy threatens again.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Do you have any idea how much trouble you and your boss are in?”

“You can’t take him. He’s–”

“What? Immune? Invincible? Made of starlight and fairy dust? Sorry, asshole, creating unsanctioned vampires is a death sentence.”

“You have to catch him first,” he declares defiantly.

“Don’t worry. We will.”

The van with Dante’s men pulls into the alley. I heave the now unconscious vamp to his feet and drag him back to the van while one of Dante’s men slips a pair of charmed zip cuffs on the other one.

“I’ll meet you there,” I tell them before heading down the street to retrieve my car, hoping we were able to catch this before it got out of hand, though something tells me that’s wishful thinking.

14: Asher