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Luc

I was not expecting this.

These feelings. These very disturbing impulses.

Yet, the moment I saw Ruby in that disgusting club everything changed. I didn’t know this yet, but my life was about to be blown apart. At that point, I cared only about finding out who had killed my best friend, Matteo. He had last been seen in an area that was shifter territory. I had no idea what he was doing here or why. I had been told this was the hub of the local shifter and MC club activity. When one of my men reported that he had died here, I refused to believe it. They told me they’d found his remains, burnt. Still, I wouldn’t listen to them. Until they brought me the Lombardi belt buckle, which he had worn for as long as I’d known him.

It was his family crest, intricately carved, centuries old. It had been given to him by his father, whose own father had given it to him. The Lombardi were a proud Second Families house, similar to my own.

We had been as close as brothers, more than friends.

I could not believe he was gone.

Killing Matteo would not have been easy. He was one of the strongest and fastest vampires I’d ever known. He’d grown more powerful over the centuries as well. Eventually becoming one of the king’s most trusted soldiers.

I had to find out what had happened to him. Our men, who had gone out looking for him, concluded that he must have been surprised by a party of shifters, but I knew there had to be more than that. Matteo would have been able to finish off a regular pack of wolves.

“Let it go,” King Vlas, our ruler, told me. “We have more important things to focus on.”

But I had to know who had killed Matteo. I needed to avenge him. I told Vlas that it might be linked to a bigger plot, some development that we were unaware of. There had always been tensions between the vampires and the shifters, but the power balance had shifted since almost three quarters of the vampire community were killed by a virus fifty years ago. The shifters, on the other hand, had more than doubled in numbers. It had made them bold and ambitious, keen to take us on and take over our interests, which, of course, were considerable. Matteo had warned me that the shifters were planning something and wanted to get rid of us, an escalation in the conflict that was always brewing between vampires and shifters, but Vlas thought them too unsophisticated to organize such an attack.

What if Matteo was right?

I hid in the shadows for days and studied the lay of the land at Diablos. It didn’t look like much from the front, a squat two-story building with a dirt yard for bikes and cars but at night, the place was buzzing with a frenetic energy that was unpredictable. There were many people going in and the property extended out back into several outbuildings. The main building housed the stage for the strippers and the drinking area. Strippers danced for the pleasure of rather foul, poorly behaved and uneducated customers who did little to hide their base animal natures, but there were very many of them, more than I wanted to take on by myself.

I needed to talk to their leader, Tomás, but I had no idea how to get him outside, alone. He was always surrounded by a posse of bodyguards and did not leave the club.

Finally, I went in, put on a hat I picked up from a table and pulled it down low over my head. Nobody paid attention to me and as long as no one saw my eyes, I could get away with it for a while. The noise was deafening. Men were shouting, yelling to one another and the women on stage. Some kind of modern rock music blasted from speakers mounted against the roof. I admired the dancers, several of whom had skill and some measure of physical beauty and wondered idly how they dealt with these customers. A couple of big men stood around, keeping an eye on the punters, but I wondered if it was enough. I sank down on a chair in the corner and tried to get a sense of where Tomás and his henchmen were. The waitresses caught my eye, dressed in sexy outfits, no doubt to stimulate the clientele into buying more liquor and drugs. Not that they seemed to need the encouragement.

One of the waitresses captured my interest.

Right away, I could see she was cut from a different cloth. She was finer, superior in every way. She moved gracefully, even when carrying a tray loaded with drinks, anticipating men walking in front of her. Her beauty was rare and unusual, and the energy she exuded was intoxicating. There was more to her, I thought, she did not belong in a place like this. I saw some oaf harassing her and she dealt with him with an ease that seemed to belie her age. She couldn’t have been more than twenty, twenty-five?

Who was this girl-woman?

She had noticed me looking at her, of course. She stared back at me and our gazes locked, but she broke it off, surprisingly strong willed. I watched as she brought the idiot down with a well-aimed blow and was rewarded with a view of her magnificent breasts, as her top was torn off by the man trying in vain to defend himself. I could see how she took hold of herself, stood tall in the throng of men trying to get their hands on her, how she calmly bent down to fix her shirt and got out of the crowd.

I needed to meet this girl.

Perhaps she could help me with Tomás.

I had no specific plan until I found myself next to her, talking to her.

Up close, she was even more beautiful than I had realized. Her eyes, large and grey, were mesmerizing, and she had dark hair framing a delicate face. She was wasted here, I thought. I could get her out, she could help me with Tomás . That was my thinking, I mean, I didn’t think too much about where I’d take her or how things would go from there. I definitely meant to get to know her and those breasts a bit better.

First, however, I needed to focus on the job at hand.

I was not one of these idiots, who turned into beasts at the slightest whim, losing all control to their baser nature. I had a finely tuned mind, a brain that worked on a higher frequency, fed by superior blood products.

I had to find out what had happened to Matteo and the girl would help me.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that she was driven by money and smart enough to know that I had it. I convinced her to get the club boss outside and then briefly, I touched her to get my imprint on her. I used the ruse of giving her the money, tucking it into her shirt, but I stroked her skin as I did that and felt the firm, pulsing warmth of living skin.

It was incredible, what that, the lightest of touches could do. It may have felt like a moment, but time was so pliable, so relative. If you’d been around long enough, you learned to manipulate it, make it stretch or shrink, as you wished. You could go back in time, if you wished, even into the future, if you dared. I would make that moment last, play it over in my mind and use it as a calling card to visit her.

It was an invitation that I could tell she had accepted, whether she knew it or not. There was an immediate response from her body as she reacted to my touch. Her body yearned for it and our attraction was sparked. Our beings had recognized each other, something that I knew by now was rare in any lifetime.

Even though she disappeared soon after I spoke to her, I knew I’d find her. I paused to ask a fellow waitress what the girl’s name was.

Ruby.

Of course.

The blood red gem. How fitting that was.

But first, I had to talk to Tomás.

I waited outside, and saw him come out, calling for someone. I had but a moment to grab hold of him and pull him into the shadows, a knife against his throat.

“Did you attack the vampire, Matteo Lombardi?” I demanded to know.

“Who are you?” his voice was raspy, I could feel his heartbeat racing.

I swung him around and stared into his eyes, bending his will to get the answers I craved.

“Matteo Lombardi was found in the woods off the swampland, near here. He was burnt, by shifters. Did you order this?”

The man was subdued now.

“Not us,” he said, his voice dreamy, “but I heard about it.”

“From whom?”

“Sunny.”

“Sunny?”

“Sunny the Snake.”

The door outside the club slammed and I felt rather than heard the men shifting into their animal selves. The air changed, became supercharged. I could hear sniffing and snarling. Wolves. I needed to go. I dropped Tomás and shot into the air, blending into the shadows before they could find me. The effects of my charm would mean that he’d forget who he’d spoken to and about what, but he might remember the girl. I needed to ensure that she was safe.

I moved among the trees and once I knew I was safe, I trained my thinking on her.

Ruby.

She wasn’t far.

I focused on the feel of her skin, let it call to me.

It led me through dirty streets lined by ramshackle houses and boarded-up shops with broken windows. This might have been a sweet little town once, but not anymore. There were no shops or businesses, just boarded up buildings with broken windows, a dumping ground now for lost souls, broken people. There was trash everywhere. I knew things were bad outside the cities but this was one of the worst towns I’d ever seen. It was outlaw country where the shifters ruled. I couldn’t imagine a beautiful woman like Ruby living in a foul place like this.

I was pulled towards a small house next to a vacant lot.

She was here, I could feel it.

Ruby.

It was meant to be.

I knocked on her door, only once.

She knew I was coming.

The agony of anticipating her opening the door was the most exquisite torture.