Night Watch: Bloodlust

Chapter 1

Riley stalked down the streets of St. Cloud just shortly after midnight. It was a cool Minnesota night, with a full moon overhead and barely a cloud in the sky. The bars were full of college students celebrating the weekend, nine-to-fivers who had a long day at work, and a very different clientele. Riley could smell the Fae from the street. The elves and gnomes especially enjoyed lurking in the bars, feeding off of the energy of unsuspecting humans. Sex witches and faeries were among the human hookers near the street corner. Lycanthropes and vampires were also lurking nearby, obviously trying to avoid each other but not doing a very good job of it.

Continuing down the street, Riley stopped near a park to sit down on a lone bench and enjoy the night. As a vampire, his senses were magnified tenfold. He could hear everything going on within miles of the park, able to focus on specific sounds and filtering the rest out if he chose to. In a house down the street, a man was arguing with his wife over whose turn it was to wash the dishes while all she wanted to do was go to bed. The house next door contained a couple recently wed that couldn’t get enough of each other. Further down some teenage boys were up playing video games and talking about how cool it would be if they were real.

Down the other way, Riley could hear a drug deal going down behind one of the bars. He could even hear the scrape of metal against leather. One, or both, of them had a gun. In the vacant lot not much further down, two lycanthropes were in a power struggle over a female. Soon, they would need to take it to a much less populated area where they would take on their wolf forms and the real battle would begin. Riley had to laugh at pack politics, thinking about the wolf that he lived with. Matt was a lone wolf, refusing to align himself with a pack. The local alpha was not pleased with this decision, but he let it slide as long as Matt remained on the straight and narrow.

Riley took the greatest pleasure in his sense of smell. He could still catch the sweet perfume of the women on the corner, able to pick out each one individually. The sex witch smelled of cinnamon and male musk. She had recently been with a man or two. Each of the faeries was heady with pheromones that did not affect the undead, but were pleasant nonetheless. They smelled of flowers and nectar from their sidhe. The human women were on the top of his radar, however, their blood filling the air like a beacon.

Ignoring it for the time being, Riley continued down the street, with no particular destination in mind. He loved St. Cloud. In one short year the place had become home to him. He knew every back road, every shadow, and every smell. Never before had he felt like he belonged somewhere. In two thousand years, he finally felt at home.

Riley thought back to his former Kiss. It was lead by one of the Old Ones, Lucian, one of the first vampires. Lucian’s bloodlust was strong, and was present in all of those who descended from his line. They chose the worst, most corrupt humans to turn and bring into the Kiss. Every once in awhile, though, they would take on someone young and innocent and try to corrupt him. It was a sick and twisted game – one that Riley unwillingly became a participant in. It took centuries to condition the humanity out of a newly turned such as him. They would force him to go months without feeding, until the burning in his veins got to be too much to bear and his bloodlust took completely over and he was nothing more than a shell of a man following unnatural, primal instincts. Then he would be set free, left to ravage several villages in one night. Eventually, he came to accept and even enjoy who he had become. He killed for the thrill of it. After five hundred years, Riley had forgotten what it meant to be human.

For centuries, Riley believed that the path he followed was the right one. He was a member of the most feared Kiss in the vampire realm. Unstoppable. Arrogant. Then he woke up one evening and realized that he had been blind. Even with countless deaths staining his soul, Riley found a small shred of his human-self left in him. That same night he left his Kiss and found his own territory, unclaimed by any of the major vampire sects.

Thinking about the past brought Riley’s bloodlust to the surface. He returned to the corner, following the sweet scent of blood like an alcoholic to wine. One particular blonde caught Riley’s eye. She left little to the imagination, with only patches of cloth covering her most private parts and fishnet displaying the rest of her body like a buffet. He flashed a few bills to catch her attention, luring her to the dark alley near the bar. Using a touch of vampire magic, he whispered, “You will make no sound, we have nothing to discuss. Just relax.” She immediately fell pliant into his arms.

The smell of her skin intoxicated him. A faint trace of cinnamon enveloped her, an effect of working near a sex witch for too long. Underneath that was the scent of strawberries that clung to her skin like a blanket. What got his attention was the scent of woman mixed with the sweet nectar that pulsed just beneath her skin. With no pretense, Riley’s bloodlust began to take over, his fangs elongating and sinking deep into the blonde’s lifeline. He mentally pulled the reigns in on his hunger, forcibly trying to take control and do no more than taste her.

With Lucian’s blood in Riley’s veins, he had the ability to see the girl’s life as it flashed before her eyes. He could also ignore it if he chose to, but Riley always forced himself to watch. He tortured himself by witnessing the life he was taking away. Once, he took pleasure from the act. Now, it only served to enhance his guilt. By day, this girl went to St. Cloud State University where she was working toward an elementary school level teaching degree. Her parents had no money, so at night she sold her body to pay for school. She was very careful, and so far clean of any disease.

Her blood was like a sweet wine, intoxicating him and stripping him of any inhibitions. His good intentions flew out the window as he found pulling away to be impossible. Before he knew it, the girl’s veins had run dry. Trembling with a power high, Riley let her body drop to the ground. As his sanity returned, Riley stared down at the girl, her skin now pale with the kiss of death touching her cheeks. Slamming his fist through the brick wall in front of him, Riley growled. He had not meant to kill her.

For a year now it had been this way. He would wait too long before he hunted, take too much from those willing to trust him with their lives, and beat himself up over it after. The cycle was endless. He did not possess the control that some of his brethren had. He was never taught how. In his former Kiss, they would strike hard and fast, and kill all of those who stood in their way. They would take their fill and bask in the power of the death. High on the power, they would battle each other like the lycanthropes, fighting for higher rank within the Kiss. It wasn’t until his lover was killed by his own hands that Riley suddenly understood that they were far below the animals. At least the lycanthropes never killed their mates.

Riley made sure to remove any evidence of his kind from the dead girl’s body before leaving her there to be found in the morning. He refused to let his victims become another missing person never to be seen again, never to be truly mourned or given a proper passing. Most vampire kills ended up that way, to prevent anyone from catching on, and to keep the police from looking for centuries old serial killers that they had no hope of catching and living to tell the tale.

Striding into the apartment that had become his home, Riley headed straight for the living room to collapse on the plush leather couch. Matt, who had taken Riley in not long after he left his Kiss, sat at the desk near the window staring at him. Matt was not one to judge, so he just sat quietly until Riley spoke, “Do you think I’ll ever change? I’m two thousand years old and I feel as though I am newly made. Hell, I may as well be for all the control I have. It’s a wonder I even have a streak of humanity left.”

“How many tonight?” Matt asked, rising from his place at the desk to sit across from Riley on the opposite couch. The man moved almost as smoothly as the undead, but Riley saw a life in him that none of his previous companions had. He hoped that living with a lycanthrope would help him adjust to his new way of life.

Closing his eyes, Riley almost had to laugh. “One or one hundred, I still beat myself up the same, don’t I? It was just one girl. That’s all she was, too. Barely out of high school, I suppose. She had a family waiting for her, a life ahead of her, but she was throwing it away by selling her body on the street. She managed to escape disease only to fall victim to the wrong man on the wrong night,” he said, his voice turning solemn.

Matt stared pointedly at the vampire. “It’s only been a year, Riley. I’d say that only one is an improvement from when I first met you. Besides, you’re not infallible. No one is, really. People are going to die, especially if they are in that girl’s line of business. If it wasn’t you, she may have met the wrong man tomorrow night or the night after. She may have died by a blade or a silent killer on the inside. Fate’s a bitch like that. If it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else.”

“Did anyone ever tell you that your advice sucks?” Riley asked, his mood lightening by a fraction. “Because it does.”

“All the time, my friend. All the time,” Matt laughed. “In any case, I think I found something to take your mind off of your problems for awhile.” Matt had been working for years to find a way for all of the local supernatural beings to live at peace with one another. And, for the most part, his efforts were paying off. St. Cloud was probably the only city in the Midwest where the lycanthropes, vampires, Fae and witches got along with few turf wars. Except when things turned ugly.

Every time something happened, everyone started pointing fingers at one another, and be damned the humans that got in the way. So, Matt and a few others who were tired of the Old Ways decided to police the city’s nightlife and get to the bottom of every issue. They became known as the Night Watch. This was also how Riley came to be staying at Matt’s Grand Gateway apartment on south Twenty-fourth Street, as his kills were starting to be noticed by the various sects. Once Matt cleared things away with the other groups, Riley was left alone, on the condition that he helped out every now and again.

“What is it this time?” Riley asked, willing to take anything on to distract him from the ever-present bloodlust. When he first joined the group, Riley was weary of helping out the other creatures of the night, still set in the ways of his former Kiss. Matt convinced him that Night Watch could be like his rehab program and self-help group. When put that way, Riley laughed and couldn’t completely refuse. The group, at the time of Riley’s initiation, consisted of only five members.

Matt was the leader of the group, which was strange considering he’d been a lone wolf his entire life. His on-again, off-again girlfriend, Lana was a very talented grey witch that got off walking on the wild side was also part of the group. From there they expanded and brought in a lycanthrope of the feline variety, Jadyn, a panther that owned a nightclub in the downtown area called Night Pleasures, where she bartended and offered a safe house for any creature of the night needing a place to stay for a day or two. The twins Taylor and Keiley, local vampire hunters, spent many hours at the club collecting information and helping Jadyn keep things under control. It was only logical that Night Pleasures would become the center of operations for Night Watch.

Over the past year, Night Watch expanded a little more. First they brought in Riley, which Keiley immediately objected to. Once she was overruled, she swore to make Riley’s life a living hell. Riley promptly replied, “Already there, sister,” and that was the start of their love-hate relationship. Keiley’s sane half, Taylor, instantly took a liking to the vampire and made sure to reel in her sister when things got out of hand. Matt felt that their group should also include Fae, now that they had two lycanthropes, two humans, a witch, and a vampire. So he brought in Roland, a troll who could forge mystic metals, and Anise from the faerie high court. Anise was fifth in line to the throne and had some pull in the Fae society. Matt had also extended an invitation to each of the other local lycanthrope communities. The lion pride respectfully declined, and negotiations were still underway with the leopard pard.

“I got word from Lana that some crazy shit is going down, and they want us over at the club within the hour. Jadyn has all the details, and from what I hear it might just be right up your alley. You in?” When Matt put it that way, it usually meant vampires were involved.

The vampires hated Night Watch, preferring to police themselves. The leader of the Twin Cities Kiss, Nadine, has on more than one occasion tried to take the St. Cloud area into her territory. She temporarily backed off, however, when Riley arrived. If Riley chose to, he could start his own Kiss in St. Cloud as he was the most powerful vampire there. He was a first generation fledgling from Lucian’s line, meaning that he retained most of the perks of the Old Ones, and that made him far more powerful than Nadine, who was a second generation vampire from a different line entirely.

As the vampiric law dictated, Riley had one more year to establish his claim on the city. Riley wasn’t so sure he wanted a Kiss to even exist in St. Cloud, as that would overrule Night Watch’s authority and give the vampires control over the city. His experience with Lucian’s Kiss told him that was a bad idea. However, if he didn’t do something soon, Nadine would make a try for St. Cloud again, and this time she would come with her full army.

Pushing those thoughts into the back of his mind, Riley focused on the problem at hand. He grinned at Matt, and in a voice of faux amusement he said, “What are we waiting for? Anything’s better than standing here and beating myself up.” He and Matt laughed and they stalked off to rendezvous with the group at Night Pleasures.