Another story! MUAHAHAHA! I was hit with this idea late at night when I was supposed to be sleeping and couldn't get it out of my head. Hope you likey.

He watched in the shadows on that unforgiving night. The night was hot, sultry, dry, and seemed to envelop you in blankets and suffocate you, until you had no wish to move and do nothing but stay at home. The wind blew in sudden gusts and then not at all, swirling up dust and dirt from the city's streets. Every now and then, a disconnected lamp flickered on and off, and narrow, winding alleyways, some barely wide enough for a person to walk through, gave the vampire all the cover he could wish for.

It seemed as though the city was deserted; at this time, many were somehow asleep, and others that weren't hadn't gone outside. Only the lone car drove through the city's usually gridlocked streets, perhaps some misguided tourist. However, the vampire knew better.

He could feel ever life-beat and life-energy of every human in this area, and his senses were extremely sharp, even for a vampire. He prided himself on that fact.

Perhaps the vampire had led a past life somewhere where he didn't have to slink about in the shadows, searching for food. However, now, being a vampire, he didn't care, and had learnt to kill as carelessly as one might take a sip of water—killing sometimes when he actually had no need for it, or killing like his life depended on that, when it didn't. His beginner's clumsiness as a vampire had quickly faded away into a deadly blood sucker, a sadist making his way through the shadows, melting in and out of them, unnoticed.

Suddenly, the almost-silence he heard (for these days, there was barely any place except Antarctica that was completely silent, and anyways it was awash with space's radio noise) the sharp clip-clapping of stilettos.

"Oh, please Raymond, you must be kidding. Wha—wait! What do mean, it's not working? If this is some kind of practical joke—"

A woman's voice, high and melodious and musical, wafted over to the vampire's sensitive ears. He, in turn, grinned, baring his sharp fangs, hungry for blood. Anyways, she sounded just like some spoiled brat talking to a boyfriend over the cell phone; the world wouldn't miss her.

"—But theory has it—what? But my calculations say that the intermolecular adhesion should be—what's that got to do with Schwarzschild geometry? So what if we don't know if exotic matter exists? Makes no difference—wait, you're right. We'd be able to make 'white hole wormholes' stabilized if we can make this, and if this is successful, which at the moment it's not, we'll have exotic matter—"

The vampire recollected his thoughts. So, perhaps she wasn't a spoiled brat talking to her boyfriend but a woman genius talking to a co-scientist. Was she not about to become food for him, perhaps she could have blazed a trail for women who felt controlled and discouraged from such male-dominated fields. Still, that was too bad.

He spotted a glimpse of her. She had slightly tanned skin, a slim, delicate figure, high cheekbones, blue-gray eyes, and unruly black curls. The woman wore a jet black knit halter top and a white, knee-length, A-line skirt, and jet black boots with stilettos, which ended halfway up her calves. Slung over her right shoulder was a black purse, at the time extremely fashionable, as well as extremely expensive. She was talking agitatedly to her partner, presumable Raymond, on a black RAZR. Her left arm supported the cell phone while her right arm wrapped itself tightly around her waist, drawing the jet-black long coat she had donned around her.

All that he caught in one glimpse.

There was something familiar about her, he found, something that reminded her of somebody he had known before he had been Bitten.

Shaking his head slightly, he discarded that thought for reflection later. Now, what he needed was food, blood, and this woman, who he realized now, was extremely attractive, and so food was what he would get. It had never bothered him before whom he got food from, so why should it bother him now?

He emerged from the shadows, getting ready for the kill.

As she walked ahead of the alley he was hidden in, the vampire suddenly appeared, pushing her down into the alley. She let out a startled yelp and the cell phone fell from her hand, skidding a few feet and resting, but she didn't have time enough to let out a substantial scream before he sunk his teeth from behind her into the left crook of her neck.

"Rina? Rina? Karina? Karina! What's happening, what's—"

So his victim's name was Karina? thought the vampire absently, as he felt he relax and start to hang limp, reacting to the natural euphoria and anesthetic his teeth injected into the human's bloodstream while sucking. The cell phone, battered from falling, became silent as Raymond continued, panicked. The vampire was thankful that the annoying man's voice had stopped.

Then, he noticed the taste of his victim's—Karina's, he somehow remembered—blood. It tasted like any normal human's, but there was some peculiar aftertaste, as though he shouldn't be feeding off of her—but that was nonsense, he reasoned. What could be so different about this human?

There was a sharp pain in the vampire's foot then, and although it faded quickly, he was startled enough to let go of his arms, which had wrapped themselves tightly about Karina's waist. How was it possible? Victims, humans had never struggled, never in the history of all vampires! It was impossible!

The victim, Karina, flung herself away from him, plastering herself against the back wall of the alley. The vampire was blocking her way to the front.

With his heightened senses, the vampire noticed that she felt very woozy, disoriented, and scared. He flashed her a cocky grin, making sure to bare his fangs. He was rewarded when he saw Karina's eyes widen. Scared was his business. He liked it when his victims were scared.

Breathing heavily, Karina said, "I don't know who the hell you are and what the hell you're doing, but you better let go of me right now before you're sorry! I've got better things to do than spend the night with some psycho axe-murderer or serial killer or whatever!"

This was curious. Never before had anyone he had seen masked their fear with anger; they had all cowered and whimpered in front of him. He generally had that effect on people. And yet, she wasn't like those whores who had, once seeing his god-like looks, with his shaggy black hair and deep, dark purple eyes and muscled, toned body, prostrated themselves in front of him and practically begged to sleep with him.

"I assure you, I am most certainly not 'psycho,' as you so aptly put it," he answered in his deep, husky voice, jellied with amusement.

He noticed Karina's sharp intake of breath at his voice and the sudden view of him, and he noticed that she had started blushing.

"Like what you see?"

Karina's blush deepened, but this time it was mixed with anger. "No, I do not! Now let me go, and we'll all go on our happy little merry way!"

Quirking an eyebrow, the vampire delved into Karina's mind and was hit with fact after fact after fact, almost overwhelming him. That was another thing to puzzle over; usually a human's mind was weak. He sorted through her mind until he found her 'Thoughts' section.

Who the hell is he? Aargh, I'll just call him Hottness, with two t's—

What a psycho!

Uh huh, suuure he's not a psycho.

WHY ME?!?! WHY DO I GET TO BE STUCK WITH SOME GODDAMNED PSYCHO AXE-MURDERER?!?!

Stupid Hottness, it's all his fault if I never get to finish the breakthrough—

He scares me.

What a sadist.

Is he—no, he can't be! They're fake! They're just something to scare little kids!

I think I'm scared of him…

The vampire retreated from Karina's mind. He saw that she had fallen to her knees, clutching her forehead. Suddenly, he felt a pang of something he had never felt before he had been Bitten—guilt.

He approached, and Karina, realizing the headache had retreated, glanced up at him with wide blue-gray eyes and plastered herself even more against the wall.

"Okay, I'm only going to ask once and I want an answer. What the hell was that?"

"That, my dear, is what happens when I delve into your mind for your thoughts."

"Okay, hold it, back it up. What do you mean, delve into my mind? Do you mean you read my thoughts?"

"That is a crude way to phrase it, I believe."

"I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, but just let me go. Killing people is not the answer, and whatever else Dr. Phil says." Karina looked slyly around and suddenly darted forward, trying to escape.

Perhaps she would have, had she not been up against that particular vampire, whose left hand shot out and encircled Karina's right wrist, twirling her into his arms, so that her back was pressed against him and her arms pinned to their sides at the waist by his right arm, encircling her in a grip of steel.

Karina's breath hitched and she let out a gasp. She remembered, at that moment, to scream, but, as she took in a long breath, and hand clapped itself over her mouth and the vampire made a tsk, tsk noise. "We can't have you escaping, now, can we?"

Karina bit his hand and stomped on his foot in answer.

"I got you fair and square, darling, and I get to keep you."

Karina's answer was to snort.

"Sleep." The vampire's voice was laced with the blood sucker's dark magic and, powerless to resist, Karina fell limp and her head lolled back, onto the vampire's left shoulder.

Many things were strange about her, decided the vampire. Too many things, and so he would find out why.

The vampire and Karina melted into the shadows.