Page 103 - Hunter - The Vigil

The vampire awoke.
It squinted through a haze of velvet smoke. The room was low lit. Lots of pillows.
Mirrors, too; one on every wall. Somewhere, a dull bass beat pulsed. It almost made
him think he had a heartbeat again.
The creature’s vision swam and dipped. A line of drool — blood, really, given that the
thing didn’t have saliva anymore — trickled down to his chin. He tried to wipe it away,
but his hands were held above him, affi xed to something…
A round shape fl oated in front of him. A face. A body came with it. Stocky. Crammed
into a tuxedo. The shape, the face, smiled: pearly whites; small, happy eyes; a bald head

that gleamed with a sheen of perspiration.
“You’re up,” the face said. “Good! Sorry about this. Had to dose you. Well, had to
dose me, strictly speaking, before you came in for the bitey-bite. Oxycontin and Vicodin
make for a powerful cocktail — I could barely keep it together, I swear! If you hadn’t
bitten me when you did, oof, I might’ve toppled right there on the men’s room fl oor.”

“Buh…” the vampire said, or rather, tried to say.
The round face laughed silently, then took an eyedropper full of red and squeezed a dot

of the crimson fl uid onto his tongue.
“Mm, delicious!” he said. “Your blood has a kind of…hazelnut aftertaste, did you know
that? It’s got quite a long fi nish. Don’t worry, I don’t plan on hurting you. You might
even enjoy this. I’ve nothing against your…people. Hiram does, of course. And so does
Bettina. But they won’t be here for a few hours, with the rest of the guests. Until

then?”
The man took another hit from the eyedropper.

“Until then, you and I have time to play.”

Caught alone in the dark, back against the wall, pur- they’re curious. Ask them. They’ll give you all sorts of rea-
sued by things you barely understand, things that treat sons. But hardly any of them admit the one thing they all
humans like cattle or insects or breeding stock, chased by have in common, even to themselves: it’s one of the great-
witches who stand above you like cut-price gods...this is est rushes anyone could ever know.
the Vigil. It’s what it means to be a hunter. Hunters do it The members of Ashwood Abbey have never once
because they feel they have to, or because they want to pretended they’re doing it for anything other than kicks.
get revenge for some loss inflicted upon them, or because Since 1855, this cabal of silver-spoon-sucking party ani-
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