The Drinker of Blood

Chapter Six

I was through with fucking around. The three men were deep in conversation, and none seemed to be paying attention to their surroundings. So I walked up to them.

"Renard, what the fuck do you want?"

A look of shock flashed across the man's face. Neither of the men with him were blood drinkers, and there was something uniform about all such creatures. The more that lackeys knew about us and about what we were, the more they feared us.

The two men with Renard looked at me with faces of abject terror, as two men might who ran across a wild tiger on a city street.

No wonder Phil hadn't been searching too hard for me.

There were three long seconds of silence. Renard seemed at a loss, and much to my relief none of the men looked in the direction of the restaurant at which Freya waited.

"Marion was a friend of mine," the man finally said with more bravado than I would have given him credit for.

"Marion didn't have any friends, you gullible halfwit." The dead man had surrounded himself with the young and the naïve, those ripe for exploitation. Even among his blood drinking comrades that was true. "Is this something you dreamed up on your own, or did Whitefarrow send you?"

A look of defiance leapt to the man's face. "I understand you've made some new friends in town."

I hit the fool in the throat as hard as I could. Like I said, young and naïve. Only a full-on idiot would have threatened me in that way. Poor, dumb Renard dropped to the ground, a sickly wheezing arising from him.

His posse wasn't so robust. One just flat-out ran, the other groped under is shirt before hauling out a pistol. I grabbed the man's wrist and twisted until it broke. When the pistol rattled to the ground, I kicked it to the curb.

"Get the fuck out of here," I told the man before taking a quick look around. There weren't too many people on the street, and no one seemed to have taken special notice of a fight that was over in less than a second.

I toed the fallen pistol into a storm drain. Guns didn't really frighten me. You'd be amazed the injuries from which I've recovered. But the right bullet at the right time could kill me, and someone seeing a pistol on the ground might be inclined to call the police.

I knelt beside Renard, my right hand around the back of his neck in a comforting gesture. "You alright buddy? Have a little too much to drink?" I said aloud for the benefit of any passersby.

He was still wheezing, but don't think for a second the blow was a serious one. The man would be up and around in 20 or 30 minutes, no worse for wear.

When I spoke to him in earnest, I spoke quietly with a firm but steady squeeze on the back of his neck.

"What year were you born?"

"What?" he croaked.

"What year were you born?"

"F ... fifty-five. Nineteen fifty-five." Like I said, Marion surrounded himself with young ones.

"You're a young'un," I said. "Still have family alive? Mom, dad? Brothers, sisters? ... Kids?"

The man gave me a frightened look, and I squeezed a bit harder. I'd needed to remind him that he wasn't in a position to threaten anyone's loved ones.

"My fight isn't with you," I said. "I'm sorry about your friend. But he sided with a man who intends me great harm." Then I squeezed a little harder. I'm wicked strong, even for one of my kind. "I'm going to let you walk away, scot-free. Don't ever come at me again. If I see or smell anymore of your lapdogs, I'm gonna come do you like I did your boy."