She couldn’t believe she was in her current situation. What was the old saying? No good deed went unpunished?
Normally, her runs to the city’s parks, where the homeless and poor spent their days, were over and she was safely back in her own home well before sunset. But today, when she’d returned to the parking area where she’d left her car near Battery Park, it was gone. Where once the realization of a stolen car might have brought about anger and frustration, now it was cause for pure and utter terror. When a call to her best friend, Mindy, went unanswered and her phone then chose that moment to die, Olivia had started running and trying to find a building where she could spend the night.
If only she’d noticed her car had been stolen before the last city bus of the day had made its stop at Battery Park, picking up the homeless to transport them to whatever shelters had space. A night on the floor of a shelter would have at least guaranteed she’d live to see tomorrow.
Considering how many people had died during the virus outbreak, it was a sin there were even homeless people anymore. Even with the increasing immigration from other hard-hit parts of the world, there were more than enough apartments and even empty office space to hold the homeless now, not to mention the hotel rooms. But despite everything that had passed during the past two years, greed still reigned supreme in the hearts of many. They banked on fear of the night ensuring their survival in this dark descendant of what New York had been such a short time ago.
And with society on the edge of disorder, with thugs and gangs posing almost as much danger as the vampires, there was plenty of fear to go around.
Movement out of the corner of her eye caused her to gasp as she jogged down yet another stoop. But it was only a gray-and-black tabby cat. He stopped and stared at her for a moment before continuing on his way. Unlike her and the rest of the human population, he had no more worries than he’d had before the pandemic. Unless he’d lost his owners and thus his fancy cat food, and really that was nothing in the greater scheme of things. At least the disease hadn’t jumped species, and vampires couldn’t feed from any living creatures other than humans.
Lucky us.
It was full-on twilight now. Not even the highest floors of the surrounding buildings or the distant skyscrapers were bathed in sunlight. Olivia imagined an increased ticking in her head, counting down the minutes she had to live. A part of her whispered to just accept her fate, to take a seat on someone’s cold concrete steps and wait for the inevitable. Why spend the last moments of her life engaged in fruitless, panicked flight?
But that wasn’t who she was. She’d survived the world’s worst pandemic when so many hadn’t. She owed it to whomever or whatever had saved her from that awful death, owed it to herself and the people she helped each day, to survive yet again. Owed it to Jeremy and all the good the world lost when he’d succumbed to the unstoppable disease.
So she kept moving, kept knocking on doors, would have considered breaking out a window and forcing her way inside if all the windows weren’t barred. She doubted any inhabited lower-floor residence in Manhattan was without those bars. The irony was that they weren’t there to protect the residents from vampires, since vampires couldn’t enter any human-owned building without being invited. No, the bars were there to prevent people like her—those seeking sanctuary—or the city’s criminal element from committing home invasions. Sadly, when the world came down to pure survival, the veneer of civility and kindness too easily slipped away. Many had died at the hands of the frantic and the criminal.
A gust of wind from between two buildings slapped against her. She pulled her jacket closer around her body and continued scanning the buildings she passed, looking for what she wouldn’t find—a way inside, a portal to safety for another night.
One more day of living and breathing.
The moment the deadly sun slipped to bed below the horizon, Campbell Raines signaled for his V Force team to load up. Time to go to work patrolling the dark streets of New York to make sure the vamp population was behaving itself.
Colin O’Shea slid into the driver’s seat of the black armored vehicle, much as he’d done in fire engines prior to his turning. Travis Wright took shotgun as he always did, a victim of motion sickness if he rode in the back despite being immortal. Campbell climbed into the back with Sophia Tanis, Kaja Belyakova, Len McBride and Billy McGoin.
“Where to?” Colin asked as he put the truck in gear.
“Head down to the Financial District. We got a tip that the black market has gotten more active in that area,” Campbell said.
“Imagine that, bloodsuckers on Wall Street,” Len said as he adjusted the sharp stakes and blessed handcuffs at his waist.
Travis, a former stockbroker, flipped him the bird from the front, drawing a deep laugh from Len.
Colin left their underground garage near Central Park and headed toward their first destination of the evening. No matter how long he’d been a member of the undead, Campbell still chafed at being able to move about freely only at night. Although the idea of going up in a sizzling ball of flame didn’t hold a whole lot of appeal either.
As they moved down Broadway, Campbell eyed the vamps lined up outside the Times Square blood bank, one of several scattered throughout the city. It was here that humans gave blood during the day to feed the hungry vampires at night. It gave them a false sense that they were making the night marginally safer for humanity, though most of them weren’t stupid enough to test it. But no matter how much they gave from their veins, the night was lost to them. He doubted they’d ever be able to reclaim it, even after generations of births helped to repopulate the planet. For now, too few humans meant too many hungry vampires.
That was the real reason the blood banks had been established—to curtail panic in the vampire community and protect the remaining food supply.
He swallowed against his own mounting thirst. He’d gone to the blood bank the night before, but as usual the AB-negative was in short supply. He’d given his allowance to a young vampire who’d been already cramping over from thirst. She’d broken his heart when he’d seen her, not more than fifteen at her turning. Her human life had been taken before it had even really started.
As their truck rolled by the blood bank, Campbell didn’t see or sense anything wrong, but he did catch the eye of a tall beefy vampire who didn’t disguise his hatred of the V Force. No doubt this guy had been a thug in life and had brought his lawbreaking ways and contempt of law enforcement into life after death.
“We have a fan,” Colin said, picking up on the guy’s pissed-off vibe. “I’m guessing he’s not looking forward to the bagged stuff.”
That was nothing new. Even Souled vampires such as his team had to admit fresh blood tasted better. They just weren’t willing to risk tapping into a pumping vein to get it. In addition to the practice now being illegal, they ran the risk of being overtaken by bloodlust and killing someone. And they knew better than anyone what happened to vampires who killed humans. V Force took them out. As odd as it seemed, even immortals could die.
He made a mental note to stop by the bank himself later to see if they’d restocked the AB-negative supply. It’d been seven days since he’d fed, and that was the max before a vampire tipped over into the danger zone. Just another of the odd quirks of his species. He shook his head slightly. Even after all the time that had passed since his turning, it was still surreal to think that he’d actually changed species that night. It was like a bad late-night horror movie.