Patience. Richard willed inwardly and lifted the
woman’s wrist to examine any progress. Just one puncture
mark remained; a barely discernible hollow beneath soft
new skin. His blood did more than staunch bleeding. Her
flesh, if not her depleted circulatory system had forgotten
he’d bitten and drank from her.
“For the special.” He produced a silver coin.
Flipped it towards her.
She snatched the florin from the air, and raising
her skirts, tucked her earnings into the top of her stocking.
She adjusted her clothing like a starling settling ruffled
feathers, winked at him and left.
Richard loosed the vampire. Walls passed beneath
him as he sprang easily over them, crossing the tiles and
breathless chimneys of two and three-storey buildings so
swiftly, if he was discernible at all, it was as a wrinkle in the
heat haze.
The bare-fisted fight, with its savage perfume of
blood and sweat filled his nose, his head and as the
vampire responded to the stimulus visceral, took the last
of his control.
Aching gums spawned predator’s teeth from his
upper jaw. Strong, sharp opaque talons stretched and
strengthened from soft fingernails and the night-blind dark
human eyes bleached to practical infrared. Homing in on
the hot blood, he dropped off the roof and into the thick
of things.
One fighter, a compact wiry man, his split eyebrow
trickling blood into his eye socket, swung wildly at
Richard’s head. The clumsy attack masked a calculated
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