Good Lord.
"Assuming you can be taken seriously about any of this, you're talking about thousands of years of carnage." A chill spread over her limbs when he said nothing to deny it. "Do they they... do you - God, I can't believe I'm having this conversation. Do vampires feed on any living thing, like each other maybe, or are we humans the main course?"
Lucan's expression was grave. "Human blood alone contains the specific combinations of nutrients we need in order to survive."
"How often?"
"We must feed every few days, a week sometimes. More is required if we are injured and need strength to heal from wounds."
"And you... kill when you feed?"
"Not always, seldom, in fact. Most of the race feeds from willing human Hosts."
"People actually volunteer to let you torture them?" she asked, incredulous.
"There is no torture involved, unless we will it. When a human is relaxed, the bite of a vampire can be very pleasurable. When it's over, the Host recalls nothing because we leave no memory of ourselves behind."
"But you do kill sometimes," she said, finding it hard not to sound accusing.
"At times, it is necessary to take a life. The Breed shares an oath never to prey on the innocent or infirm."
She scoffed. "How noble of you."
"It is noble, Gabrielle. If we wanted to - if we gave ourselves over to that part of us that is still the warring conqueror of our forebears, we could enslave all of mankind. We could be kings, with every human existing only to feed and amuse us. That very idea is at the core of a long, deadly battle between my kind and our enemy brothers, the Rogues. You saw some of them yourself, that night outside the dance club."
"You were there?"
As soon as she said it, she knew he had been. She recalled the striking face and sunglass-shaded eyes that had watched her through the crowd. She'd felt a connection to him even then, in that brief glance that had seemed to reach out to her through the smoke and darkness of the club.
"I'd been tracking that group of Rogues for about an hour," Lucan said, "watching for the prime opportunity to move in and take them out."
"There were six of them," she remembered vividly, seeing in her mind the half-dozen terrible faces, their glowing, feral eyes and snapping fangs. "You were going to confront them by yourself?"
His shrug seemed to say that it was not unusual odds, him against many. "I had some help that night - you and your cell phone camera. The flash surprised them, gave me the chance to strike."
"You killed them?"
"All but one. I'll get him, too."
Looking at his fierce expression, Gabrielle had no doubt that he would. "The cops sent a squad car out to the club after I reported the killing. They didn't find anything. No evidence at all."
"I made sure they wouldn't."
"You made me look like a fool. The police insisted I was making all of it up."
"Better that, than tipping them off to the very real battles that have been taking place on human streets for centuries. Can you imagine the wide-scale panic if substantiated reports of vampire attacks were to start making news around the world?"
"Is that what's happening? These kinds of killings are going on all the time, everywhere?"
"More and more, lately. The Rogues are a faction of blood addicts that care only about their next fix. At least, that had been their mode until very recently. Something's going on now. They're preparing. Becoming organized. They've never been more dangerous than they are now."
"And thanks to the pictures I took outside that club, these Rogue vampires are coming after me."
"The incident you witnessed brought you to their attention, no doubt, and any human makes good sport for them. But it is the other pictures you've taken that have likely put you in the most jeopardy."
"What other pictures?"
"That one."
He indicated a framed photograph hanging on the wall of her living room. It was an exterior shot of an old warehouse in one of the sketchier parts of town.
"What made you decide to photograph that building?"
"I don't know, exactly," she said, not even sure why she had decided to frame the picture. Just looking at it now gave her a little chill down her spine. "I never would have set foot in that part of town, but I remember I'd taken a wrong turn that night and ended up lost. Something just drew my eye to the warehouse - nothing I can really explain. I was nervous as hell to be there, but I couldn't leave without taking a few shots of the place."
Lucan's voice was gravely serious. "I, along with several other Breed warriors who work with me, raided that location a month and a half ago. It was a Rogue lair, housing fifteen of our enemies."
Gabrielle gaped at him. "There are vampires living in that building?"
"Not anymore." He strode past her to the kitchen table, where a few other shots lay, including some from the abandoned asylum, taken just a couple of days ago. He picked up one of the photographs and held it out to her. "We've been surveilling this location for weeks. We have reason to believe it might be one of the largest colonies of Rogues in New England."
"Oh, my God." Gabrielle stared at the image of the asylum, a slight tremble in her fingers as she set it back down on the table. "When I took these pictures the other morning, a man found me there. He chased me off the property. You don't think he was - "
Lucan shook his head. "Minion, not a vampire, if you saw him after dawn. Sunlight is poison to us. That much of the old folklore is true. Our skin burns quickly, like yours would if you held it under a very powerful magnifying glass at the height of morning."