Page 16 of Her Reborn Mate
There was no time to linger in this alley. The minute Alexis appeared, so did the vampires. Their silhouettes stood jaggedly atop the roof, watching her get out of the car. If they didn’t know where she lived before, they knew now. I had to kill them before they’d get a chance to call for reinforcements.
Once the man and Alexis had gone into the back alley behind the bar, I came out of my hiding spot and assessed the situation. The vampires were not on the roof any longer. But where were they? I craned my head around the corner to see Alexis talking to him.
When the man tried to kiss her, she pushed him back. I heard each word of what she said, and it brought my heart great comfort. She had not allowed him to touch her. Alexis was still mourning for me. There was hope yet.
Before the man could come out of the alley, I immediately hid in my hiding spot and waited for him to leave, all the while keeping an eye on the vampires.
As the man was getting into his car, the vampires appeared from the other end of the street and came up to him. They were talking in whispers that I could not decipher. By the end, the man gave them cigarettes and got into his car. Were they just asking to bum cigarettes from him? That was very unlike them. This situation was all kinds of fishy, and I intended to do something about it.
As the car drove away, the vampires, still smoking their cigarettes, headed into my alley, not knowing that I was waiting for them with two shanks in my hands. There were five of them. I let them pass by me while I tucked myself away behind an industrial air conditioner unit. They didn’t even hear me as they walked past me, talking about how cold it was and how they wished to be back in the cove.
They’d never get to the cove.
I jumped out of the shadows and crept behind the two vampires falling behind. I stuck both shanks into their necks. Before they could fall to the ground, I retrieved the shanks and flung them at the two vampires. The only remaining vampire turned around and hissed at me, baring his fangs. I was ready for that. I picked up the two shanks from the dead vampires’ bodies and slashed at the remaining vampire as he ran toward me. I slit his neck and his torso, drawing an immense amount of blood.
Here they lay, the five conspirators who had sought violence on my mate. And as I stood over them, towering, I could not help but feel my strength return to me. The realization that I was still a force to be reckoned with, even without my werewolf abilities, was an encouraging one.
Knowing that I could not linger in this alley, I cast one look at Alexis’s window and saw her staring. She couldn’t possibly see into the dark alley. It was pitch black here. I leaped back into the darkness and took care of the bodies by dumping them in the trash disposal. There was still a lot of blood in the alley. I could not do anything about that. When the police or whoever was unlucky enough to open the trash disposal would come across the bodies, they’d try to understand what happened here. They’d chalk it up to gang warfare. Hopefully, this would be the end of the matter.
In killing the vampires, I had exhausted my option of hiding in the alley, but now that they were not a threat, I could go back to the roofs.
I stayed up all night, keeping a watchful eye on the bar and the alleys to see if any more vampires would turn up. When they didn’t, I slept at dawn.
***
The other good thing to come out of killing those vampires was the money I robbed from their bodies before I dumped them in the trash. I had more than five hundred dollars in my pockets and the whole city to myself. While making sure that Alexis was safe was my prime designation, I had to sustain myself too.
So, not knowing where any of the best restaurants were, I just took to the streets and walked wherever the roads took me till I came to a diner that looked just like the ones that I had seen in Fiddler’s Green.
Half an hour later, a quarter of the staff at the diner was staring at me from behind the counter with wide eyes. I was ravenous and thus had ordered half a dozen eggs, ten slices of bacon, a whole jug of water, three burgers, and a cup of coffee. I was ravaging all of it quite ravenously until I realized that a lot of people were staring at me. I slowed my roll, ordered a cup of tea and a slice of pie, then just sat there idly as if I had done nothing wrong and drank my tea while I ate my pie.
Now that food and water were in my body, I could think more clearly. The delusions and fears started fading away, and sleep took hold of my body once more. I didn’t know how long I sat there and when I fell asleep, but by the time I woke up, a waitress was loitering around me, poking me with a rolled-up newspaper.
“What is it?”
“You can’t just sit here and fall asleep. This place is for paying customers only.”
“I paid, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but you were asleep for three hours, mister. We didn’t bother you for the first two. Now you gotta leave.”
“Well, in any case, here’s some more money for your troubles,” I said, tossing her fifty dollars. “Cheers.”
“Do you want some coffee to go?”
“That’d be lovely.”
With my coffee in hand, I went back to the alley and saw that there were police at the sight where I had murdered the vampires. Upon nonchalantly joining the crowd that had gathered there, I asked what had happened.
“Some gang war, most probably. It’s the same shit all over this town. People from rival squads killing each other over drugs. These guys were peaking, the police say. Their pockets were filled with meth,” someone standing next to me said.
Well, that was the end of that. I stayed there long enough to see the crime scene being evacuated, the bodies being dragged off in body bags, and the sanitation department cleaning away the blood.
By that time, it was evening, and I was hungering yet again.
But I did not leave. I couldn’t leave Alexis alone in the evening.
I needed a place where I could keep an eye on her and somehow hear whatever was happening in her room. Then it occurred to me how stupidly simple the solution to my problem was.