Chapter 64 64

Chapter 64 64


I followed Raven’s gaze.  
The hallway was empty.  
Only the wall lamps flickered softly, casting a yellowish light across the concrete floor, cracked with age. From the main room I could still hear the pounding of music, but in the back of the club, that sound turned into a distant echo, as if it came from another world.  

I turned back to Raven.  
“How long has this been going on?”  

Raven didn’t answer right away. He walked to the wooden shelf behind the counter, grabbed a bottle of mineral water, and tossed it to me. I caught it with one hand.  

“Drink.”  
“I’m not thirsty.”  
“I know.”  
His tone stayed calm.  
“It’s so you look human if the police come back.”  

I opened the bottle without arguing. The water ran down my throat, even though my vampire body gained almost nothing from it.  

“I’m asking when all of this started.”  
Raven leaned his hip against the table.  
“The first victim was found six days ago.”  
He held up one finger.  
“Then two days later, the second victim showed up.”  
A second finger went up.  
“This morning, the third.”  

I frowned.  
“They were all human?”  
“Yes.”  
“Bitten?”  
“That’s what’s strange.”  
Raven’s gaze turned serious.  
“There were no bite marks.”  

I went quiet.  
“That’s impossible.”  
“That’s what I thought too.”  
He picked up a newspaper from the table and opened it to the middle page.  

A victim’s photo took up almost half the page.  
The police had blacked out the face, but the neck was still visible.  
No two small punctures.  
No tearing.  
No wound a vampire would normally leave behind.  
Almost like…  
The blood had simply vanished from inside their bodies.  

A chill ran down the back of my neck.  
“I’ve never seen anything like this.”  
“Neither have I.”  
Raven folded the paper again.  
“And that’s why I’m starting not to like it.”  

He rarely sounded worried.  
It was his calmness all this time that made everyone respect him.  
If Raven said he didn’t like a situation, then things were far from normal.  

Before I could say anything, the back door suddenly opened.  
A red-haired woman rushed in.  
She was breathless.  
Her face was pale.  

“Raven.”  
Her voice trembled.  
“What is it?”  
“Leon’s here.”  

Raven exhaled sharply.  
“Have him come in.”  
The woman shook her head quickly.  
“He can’t walk.”  

Raven and I exchanged a look.  
Without a word, we headed out to the back hallway.  

The night air hit my face immediately.  
An old car was parked by the club’s service entrance.  
Two men were helping someone out of the back seat.  

The moment the man’s body caught the streetlight, I stopped walking.  
Leon.  
I knew him.  
He was one of the traveling vampires who sometimes came to Raven to buy synthetic blood.  
He was tall.  
Always talked a lot.  

But tonight…  
He barely looked like himself.  
His face was ashen.  
His lips were blue.  
The white shirt he wore was stained with dried blood.  

“God.”  
One of Raven’s staff hurried to open the door wider.  
“What happened?”  
Leon tried to stand on his own, but both knees gave out.  
“I…”  
His breathing was heavy.  
“I was attacked.”  

I stepped closer.  
“Can I see?”  
Leon nodded weakly.  
With trembling hands, he opened the collar of his shirt.  

There was no big wound.  
Just a thin scratch running from below his ear to his collarbone.  
But from that tiny cut… 
I smelled something.  
Not blood.  
An unfamiliar scent I’d never encountered before.  

It was old.  
Very old.  
As if it came from something that had been sleeping for hundreds of years.  

“You recognize the scent?”  
Raven’s voice was low beside me.  
I shook my head.  
“No.”  
And that’s what scared me more.  

In my life I’d met vampires from almost every major clan.  
Bloodfang.  
Crimsonveil.  
Ashmoor.  
Noctis.  
Silver Hollow.  
Each one had a different blood scent.  
But this one…  
It was completely foreign.  

Leon closed his eyes for a moment before speaking again.  
“I was hunting near the docks.”  
His voice came in broken pieces.  
“Suddenly someone was standing on top of a warehouse roof.”  
I held my breath.  
“A man?”  
“I don’t know.”  
Leon shook his head slowly.  
“I only saw a shadow.”  
He swallowed hard.  
“Then he…”  
Leon’s body shuddered.  
“…vanished.”  

“Vanished?”  
“Not running.”  
His eyes went distant, like he was reliving it.  
“Not jumping.”  
“He…”  
Leon clenched both fists.  
“It was like he disappeared.”  

No one spoke.  
I could hear the old clock ticking inside the club.  
I could hear cars passing at the end of the street.  
I could even hear every person’s breathing around us.  
But no one broke the silence.  

Because we were all thinking the same thing.  
If the thing that attacked Leon wasn’t human…  
And wasn’t a normal vampire either…  
Then what exactly was roaming this city?  

Raven finally lifted his face.  
His eyes swept over everyone gathered behind the club before stopping on me.  
“Ely.”  
I looked at him.  
“Starting tonight.”  
He spoke slowly, but there wasn’t a trace of doubt in his voice.  
“Don’t go home alone.”  

  

Leon was finally brought into the small treatment room behind the storage warehouse. Two of Raven’s staff helped him walk slowly while Raven and I followed behind.  

The room wasn’t any bigger than the room I shared with Dahlia.  
An iron bed stood in the corner. An old medicine cabinet covered one wall, filled with glass bottles, bags of synthetic blood, sedatives made for vampires, and various remedies used to speed up healing.  

Leon sat down on the edge of the bed with difficulty. His breathing was still uneven.  

Raven picked up a pair of leather gloves from the table.  
“Let me see the wound.”  
Leon nodded faintly.  

When Raven opened his collar wider, I studied the thin scratch on his neck again.  
The longer I looked, the stranger it seemed.  
The wound was too small.  
Not deep enough to make a vampire lose this much strength.  
A vampire’s body doesn’t weaken from a cut like that.  
Especially Leon. He wasn’t a young vampire. He had to be over two centuries old.  
And yet his face was now nearly paper white.  
As if something had drained the life out of him from the inside.  

“What did you feel after you were attacked?”  
Leon closed his eyes briefly before answering.  
“At first, nothing.”  
His voice was hoarse.  
“I just felt cold.”  
He took a long breath.  
“Then… my strength felt like it was being pulled out.”  

I looked up.  
“Pulled out?”  
“Not my blood.”  
Leon shook his head slowly.  
“More like…”  
He seemed to struggle for the word.  
“…its essence.”  

The room fell silent again.  
Raven and I exchanged a glance.  

The essence of blood.  
That term was almost never used except in ancient rituals.  
Even in Crimsonveil, I’d only heard it a few times from the elders.  

Father once said that vampire blood wasn’t just fluid running through the body.  
It was a vessel for the soul.  
The older a vampire was, the stronger the essence stored in their blood.  
If someone could absorb that essence…  
They wouldn’t just steal strength.  
They’d steal part of a life.  

Raven slowly took off his gloves.  
His expression grew darker.  
“Did you see your attacker’s face?”  
Leon shook his head.  
“No.”  
“How tall was he?”  
“I’m not sure.”  
“Man or woman?”  
“I…”  
Leon clenched his fists.  
“I’m not even sure it was actually walking.”  

A chill crawled down my spine.  
“What do you mean?”  
Leon opened his eyes. His pupils were slightly dilated.  
“The shadow was on top of the warehouse.”  
He stared at the ceiling as if seeing it again.  
“I blinked.”  
“When I opened my eyes…”  
“The figure was already standing right in front of me.”  

No sound.  
No footsteps.  
No rush of air.  
As if the space between them had folded.  

“That’s impossible,” one of Raven’s staff muttered.  
Leon gave a faint laugh.  
“I wish it were.”  
The laugh cut off almost immediately.  
“I didn’t even get a chance to fight back.”  
He lowered his head.  
“His hand just touched my neck.”  
Leon lifted his own fingers and touched the thin wound with his nail.  
“Then my whole body froze.”  
“Even my vampire hunger…”  
He swallowed.  
“…disappeared.”  

That last sentence made me look at him more closely.  
Disappeared.  
A vampire’s hunting instinct never truly disappears.  
It can be suppressed.  
It can be controlled.  
But it never vanishes.  

If what Leon said was true…  
Then this thing wasn’t just attacking his body.  
It had touched the core of what made him a vampire.  

Raven broke the silence.  
“Rest tonight.”  
“I can’t.”  
Leon shook his head immediately.  
“If I stop moving…”  
He took a shaky breath.  
“…I’m afraid he’ll find me again.”  

Raven’s gaze sharpened.  
“Who?”  
Leon went quiet.  
Then he slowly lifted his face.  
“I feel like…”  
His voice dropped lower.  
“…he’s looking for something.”  
“Not hunting.”  
“Not killing.”  
“Just…”  
He gripped the thin blanket under his hands.  
“…searching.”  

My chest tightened.  
Searching for what?  
Or…  
searching for whom?  

The question hadn’t even left my lips when the sound of the club’s front door burst open.  
One of the guards ran in.  
His face was pale.  

“Raven.”  
The man hadn’t even caught his breath yet.  
“Is it the police again?”  
Raven asked flatly.  
The guard shook his head fast.  
“No.”  
“Then who?”  
“It’s an envoy from the Night Council.”  

The room froze.  
I’d never seen Raven’s expression change that fast.  
His jaw tightened.  
His gaze turned cold.  

The Night Council.  
I hadn’t heard that name in a long time.  
To humans, they were just a legend among underground vampire circles.  
A group of independent elders who kept balance in the territory without siding with Bloodfang, Crimsonveil, or any of the other major clans.  
They only stepped in when something threatened the entire vampire race.  

Raven slowly turned to me.  
His look was brief, but enough to make me understand one thing.  
If the Night Council was sending an envoy to this city…  
Then what was happening was far bigger than three human bodies found drained of blood.  

And the bad feeling that had been bothering me all night came back.  
Maybe…  
for the first time…  
Alaric was no longer the biggest threat I had to avoid.