Free Blood of Gold by Duncan McGeary Page A

had probably been days since they’d actually seen a vampire. They weren’t really expecting to find one; they were just reliving the glory of previous nights of hunting. When one of the young men opened the closet door, his eyes weren’t even focused. They were already moving away, on to the next thing. Then his head snapped back in a double take.
    It was too late.
    Feller fired his FBI-supplied Glock twice, the silencer muffling the shots. The kid fell limply to the floor, folding almost without a sound. One of his friends called out tentatively, “Sergi?” Feller fired in the direction of the voice, heard a thud, then walked out of the closet into the middle of the room. Only one of the remaining youths had a gun, and Feller fired into his head.
    It was down to three opponents, the number he preferred to deal with.
    He was on the first kid before any of the three could move, using his claws to rip into his neck. He left his victim standing, blood spurting out into the room, not yet aware he was dead.
    One of the surviving hunters attacked Feller with a big Bowie knife. He almost caught the vampire by surprise with an overhand blow, but then the kid slipped on the blood-soaked floor and slid into Feller’s grasp. Reaching down, Feller took hold of his head and twisted it. The hunter’s neck snapped, but Feller kept twisting until his head came off. He rolled it toward the last hunter.
    The lone survivor was running, as humans always did. Feller caught him at the top of the steps, bit into his neck and drank deep. This was the real prize: the warm red blood of a still-living human. When he was done, he’d go back and feast on the dead, but nothing could match the sheer exhilaration he felt at sucking the adrenalized blood of a terrorized teenager.
    “Well done,” he heard a voice say.
    Feller dropped the dead guy and reached for his gun.
    “No need for that,” the voice admonished. Feller used his sharp night vision to scan the stairs, the hallways, the room behind him. There was nothing there. No, wait. There was a shadow, darkness where there should have been clarity. Feller could see into the darkest shadows, but he couldn’t penetrate this void.
    A huge vampire walked out of the shadow; that is, he became visible, but the darkness accompanied him. His voice was low and neutral, yet not quite masculine. It was a voice that seemed to be made of many voices.
    “What do you want?” Feller asked. He raised his Glock and considered firing. It wouldn’t kill the other vampire, but it might slow him down. Feller didn’t care that this new opponent was one of his own kind. He felt nothing toward other vampires and suspected they felt nothing toward him.
    The hulking vampire gave him a big grin, or at least appeared to be trying to. It was a rictus, a death mask, and Feller, who thought he’d seen everything, felt a chill.
    “My name is Kelton. I have been granted powers that most vampires don’t possess.”
    “Good for you,” Feller said. “So what?”
    “If you follow me, I will give you the power to walk in sunlight,” Kelton said.
    Feller lowered his gun. This was what made being a vampire dangerous: humans merely needed to uncover them, just draw back the curtains, overturn the rock, and they would win, with all the daylight hours at their command. At night, the fight was equal, but unless vampires had time to prepare for the morning, they were always going to be vulnerable.
    Even Feller, the former vampire hunter who knew all the tricks.
    “You can do that?” he asked.
    “Yes… but you must descend into a deeper darkness than ever you have known, from which there will be no return.”
    “Let’s do it,” Feller laughed. “I have no desire to return to what I was.” He holstered his gun and opened his arms.
    Moving with blinding speed, the other vampire scooped him up before he was quite ready, and Feller felt his neck being sliced by huge fangs. As a cold lassitude swept through his blood, he