Free Falling from the Light (The Night Runner Series Book 3) by Regan Summers Page B

artist?”
    “Vesta. One of Bronson’s soldiers.”
    “So how are things going with…” I couldn’t quite say “Richard Abel.” Okay, I could. But I didn’t want to.
    Mal spread his hands. “You tell me.”
    Dates, most of them ranges. Addresses, some with accompanying images captured in pencil and charcoal, others with short descriptions. Names, also with date ranges in addition to what looked like running medical notes.
    “What’re those?” I asked, my stomach turning.
    “Feeders. The only blood bagged for feeding is on the reservations down here, and he’s stayed off the radar. Didn’t steal, didn’t mail order.”
    “Might not have known where he’d be when it arrived.”
    “He had one feeder at a time.” Mal slid a couple of pages toward me and I felt his gaze linger when I started to read the statements, made in hospitals or to the police. “Approached them out of the shadows, glamoured them. He didn’t drink directly, but made them cut and bottle it. Then he’d turn them loose and grab someone new. He selected them for their age and relative health. Moved on every ten days no matter what shape they were in.
    “So he didn’t want the responsibility of thralls. Doesn’t sound like he had any use for the people he’d snatched other than blood.” Ridiculously, that was a relief, that he only wanted their blood. “The last name is almost three months ago. You have locations up until a month ago. What happened then?”
    Mal shrugged. “He might have stored enough up to tide him over.”
    Or he’d stopped turning them loose. I shuddered. “You talked to these people?”
    “They were neglected. Heat. Exposure. Dehydration. Some of the locations didn’t have utilities. Basically he ignored them. Sometimes they didn’t see him for days.”
    “There was no…” I fumbled. I felt like I was getting a headache. They were all young, male and female, mostly street kids. Vulnerable. Vampires had saved my life – the courier job meant money which meant security. But these sketches could have been me, at a different time, in a different place.
    “No physical abuse other than the cutting,” Malcolm confirmed. “He’s not a recreational sadist, and our information on him shows him to be disinclined to sex. About half of our population doesn’t engage at all.”
    His attention was almost tangible, his power swirling around me, soothing even though he was anxious. I gave him a grimly reassuring smile. I could handle this if it meant stopping Abel.
    “These are the locations we’ve confirmed,” Mal said. “Some of the humans were able to backtrack to the places he held them. In these he was sighted by or met with vampires.” He tapped at addresses written in red, his finger lingering on one. I checked the date. My lip curled.
    Abel had been in Los Angeles when he’d sent humans to attack me in Hawaii, back when he’d considered me a flag draped off of Bronson’s castle or whatever. Back when he’d had some hope for his side winning against the Master and was still pulling strings.
    After that, he’d swung through Arizona and New Mexico, back again to California where he’d meandered along I-5. Even with this many human reports of illicit vampire activity, the reports were spread out, with fuzzy descriptions. When he’d wanted to, or maybe when he’d remembered, he’d forced them to forget his image. How many other vampires operated like that, outside the rules, drifting through an oblivious human population?
    Until his location had been lost, he’d spent almost two months in Arizona. No vampire confirmations, and no more unwilling feeders.
    “How do you know?” I asked, flipping through sketches of run-down homes and boarded-up commercial buildings. Abel wasn’t one for luxury, but he hadn’t gone far enough underground that he’d hidden himself. Rooms empty except for a single chair, a single bed, he gave the impression of a soldier or a monk. He was neither, not if power drove