Chapter 9

Morgan started connecting with the wire services and her pictures were selling. She noted that a new entertainment news website based in downtown Los Angeles called Buzzwire had made inquiries into a few of her shots of local celebs and some news events. They offered her a permanent contract but she would have to give up her freelancing. It was tempting since it was exactly where she intended to be, in L.A. But she was not quite ready to relocate and certainly not ready to give up her freedom.

For the plans were still coming together: she had to recruit someone who resembled herself and put that someone together with her newest recruit, Hank Mattola. Cynthia did the honors of turning him and he seemed very eager to escape death by a very painful pancreatic cancer. Still she hoped Cynthia could control the guy. Too bad it had taken so long to find him as he was still in the hunger frenzy stage. And as any vamp will tell you, controlling a newbie was not easy. So she'll have to wait it out and make sure everything was in place.

She had even gone out there and scoped out the area being careful not to be seen. Wearing a red wig and big sunglasses, she had acted like a tourist. She had even taken some of those red bus tours, just to reacquaint herself with a city she wouldn't have recognized. It was only 26 years ago she had left, but a completely modern city had risen up. And the traffic! Horrible, agonizingly slow grid lock. How do humans stand this? Why don't they do something about it?

Morgan laughed. I'm human. Why don't I do something about it? Not her problem and besides, once she was vampire again, human deaths from pollution, smoking and especially car accidents were nature's way of helping the vampires to cull the population. For there were surely way too many humans in one small area of the planet; this was almost as bad as Calcutta. Worse in some ways.

Still Los Angeles had its own special allure. And being human, seeing it through the lens of the camera, she found beauty.

And once she had Mick back, this City and the world awaited them!