Chapter 27

The conversation had died after that and we had made it back to the hotel. The night was black as I threw off my dress and pulled on some pajamas. It was strange how confused I was emotionally. Never in my wildest dreams, or worst nightmares, would I have believed I would see Nicholi again. I felt so disoriented with him here and felt a knee jerk reaction to run, which had always served me well. But now I was completely and utterly out of my element. It was true he had decided to trust me, though I had a feeling he was doing things behind my back I did not know about.

My phone lights up and I look at the text, 'So, was dinner ok?'

Jerry, it was well past midnight and I had a feeling he was starting to morph to meet the vampires nightly schedule as I text back that all was well. Brushing my fingers through my hair, I stare up at the stares until I hear a whisper in my mind, 'Dante is dangerous.'

It was like smoke at first until it finally materialized into that smooth voice of the Pureblood who had me so off kilter. I squint and say, 'Stay out of my head. If you want to talk, we can talk. Otherwise leave me be.'

Suddenly my door opens and I jump. Nick stood there in the doorway, will in his suit minus the vest, tye, and jacket. I glare at him and ask in a monotone, 'What do you want to know and why didn't you ask me in the car?'

'I live at night, clanless. If I spend another night in that dull room watching reruns of Friends I will loose my mind,' he says as he comes inside and sit down at the small table with high backed chairs.

There was no point in asking him to leave. Dracul Purebloods always get their way, in one form or another. I sigh and sit down opposite him saying, 'Yes, I know Dante is dangerous. I have history with him.'

'As I expect many vampire do, though I find it interesting that a bitten clanless would fascinate a man so,' he says, his eyes fixed on the stars from my window.

It was agrivating how little he respected me, but he was royality and knew no others but those similar to himself. Finally he looks over at me and says, 'The Night Hunters have already spoken with Dante on this subject and he says he doesn't have dealings with them.'

I nod once, look down at my hands, remembering what happened a little over a hundred years ago, smiling and murmur, 'He I will talk to me.'

'Why might that be?' Nick asks in a sardonic way.

Looking up at him, I answer, 'As I've said, we have history.'

'Besudes that what other steps are you taking. As you said yourself you have two weeks. By Thursday it will be five days and we are still stuck here in Rhode Island. So what have you learned so far?'

'That the Phantasma has a calling card.'

Nick sobers to this and asks in all seriousness, 'What calling card?'

'Your clans have been attacked, didn't they leave on there?'

'Besides bloody remains and destruction there was nothing else.'

I nod, clasp my hands together and say, 'JR said that a few of her men have gone missing and the only thing she found was a calling card of a bloody ace.'

Nicks looks darkened and I felt his power slip a little, his pheremones becoming slightly more pungent as he growls, 'There was a bloody ace at one disaster of a place months ago. I didn't think anything of it, since the room was full of gambling equipment. It didn't seem out of place.'

'Sometimes the most obrious things are those which are overlooked. Has there been any other instince of the bloody ace at any of the times when a clan has been damaged or attacked?'

Nick looks out the window, seeming to contemplate the question before shaking his head and says, 'No, not that I know of. By the time news reached the Royal Clan of the Dracul it was already too late to investigate. The Night Hunters have been trying to find what they can, but maybe they withheld that information to try and smoke out one of the leaders, such as I did when I found you.'

I felt a sour taste in my mouth, licked my lips and say, 'I guess you should have killed him.'

Nick growls in frustration, brushes his hand through his hair and murmurs, 'I didn't realize someone so high up in the organization of the Phantasma would be there. I reacted instinctively.'

It had been stupid on his part. If he hadn't killed ? then he might have gleaned more information. I sit there quietly asking, 'So you didn't pay attention to the smaller clans associated to the Dracul name?'

He shakes his head, lifts a brow and says, 'Why should I? Smaller clans usually are always squabbling amongst themselves. It would be beneath the royal Clans to help or manage them.'

I also knew why he said this. To keep a low count of vampires, these squabbles killed off lower ranked vampire, keeping the population low and maintaining the vampires secrecy from the outside world of humankind. My mind went back to the first time a human saw me for what I was besides my father. It had happened almost 150 years prior. I had been badly injured and taken to the hospital without my consent. I had tried to dissuade the attending from looking at what was a mangled leg from a carriage accident.

I had struggled to prevent him from seeing it, but finally his persistance paid off. He had literally seen my leg healing before his eyes. The look of awe was first, but my hunger from the need to feed made his eyes widen with fear. I had not done anything to him. Simply knocked him unconscious in a split second, dragged myself from the room and left before a nurse saw the Carnage. I hadn't been kind to him and I found out years later he had been wheel chair bound from what I had done. Humans we're fragile in comparison to vampire, but I hadn't realized how much strength had gone behind my punch.

Turning I ask, 'I would think you keep up with the other royal Clans affairs.'

He smirks and says, 'A majority of what I know about what's happening to the other clans I learned while speaking to the late Elric Clan leader that day in the bar.'

I rub at my temples, thinking and murmur, 'I must go to the slums.'

Nike's eyes narrow, his lips thinking as he asks with an iron voice, 'What can you learn there?'

'Unlike you, Royal Dracul, I learned how to survive among beggers, and they have an intricit understanding of the deep darkness, Furlow was a prime example of such.'

Nike didn't look pleased as I stared at him, but finally he nods saying, 'I I won't be of any help in that area. The bitten beggers fear us purebloods.'

'With good reason,' I murmur as I stand, knowing there might be more to learn before we left for Paris.

The air was stale as I walked among the trash heaps and small forts of the homeless. My clothes were tattered and dirtied so I would look like the rest of the forgotten. It had been many years since I had been in such an area. When New York City was young and not an iron and cement jungle.

Slowly I let my pheremones envelope the area, telling those who were human to leave with haste, while alerting the begger phantoms I was here. I knew the special pheremones that allowed them to know I was one of them. As I walk by a dumpster, I raspy voice says, 'I know that smell, you knew Furlow.'

The voice was like a splash of cold water, as I turn to the makeshift tent and see a figure crawl from it's dark depths. He was a small man, coming to my shoulder, with a scraggly beard, and cool exhausted eyes. I nod and say, 'Its been a long time Longsworth.'

The old phantom chuckles and says, 'Same to you Nina.'

It felt like a bit of my past had enveloped me as he stared at me before saying, 'You have stayed safe?'

'I have yet to meet my first Night Hunter,' I murmur, rembering the old greetings of the bitten beggers.

He laughs and says, 'Truly a blast from the past. Please sit by the fire with me.'

He nods to the now abandoned drum pit fire and I walk over to it. As we warm our hands he says, 'You aren't a begger anymore are you Nina.'

'Why do you say that?'

'Too clean.'

I chuckle and then glance at him. He was thinner then I remember, bitten when he was in his sixties as a human, he had always looked gaunt, but now it seemed somehow worse. I ask, 'You aren't feeding enough.'

He nods and says, 'Times are tough for the beggers, many of us have gone missing and few want to bring attention to ourselves. So I have to feed sparingly, and move often.'

'So it was a fluke I found you?'

He nods and I ask, 'How many of the begger bitten are missing?'

'Many, I seem to be the only one of late. I keep letting my pheremones out at each stop, but no one answers, except you. I was surprised when I smelt the old signal. Almost thought my time was up.'

I frown and ask, 'What happened to the others?'

He shakes his head and says, 'They have been taken.'

'By who? The Night Hunters?'

He shakes his head, his long greasy ponytail flopping against his shoulders, beforw he says, 'Ghoul.'

My eyes widen as I stare at him and ask hoarsely, 'H-How?'

He shrugs, a deep frown making his eyes turn into dark hollow wholes in the firelight ash e murmurs, 'I don't know, I have never seen anything like it. They moved like a flock and -amd took some of us. I was well hidden when they came.'

'So you saw this happen?'

He nods taking a small bottle out of his old ragged coat pocket. My eyes laser onto the silver liquid and I put my hand over his shaking one saying, 'Longworth.'

Slowly his eyes meet mine with a disparing look. I let out a sigh and ask, 'You never kicked the habit did you?'

He looks down as if ashamed and my mind goes back to when I first met this deject bitten. I had been with Furlow for about five years and learned quite a bit already when Furlow pulled Longsworth from the mud and slowly brought him back from ghouldom. It had been scary to see pupils and sclera of the same black shade. It was one of the three signs of a turning vampire to a ghoul. It had taken weeks of feeding him and his screams as he detoxed from the Tridium we knew he was on. He had turned out to be a kind man and a better phantom then most. He hunted seldom and quietly. Like me he had seemed to distain hunting humans and I think the Tridium helped him with his guilt. Like myself, he had killed people dear to him, but unlike me, he couldn't handle the guilt. His way was to destroy himself. But why he hadn't let the Night Hunters do so I will never know. Maybe he wished for a slow death. But for him to still be alive after all this time, said a lot about him.

He sighs and says, 'I only take it to take the edge off.'

I shake my head, now understanding why he was more gaunt then I remember. Tridium is much like cocaine in that vampires will loose their interest in food, or the need to hunt. I so wanted to snatch the bottle, but instead I return to the topic at hand, 'How long has this hunting from the ghoul been going on?'

'About three years. We can't tell the Night Hunters because they don't care and want to kill us anyhow. The Purebloods don't care either, even if we told them.'

I let out a huff of frustration, knowing how true this was. Unless the threat was directed at the Pureblood they let everything else rot. I nod and think about the mansion and the ghouled there. Turning to face him, I ask, 'Did...did the ghoul act strangely?'

'if you mean less spuratic, then yes. They seemed to more like a...a flock of birds. I have never seen that. I just remember how during the French revolution, they would eat human, vampire, and ghoul alike. They never worked together, but we're senseless. This was different.'

I look down at the fire, returning to warm my hands and think about this. So what I had seen hadn't been a figment of my imagination. So that meant they had evolved, or something or someone was controlling them. I look at Longsworth as I takes a small sip of the Tridium and shutter. He won't last much longer at this rate and I ask, 'When was the last time you ate. Truly?'

He looks down at the small vile and murmurs, 'About a week or so.'

I pull back my sleeve cuff and offer my arm saying, 'Eat, you need something before you are effected by the loss of blood.'

His eyes slowly move up to my face and he gives me a pitiful smile, 'Thank you Nina, you are too good to me.'

Long ago I had done the same, and I watch as he lowers his head to my wrist. I hadn't eaten much either, but unlike him, I didn't need to. I feel the prickle as he bites down and feel a little bit of myself drain away.

Suddenly he jerks back, gasping and stumbles to the ground. I cry out, 'Longsworth?!'

'You, you have tasted the cup of all evil.'

I freeze, looking at him with confusion as he spits out, blood dripping from his fangs, 'Pureblood!'