afford him enough time to find and kill the trouble twins before he had to be on his way to another town.
Deliberately, he picked a route that led him away from the petrol station where he had worked until the previous night. The gate was locked when he got to it, but since the cemetery was only surrounded by a waist-high wall he had no difficulty leaving it - he vaulted the wall easily and landed lightly on the other side.
A relatively short walk brought him to the road where the majority of the local drug dealers and prostitutes plied their trade. Despite it being early, Julian could see that a few people were already out, conducting ‘business’, as he walked down the street, and he pulled the hood of his jacket up to hide his face, just in case any of them might recognise him – many, most, of them came into the petrol station at least once a night and so knew him pretty well.
“Wanna have some fun?”
The invitation came before he had gone even a quarter of the way down the street, and Julian looked at the prostitute from the shadow of his hood. The drugs most of the women who worked the streets were on gave their features a similarity after a while that made it a little difficult to tell one from another at a casual glance, but after a couple of seconds he saw that it wasn’t who he was looking for. He shook his head and kept moving.
It took Julian very little time to reach the end of the road, without seeing who he was looking for, and he immediately turned to his right to follow that road. He did the same when he got to the end of that road, and in barely half an hour he had completed a full circuit.
“Wanna have some fun?” It was the same girl who had propositioned him before, too out of it from whatever drugs she was on to remember she had already asked him.
He had a strong urge to stop and put the girl out of her misery, more for his own sake than for hers; he had no particular issue with drugs, any more than he had a problem with alcohol, but he did despise people who used either to such an excess that they couldn’t remember speaking to someone half an hour before. Ignoring the urge, because giving in would accomplish little in the short term, and nothing in the longer term, he kept walking; it amused him to think that the girl had no idea how close she had come to losing her life. His amusement was tempered by the thought that the girl probably wouldn’t have cared how closed to death she had been.
His self-control was rewarded moments later when a car pulled up to the curb further down on the other side of the street; the two people he had been hunting for climbed out.
Changing direction, Julian headed straight across the road, taking the shortest route to his targets. He didn’t even allow the few cars that made their way down the road to move him from his course. When he reached the far pavement Julian took the few paces to where the girl was standing.
“Looking fer some fun, mister?” she asked as he approached, only to take a quick step back in surprise when he lifted his head and she saw his face. “Jesus!” The imprecation sprang from her lips before she could stop it.
The man who had exited the car with the prostitute quickly appeared from the shadows he had disappeared into. “What the…” The burly man stepped into the light with one hand under his jacket, clearly ready to produce a weapon of some kind; he stopped abruptly, momentarily rendered speechless, when he saw Julian’s face. “Fuck me!”
“I’d rather not, Mike, you’re not my type,” Julian said with a smile. “If I was going to fuck anyone, it’d be Bella here.”
That comment brought a smile to the girl’s face and she squeezed herself up against him, making sure to squash her breast against his arm where he was certain to feel it. “You can fuck me anytime, Jules, you know that; I won’t even charge you. I don’t charge anyone who can get me wet without touching me.”
“Thanks.” Julian gave her bum a squeeze. “I didn’t come here for a fuck, though,” he told her.
“Then why’re you here?” Mike, Tammy’s pimp and drug dealer, wanted to know. “You after summin to keep you goin’, summin fer the pain? We ‘eard about the trouble twins robbin’ t’ station an’ shootin’ you. You mus’ be on summin pretty good alreddy t’ be out o’ ‘ospital so soon. I got stuck a while back an’ were in there fer a week ‘fore I could get outta bed, weren’t I babe?”
“Uh huh! It were bad; he were white as a ghost and everything. Like ‘ow you look normally, only worse, like how you look now. If you was any paler, I could see right through you; you sure you should be outta hospital? Drugs are good, but we ‘eard you was shot five times, you was killed we ‘eard…” Even as she spoke, Bella rubbed her breast up and down Julian’s arm, trying to get him interested in fucking her.
“It was only three times, and as you can see, I’m still walking and talking,” Julian said. “I’m not here for drugs either; I’m after information, and I think you can give it to me.”
“What’s that?” Mike wanted to know.
“I want to know where I can find the trouble twins.”
“What you wanna know that fer?”
“So I can do to them what you did to the guy that knifed you.” Julian had heard what Mike had done to his attacker, it was common knowledge, though how he had avoided jail wasn’t.
The big man looked down on Julian with something akin to pity, but also with a hint of amusement, mixed with concern. “You really think you have wha’ it takes t’ kill someone?” he asked. “I know you’re tough, there’s no way you’d be outta hospital the day after bein’ shot if you weren’t, and I know you can deal with the trouble you usually get at the station, but killin’ someone’s a whole different game. I don’t think you’ve got it in you. Besides, the trouble twins are crazy motherfuckers; it’s ain’t a good idea to piss ‘em off.
“They already shot you, if you go after ‘em they’ll kill you, then they’ll be after me for telling you where to find ‘em. I don’t need that kind of trouble; it attracts too much attention.”
Julian nodded his head after a moment. “I guess you’re right, I guess I’m just pissed off they shot me. It’s not worth the trouble it’d cause to try and get even, though.” He turned to Bella then. “Why don’t you take me down that alley and take my mind off being shot,” he suggested.
“Shit yeah!” Taking her hand out from under his t-shirt she grabbed his belt and all but dragged him towards the alley. “Back soon babe,” she told her boyfriend/pimp/drug dealer. To Julian she said, “I’m gonna fuck you so good yer not just gonna forget about being shot, yer gonna forget about everything.”
“She’s not kidding; her pussy’ll make you forget anything,” Mike told him. “You get this fuck fer free coz I like you, next one’ll cost you.”
Bella shook her head as she preceded Julian into the alley, walking backwards. “You won’t ever have to pay with me,” she said quietly, making sure her boyfriend wouldn’t hear. “Not when you can do this to me without even touchin’ me.” She took his hand and slipped it up under her skirt and into her panties, where his fingers slid easily into her wet pussy.
Leaving his fingers in her pussy, Bella fumbled with Julian’s belt and zipper in her eagerness to get him inside her. While she did, Julian backed her up against the wall of the alley where he kissed her, moving quickly from her lips to her neck as she moaned in pleasure. It wasn’t until his hand came up to cover her mouth that she realised something was wrong; instinctively, she struggled, not knowing what was about to happen, but certain that she didn’t want it to happen.
Julian didn’t really want to kill Bella, he liked her, but he had to get blood from somewhere, and since he was leaving town he didn’t have the time to hunt around. Slowly, he sank his teeth into her neck as he took his first taste of her blood, aware, in that one taste, of the drugs she had taken that day. Pulling his head back, he allowed the blood to run down her neck. “Pity,” he remarked, unmoved by either the fear or the lack of comprehension he saw in her eyes; with a quick jerk of the hand he had clamped over her mouth he snapped her neck.
He left the body to fall to the g
round in a heap, one blood-coated breast exposed, and did his trousers up so he could leave the alley. Julian grabbed Mike’s arm as the drug dealer turned towards the sound of approaching footsteps and swung him round. When he let him go, he sent him stumbling up the alley, where he tripped over Bella’s body and fell to the ground.
Mike sprang to his feet, a large knife appearing in his hand as though by magic. “What the…” he started to say, looking from the body at his feet to Julian. When he realised the man he had thought of as a friend was closer than he should have been he stopped speaking and lunged with the knife.
Julian twisted away from the blade that was thrust at his belly and grabbed Mike’s wrist. Almost casually he gave a sharp twist that snapped the wrist with an audible crack and pointed the blade at the belly of its owner, he then plunged it into Mike’s stomach, burying it up to the handle as he pushed the drug dealer back against the wall where he had kissed Bella just a minute or so before.
“I think,” the vampire hissed the words almost directly into Mike’s ear. “this establishes that I do have what it takes to kill someone, and that I’m the one you should be afraid of, not the trouble twins. Now, why don’t you tell me where I can find them.”
“Go fuck yourself, you’re fucking nuts, you know