Gavin snapped awake, and the dream faded. The bedroom was dark and silent as expected, but it hadn’t been a noise that woke him. The sun, the ever present guardian of the day, had slipped below the horizon releasing him and his kind from its tyranny. He sat up and his senses reached beyond the room, the corridor, the building and he was satisfied that all was well. His people, his neighbours in the other apartments, were safe and happy. They were watching the vid in most cases. He could feel the soporific effect the shows had on them in the slow pulsing of their heart’s blood.

He cocked his head and smiled as he felt the newlywed couple in the apartment at the end of the hall consummate their love once again. He breathed in the energy they exuded and felt revitalised—their love was strong. William was a lucky man. Marcia was very beautiful and very much in love with him. Marcia and William were friends as neighbours were, not close, but friendly. Marcia liked him. She smiled when she spoke with him, but that’s all it was. He knew the difference. He could feel it as he could feel the air on his skin. There was no one but William for her—as it should be.

He rose from his hard bed and padded into the bathroom for a shower. The cold water pummelled him and washed away the dreams that seemed increasingly to come upon him as the years rolled by.

Six hundred years and more. Where did the time go?

Garvan Lochlain had been his name once, but now he was Gavin Lochlin. Not much of an alias as such things go, but then no one still living knew his real name, so why worry? He smiled and shampooed his hair. When he was done with his ablutions, he dressed in good quality slacks and caramel coloured polo-neck sweater. He smoothed the wool over his chest. He liked the feel of it. A friend had told him long ago that the colour suited his complexion. Neckties were a bane to him as cravats had been before them. He much preferred casual dress. Though he did miss the courtesy of those long ago days, he would never miss their styles.

He snorted at his musings. This was what came of having nothing to do. Musing on the significance of no longer wearing neckties—by the Gods, how had he fallen so low?

“Stupid question,” he muttered in irritation.

He well knew why he was here, who had betrayed him to make it happen, and why he did it.

“For love of you...”

Gavin spun, but he knew there would be no one there. Charles was long gone to dust and cobwebs. He was alive now, only in his memories.

“For love of me, my old friend?” Gavin sighed as he opened the balcony windows and stepped out. “If he had truly loved me, he would have let me die.”

The air was foul with the pollution he had come to accept over the years, though the elves had considerably improved matters with the introduction of hydrox over gasoline, it would take many years yet for the atmosphere to recover fully. Pollution or not, it refreshed him. Air of any description was a luxury few corpses could indulge in, and he was, undeniably, a corpse. Six hundred years dead. Six hundred years of yearning for what was lost. How many more before the long sleep took him?

He stepped out upon the balcony to survey the city. The sound of sirens floated up to him as a patrol car sped to the scene of some crime. He sniffed the air. He smelled smoke on the wind. Perhaps it was speeding to join the fire truck that was even now making its way through traffic. A dog barked in the darkness, and another answered him. He smiled as a memory surfaced of a young carefree lord riding on the hunt with his faithful hounds. That was long ago—before the curse and before his exile to Earth.

A scream made him tense, but it was nothing—just a group of street toughs fooling around. His eyes narrowed as they came toward his building. They stopped opposite the lobby doors, and he wondered if they would dare enter his House, but no, they moved on. He watched them go feeling faintly disgusted but disappointed too. He would have enjoyed removing them from this life. He knew their kind well. Brigands were brigands no matter what world he found himself in. On Tahir—his birth world—such men as they appeared to be would be robbers lurking along the border. Perhaps if they were brave, they might haunt a lonely stretch of highroad. Whatever their choice, he would have dealt with them as they deserved, but not here where someone might see. Brigands had more rights than honest citizens here.

This world was heading into a new dark age, and no one cared. Everyone looked to his or her own gratification, and never looked to the wider world. Living so long showed him clearly how society had declined as its dependence upon magic and technology grew ever greater. He could see nothing good coming of the trend. Despite the miracles he witnessed daily, the people were not satisfied. They wanted more, ever more.

He had lived in England just as that tiny island kingdom became the centre of the Old World. The War of Races had still been fresh in living memory when he stepped out of the portal onto this world. The European Empire of Great Britain and Germany had been so new back then, it had still been finding its feet and trying to integrate the elves into its royal houses and government. The chaos years they were called now. He was glad he had left. Though the journey had been the worst period in his long life, staying would have been worse. Sea travel… he shuddered at the memory. It was like drowning forever without getting wet. Without Charles, he would never have survived the trip. He would never go back, never.

Gavin surveyed his city letting the lives that populated it flow through him. The air was chill and damp on his skin. The rain had left the streets shiny and wet. It had been on a night just like this that he had met Angelina and her friends. He wondered what mischief she was getting into right now. There would be something he was sure.

He smiled as he remembered the tough little witch woman dressed in tight leather pants and worn jacket who had tried to rob him. It had been something of a surprise to both of them when instead of killing her he had spared her life. They had been friends ever since. Angelina reminded him of another woman he had known once in a better time and place. She had been betrothed to his brother and would have married him if not for the events that followed. If his memory was not lying to him, they looked alike as twins, but their manner was anything but alike. Angelina was a tough little street thief. Isabella had been a wallflower in comparison. Beautiful and charming though Isabella could be, he preferred Angelina’s directness. Less subtle though she was, the little witch was no less lovely in her way.

He leaned upon the iron railing listening to the traffic and sampling the pulse of the city as best he was able. He needed to feed and his senses were depressed. He sensed millions of people going about their lives. Some were working, some sleeping. Some were dancing in the clubs, while others made frenzied love trying to fill their humdrum lives with a little pleasure before the dawn came again. He sensed another revenant, and tensed, but the man was far away and receding from him faster now that he’d been detected. The interloper knew he was the weaker. Gavin stroked that presence with his power, caressing it like a jewel in his head, and estimated he was easily three hundred years stronger—at the least three hundred.

Gavin frowned. He knew all those of his kind that hunted his city but he did not recognise this one. Each of them had a distinctive… call it a presence for want of a better word. It was like a pressure in his head and was quite unlike anything else. Humans for the most part did not even register in the same way. Although there were exceptions, humans with the sight came immediately to mind, the living generally didn’t have the same… the same weight to their presence as another revenant would have. This one must be new to the city, but no one had asked his permission to hunt recently. He wondered if Stephen knew this one but he wasn’t concerned enough to ask. There were millions of people living in this one city alone, many more than the kingdom of his birth had in its entirety. Surely, there was room enough for one more.

How fared his beloved Lochlain without him? How faired the wider kingdom? Tahir was different. Much different to Earth, but people were people no matter the world they lived upon. Yes, they were the same—spiteful and petty, avaricious and treacherous… treacherous above all.

Turning back into the room, he closed the balcony windows and put on his coat. He felt for his wallet, and checked he had sufficient funds before leaving the apartment. He detested this part of his unlife. Not the feeding; that part was very pleasurable, but the purchase of a woman. A century ago he had not done this. He had hunted the streets and fed as his kind was meant to, as many of them still did despite the dangers, but not he. He lived quietly now, safely hidden from AML and others who would do him harm. Purchasing what he needed was his solution to the modern world, though it was very far from a satisfying one.

He stepped out of his apartment and locked his door before heading for the elevators. He didn’t really need to lock up, not here of all places. He was at the centre of his power. The entire building and all those within it were his. His to protect, and his to be protected by. None could harm him here, not with so many guarding him through the daylight hours, and at night he feared nothing and no one.

“Good evening, Mister Lochlin,” Mrs Marchant said as she entered the elevator by his side. “It’s a lovely night for a walk.”

“Good evening to you,” he said summoning a smile for her. He took the opportunity to check his work upon her mind, but all was well. She remembered nothing of the boys she had befriended. “You’re not venturing out alone I trust.”

“No… well yes, but it’s not far. Thank you for caring.”

Gavin smiled again; it seemed called for. “You are visiting your boyfriend?” he asked her with a teasing grin. Ellen was a widow and seventy at least.

She tittered. “Oh you! He’s just a friend to talk to. Everyone needs company now and then.”

His mood plunged. How right she was. “I shall escort you.”

“Well that would be very kind of you. I don’t like to impose, but they still haven’t caught that terrible man.”

“What man is that?” he asked as they stepped out of the elevator and into the lobby. Frank looked up at their movement and nodded to him. Gavin inclined his head in acknowledgement.

He offered Ellen his arm and she took it unselfconsciously. Many women of this day would not have done that, but then she was old for a human. As little as fifty years ago walking on the arm of a gentleman was common. Perhaps she would have preferred living in a more civilised time. He certainly had.

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard. It’s on all the news channels.”

“I have been preoccupied of late.” He rarely watched the vid, and hardly ever the news when he did bother. He didn’t need help to feel miserable. “This man, what has he done?”

“Eight women murdered in the last month! Oh, isn’t it just horrible what people do to each other?”

“The police are sure it’s the same man?”

“Well dear, I don’t think they know very much at all. The newsies have started calling him the South Central Ghost. He’s supposed to be one of those albino people. You know the ones with the strange eyes and really pale skin? He could strike again at any time. It’s awful.”

He supposed it was from her point of view, but what was one more killer added to those he had met? “What is the motive, do they know?”

“The police say there isn’t one.”

“Nonsense,” he said crossly as they negotiated the still busy street. The headlights dazzled him but he made no complaint. “There’s always a motive for what men do.”

“I suppose you would know.”

“I have come across a few like this,” he lied. “My research tells me there’s always a motive whether we recognise it as such or not.”

“How is the new book coming?”

“Slowly, but I’ll get there.”

It was another lie but one that came easily. He often used it when asked what he did. He had been published in the past, and he still received small royalty cheques on occasion, but over the last couple of decades he had found himself unable to write anything of any worth. His stories were fantasies; at least that is the genre he wrote in. He alone knew the stories were factual. He knew the history of his birth world intimately and had used it as a foundation for his books. People enjoyed reading of the Sae’hrimnari and their place in the world of Tahir, so very different yet evocative of the elvish people of this one. He had written of Lochlain and the kingdom, bringing to life those places and the great heroes that had lived there so long ago, but those stories always made him yearn for home. One day he had just stopped writing halfway through a scene, and had never started again.

“That’s the ticket. Don’t let rejection letters get you down,” Ellen said oblivious to his melancholy.

“I will try to remember that.” He kept his amusement at her matronly advice out of his voice.

Ellen stepped up to the lobby door of her friend’s building and gave him a small wave before disappearing inside. It was a rundown apartment block, but far from decrepit even yet. A little paint and a good cleaning would see it looking like new, but no one was interested—not even those living there. He shrugged, only mildly annoyed. He had lived long enough to know that people never changed.

With nothing better to do, he wandered aimlessly through the city streets. The sky was clear, and the breeze brisk enough to waft the pollution away a little. It was sad that all Earth’s wonders had such a heavy price. Technology seemed so much like magic to him sometimes, yet where magic exacted its price upon the practitioner of the art, technology exacted its price from the Earth herself. It was slowly killing her, but no one cared. Even those professing to be anti-technology and pro-environment played their part in the destruction and there was nothing to be done about it. Without technology, half the Earth’s population would starve.

104^th street was as it always was at that time of night. It was badly lit and bustling with men looking for a certain thing that they were willing to pay for. To Gavin, the street was brightly lit by the stars and was somewhere he came to for survival. Some of the men were going into the clubs, which seemed to spring up with tiresome regularity throughout the area, others left stoned out of their minds or just simply drunk. There were many streets like this one, but none had such a selection of what he needed—whores, or hookers as was the current idiom. It mattered not what they called them. They were life to him.

He walked slowly along the street trying to decide. A tall black girl took his fancy, but when he had time to really look at her, she repulsed him. She was ill. He could see it as easily as he saw her desperation. Her aura was shot through with disgusting brown streaks. She was some kind of addict.

He passed on by.

The next girl came toward him with hope plain in her eyes. She was also tall, but she came by much of her height through her shoes. She had red hair apparently, but on closer inspection, he decided it was a wig. She had nice eyes, but her whining voice put him off.

He passed on by.

He was surprised when he found one he liked so quickly. Usually he had to watch them for a long time before he overcame his reluctance to pay for what he needed, but tonight was different. She was tall, almost exactly his height and that was a nice change. He was well over six feet. For a woman that was unusual. She was blond and very slim with very nice hands. Her fingers were long and delicate, but she wasn’t weak. Her bare arms and legs were nicely tanned and muscled. Her face was open and friendly; she hadn’t yet learned to view the world with cynicism. She must be new to the streets, he decided as he advanced toward her. He hadn’t met her before and she was young. She wasn’t much older than Angelina. Probably no more than twenty, maybe twenty-two he thought revising his estimate when he reached her. She had liquid blue eyes.

He stepped forward and interrupted her conversation with a prospective customer. He inclined his head gravely and ignored the man’s glare. “Might I know your name?”

“Hey, get your own, she’s mine!”

Gavin turned slowly toward the nuisance and pushed. The man staggered back, but it hadn’t been a physical push and he was confused. The anger was quick to follow, but something warned him and he fled like the coward he so obviously was.

“Wow!” the girl said with a nervous laugh. “You’re really good at that glaring stuff.”

He smiled, she had a pleasant voice, very pleasant. “Are you available my dear?”

“Yeah… I mean, yes kind sir. I haven’t been engaged this evening. My name is Sandy.” She smiled shyly playing the role she thought he wanted. That annoyed him faintly, but she would learn.

“Would you care to accompany me then?”

“That would be very nice.”

He offered his arm and she took it as he led her to the curb. He waved for a cab and they climbed in when it pulled up to the curb. “Vincienzo hotel,” he said and the driver nodded.

“I’ve never been taken to that one before,” Sandy said in delight.

Gavin smiled. He always used the Vincienzo for this kind of thing. The management and staff were discreet, and the hotel itself was of good quality yet not too good. For the most part, the Vincienzo’s clientele would be unable to pass through a more expensive hotel’s doors, hence its popularity with people of less than perfect character. If you had the means to pay for quality, yet needed your privacy, the Vincienzo was the perfect place.

He paid the driver outside the hotel and the doorman nodded a greeting to him.

“Nice to see you again, Mister Lochlin.”

“And you, Henry.” Gavin handed the doorman a tip. “For Margaret. She is well?”

“Very well, thank you, sir,” Henry said tipping his hat to Sandy while pocketing the fifty. “She said to tell you she still remembers your kindness. I do to.”

“It was nothing.”

“As you say, sir,” Henry said, and held the door for them.

Gavin escorted Sandy to the reception desk. “My key please.”

“Yes sir, Mister Lochlin, sir,” the youngster said. “I have mail here for you.”

He frowned at the pristine white envelope that the boy slid across the desk to him. He pocketed it unopened. “Thank you.”

“What did you do for Henry?” Sandy said in the elevator. “I’ve never seen a real live doorman before. The places I get taken to always use droids.”

“Hmmm?” he said distracted from wondering who the message was from. Not many knew he frequented the Vincienzo and those who did had been forbidden to contact him here. “Oh, I helped his son. He had fallen in with some bad company I’m afraid.”

As for droids, they had their place, but their limitations meant high-end establishments rarely used them. They could afford to pay the salaries human staff demanded, and they had advantages over technological alternatives. Henry could be relied upon to keep the peace and eject unwanted persons from the premises. Civilian droids could do quite clever things, but their programming prohibited anything considered harmful to a human.

Sandy nodded obviously disappointed when he didn’t elaborate.

Ian, Henry’s son, had fallen in with some people who made their money from selling drugs. They became wealthy, and Ian became an addict. It had taken less than a minute to break the boy free of the addiction and secure his father’s gratitude. Ian hadn’t appreciated it of course. Using his power to break the dependency did not cure the physical effects of his drug taking. All it did was stop him from using the drugs he craved. Henry said the boy deserved the pain for what he had put Margaret through. Gavin didn’t know about that, but if anyone had the right to decide something of the sort, it was surely a father’s right. Henry was a good man to have on one’s side.

Gavin used his card, unlocked the door, and switched on the lights. The suite was a pleasant place that he kept solely for feeding. He never took food home; it would be too intimate. His home was his private retreat.

“It’s nice,” Sandy said, dropping her purse on the sofa. “Do you live here?” She went to look at the view through the windows. It was a good one of the city.

“No.”

She turned back to him and he caught her gaze with his own. “You will not fear me,” he commanded with a small and subtle push at her mind.

“Fear you? Why should I do that?”

She slipped the thin straps of her dress over her shoulders, and it puddled around her feet. Her smile was just a little shy and nervous. She was standing naked before him and she was truly lovely. Why was she on the streets? She could be so much more. Anything she wanted to be.

“I am... different to other men,” he said in massive understatement. He felt compelled to explain himself to this woman. He didn’t know why, but he wanted her to understand.

“I doubt that,” she said and ran her hands over her slightly upturned breasts making the nipples harden and jut toward him. “I’ve done vamps before.”

He grimaced at the term. No doubt she had done others, though her lack of any fear or concern appalled him. He had no plans to hurt her, but he wasn’t exactly typical of his kind. Most refrained from killing, most, but not all. That preference had nothing to do with compassion. It was simple practicality and convenience. Not so much with him these days. The older he became, the easier he found it to become attached to his food. He had found abstinence the only cure for it; that, and never feeding too often from the same source. It was one reason for his current preference for feeding upon the working ladies of the night.

“How are you different?”

“Like this,” he said as he bent to her neck.

“Ah,” she sighed in pleasure as he cut into her throat and drank her life.

His aura surrounded her, enveloped her, and the usual result occurred. His bite was orgasmic in men or women; it made no difference and he had no control over it unless he worked himself into a fury on purpose to hurt someone. That’s what he’d done to Slick Willie that night in Ellen’s apartment. He had made Willie’s punishment hurt very much indeed before applying his sword to remove his head as Lochlain tradition demanded.

“Goddess, you really are different!” she said and clutched him tighter as orgasm claimed her, shaking her entire body.

They lost themselves in the ecstasy of blood.