Page 10 of The Tenor's Shadow

“He abandoned me,” the vamp said. “In Tampa.”

“You need to learn the rules.” Freddie tossed the rogue to the ground. He gasped and forced air into his lungs. “Don’t feed in King’s Cross.”

The vampire rose slowly from the earth, wiping off dirt and collecting himself. “Fine. Can I go?”

“No.”

Freddie spun around and started back up toward Granary Square, gesturing for the vamp to follow.

“Where…where are we going?” The vamp’s voice trembled. Freddie would have had more compassion if he hadn’t just tried to feed on an innocent human.

“Come.” Freddie took the stairs two at a time. Now that he’d captured the rogue vampire, he needed to get home. Master Hughes was waiting for him.

There was no sound of footsteps behind him. Freddie came to a stop. Why wouldn’t rogues ever follow his instructions? If they did, they could travel freely through London. Check in with the coven house, refrain from feeding on humans. It was that simple. But no, they always had to run.

Freddie turned to look, and sure enough, the rogue was gone. He scowled in annoyance. Why would a baby vamp think he could hide from a multi-centenarian like Freddie? They tried his patience.

At an inhuman speed, Freddie flew down the path next to the canal. No infant vampire could outpace him. Even traveling that quickly, his eyes still spotted the flicker in the nearby copse of trees.

The rogue was on Freddie then, but he had lost the element of surprise. He let out a ferocious growl, his fangs and claws out, a whirlwind of movement, but Freddie was calm. The vamp had barely gotten a scratch in when he buried his own claws in the rogue’s stomach.

He collapsed inward, Freddie’s arm sticking rather grotesquely out of his guts as he rooted around inside. The rogue vampire screamed, high-pitched and desperate. Freddie’s head began to throb. Why couldn’t this ever be easy?

“Shut up.” He pulled out his claw from the creature’s bowels, bringing out his stomach and a good ten feet of intestine with it. The blood and viscera flowed down his forearm as he presented the vamp’s organs to him. “We can keep going, if you want.”

The vampire took one look at the bloody mess and passed out cold. Poor kid. Not that Freddie felt sorry for him, but he remembered what it was like to be so new, before violence and gore became a mundane part of daily life.

He let his trophy drop to the ground and hoisted the vamp over his shoulder. Everything about this had been inconvenient, but he was lucky it wasn’t more serious. The rogue would heal up in a day or two, and hopefully, he’d be humble and compliant.

That’s assuming that he had been planning to feed on the woman and not kill her. They’d find out once he was awake, and if tonight was to be the start of a killing spree, the outcome would be less pleasant for him.

There hadn’t been a human death perpetrated by a vampire in London in decades. Freddie knew that was thanks to Master Hughes. It was one reason he admired him so much.

Once around the rooftops of King’s Cross, the body of the vamp resting easily on his shoulder, and Freddie headed back to the coven house in Knightsbridge. The gold tips of the wrought-iron fence glistened in the moonlight, and the antique sconces on either side of the front door cast an amber glow over the white facade.

This had been Freddie’s home for almost fifty years. He’d felt horribly out of place, joining a coven and moving in with so many other vampires. That hadn’t fully gone away.

He recognized the strength of the community and worked to protect it, but he saw himself as an outsider. There was a camaraderie there that he couldn’t seem to take part in. He had given up trying. Better to be the loner that’s good at his job.

When he reached the main door, he nodded at Archie, an eager young vampire who’d joined only a month ago. Although Freddie hoped his puppyish enthusiasm would eventually wane over the ensuing decades, he would always have the face of a twenty-three-year-old grad student. Archie waved Freddie through enthusiastically.

“Welcome home, Lord Grosvenor.”

Freddie grunted as he walked past. He hadn’t been a Grosvenor in over two centuries.

“Grey, Archie. Freddie Grey.”

No Grosvenor alive had any clue who he was. Archie was trying hard to impress. That wasn’t an undesirable trait in a new coven member, as much as it might annoy him.

“Do you…do you want me to deal with that?” Archie scrunched his face in disgust, gesturing to the unconscious vampire slung over Freddie’s shoulder.

“Please.” In one easy motion, Freddie flipped the guy into Archie’s arms. Archie held the rogue vamp away from himself like he was a rotting fish. Freddie nodded in thanks.

Freddie made his way up the stairs to the fifth floor, where Master Hughes’ office and living quarters were located. The floorboards creaked as he ascended the levels of the old Georgian house. When he reached the top, he stopped in front of the heavy wooden door.

A jolt of anxiety kicked up, even after all these years. When Master Hughes first found him, Freddie had been a desperate, uncontrolled mess. He’d shown Freddie a different way to be, given him a home, and since then Freddie dearly wanted to prove that his trust had been well-placed.

He raised his fist to knock.

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