Nikonorov's office was so small it made Alexei's skin itch. Three monitors spewed artificial RGB light from wall to wall. Piles of cords like writhing tangles of serpents pooled on the desk and on the floor at his feet. Even Nikonorov's chair was too small for his lanky frame, still whippet-like after hunching in it for a decade. Most of that time spent finding leeches who liked to hide under rocks in the hopes that they wouldn't meet their end at the Wolf's blade.

  Between Alexei, Nikonorov, and the two grunts who'd been chatting idly before the Wolf's silence had infected them like a disease, the room didn't have enough air left to breathe. It didn't bother Alexei, nor Nikonorov, who stared up at his monitors like a man praying to god. The two grunts, on the other hand, sucked in quick, staccato breaths in time with their sputtering hearts.

  To make matters worse, the computers Nikonorov dedicated his devotion to heated the air in the room to a stifling boil. They whirred and whined in protest of their own pollution as the window cracked near the ceiling vented in abhorrent summer heat like a blast furnace.

  The chair, the small room, the heat—they were the least of Nikonorov's worries. His ill-fitting trousers, far too long on his lean legs, his reclusive inclinations, and his stiff, unmoving ankles spelt out an undeniable truth on his flesh. Alexei didn't need to see the splints on his legs to know they were there.

  'This one's a tough nut, Puppy. I'll give you that.' Nikonorov's full attention adhered steadfastly to his screens, not bothering Alexei with a backward glance. 'Hardly ever leaves the nest.'

  One of the grunts sucked in a breath. The other went so still that Alexei would have thought his heart stopped if not for his preternatural senses.

  'Lighten up, will you?' said Nikonorov. 'What's he going to do? It's not like he can tattle on you to Volchek.' The grunts glanced at each other, then at Alexei. They couldn't hold his gaze for a whole second. 'Isn't that right, Puppy?'

  Were it lasered in on anyone else, Alexei's gaze would have burned through to bone, but Nikonorov was unfazed. Still, Alexei didn't raise a hand against him. Cheap blood wasn't worth punishment from Volchek. Besides, Alexei was a good dog.

  'You are so dead,' said one of the grunts.

  Nikonorov huffed out a shallow breath. Alexei had heard him laugh only once. It was succeeded by a coughing fit. 'We go way back, don't we?' Nikonorov's tone rose on the parting question like a dog owner saying 'who's a good boy?' Like he didn't expect Alexei to understand him without it. Turning to the grunts, Nikonorov said, 'I've been fucking with him for years. Hasn't snitched once,' as he reached up and scratched under Alexei's chin.

  Nikonorov's warm fingers were damp with sweat as he scraped the day-old stubble on Alexei's face. Each hair follicle, every little nerve, blazed to life in a deafening cacophony of sensation. But Alexei didn't so much as flinch. His muscles locked into place, and his mind went dormant in his skull. He was a good, loyal dog, and good dogs didn't bite without orders.

  One of the grunts, the taller of the two with a coarse black beard, took a tentative step towards Alexei and said, 'I knew he was missing a few marbles, but you've got to be retarded to take that.'

  Alexei's fangs itched in his gums.

  'You rotting shitstain,' said the other. 'You're going to get us killed.'

  Turning back toward his altar to artificial light, Nikonorov huffed as grainy traffic camera footage shuttered across the monitors. Frame by frame, Nikonorov sifted through them for flashes of crimson skirting around the field of view. Nikonorov switched cameras so quickly that Alexei could hardly follow the traces of Raphael darting through the city.

  'Look at him. It's like the words don't even register,' the bearded one said.

  The frames on Nikonorov's monitors were stamped in the corner with a time signature and a street name. Raphael never lingered within range of a single camera for more than a couple of frames. He crossed blocks in microseconds, darting toward downtown from the abandoned apartment complex on the outskirts of the city that made the New Harbour coven's nest.

  Fingers prodded at the tender flesh below his shoulder blade, where a particularly nasty scar lay beneath his suit. Words thumped against his eardrums as the other grunt tentatively joined the bearded one's taunting. Alexei smelled the movements on them before they made them—the pause of breath before speaking, the flinch of muscle disrupting the stiflingly stagnant air—Alexei felt it all.

  His eye processed the frames flashing across Nikonorov's screen well enough, but it was no good at judging the distance between himself and a threat. Not anymore. Not without the other. He'd learned to depend on his other senses. He'd never have survived his years scuttling about New Harbour's alleys without them. Humans and rats were more alike than the former would prefer. They had all of the same tells—hitching breath before a strike, trembling hearts pumping adrenaline at the sight of a kill—and Alexei was one hell of a rat catcher. They had less blood than a human or a vampire, but they tasted similar enough, once one smelled as much like shit and garbage as the vermin in the sewers.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Alexei had scrubbed himself clean of that stench, but decades later, the memory of it still lingered inside him. Even the humans could smell it. The only thing their inferior senses could latch onto better than a vampires' could was otherness. The hairs on the backs of their necks prickled at the sight of it, their pupils contracted, and they brought their limbs closer to the safety of their flanks.

  'Found you, you slippery little leech,' Nikonorov said as a few seconds of Raphael standing in an alley played on loop across his monitor. The vampire rushed into the alley in a blur of crimson, stopped to adjust his robes and dusty blond hair, then walked out of frame at a human pace. Nikonorov hardly stopped to watch it before typing out a few commands on his keyboard. In response, the screen flashed 24 hours earlier to an empty alley. When nothing came of skipping around through the surrounding hour, Nikonorov set the footage back another day and began again.

  For a few seconds, the grunts were mercifully still as they watched Nikonorov's eyes dart across the screens, absorbing every spec of information like a bone-dry sponge, his mind creating a web of connections and logical pathways as fast as any computer. It was bewitching, like watching someone speak a foreign language flawlessly.

  But Nikonorov's mechanical mind only entertained the grunts for a moment before they honed in on another scar Alexei had earned during his time with the Brotherhood: a bite mark on the back of his neck. The leech who'd given it to him hadn't known what he was until the revolting taste of his hybrid blood hit her palate. She'd died retching—hadn't even bothered to beg for her life, not that it would have done her any good.

  The bearded grunt ran his meaty fingers along the torn flesh. His touch was warm, but it still dragged forth the memory of cold teeth. Alexei's hands twitched toward his pockets, to the Ka-bar knives sewn into the seams, but he clasped his hands behind his back instead. The knives sang an enticing tune of bloodshed he couldn't afford to heed.

  '…must've taken a nice chunk out of…'

  '…poor sod…showed up like that…'

  '…like to know what's underneath…'

  Alexei caught clips of their conversation, listening more for a potential threat than the content, yet he couldn't escape it. The story of what lay beneath his mask had been blown so far out of proportion among the Brotherhood that it wasn't worth righting. The truth was disappointingly simple—just another episode of killing instead of being killed. Had he been a full-blooded vampire, the wound would have disappeared. But Alexei scarred like a human.

  There were two reasons he kept it covered. Firstly, and most importantly, when half of his face had been clawed into a mess of flesh canyons, his irises had been red. The wound ruined his eye and rendered it a permanent, milky-puce colour. Revealing it risked raising questions at best, and outing his mixed blood at worst. Secondly, it was unsightly, and Volchek treated his subordinates like an extension of himself. Hence, he held them to his high standards of personal care. The stubble on Alexei's chin was a freedom Volchek only afforded to his most loyal subordinate.

  The air near Alexei's head shifted—a hand passing through his gargantuan blind spot. But the movement was only blind to his eyes. The scent of gunpowder and cheap cologne wafted through the air. The sound of a human heart thumping with anticipation thundered through him like a heavy bassline. The hot air hissed as the grunt's hand cut a path through it right to Alexei's mask. He knew it was coming, knew it was a member of the Brotherhood. He even knew the guy's name—Musayev, or something. But that didn't stop the attempted touch from catapulting him into the past.

  Every sensation was the same as that hot August day, down to the cheap cologne. Alexei's memory of it was little more than a bloodlust-addled haze—just fragments of an incomplete memory: the sight of his mother's brown curls darkened with blood, the feeling of his juvenile teeth in the neck of a much larger man, the searing pain as a silver-tipped gauntlet tore through his face.

  Alexei didn't do what he'd done that day. He didn't bite. His fangs would have worked better. They were Sharper. Crueler. But Alexei was a good dog. He grabbed his knife. Before the grunt's hand reached his mask, Alexei slammed the hand down onto the table and relieved him of his pointer finger.

  The grunt screamed. Alexei hated the sound of screaming. It reminded him of pigs squealing before the slaughterhouse. He'd have cut out the grunt's tongue if given the chance.

  Nikonorov laughed. The sound wasn't much better. It was like a wheezing kettle until his feeble condition caught up with him, and wet coughs wracked his body.

  The finger rolled across the table from the force of the cut, leaving an arc of blood in its wake. The wound was clean enough. The Butcher could probably reattach it. Probably.

  Clutching the stump where his finger had been, the grunt said, 'You rat fuck!'

  'Don't look at me. You're the one who poked the beast,' said the other.

  'I'm not bloody talking to you!' The one with the severed finger glared at Alexei, straightening his shoulders and stalking toward him.

  Alexei was a head shorter than him, but he was faster, stronger, and gutsier. Grabbing him by the chin, Alexei hoisted the grunt into the air. His legs kicked fruitlessly beneath him, and a choked gurgle climbed up his throat.

  Alexei pulled back his fist, ready to break the grunt's nose and cause him some real pain, but Nikonorov's voice cut through the small room.

  'No blood on the PC!' Alexei dropped him to the floor. 'Take your stupid arse to the Butcher, and get back here when you're done. We still need to find out who attacked the Dragons before they come knocking at our door.' Nikonorov turned to the unharmed grunt and said, 'You. Get your keys. I've got a strong suspicion that Raphael is going to show his undead face in the alley near the Pig Stye in the next half hour. I've already sent you the directions. It's time to take the puppy for a walk.'