Chapter 15

Arthur rose from the couch with a troubled look of his own. He had known that the police, and the rest of the city, would eventually accept what it was that they faced; that was, after all, the entire point of this exercise. He had not, however, expected that this would occur quite so quickly. In his experience, mortals were extremely reluctant to acknowledge the existence of vampires in their midst.

Arthur recalled that he had one more errand to run before his rapidly approaching dormancy, an errand that he'd had to postpone while he had the ferals in tow and Alicia over his shoulder. Moving to the front door, he extended his senses to make certain there were no witnesses and slipped outside.

Arthur gazed along the row of neat, well maintained homes. Any of the occupants would do for what he had in mind, but, in the common vernacular of this age, you don't shit where you eat. Another disappearance could well focus attention on this place and he was already pressing his luck. It had been less than three full nights since he had so rudely intruded on the Bollingers and already neighbors were coming around, wondering why Jimmy's wife had missed the weekly meeting of her card club or why she wasn't returning calls. That was the problem with fairly affluent areas, Arthur decided, too much of a sense of community.

He began to run to the east, passing like a fleeting shadow among the darkened homes. He had hated being forced to hold back while guiding the ferals to this place; the sluggish pace that they could maintain had made him feel vulnerable and weak. To make up for it, he pushed himself to his limit now, quickly passing through the outskirts of Pleasant Hills and skirting swiftly around the edge of a large mall.