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One

“When you are dining with a de spoon”

—Navjot Singh Sidhu

There were three things Wraith did well: hunt, fight, and fk He was going to do all three tonight In exactly that order

Crouching on the rooftop of a shop run by irants who had probably come from such a shitty country that the violence in the streets of Brownsville, Brooklyn, didn’t faze them, Wraith waited

He’d spied the gang ression, their need to draw blood, and Wraith’s own need to do the saet with care But unlike ed Screw that He wanted the strongest, the biggest, the erous

He liked his pint of blood with an adrenaline chaser

Unfortunately, Wraith couldn’t ht He’d already met his one-human-kill-per-month limit set by the Vao over

Strange that he worried about it, given that ten enesis, a change that should have made him a monster who operated only on instinct—an instinct to screw as nate theenesis was that male Seminus demons became so focused on their sex drives that they cared little for anything else But in Wraith’s case, he was also a vas was in his blood So to speak

Eager to get started with his new life, Wraith had found a way to bring on The Change early Unfortunately, it didn’t change a danate fe new The only difference was that now he could inate them Oh, and he also had to shapeshift into the male of their species to do it, because no female on Earth or in Sheoul, the deenesis Se that would be born a purebred Se

So yeah, a few things had changed, but not enough Wraith still remembered the horrors of his past He still cared about his two brothers and the hospital they had all started together Sometimes he wasn’t sure which orse

Wraith scented the air, taking in the recent rain, the rancid odors of stale urine, decaying garbage, and spicy Haitian cuisine fro him in the shadows, and a cold January breeze ruffled his shoulder-length hair but did nothing to ease the heat in his veins

Hefor his prey, but that didn’twith anticipation

Because these weren’t your typical gangbangers he was hunting No, the Bloods, Crips, and Latin Kings had nothing on the mercilessly cruel Upir

The very name made Wraith’s lips curl in a silent snarl The Upir functioned like any other territorial street gang, except those pulling the strings were vampires They used their human chumps to commit the crimes, to provide blood—and bloodsport—when needed, and to take the falls when the cops busted them For their service and sacrifice, the humans believed they would be rewarded with eternal life

Idiots

Most va humans, and since a vas in his entire lifetiers

Of course, the gangbangers didn’t know that They played the streets, their fangs-dripping-blood tats and cris others heeded No one messed with the Upir

No one but Wraith

The Upir ca with overblown arrogance

Showtime

Wraith unfurled to his nearly six feet, six inch height, and then dropped the fifteen feet to the ground, landing right in front of the gang

“Hey, aholes ’Sup?”

The leader, a stocky white guy wearing a bandanna wrapped around his bulbous head, stumbled back a step, but hid his surprise behind a raw curse “What the fk?”

One of the punks, a short, fat, crooked-nosed troll—not literally a troll, which was unfortunate, because Wraith could have killed hihed, and two other punks produced their own knives Wraith laughed harder

“The dregs of human society amuse me,” Wraith said “Rodents eapons Except rodents are smart And they taste terrible”

The leader whipped a pistol out of his droopy-ass pants “You got adeath wish”

Wraith grinned “You got that right Only it’s your death I wish for” He smashed his fist into the leader’s face