Edeline

     I walked down the street, confidence in each step feeling the cool breeze flutter over my face, brushing away black strands of hair from my temples. Cincinnati was a charm, I had missed the bustle of a busy city, even if-I amended-the last time I had been in a city was about a hundred years ago.

     I ran my tongue over my teeth; my canines were retracted as to not draw undue attention to myself. A run in with USHUA would be… unpleasant to say the least, deadly at the worst. I smirked, as long as I played my cards right, I would never even have to hear about USHUA.

     I checked my watch, I needed to be back by eleven at the latest to my shop. It opened at noon on the weekdays. I had about an hour left, might as well head back now.

     I knew my well around well enough that I would have been able to cut a few corners to get back faster, but I wanted to enjoy the walk home. I enjoyed seeing the people go from place to place, the idle chatter streaming from different stores and shops on the street sides.

     I saw a few feral cats darting behind bins, their scraggly tails whisking out of sight as people bustled by. Each block I walked was met with a new set of stores, a slightly different style of building, it was refreshing.

     The best part of all of this was that it was all mine, fresh territory as far as Grey, my begetter, was concerned. For what fool of a vampire would nest so near to an USHUA headquarters? I could almost hear his scoffing at my idea, and I could feel a laugh rising in my throat.

     As I passed an alleyway, I caught the scent of something that made the laugh disappear from my throat and my eyes narrow in suspicion.

     A vampire had been in this alleyway. Recently too, the smell wasn’t even a day old. My stomach coiled, taut as a wire. Either Grey was wrong, or something had happened between the last time I had seen him, which had been a month ago. Grey’s sources were hardly wrong, and it was only one vampire.

     I was stopped in front of the entrance, hesitating a moment, before walking further, following the trail.

     It was likely it was only a vampire passing through, though if he or she wanted to settle a coven here they would have to fight me for this claim. I had plans and I wouldn’t let a rover get in my way.

     There was a manhole to the side of one the dumpsters in the narrow alley, and I crouched down, careful not to let the ends of my light brown duster get in anything nasty. I carefully pulled the cover off of it, peering down into the gloom inside.

     As the dank scent of damp hit my nose, so did something else: the smell of vampires. More than the single I had caught before, this was the smell of a whole colony, at least twenty. I reeled at it, jerking up and letting the cover drop with a loud clang that hardly made me wince. Grey had been wrong, so spectacularly wrong.

      I stalked out of the alleyway, more in a rush to get back to my store than before. I need to call Grey. His sources in the vampire network around the globe were usually very good at keeping track of the vampire covens in the world. And if Grey’s network were truly in the dark about this nest then they needed to be aware of it.

      A single anonymous vampire was one thing, easy to lose track of. But an entire coven? That could be dangerous. Large covens could do all sorts of things, exposing vampires being one of them.

     Vampires were already a dying minority in the realm of the undead, our numbers slowly lowering over the years. Unlike lichs, ghouls, and ghosts, which could easily be created by a desperate witch, vampires had a complex begetting ritual only vampires of a certain age could do-but at great expense of the begetter.

      A large coven could be a blessing, but a hidden large coven seemed more like a curse.