Yet another bad lead. Dammit, she could have screamed out her frustration. Thankfully Elaine had a little more self control than that and, instead, settled on silently fuming while glaring at the sidewalk. She should have probably been paying a little more attention to the area, but she was just a bit too cross to care that much. They weren't going to find him there. Just like they hadn't found him in the last ten or so places that they looked. This wasn't even really near the area that he had been spotted. Rather, they had already checked there and, having come up with nothing, were just looking around the general area just in case.

     There was no one on the road. Not a single soul. Just a line of varying sizes of old buildings, all looking mournful and abandoned. Some light poles with lights that were either burnt out or flickering and on the verge of burning out. Trash on the ground with unheeded garbage cans. Nothing interesting. Just a whole lot of nothing.

     He's not here. Why would he be? There wasn't anything remotely interesting there. And she doubted he'd be staking out the place for prey. This was the worst part of town and no one in their right mind would venture this far at night. It was the classic kind of place to either be mugged or, worse, get bitten by some disgusting blood sucker. Everyone knew the cliché.

     And then there was her, your atypical helpless, conveniently alone, young woman armed with nothing but her stupidity. Rather, that was what she was supposed to look like. And Elaine did look pretty pitiful, all huddled up beneath a thick, brown coat in an attempt to ward off the biting cold. The cold weather brought a flush to her elegantly pale skin. She looked terribly out of place in this dank, dark part of town. Elaine was fairly short and perhaps, at the moment, a bit too thin. She hadn't been eating or getting must rest thanks to the stress of her job.

     Her hair was pulled back neatly with a white scrunchy, away from her neck, which bore no sign of the dreaded red ribbon that the vampires had come to loathe. It was a deliberate ploy to draw attention to her throat so to tempt any vampires within the vicinity. Bait. That's what she was. Bait.

     "This isn’t working,” Elaine mumbled, not to herself, but to the mic hidden in the collar of her jacket. She stopped walking and pulled her hands from the pockets of her coat and tucked them beneath her armpits in an attempt to get a little more warmth.

     It was freezing and she just wanted to go home and take a nice long bath. Not to mention she just wanted to leave this dreadful place. Though she wasn't really alone as there was a car tailing her from a few blocks back, they were far enough away that she felt as if she'd been cut off from humanity all together.

     She sighed and shook her head just slightly. They'd probably never find that vampire. Perhaps they were better off with finding out a new way....

     A hand snaked out suddenly and rested on her shoulder which startled her because of how engulfed she had been in her thoughts. The young woman had to stifle a gasp of surprise as her body was forced to stop because of the weight on her left shoulder. She made a move to jerk but suddenly she heard the seductive purr of a male voice in her ear.

     “Don’t you know how dangerous it is to be out here alone?”

     Her body shuddered when she felt his cool breath fan against her ear and down her throat, and again she began to move away, trying to shrug his hand off of her shoulder.

     “Perhaps you should come with me,” he cooed again in his melodic voice and it was then she was finally able to twist around to face him after pulling away from his hand. Her lips parted, just about to form words when she once again froze at spotting the most dazzling pair of green eyes on the planet. Her own blue-gray eyes widened in absolute awe before she had forced her gaze to slide over more of his body, trailing from head down to foot. If there was a dark god of the underworld like the one she had heard so many stories of from various women, she would picture him to look very much like this man.
     
     He had dark chocolate brown hair, short and messy atop his head with two thick strands that fell slightly longer than the rest, framing his perfectly structured face. His bangs were slightly long, pushed to the side, mixing with the two strands and this had somehow helped to make his green eyes stand out more than they already were. The male was dressed in a navy blue, silk button up shirt with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The first few buttons were undone on his shirt, exposing only a little bit of his toned chest. Black, slightly heavy dress pants rested on his hips, secured with a black belt though his shirt was carelessly untucked as if he were just on his way home from a long day at work. On his left arm, she could spot the dark, tribal-like tattoo snaking up his arm.
     
     She had heard that he had an elaborate and beautiful tattoo that snaked up his entire left arm and expanded over the entire left side of his upper torso from his chest to his back, up from shoulder down to hip. But she didn’t even need to spot the tattoo to know that this was him.

Julian Wolf.

     She knew quite a bit about Julian not only from stories but from research. He was well known amongst the vampire world and had quite a reputation despite how young he was. In his file, it said he had only been a vampire for about eighteen or nineteen years and was turned at the ripe young age of twenty-four. The story behind the tattoo that covered most of his upper torso was still uncertain but they did know that he had gotten it the same night he had been turned. Most women described him as Hades. Tall, dark, and handsome, but a cruel and heartless bastard as well. Just by looking at him, she felt that the “Hades” title suited him well.
     
     “I-I… Uhm,” she stuttered, looking around her for a moment as if she were looking for something or someone. But Julian’s gaze didn’t leave her; he simply continued to watch her as she fidgeted and shoved her hands into her pockets.

     “I’m… lost, you see,” she blurted out sheepishly with a small smile. It was going well after all. They had found him at least but now the challenge was keeping him at bay until the right moment without becoming his dinner first.
And by the way he was looking at her… it wouldn’t be long before he would decide to try and dig in.

     “Are you?” he had responded with a very small tilt of his head and a light smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.  He thought it was going perfectly for him as well. The young lass was lost, alone, and though she wasn’t drunk, she seemed foolish enough for him to trick into coming with him. It would be quite an easy catch regardless.

     “Well then perhaps I can help you find your way, my dear. Please, join me won’t you,” he urged as his hand rose again and snaked around her shoulders, careful to keep his skin from coming in contact with her own. One touch of his ice cold skin against her warm neck and he doubted she would be willing to walk with him much further. Most humans easily caught onto a vampire these days, especially now that they were much more aware that vampires stalked the night. And the fact that most of them had chosen to infect themselves with the virus to keep a vampire off of them was quite frustrating. Seeing that damn red ribbon practically glued to the humans’ throats nearly drove him up the wall. But it was also amusing to see the select few that wore a black ribbon as an invitation for the creatures of the night to pounce upon them and feed to their heart’s desire. Most of them were teenagers that believed being a vampire would be the best escape from reality.

     But they had absolutely no idea.

     He led her toward an alleyway which, of course, he quickly explained that it was simply a shortcut and he would keep her safe if there happened to be anything that would jump out at them. Elaine fidgeted in Julian’s grasp, her eyes staring straight ahead of her. But it wasn’t long before she felt his eyes on her and slowly looked up toward him with a curious look on her face. She lifted a brow at him as his lips parted to speak again.

     “What is your name…?” he inquired softly with a small tilt of his head. Ah, yes, he was most definitely toying with his ‘food’ tonight. And Elaine knew it. She knew exactly what he was trying to do. She usually was a sympathetic person, even when they had caught the previous vampires but this was different. The fact that he was actually going to try to kill her left her completely uncaring. He could be shot in the head right at that moment and she would not care.

     “…My name?” she inquired as her hands dug to the very bottom of her pockets as if she were trying to hide them from the cold. Only then had he suddenly shoved her against the wall, his hand pinning her shoulder to it to try and keep her still. Suddenly the young woman smiled tightly.

     “Weenie Queen.”

     She kneed him hard in the groin, and because of the fact that he was caught off guard by the strange name, she had succeeded and sent him bowing forward in pain. Of course, the vampire hardly had any time to react for the girl was quite quick with her actions. As soon as he was bowed over enough, she jammed a hospital-like needle into the back of his neck, pressing down on the round, flat end of the needle to inject a liquid into his system. It was a sedative created specifically for vampires and now that it was in his system it wouldn’t be long before it would take effect; she just had to stay alive long enough for it to do that.

     “Juvenile as hell trigger word, Kenny!” she hissed into the mic hidden in the collar of her jacket as she quickly backed away from the vampire. Julian recovered within a matter of minutes, however and it wasn’t long before he had lunged at her, his hand launching out and curling around her slender throat. His grasp was unrelenting, tightening even as he slammed her back against the wall.

     “You’re one of them!” he hissed, his eyes narrowing down as his lips curled back slightly, teeth bared in a threatening manner. “You’re going to regret this…”
His hand dropped down from her throat to the base of it and his lips replaced where his thumb had been over the tender flesh of her throat. His lips kissed the tender skin of her throat at first, as if to heighten her sense of anticipation before he would finally penetrate the skin with his fangs.

     “Let go of me you monster!” she screeched, her body squirming against his hold. But she could say no more as soon as he so boldly used his tongue to lap at her skin, before suddenly he drove his fangs into her throat as deep as they could go. He grunted the moment he tasted her blood once it flowed past his fangs and flooded his mouth. It was warm and absolutely wonderful; he couldn’t really recall ever tasting blood as sweet as hers before. As he drank, he really could not help but groan just slightly as his other arm curled around her waist and he had easily dragged her against his chest.

     The young woman had gasped the moment she had felt his fangs penetrate her skin, and with her entire body against his own very male, very muscular body, she felt entirely violated. Her chest was against his own, her hips pressed to his, her legs almost tangled in his own. It was a huge violation of personal space and with the way her body was reacting, it both frightened and disgusted her. She shouldn’t be reacting to him, not like this!

     But what she found odd was the fact was… it wasn’t hurting. It had stung at first, but now she almost felt as though she were… floating. Her body was beginning to grow numb and she felt her knees grow weak. All she could do was cling to him, her nails biting into the skin of his shoulders. She had shuddered at the sound of his groan, unable to help herself. Everything had gone hazy by then and even she couldn’t tell if she had moaned herself.

     But something had changed in the vampire. He had tensed and it seemed as though he had stopped drinking the blood that was flowing from the puncture wounds on her neck. And it wasn’t long before she felt him shove her back, the young woman stumbling against the brick wall again. She looked up just in time to see Julian trying to run, his hand shooting out to steady him on the wall as he tried to escape. But his pace quickly slowed to a stop and by the time he had gotten a good ten feet away, he had collapsed against the wall and slid down it until he was on his side, completely unconscious.

     She had already collapsed herself, her hands scraping against the concrete when she caught herself. She had continued to watch Julian even after he had fallen and didn’t move even when she noticed the gray van at the end of the alleyway and a ginger-haired man quickly approaching with what looked to be a lethal gun in his hands followed by another.

                           They had caught their vampire.