Ansuya awoke suddenly. She felt the soft comforter and the sheets around her. She jerked her head up and looked at the still closed door to the bedroom. She let her eyes drift to the other side of the room where curtains were drawn, but not even an outline of light around the limp heavy drapes. She slowly pushed the sheets down and away from her. She still had on the skimpy outfit that she had put on before she fell asleep. What time is it? What day is it?
She looked around and couldn’t see a clock anywhere. She stepped out of the bed and roamed around the room. She pulled the drapes aside. The windows were heavily tinted, almost black. She couldn’t be sure if there was any light out in the world at all. She eased her way to the door and listened for any sound. She considered shifting to werewolf form but then though better of it. She was still far too weak. Even one shift might deplete all her stores of energy and cause serious damage to her own body, especially if she couldn’t find any food. When she was as satisfied as she was going to get about no one moving around outside her bedroom, she unlocked the door and silently opened it.
The condo was as dark as her room had been. There was not a single light on anywhere. There was a small red light coming from the kitchen. She moved around the island from the hallway and looked for the source of the light. The microwave time read four thirty with a little p in front of it.
She breathed a sigh of relief. It would still be some time before sunset and she was confident that she would be able to move freely through the condo until then. She flicked on the kitchen light without fear or hesitation. She opened the refrigerator. There were bags of blood stacked neatly there. There was nothing edible for her. This was not unexpected. She hadn’t reminded her ‘host’ that she would need real food at some point. Her stomach growled intensely. She hadn’t eaten any sizeable quantities of food while in Alexander’s cage, and before that, she had been fed through a feeding tube in Kenneth’s. She needed real food to regain some of her lost strength.
She closed the refrigerator door softly. She went through all the cupboards and closets she could find. There wasn’t a speck of real human food to be had. She dared not do anything strenuous until she had eaten. That would have to wait. But she wasn’t going to be idle with her time either.
Ignoring her growling stomach, she went into the bathroom and cleaned herself. She went back to her bedroom and got dressed in the same clothes she wore last, tossing the discarded stripper outfit back on the bed. Then she quietly went back into the study and turned on the computer.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
She began searching for information on the warehouse fire and anything else that might give her a clue about what was going on in the world.
She scrolled through her search engine. There had been a gun fight at a construction site? That was a new one. There weren’t any suspects and no vandalism had taken place. Strange custom shells were littered around the site. Custom shells? Without any hard facts, and there was none to be had in the news story, that could mean anything.
She backed out and continued to search the page she had been on moments ago and found an article on a Little Tokyo distribution plant having an accident. She opened the link and read the story. Again, no real facts, no suspicion of foul play, or arson just a strange accident that was being investigated by the company with the help from local firefighters and authorities.
Ansuya leaned back in the office chair. This would be the second “accident” that Little Tokyo had suffered in as many days. She didn’t know for sure but she could guess that this too was a House Himura facility. This could mean two things; either House Himura was purposefully sabotaging their own facilities for whatever reason. Fumiko Nakahara, the Head of House Himura had a history of cutting off her own finger if it meant she could take an enemy’s arm with it, this could be another gambit on her part. Or, it meant that House Himura was being attacked. Either way, she would need to convince Alexander to get her information on what was going on.
Alexander. She had no qualms about using him in the slightest. He would have used her if he could. Vampires were despicable monsters that used what was available and then tossed it away as soon as it wasn’t useful anymore. She still had a job to do. She had to find out how Kenneth could know what he did and how the vampires were attacking and probably killing shape shifters even before they had been reborn.
She carefully erased her history and keystroke data from the hard drive once more before she turned it off. Hopefully Jason would have better luck in finding out just what that warehouse was used for. It might give the Mountain a clue as to what was going on.
She stood up and, like the night before, began carefully lacing the entire condo with her scents and biochemicals. She lazily walked around the apartment, gliding her hands over every piece of furniture. She pulled the drapes aside in the sitting room and found that here too the windows had been heavily tinted to an almost black.
She found Alexander, sleeping right where she had left him the night before, sprawled out on the sofa. His dead form not breathing or moving in any way. He would answer for the indignities that he had visited on her, soon.
She walked through the rest of the apartment. Looking at his possessions and seeing what kind of a man he was.