On another occasion, we were back home, walking from a very different restaurant to our respective apartments. Jaime and I lived just a block or two away from each other, quite by accident. The apartment towers in the Central Business District offer attractive options to bachelors looking to express their statuses. The rooms were small, but everything about them was premium, and the sky-high rents were indicative of that.

New Orleans is one of the most fascinating places in America. It feels like a different country... a separate entity, its rhythm out of step with that of its peers. I am reminded more of the casual, colorful Caribbean than of the industrious United States. Perhaps that's why I have been so comfortable here.

There are other reasons aside from its cultural significance. Perhaps the most important of those is the extraordinary amount of nonhuman creatures that call the city home. New Orleans is the perfect place for us. It is full of stories, and it has always had a toe in the supernatural. Also it is entirely true that the residents of New Orleans, even the human ones, seldom consider anything truly "weird." It takes something truly suspicious to turn the heads of our kind and mild-mannered neighbors.

I can only go so long without drinking blood. A day, perhaps, or two. Or longer, but that requires my sleeping coffin-like throughout that time. I prefer not to. And if I do, I simply sleep in a dark room. I have no need for a dramatic flair such as a coffin.

But yes, Jaime and I were walking home, because we live so near to each other, and the conversation we had embarked upon was an entertaining one. Jaime could be quite the philosopher when he put forth the effort. Our very different experiences gave us such different views of life and society.

We were approaching the street on which both of our buildings stood, a couple of blocks apart. True dark had fallen. Jaime's building was nearer, and at any rate, I planned to go out hunting once we parted ways. I was not in the habit of telling my friends when I hunted. It caused them unnecessary concern, and besides, if I was ever caught at my game, they could honestly say that they did not know about my plans, and thus they would avoid becoming accessories to murder.

I have no delusions about the nature of my being. For the past three thousand five hundred years, I have needed to kill to survive. I have gotten very, very good at it. That is true of every creature, few of us as there are, who has survived longer than a mere few hundred years.

We were preparing to cross the street, still engrossed in conversation, when a black panel van arrived at the intersection. We had the right of way, but we waited for the van to pass anyway, because one never knows when a New Orleanian driver is going to run a stop light.

Instead, two figures all in black jumped out of the back of the van and rushed us.

"What the fuck!" Jaime shouted, and he quickly put himself between me and the men. They were also tall, not as tall as the man on the subway platform, but certainly taller than me, and very well built. Again I was outclassed in the physical sense. Again I tried to hold my own against them anyway.

I opened my hands and let my claws come out. My fingernails can extend about three inches long each, and when they do, they are quite tough, about as tough as copper. They are also sharp enough to cut through skin and muscle.

The first man was stopped by Jaime, but the second one made it around to me. When we clashed, I slashed forward with my right hand and caught the man across his chest, and then I dropped into a roll and regained my feet. The man came to a stop and whirled around as he realized what had happened. He clutched his chest; the wounds were deep. I opened my mouth and showed him my fangs.

To my right, Jaime was exchanging punches with the first man. I could hear Jaime's fists breaking bones, his hits landed so hard. The second man rushed me again, and I repeated my defense, but with my left hand. Now the man had matching scars.

His back was to the van again, and he was growing weak. The scent of fresh, flowing blood reached my nose. I had long since learned to channel the hazy rage that fills me at that scent into more constructive behavior. So this time, I attacked first, leaping into the air and landing on his shoulder blades, knocking him down and winding him.

This was a mistake, because it put much of the black van out of my view. It also happened at the same time that the first man in black finally got an opening with Jaime, who had no formal kick-ass training at the time and was mostly winging it... no pun intended. I leaned forward to sink my teeth into my attacker, and the first man pulled me off of his friend, and the second man got up, and they threw me into the back of the van. One of them, I couldn't tell which, punched me several times, perhaps trying to knock me out, but he ran out of time, because when the driver, a third man in black, hit the gas, he immediately ran into something, and all of us went flying into the roof of the van.

What the driver hit was Jaime. My friend had recovered quickly, and when he saw me disappear into the van, instead of trying to go in after me, he went around the front and stood in the van's path. The driver probably thought to run him over. I can't blame him; I would have tried that as well. To describe Jaime as a beanpole would be generous.

But when the van collided with Jaime, it was the van, not Jaime, that went into the air. The van's rear wheels lifted up from the asphalt, and the van was partly airborne for what felt like forever until gravity kicked in and slammed us down with a jerk. The front of the van had not gone very far. In fact, it went around Jaime, leaving a deep indentation in its hood. I recovered first, and since the men had not had the chance to tie me up, I unlocked the back doors and jumped out. I scrambled to the sidewalk and found Jaime there, miraculously unhurt.

But you look distressed. Should I not have begun with these wild stories of action and suspense? I thought it would make for a better introduction to what I have to say. Everyone these days wants the superheroes and the heart-racing thrillers and the big explosions. Am I wrong? Well, I thought I would explain the aftermath of this episode at any rate, so we will leave the antics behind for a bit, and return to them when me must.

The rest of our friends joined us at my apartment. There was no filing of reports this time. We dealt with it ourselves. We have acquaintances who are well versed in getting reticent men to talk, and two of those friends took on that project elsewhere as we discussed the situation.

"This is the second time you have told us about an attack such as this one," René mused. Yes, that is René Renaud, one of the richest men in the world. No, he is not nonhuman. He is peculiarly intelligent, but he is a confirmed human. One of the brightest of your kind, certainly.

"Yes. Someone keeps throwing slabs of meat at them for no reason," Blair remarked. We had described both the subway man and the men from the panel van as being overly beefy.

Jaime snorted at the illustrative term, but he said, "No. Someone keeps throwing slabs of meat at him," and nodded in my direction, which was unfair. Blair had rolled up his sleeve, and I was feeding from him at that moment.

To ease the burden of my regular killings--which, I stress, I do not enjoy--my friends allow me to drink from their veins on occasion. Obviously, I don't drain them, and I also don't turn them. Because I can only sip from them, as I call it, it is only a stopgap measure, as I have to drain someone every few days. With careful management, and with also drinking from animals, which also cannot satisfy my thirst, I can reduce my need to kill to once a week at the best of times.

"But why?" Christian asked. He had been the first to offer me his wrist that night, so he looked a bit paler than usual. When it comes to it, I tend to drink from either Christian or Blair, because we know for certain that both of them are Fae of the highest sidhe. Thus they are less likely to die from the loss of blood.

"I think they're bounty hunters," Jaime said. "They sure had the build and the strength for it."

"Perhaps," René said. "But no one beyond this room knows that Reynardo isn't human. Why would they target him?"

"Are you sure it was him and not you?" Blair asked Jaime. He was also pale, but that's par for the course with him.

I carefully disengaged from Blair's wrist and withdrew my fangs so I could speak. Trying to talk when your inhumanly sharp canines are out is a mistake that any smart vampire only makes once. "Let's go back to why they would be after me. Could Jaime and I simply have bad luck? Perhaps we are making too much of this and he and I truly are just victims of random attempts at mugging."

"That may be true," Blair said as I wrapped the tiny puncture wounds with gauze. "But I think it would be better if we assumed the worst. Then we can prepare for the worst, and if we turn out to be wrong, then that will be a happy circumstance."

Earlier I said that I became good at things over the millennia of my existence. The same is true of Blair Winters. He claims to be three thousand, one hundred seventy-five years old. But he has been repeating that exact same number for at least as long as I have known him, and I met him in 1985. In the same way that we know Jaime is not human--intuition lent to us by our species and our experiences--I know that Blair is older than me.

"I think that's a wise approach," René said. He is forty or fifty years old and a survivor himself. "But for the same reason, I think we should assume that both Rey and Jaime have attracted attention."

"They really aren't after me, though," Jaime insisted. "The first guy was way too focused on Rey. That's probably how I beat him, actually. And then--"

"I think you beat him with whatever special powers you have," I interrupted. We still did not know what he was at that time.

"--these second guys would have left well enough alone once they had Rey in their creeper van," Jaime went on, ignoring my remark. "So yeah, it's definitely him."

Blair turned to Christian. "Your thoughts?"

"Cover both of them," Christian replied. He was focused on his cell phone. He's a businessman, like the rest of us, but he was dealing with a product release, the Epsilon software I believe, at the time.

"Then it's settled," René said. "Jaime, Reynardo, you're both on curfew. Work and home only, and no walking alone after dark. Understood?"

"That's gonna be super inconvenient," Jaime whined. "Also, why do you assume I have a life outside of work and home?"

"You can have a Bienville CV," Christian said without looking up from his phone. That, of course, is the self-driving car that his company designed.

Jaime blinked. "Whoa. Okay."

"René, I feed at night," I said bluntly.

"Then you'll take Adrién with you when you hunt," René said simply. "I will find out who is after both of you and why, if that is indeed the case. It won't take long. We've already started."

"How have you already started?" Blair asked.

René nodded at Christian. "What do you think he's been doing this whole time?"

I shrugged. "Business things?"

"The HellKat says she'll help us, but she wants us to know that she isn't confident about anything," Christian said, still with his eyes on his phone. "Because 'beefy men who are after Reynardo and/or Jaime' casts a pretty big web."

"Understood," René said. "Thank her, please."

"Always," Christian replied.

"Then it's settled," Blair said. "I'll do my part to protect them as well."

"My vote is still a no," I said.

"That's unfortunate for you," Blair replied.