Leaving Flint with Ms Day and Ms Hunter, Sol went to the kitchen.

Opening the fridge he grabbed a bottle of deer blood and drank it down. He would have to visit a human donor to get some real nourishment soon. Animal blood could sustain him for a while but only if he had a live donor occasionally.

Would it be enough? Not really. He worked it out, it had been more than a month, maybe closer to two? He couldn't remember. The fog in his mind was getting worse.

His last human. Was she? He should have never given in. He banished the thought of Faith from his head.

The plan had been to send Ms Hunter to the library doing some pointless task with reading until she left out of boredom. Constructive dismissal they called it. At the very least she would be out of the way, so he could concentrate on finding more capable employees. Perhaps Flint was right they should visit Leafe pack for recruiting. That would be amusing, turning up at the compound and asking for a couple of Alphas. He chuckled at the thought of two vamps near wolf shifters, they would positively reek of desperation, the wolves would scent it. No, better not think about it until all options had been exhausted.

Another deer blood bottle opened and drained. He would have to go hunting again soon, maybe tomorrow.

Speaking of wolves he was glad he was not a shifter, having a dual animal spirit would have made life difficult right now. Having a part of you yelling in your head like a hormonal adolescent arguing with the rational part of you would be irritating. He just had to suppress the desire to bite into Faith's neck. Again.

I need her out of my life. Then I will request a transfer. Somewhere far away. Edinburgh perhaps? He had not been there since they drained the loch in the middle of the city. Edinburgh stank before then, especially if you lived in the poor area where the sewage drifted downwind. Maybe a stint in Paris? He couldn't see himself in Paris either, it was too decadent for his liking.

He couldn't go yet, not with the hungry ones. A few cropped up now and then, when old buildings were disturbed. They were the remains of the uprising, thirty years ago. Old and disintegrated, so weak even a human could destroy them. It was the law to send teams into old buildings before demolition to destroy the stragglers. You would think that by now none existed but yet, like the two that night, they persisted. They must have been lying dormant under the pier rotting away until Ms Day upset them, maybe they detected an undead lifeforce or sensed a primal urge? What of the one in the club? definitely more than a newborn who had not fed. Why? The Initiate houses were supposed to train them how to keep well fed. What house could afford the bad publicity these days? Bad publicity meant few recruits and less profit.

Except Ms Day had not an Initiate. She was nothing but a murder victim. A secretary and lover of the councillor, employed more for the latter than the former.

Old men were such fools.

He laughed, he was at least six times older than the man he was calling foolish. Being older did not make you wiser, it just gave you more opportunities to be a fool.

Like drinking his employer's wife's blood and taking one of her recruits.

Tomorrow after hunting he was going to write a letter of resignation to Richardson, possibly. Maybe even sign up to the clowns? Once you got past the beaurocracy, the Crimson guard paid very well.

Ricky would refuse of course, especially when he found out the real reason. Which he would.

It was all hopeless. He was being a coward.

So what else is new? He thought as he went to the fridge for more blood.

********

Edie spent most of the night lying awake. She had found a bedroom to sleep in, not too difficult as the property had several bedrooms. She hadn't paid much attention to the decoration at the time but now as her eyes adjusted to the dark she could make out the mouldings around the light on the ceiling. It was a fairly nondescript room lacking any personality as if the occupants were not planning to stay for a while. It looked very much like a mid priced hotel room in a generic town.

The shutters gave it away that the occupants may not be human. They would close at sunrise, blocking out the lovely light. It was strange that you could feel tired but your mind wouldn't shut up and let you sleep.

Five am, if she fell asleep now she could get a few hours sleep or would it be safe enough to book a taxi and go home now? How light was it in late February? Not very. Her phone was at 20%, She forgot to charge it before starting last night. She could phone for a taxi now, there was one problem.

How can I book a cab when I don't know where I am? She thought, and to find out where I am, I have to find someone, which defeats the object of sneaking out of this house. Normally, She would look at the Map app on her phone but there was no Wi-Fi or she needed to find out the code. Her phone data didn't have a signal here.

So what else could she do? Let's see, sunrise is probably around seven give or take. Allow an hour or two for Sol because of his age and the fact I want to avoid him right now. Nine or ten, damn, that's five hours in here with no books or coffee! Is there even coffee here or food? They must have day staff who need to eat?

She wanted her mind to go to sleep and leave her in peace. However, the questions kept circling around, was what Jenny said true? What had Sol done? Had he stolen something?

After this she was going to resign and go back to data crunching. Boring but risk free data entry. Very dull and unchallenging data entry. Oh shit, even mentioning the word data entry made her almost lose the will to live and yet she still was contemplating it. It was all Martin's fault he left her with a lack of fulfilment, before the photo shoot at Leafe, they were happy. If she had the foresight, she would have loaded up his dinner that night before that fateful day with laxatives, enough to give him a serious case of diarrhoea so he'd have to cancel. She'd still be happily married to him, drinking a bottle of wine on Saturday nights and falling asleep, only to be woken by the late night football results on television.

Instead he woke up fit and healthy, went to that shoot, met the alpha's daughter and six months later the divorce proceedings started. Seven years of marriage counted for nothing. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I love you but I love her... It's like my soul ripping when I'm away from her." He said at the time. Edie had burst into tears and threw her wedding ring at him, a good shot, it bounced off his forehead. The house was sold and Edie moved into her parents attic.

Would she be here if she was still with Martin? Doubtful, she really wanted nothing to do with her magical family. She took her husband's name when she married and before then her adopted father's (witch families usually took their mother's). She came back because she had nowhere to go. Laurie still hadn't forgiven her for turning her back but she couldn't admit failure for the one thing she had succeeded in, having a happy marriage and not giving a damn she had no magic.

Edie had to stop feeling sorry for herself, lying in bed for hours wasn't going to stop that. She sprang up out of the bed, put on her polo neck and jeans from the night before and stepped out of the room.

The whole house had a hospital feel to it, not like accident and emergency, more like a consistent home for recuperating tuberculosis patients. In the Uprising it may well have been a facility where they took the attack victims. Whatever it's previous life had been, one of the vampire houses had purchased it since. If she closed her eyes, she could almost hear the screams of the undead. For a moment, she felt a deep loss, she couldn't put her finger on it. She had that sometimes, in old buildings. She pushed the feeling down until it was gone.

A kitchen or two was likely to be downstairs, she thought, finding a staircase. It was enclosed by hatched silver glass safety doors.  Silver. She was sure of it, so this place had been used for containment! An involuntary shudder went through her, she had been born a year after the worst attack but the thought chilled her.

Ah! A kitchen. Signposted at the bottom of the stairs. She turned left on a weathered linoleum floored hall, brown to hide the bloodstains and decorated with once white walls. You'd think they'd redecorate it, I can't see the 1950's TB look being very popular, oh yes coffee. She turned into the little kitchen, barely big enough for a small wooden dining table and decorated with utilitarian white tiles. There was a coffee maker, Edie's heart lifted, some proper coffee at last. But her heart sank back down when she saw who was sitting there.

Sol.

"I think we need to talk," he said, "I have not been completely honest with you."