The buildings leaned together like old drunks, their windows dark or boarded over. Trash scattered across cracked sidewalks. A shopping cart lay on its side in a gutter, one wheel still spinning slowly.
Lily kept to the edges, her boots silent against concrete.
This was where Dallas hid its wounds. Where the desperate came to make bad choices. Where predators found easy prey.
She should know. She was one of them now.
The convenience store ahead blazed with cheap overhead lighting and a barely functioning neon sign, it was a beacon in the urban decay. Bars covered the windows. A handwritten sign taped to the glass advertised cigarettes and lottery tickets.
Lily stopped half a block away and pressed herself against a graffiti-covered wall. From here she could see everything without being seen.
Five people lingered outside. Three men, two women. One woman swayed on her feet, clearly high on something or maybe just drunk. The others passed around a cigarette, their conversation punctuated by harsh laughter.
Inside, an elderly clerk sat behind bulletproof glass. A single customer wandered the aisles.
Lily watched.
And watched.
Her throat burned. The hunger gnawed at her, relentless. Each heartbeat called to her, promised relief. But she couldn't just attack someone. Wouldn't. She needed to be sure.
But how? How was she supposed to tell evil from desperate? Criminal from victim? They all looked the same from this distance. All just humans trying to survive in their own way.
Maybe this was stupid. Maybe the stranger expected too much from her.
Headlights swept across the street. An old Buick, brown paint peeling, pulled up to the curb. The engine idled rough.
One of the men, tall, lanky, and wearing a stained hoodie, broke from the group. Casual. Practiced. He leaned down to the driver's window.
Money changed hands. Crumpled bills passed quickly between the two people.
The man reached into his pocket. Drew out a small plastic baggy, white powder visible even from Lily's distance.
He dropped it through the window before standing up straight and then tapped the roof twice.
The Buick pulled away.
The dealer returned to his friends, laughing about something. He pocketed the cash while laughing at a joke someone had just told.
Lily's eyes locked on him.
Her fingers curled into fists.
Poison. He was selling poison. How many lives had he ruined? How many overdoses, how many families destroyed, how many desperate people had he exploited just to make money?
The hunger surged.
But did he deserve death? Lily wasn't so certain.
***
The dealer pushed off from his friends with a casual wave. Shoved his hands into his pockets and started walking.
Lily followed.
Each step required conscience thought. Slow down. Not too close. Stay in the shadows. Her body wanted to move faster, wanted to close the distance and take what it craved. The hunger clawed at her insides, demanding satisfaction.
She felt like there was a tiger sitting inside of her, impatiently demanding she attack and consume.
But she forced herself to match his pace. Forced herself to maintain the gap between them.
Her footsteps made no sound.
The realization stopped her for half a second. She looked down at her boots, then back at the sidewalk. Nothing. No scuff, no tap, no evidence she existed at all.
Vampire perk, she supposed.
The dealer turned a corner. Lily quickened her pace, just enough to keep him in sight. He wasn't heading toward any residential areas. The buildings grew more derelict with each block, windows dark, walls crumbling.
Her nerves twisted tighter. This was really happening. She was hunting someone. Stalking them through the streets like some kind of apex predator.
Despite her craving for his life's essence, she still found herself conflicted. Was dealing drugs really evil? What was the measure of evil and who determined which act was more evil than another? The idea of playing judge, jury, and execution didn't sit well on her conscious.
Yet at the same time the dark passenger that was her hunger didn't care about her moral crisis. It only cared about the pulse thrumming in the man's neck, about the blood pumping through his veins.
Feed. Hunt. Kill.
The thoughts weren't entirely her own anymore.
The dealer stopped in front of a three-story building, its windows boarded over, graffiti covering every available surface. A rusted chain-link fence surrounded what might have once been a small parking lot. He pulled out his phone, thumbs moving across the screen.
Lily pressed herself against the corner of a building across the street and watched, she had to make sure there were no witnesses.
The dealer scanned the area, slow methodical sweeps of his head. He too appeared to be checking for witnesses. Checking for cops or for anyone who might interfere with whatever he had planned.
His gaze passed right over her hiding spot without pause.
Satisfied, he pocketed the phone and pushed through a gap in the fence. The front door hung crooked on broken hinges. He slipped inside and disappeared.
Lily counted to sixty. Then to sixty again.
Move.
She crossed the street, each step silent as death. The fence didn't even rattle when she squeezed through the same gap. The door's shadow swallowed her whole.
The interior should have been pitch black. There was no active power to the building and consequently no lights other than the ambient street lamps that barely flickered. But Lily saw everything as if it were the middle of the day.
Broken floor tiles, water-stained walls, a reception desk rotted through. Hallways extended in three directions.
She reasoned that this must have been some kind of office building once upon a time. Now it just another forgotten corpse waiting to be demolished.
She paused and focused hard on listening. She could hear the tiny feet and heart beats of dozens of rats. The sound of the old building settling and the noise that the wind made as it gleefully blew through any broken space it could find.
There he was. She could hear his voice, coming from straight ahead. He was talking to someone but there was only one strong human heart beat in this place so it must be a phone conversation.
Lily moved down the center hallway, placing each foot with care despite the silence of her steps. The voice grew louder and more frustrated.
"I don't care if you don't like the spot. The product is top quality and the price is right."
A pause.
"No, I'm not coming to you. You want it, you come here."
Another pause, longer this time.
"Fine then no deal. I'll find another buyer to move the product. Fuck off."
The dealer's voice carried from a large room at the end of the hall. Lily crept closer, keeping tight to the wall. Broken office furniture littered the space. File cabinets lay toppled. Papers scattered everywhere, yellowed with age.
The dealer stood near a bank of windows, their glass long since shattered. He jammed his phone back into his pocket and kicked at a piece of debris.
"Chicken shit customers. Fucking gangsters think they run everything."
He paced and muttered to himself while checking his watch.
"Still enough time to call the Deloras brothers, they'll want this for sure. Easy money and they aren't scared of taking risks. Their cuts gonna have to be bigger though."
Lily moved into the doorway. Took another step and then another, growing more confident and conflicted the closer she got to her target.
She was so focused on being silent that she didn't realize that the man could see her in the broken windows.
She froze but it was too late.
His eyes locked onto her reflection, went wide with surprise before he quickly turned around. At the same time he was spinning to face her his hand went to his waistband.
"Shit!"
Metal glinted in the light reflected from outside. He had drawn a small black pistol and was trying to raise his arm to aim it at her.
Everything seemed to slow down as she registered what was about to happen. She knew if he fired that gun he could hit her but worse than that, it would draw unwanted attention. Someone would call the cops for sure and she couldn't let that happen.
She dashed forward, becoming a blur while the man continued to move slowly.
She meant to grab the gun. To wrench it from his grip.
But she moved too fast. Far too fast. One moment she stood ten feet away, the next she crashed into him like a freight train. They went down hard, the dealer's back slamming against the floor with enough force to drive the air from his lungs.
Lily's hand clamped around his wrist as the gun started to rise. She shoved his arm down, trying to pin it.
Snap.
The sound was too loud, too final.
The dealer's scream filled the room. His arm bent at an angle it was never meant to experience. White jagged bone punched through skin and fabric. Blood welled around the fracture, dark and wet.
"Oh god, oh god, I'm sorry!"
Lily scrambled backward, horror flooding through her.
"I didn't mean to—"
The gun clattered across the floor.
The dealer stared up at her with eyes gone white with terror. His good hand clutched at his ruined arm, blood seeping between his fingers.
The scent called to her. A sirens song that was irresistible.
Copper. Salt. Life.
Her throat ignited. The hunger roared up from somewhere deep and primal, drowning out every thought, every reservation, every shred of humanity she'd been clinging to.
Lily's lips pulled back exposing fangs that were sharp and eager.
Her eyes were incandescent orbs of green as she stared at the helpless mortal before her.
The dealer saw it all and understood exactly what crouched above him.
He screamed.
"Help! Someone fucking help me! Please!"
Lily leaned forward. The beast inside her had waited long enough.