Chapter 5

In London, England, Horsham awoke at the exact moment the sun went down. There was a soft sound in the other room, and his fangs immediately extended, his face elongated, and his claws dug into the mattress. He leapt off the bed and was at the door in moments. Then he stopped and took a breath.No!he thought.Rule 3: Never feed where you live. Take hold of yourself!

He was gripping the doorknob so hard that it had crumpled in his hand. Saliva dripped from his jaws to the floor, but he retracted his fangs. He rolled his shoulders, trying to relax them, and looked down at his claws and turned them back into human hands.

The servant girl in the next room turned when the door opened. Her fabled master, whom she had never seen in person before, came in wearing a thick bathrobe, his dark hair tousled and an even darker look on his face.

“You are never to be here when I awake,” he growled. “Get out!”

She paled, as if realizing the danger she was in. “I’m sorry. The paperboy was late today, so …”

“Get out!”

“Yes, sir. Right away.” She fled from the room, closing the door behind her.

Normally, the coffee and morning newspaper were waiting in the kitchen when Horsham woke up at dusk. The servants and guards who protected him throughout the day were gone—for their own protection. Sometimes he couldn’t help himself when he first woke up. At that vulnerable moment, his hunger was always at its strongest and most instinctual.

He sat and drank the coffee in three gulps, glanced at the paper and threw it aside.

Horsham walked to his desk and turned on his laptop. The Internet was the wonder of the ages. He should know: Although he was a little fuzzy about computers, he certainly knew about the ages.

For generations, Horsham had hired cadres of young women to scan the world’s newspapers for specific types of stories. He’d spent hours every week reading the stories that had met his parameters. As the decades went by without Terrill being found, those parameters had widened. Sometimes it had seemed like reading the news was all he did.

Now? All he had to do was turn on his computer. Through the magic of algorithms, he got a complete and accurate readout of the world’s news, from which he gleaned only the most pertinent stories. But even now, he had to read for a steady half hour every morning because of all the bullshit people printed.Garbage in, garbage out,he thought.

He was eight minutes into his daily routine when an item caught his eye.

Portland, Oregon. A young woman had been found murdered