Scorching hot blood coated Alexei's face and pooled in his stomach. It was thick and slick under his fingers, weakening their hold on the neck of a man who'd failed to pay in full for his hit. It didn't matter. Alexei's fangs held his meal still, and the hole through his larynx kept him quiet. Mask off, the ruined contours of Alexei's lips failed to create a water-tight seal around his bite, but Volchek was well accustomed to Alexei's messy eating habits.

  'How is the taste, Lyoshka?' Dmitry sat at his desk, examining files.

  Alexei shrugged, his eyes on his prey. The sight of Dmitry wearing his reading glasses, steadying himself with both hands as he stood, or rolling out the stitch in his shoulder from an old injury from his vampire hunting days that never healed right, would have soured the blood.

  Chuckling, Dmitry said, 'Food never tastes as good when you're fat and happy as it does when you are on the brink of starvation. I suppose the same is true for blood.'

  The man in Alexei's hold clawed at him, so Alexei snapped the bones in his forearm like a pair of sun-brittled twigs. No sound came up his throat courtesy of his punctured voice box. Alexei much preferred the gentle tone of Dmitry's voice to the wailing of a dying human as he ate.

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  'But we can't have you going hungry.' Dmitry left his desk to kneel before a filing cabinet.

  Alexei's red eye tracked the manila folders lined up in it like a little army. Even from a distance, he could make out the names flipping past under Dmitry's fingers, not that he needed to. The bottom drawer was reserved for known members of New Harbour's Coven.

  Dropping the corpse going cold in his arms, Alexei silently prowled to Dmitry's side. Names scrolled by. Usually, Alexei didn't concern himself with his targets' Coven affiliations or lack thereof. They died either way. Still, Alexei's gaze caught on the name marking a wafer-thin file as it flicked by: Damon.

  Dmitry pulled a much fuller file from the drawer and dropped it on his desk with a heavy thunk. 'The Coven has been poking around in our business.' Its name read Raphael. 'Their leader has been a thorn in our side for years, but one of the scouts found him slinking around with the police. It's time.'

  Alexei nodded, but the fresh warmth in his body didn't sit easily. It stirred him up, flooding him with clammy heat from his cheeks to the tips of his fingers. Blood still went down smoother than human food, but the foreign temperature made Alexei long for winter nights with the windows left open and the gentle touch of soft, dead hands.

  'Clean up, then the file is yours.' Dmitri squeezed Alexei's shoulder. He was the only person who held Alexei's gaze without flinching. 'Be careful with this one, Lyoshka. He is old and sly like a fox.'

  The red drained from Alexei's functional eye, and he wedged his mask back into place over the other. With it came the Wolf.