They Thirst

"The sun reached its zenith and instantly began to fall, deepening the shadows that clung like a precious autumn chill to the eastern facades of the massive stone and glass buildings at the centre of Los Angeles. In the slow decay of hours and light, the sun shone red on the smooth lakes of MacArthur park; clear, golden beams wafted through the windows of shops and boutiques on Rodeo Drive in Beverley Hills; dust stirred lazily in the air among the cramped, boxy tenement buildings of east L.A., and clothes strung on lines from window to window caught bits of flying grit; the Pacific surf that rolled up to the edges the Venice Beach boardwalk, where the kids darted and spun on roller skates like human tops, slowly turned orange, then red deepening toward purple; lights began to glimmer like hot jewels along Sunset and Hollywood boulevards; the San Gabriel Mountains were jumbled piles of light and darkness, the western face of stone glowing red, the eastern exposures almost black.
And above the whole metropolis with its eight million separate lives and destined sat the Kronsteen Cattle on a throne of rock. It was a huge, sprawling edifice of black weather-beaten stone high turrets, arched Gothic roofs, broken gargoyles leering from towers or contemplating the patchwork of humanity in the valley below. Many of the windows had been shattered and replaced with boards, but some of the windows at the higher elevations had survived vandalism, and those that were is stained glass glowed red and blue and purple in the strong, hard light of the setting sun. A chill gathered in the darkening air and began to grow vicious. The wind hissed and whispered around stone battlements like a human voice through broken teeth."


And many maybe guilty of wishing these abilities the Vampire King possesses.

"Soon, though-very soon-he and the others would learn some of the secrets that Vulkan had kept for almost eight hundred years-how to summon dogs and rats, bats and flies in thick, noxious clouds; how to peer into the mind of a human and read the secret thoughts waiting to be tapped. How to tell from a single drop of blood how old a human was, or what his diet had consisted of-the tastes a hundred thousand complex variations of sweet and sour, coppery and salty, tart or flat, poor or fine like wine aged in old Belgian kegs. How to drain the blood from a living human to the dregs and in so doing transform that person into a brother or sister of the night. So many things to learn."