Dominic (A Vampire Biker Series) Season 1 Episode 1 Page 4

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  As the weeks passed, Dominic spent his time in 2012 as a student, rather than as a leader of vampires. He worked out on a daily basis and practiced his moves with Palo. Although he was a vampire with strength and speed, he wanted to regain his skill as a master fencer and martial arts expert.

  He started out rusty, but after a couple days of practice and some painful flesh wounds that took no time to heal, Dominic had built up his speed and lethal hands as if he had never been betrayed, killed and dumped into the ocean two hundred years ago.

  Palo had him study the modern ways. He watched television shows and movies. He laughed at the world’s depiction of vampires in True Blood and he felt an odd emotion while he watched the movie, Castaway.

  As he flipped through reality shows, his emotions altered from anger to humor, sadness to confusion. Palo had to stop Dom from throwing the remote at the television several times when he’d become enraged at the characters on TV.

  The hardest thing for Dominic to grasp was the internet and the cell phone. When a spam message popped up on the screen with an ad for porn, he pushed his chair back, shocked. Palo rushed over and slammed the laptop closed.

  Finally, Palo introduced Dominic to the infamous fast food drive-thru restaurant. When the speaker box spoke, Dominic jumped and extended his fangs. Palo put up his hand for him to calm down. “Yeah, can I get a number six and a number three with extra ketchup, hold the onions?”

  “Why is that thing talking?”

  “You’ll see,” Palo grinned.

  When they pulled around to the window, a young high school employee handed them a bag of food and two Styrofoam cups with lids. Palo paid for the food and pulled into a parking spot.

  “We do not eat human food. Why must you force this on me?” Dom demanded.

  “We’ve found that it helps to fit in with humans if we can handle some of their customs.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “Here.” Palo handed him one of the cups. “Drink up.”

  Dominic stared at the cup in his hand and sniffed the top of the lid. He put the straw to his lips and sucked the red drink into his mouth, coating his taste buds with the delectable taste of blood. “How?”

  “The DOD owns a few spots in town where we can get blood. Back in our day, one human was good for one vamp. That raised many questions. Now the ‘farmers’ can make a lot less people disappear and no one will ask any questions.”

  “Farmers? Like cows and pigs?”

  “There are now human farms. They’re illegal, obviously, but they’re well-concealed under the guise of something else.”

  Dom nodded. “So, laziness is our downfall?”

  “Laziness? This is survival, Dom. The bounty slayers are a big problem. They have weapons that you can’t imagine. The humans aren’t the same as they were. They are much more capable.”

  “Because we have degraded our vampire forms and customs. We talk like humans, eat like them.” He lifted a burger in the air and tossed it out the window. “And live like them.”

  “Like I said, it’s pure survival.”

  “I find this new world insidious.”

  “But you have to admit it has some perks, right? Television…internet…iPods.”

  “Even that has grown lazy. Now, one doesn’t even have to leave one’s house to see unclothed women.” He glanced out the window at two kids walking past. “But I must admit the YouTube entertains me. And it’s entertaining to see what history has made of the men of our day. That History channel tells blatant lies.”

  “Yes. Yes, it does.”

  Dominic’s attention was thwarted once again by a couple who passed by the vehicle. He flashed back to a moment he’d had with his lovely wife all of those years ago. Without turning to Palo, he asked. “How do I get to Florin?”

  “In order to get to him you have to get through the DOD: Disciples of the Damned.”

  “Are they his clan?”

  “Not the clan you remember. Do you remember those younglings I told you about a few weeks ago, when I first found you?”

  Dominic nodded once, quickly.

  “They are now the heads of the DOD. They call themselves The Four Horsemen.”

  “What happened to Antonio, Cesar and the rest of our ilk?”

  Palo took a bite out of the hamburger as he tried to decide how to tell Dom everything he needed to know. “A few years back, Florin was trying to sit at the big boys’ table. He wanted to be in with the Pure Bloods. He had made a lot of stock market investments.”

  “Stock what?”

  Palo sighed. “Stock market. We’ll go over that another time. Let’s just say Florin had invested his own money and he offered to do the same for the Pure Bloods. They agreed. The world runs on money and money is power.”

  “Pfft,” Dominic huffed. “Power used to be something earned by men of war and vampires with the taste of blood.”

  “Times have changed. Florin made some bad investments, and he lost all their money, but kept his money safe, so he lost nothing. The Pure Bloods were angry but they couldn’t get to Florin, so they killed his entire clan—all but four.”

  “Why did they leave the four?”

  “They were Florin’s smartest, fastest and strongest. They stepped in and protected Florin.”

  “The four horsemen,” Dominic said to himself, putting everything together.

  “Yeah. Florin was blacklisted from the Pure Bloods. It was then that Florin sold out Mateo to a slayer, or so that’s what has been rumored.”

  Dom glared at Palo. “Mateo is dead? One of the oldest vampires who was also a Pure Blood is dead? That can’t be true.”

  “He’s dead. This particularly nasty vampire slayer named Hunter King somehow got past Mateo’s clan and killed him.”

  “Has anyone tried to kill this guy?”

  “There are two problems: First, anyone who has tried to get to Hunter was slayed and second, if Hunter King is murdered, all the evidence against our kind goes public. We’d have to go back in caves and back in hiding.”

  “So, what of Florian?” Dom asked.

  “He started the DOD after Mateo was killed and now he does all his business through the horsemen. You’ll never get to him until you get through them. He has this country split into four sections and each horseman runs one of the sections.”

  “So, where do I start?” Dominic glanced again out the side window of Palo’s Chevy.

  Palo glanced in his rearview mirror and saw a man in a leather jacket lighting a cigarette while he stared at the car. “Come on, let’s go. I have something for you at the house.”