As he headed back to The Rack, he thought about the little Bitten girl called “Boots”.
When he had first taken control of The Rack, the Bitten numbered about a dozen. They were loyal devotees of whoever fed them blood, which had been a Toreador that had since disappeared a year before Bomber showed up. The Bitten numbered much more at its peak.
Boots stood about four ten in stocking feet, so she always wore high-heeled boots to give her an extra couple of inches of height. He knew she was short, because when he would feed her, he would have to sit down and she would kneel before him and drink deeply from his wrist.
He also knew she had a boyfriend. Once or twice, usually after a Kiss, she begged him to take her, but he wouldn’t, not like that. He had a rule, even if the Toreador didn’t: He would not take the ones who were taken.
One day, Boots didn’t show up for work, and a feeding. This was unusual for most Bitten, but he didn’t worry just yet. It was the second time she didn’t show up for work that he wondered. He had Anilia call her. He remembered feeling angered when Anilia told him that night that she said she quit, but it didn’t sound right. After feeding from one of Boots’ friends, he got some of the story and that pushed him from anger into fury.
Being embraced by a Brujah, his sense of fury had not diminished over time, but intensified. Anything could set him off. In this case, what set him off was something simple: she was having boyfriend problems, according to the girl.
Bomber remembered going to her apartment. He heard fighting. It took one hard punch to break the lock on the door, and there he saw Boots, standing in the kitchen, yelling up at a young man. His fury took over as he flew into the room, grabbing the guy by the throat, and lifting him two feet off the ground, demanding who the hell he thought he was, talking to her like that.
He didn’t know it was her brother.
He hadn’t known that he was the one having boyfriend problems and she was trying to get him to break up with her abusive boyfriend.
One broken shoulder later – after he had thrown him into the refrigerator door, hard enough to dent it – and when Boots stood in front of him, explaining who he was and what he was doing, Bomber finally calmed enough to look at her, and then to focus on what she was saying.
He used his compulsion, to have him forget about him, and also to have Boots forget about what happened. He left before the cops got there, taking the fire escape down, and he never saw Boots again, except as a patron of the club once or twice. Since then, he tried to consider the Bitten not like his children or his charges, but as people who were his dinner, his servants. He tried to treat them like the elders would have wanted him to.
But he couldn’t. He wanted to help them through school, get real jobs, eventually leave his employ and go out and make names for themselves. He had culled the ranks so that the Bitten were down to eight or so, with other members of the staff loyal to him and also recipients of the Kiss. The big Dhampir, half the bouncers, two bartenders, Kaf who was an employee who he had not given blood but who understood the bonds of mentor and apprentice – and Scott.
“You hurt Mike, you hurt me,” he’d said. Bomber sighed, and ducked into an alley. A cat hissed at him and ran. He flipped open the phone, trying to calculate what time it was in the Isles. He dialed Mike’s number and was not surprised when it went directly into voice mail after the first ring.
“Mike. Listen. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” He started to hang up, then said, “Oh yeah. Merry Christmas.” Then he flipped the phone closed.
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Mike turned over and glanced at the number in the dim light of the bedroom. Scott had his arm across Mike’s chest and murmured into his back, “Who was it.”
“Nobody,” Mike said, setting the phone back with a small smile. “Nothing at all.”