Manhattan, at the corner of Thirty-Ninth Street.
To most citizens familiar with Manhattan, this shabby, unremarkable storefront on the corner was nothing more than an ordinary nightclub. But to certain people—or rather, certain things—this was a lawless place.
Beyond the rundown facade and rusted escalators lay an astonishingly vast, pitch-black space beneath the nightclub. The hall was packed with people, dark figures twisting their bodies one after another in a dance resembling some ancient sacrificial ritual. Dazzling colored lights swept repeatedly over everyone's heads, while Gothic music swirled through the air.
It was practically a devil's feast.
A dozen or twenty haggard, disheveled teenage boys and girls were surrounded by the revelers in the dance floor at the center of the hall. Multicolored spotlights flickered on and off above them, as though they were the focus of the celebration. Some had been trafficked, some were undocumented arrivals, illegal immigrants... But none of that mattered anymore.
Here, they had only one identity: food.
This was one of the gathering places for the vampires living in New York. Every so often, the vampires held a feast here centered on singing, dancing, and eating. The food at each feast consisted of young people carefully selected and brought in by the organizers—what vampires might call "fine dining."
A vampire who looked almost human, dressed in a suit and bow tie, slowly stepped onto the stairs. He bared his sharp, terrifying fangs and grinned viciously at one of the rather pretty girls. His finger slowly slid down her snowy cheek to her delicate chin, his hungry gaze fixed on her like she was a sheep awaiting slaughter.
The girl's expression was numb, as though she had become completely desensitized to her bleak fate. In fact, everyone brought here was the same.
For them, there had