While Damian finished his dinner, the wampyr reached across the table to retrieve Ragoczy’s abandoned copy of the Manhattanite. It was a full-sized paper, not the tabloid he had anticipated. When he flipped it open, though, his fingers stuck against the surface as if it were printed on fly paper. He had anticipated a grainy, flare-daubed, underexposed print from his flight from the cameras on the previous morning. Instead, his fingertips brushed the stark, exquisite jaw of a young woman whose pallor and stern bearing made her seem a heroic, martial statue hewn of ice. She did not look a day over seventeen. She wore a plain traveling suit in some fabric that read grey on film, but it might as well have been a uniform. In the photograph, her hair seemed white where it bounced against broad shoulders. The wampyr knew it was ice-blonde, though. As his fingertips traced those pale waves, he felt the stillness of the hunt steal over him. Expression dropped from his face; he felt the effort it took to maintain the semblance of humanity slip away.
