After getting dressed and checking his hair, Martin left the motel room and found a note stuck to the door. [color=white:e1pv3pb7]FedEx package for you, front desk. He went to the lobby, where the night manager at the desk was watching something on a small TV. Martin had never seen him get up from his chair.
He was just leaving with his package when the manager asked, "So what do you do all day, that we can't come in there and clean up?" Martin looked back at him, a balding man in his early thirties with a gut growing over his belt buckle. Sullen curiosity pasted across his face. Martin considered him for a moment, then stepped closer.
"I sleep during the day," he said, and popped his eyes wide in a look of intensity. "For I... am a vampire!" he added, flourishing his arms wide. "I am the spawn of Count Satan Polidori, and at night I go out and drink the blood of virgins to sate my horrible bloodlust!"
"Oh, yeah," the manager said in a dismissive tone. He didn't roll his eyes but Martin could see he wanted to. "I've heard about you people, on the Internet." He turned his gaze back to the TV, and Martin left. He smiled to himself. He'd learned that after Anne Rice had become a big deal, it was sometimes easier to just go with a half-truth instead of an outright lie. Push it too far past believability and people would accept what you said just to get you to shut up.
Martin heard the man mutter "Loser" as he left. That was fine; let him think so. Martin was sure it would not be long before he was shown otherwise.

Outside he opened the FedEx box; it was empty but for a roll of twenties, rubber-banded. His "trust fund," then, from his Sire. No notes this time, but it wouldn't be long now.
He wandered, vaguely, toward the Rack. He needed to feed; it had been too long and he was having a hard time holding it together. It might lead to trouble, actually--Martin could tell it would be difficult to maintain a facade long enough to get a drink. And then he saw her, and a plan clicked into place.
She was outside a convenience store, leaning against the wall, her face a mixture of bored and pissed. He saw from how she was dressed that she was a prostitute, but the effect was more like one of those cartoons he used to watch as a kid--where a starving man sees a dog and it turns into a steak.
He walked past her, ignoring her half-hearted "Want some company?" as he approached the store. The doors were locked, but there was a booth with a woman inside, behind thick plexiglass. She said something that sounded like, "Can I help you?" through the microphone.
Martin unrolled one of the twenties and put it into the transfer bin. "Two drinks," he said. "Whatever it is you have in there--malt liquors, something like that." He closed his eyes, thought for a moment, and the word came to him. "Forties."
Alcohol in hand, he went back to the hooker and held up the bottles. "Company," he said to her. "Yes." Her eyes lit up when she saw the bottles; when she saw the cash she grew downright friendly.

He could hardly keep from tapping his foot, waiting for her to finish her damn drink already. And once she had had it, and she started to undo his shirt, he looked in her eyes and said, "Sleep." Giving it just that little extra push.
He laid her on the bed, and fed from her wrist, and it was hard oh so hard to stop, to not just take everything from her, and who would even miss her? But he did stop, and he licked the wound closed, feeling her warmth inside of him and needing more. He left sixty bucks by her on the bed, and went out to the lobby.
The manager was dozing, the TV still on. Martin crept up to him, stepped past the desk. The manager jerked up a bit, looking around. "Wha..?" he said, sleepily, and Martin gazed into him.
"Sleep."
And the manager shut his eyes, in a deeper sleep this time. And Martin took his wrist, and bit into it.[/color:e1pv3pb7]