Asteria in control
Asteria dropped the forty feet to the scrub desert surface below and then took off into a run.
She ran quickly and silently, not directly toward the target but to a relatively concealed clump of brush over a small gully about a quarter-mile out from it. There were no sounds and nothing moving. The heat source was a late twentieth century city bus with steel plates bolted over all of the windows: a classic vampire lair.
She ran into the middle of the town and approached the bus from cover, finally creeping up to the folding door at the front of the bus. There were electronic sounds coming from inside that were barely audible over the idle whirring of the climate control unit on the top of the bus. The boarding door folded open when she pressed on it.
It was dark inside with only computer monitors for illumination. The chairs in the back of the bus had been removed. In their place were two rows of four women, each woman unconscious and in a seated position with her back to a wall. They were all hooked up to an IV drip in one arm and an IV blood bag in the other arm.