by Liz Meldon
She couldn’t do it.
She couldn’t drink people.
And she had been feeling the effects of that resolve since day one. Her body ached, like a star folding in on itself, two seconds out from a galaxy-ending implosion that would blot out the sun. Her mouth was on fire, so parched, so dry all—the—fucking—time. Her belly gurgled and roared, demanding sustenance. That voice—Ella, bella, sweet girl—encouraged her to feed, but she blocked that out too, just like the rest of the world.
What hurt the most, far above the physical agony, was the loneliness.
And the fact that Ella couldn’t so much as look at her best friend, her childhood soulmate, her sister, without wanting to tear her to pieces. When she saw Moira, the hunger won out. It was the human heartbeat, Severus had told her. Demon hearts had no appeal, wouldn’t trigger the beast inside. Humans were and always would be her ideal prey. Severus visited in Moira’s place most days, sitting with Ella on her bed, holding her hand as she wept. It was nice to be able to touch him without all that sharply pungent pleasure pulsing through her system.
The incubus had been a helpful presence in her solitude. Not only had he explained how Ella would lose control the moment she heard a human heartbeat, but if she actually fed like she was supposed to, she could get a grip on things.
But Ella couldn’t drink the blood.
That made her the strongest vampire she knew—and the weakest. If she just sucked it up and chugged it all back, taking it like a shot of whiskey, then she could see Moira again. Alaric too. Instead, she stayed locked in her room, the long hours broken up by visits from Severus and Cordelia.
Moira slept outside her door each night—and sat there most days too. Sometimes, if she caught wind of the slow, precise thump-thump of her hybrid heart, Ella would have to retreat into the bathroom to collect herself. If she could ignore it, if it was muffled enough through the wood and concrete, Ella would sit on the other side of the door, pining for her old life, feeling pathetic and shattered and empty.
Until the hunger won out. Until the animal inside clawed its way to the surface, demanding blood and flesh and whatever the fuck else a half-starved vampire needed.
No. She wasn’t half-starved.
She was just starved. Seven days and no blood—she wasn’t sure how much longer she could last.
No one had told her whether or not she would starve to death if she didn’t drink. Maybe they thought she would come to her senses, but Thomas women had always been blessed with stubbornness. Always.
When would that stubbornness kill her? Day eight, nine, ten? Twenty? Fifty? Two hundred?
Seated at the head of her bed, she stared blankly at her closet, all her usual clothes untouched. She didn’t sweat—not a hint of body odor at all, actually—which meant she had been living in the same shorts and baggy, ratty old T-shirt she had woken up in last week. It felt so fucking petty, but she missed her clothes, her makeup, her styling products.
She missed going to school, talking to classmates, working her new job.
She missed—everything.
Her eyes welled again, but she just rolled them, so sick of the bloody tears, and grabbed a tissue off her side table to catch them before they fell.
The house was quiet tonight. Alaric and Cordelia had left for their standing biweekly dinner date with Verrier at seven, and Severus had all but dragged Moira outside fifteen minutes ago. They’d argued about it, but Moira had conceded after Ella sided with Severus—via text.
Go outside, you weirdo. You’re getting cabin fever.
“You’re getting cabin fever,” Moira had said through the door. She’d heard the hybrid’s sad smile entwined with every word, and it fractured what little was left of her stupid vampiric heart.
They promised to be gone no more than an hour.
Ella had texted back insisting they go out for the night—see something else besides these four walls. After all, it wasn’t like she was going anywhere. She would still be here, right here, when they got back.
So, the house had been quiet—too quiet for a creature who now heard the creak of every floorboard and the settling sigh of the foundations. Quiet all day… until now. She tossed her bloody, crinkled tissue in the general direction of the bathroom, then sat up a little straighter when she heard the familiar thunder of Malachi’s giant feet clomping up the stairs. Honestly, sometimes she wondered if he did it on purpose, just to be, well, Malachi.
Ella hadn’t seen the chaos demon since the first day of this waking nightmare, but she could sometimes feel him through the door, his aura humming chaotically on the other side. She had to be right there to feel him, but when she did, there was something both oddly comforting and immensely unsettling about it. Beyond that, she had been able to hear his deep baritone through the floors. All this time, he hadn’t left—but he hadn’t come back to see her either.
Apparently tonight was the night, because rather than lingering outside her door as he’d done before, the chaos demon came barreling through without so much as a knock. Ella scrambled up, seated on her knees and schooling her features from startled to indignant. While Malachi was as handsome as ever, golden tresses wild and free, grey slacks a stunning fit to those muscular thighs and—god help her—that ridiculously tight ass, Ella knew she resembled a sewer-dwelling mole person.
How did she know that? Because vampires did, in fact, cast a reflection in mirrors. It was faint, hazy, but her new eyes could still make out every awful detail.
“Malachi—”
She yelped when he tossed a blood-filled water bottle at her, catching it with ease, then hurled said bottle into the bathroom like it had burned her.
“This is fucking ridiculous,” the demon growled, his black eyes a perfect match to the obsidian cashmere sweater clinging to all the luscious dips and mounds of his torso. Through vampire eyes, he looked even more divine than usual, his sculpted figure somehow more pronounced. Still, his personality was the star of the show, as always, and Ella could barely manage it on an empty stomach.
“Can you just get out?”
“Are you finished with your little tantrum yet?” he demanded, completely ignoring her request. Anger sliced through the agonizing hunger; her hands balled to tight, trembling fists.
“Fuck you, Malachi.”
He leveled her with a cool look, a ghost of a smirk playing across his lips. “I don’t let vampires speak to me like that.”
Not only had Severus helped her understand the nuances of her cravings, but he had ever so graciously explained where Ella now sat on the demon totem pole: squarely at the bottom. Lower than incubi, lower than hell-born demonic vampires, she was basically dirt.
Not that she gave a shit about demon social hierarchies.
“Well, I guess you’d better get used to it,” Ella sneered right back, chin lifted defiantly. Fuck him if he thought he could waltz in here and treat her like garbage just because some vampire jerk bit her. It would be a cold day in Hell before—
“I won’t for much longer if you go on like this,” he said, voice velvety smooth as he flicked on the lights and closed the door behind him. “You’ll be a shell of yourself by the end of the month… Just stretched skin, bone, and fang.”
Who cares. She didn’t dare say it, but really. What did it matter if she wasted away? Sure, Moira would be devastated, but Ella hated to see her like this, skipping school, bailing on her angel lessons, refusing to eat, just so she could sit in solidarity in front of her door. It wasn’t fair. Wouldn’t it be better if Ella was gone? The world didn’t need another parasite.
Swallowing thickly, then wincing at the razor blades slicing down her throat, Ella sat back on her heels, fists on her lap, and sighed.
More of a habit than anything, that sigh. She had all the physical parts that made the sigh happen. She could suck in a breath. Fill her lungs. Shove it back out. But she didn’t need to.
Ella missed breathing.
“If you’re quite finished,” Mala
chi mused, standing at the end of her bed, arms folded, “I think I may have a solution to your little… issue.”
Her eyebrows shot up.
Ella, bella, come outside…
The voice had been growing fainter over the past week, and while she wasn’t sure if that meant her mind was deteriorating, the day she finally went without it whispering in her ear would be a good one.
“You can drink from me,” Malachi stated. His words lacked the usual teasing bite, so matter-of-fact and professional, clinical almost, that it made her snort.
Then it made her mouth water. “What?”
“I’m serious.” He sniffed, brushing a bit of nonexistent lint from his sleeve. “Human blood will make you your strongest, but it isn’t the only option. You don’t want to hurt people.” The demon shook his head, tone dripping with snarky disbelief. “Or cows, apparently. All right. Then hurt me.” He tugged up one sleeve, exposing a deliciously muscular forearm, veiny and beautiful. “I can take it.”
Had he seriously just offered to let her bite him?
Feed from him?
Really?
She’d be a moron if she didn’t question this stroke of goodwill. Ella frowned, her suspicions rising with the lift of each of his sleeves. “Why?”
“Because what you’re doing is senseless, and I, unlike everyone else in this Lucifer-forsaken homestead, refuse to coddle you a second longer.”
Indignant, she sputtered up at him. “Excuse me?”
“It’s a waste of life. You’re intelligent, competent, capable, and it’d be a shame to lose that biting wit,” he told her dryly. “You have immortality ahead of you, Ella. Don’t throw it away hiding in this room.”
Fuck him. Seriously. “I’m not hiding—”
“Cowering, then.” The chaos demon offered his left forearm, then after a moment’s consideration, the right instead. “Is that better?”
Her temper flared alongside the spike of his aura, like they were feeding off each other. “I’m not cowering either. I’m adjusting. Processing.”
Malachi tsked. “Don’t play semantics with me.”
“I’m trying to come to terms with this horrific thing that happened to me—”
“Horrific things happen to all of us,” he snapped, and she ground her teeth together when she realized she’d been unconsciously listing toward him, just inching down the length of her bed.
Honestly, did this guy have his own orbit? Because she’d been stuck in it since June. Ella rolled her shoulders back to shake off the tension; she had refused to let him bait her in the past, and that wasn’t about to change anytime soon. Meanwhile, Malachi’s black gaze narrowed at her as he said, “You’re letting that bastard win by throwing your life away.”
“My life is already thrown away,” she muttered, her throat raw, her eyes prickling with tears. Only they never fell—Malachi’s dismissive chuckle stopped them dead in their tracks.
“And Cordie calls me dramatic.”
Ella threw her hands up. “Oh my god, get out—”
“You can still teach,” Malachi snapped, his ordinarily spotless complexion marred by a pale rosy flush. “You can still have the family of your choosing. You can do so much more now than you ever could before, and yet you’re letting this new, far stronger body of yours rot.”
Her hands twisted in her duvet, the truth landing like a cinder block to the gut.
“You want to be some vegan vampire who refuses to eat humans?” Malachi tsked again, as though the concept was the most absurd thing he had heard in his life. “Fine. Feed from me. A little blood loss is nothing. I’ll heal in minutes.”
Her mouth filled with a sudden rush of saliva, fangs elongating from her gumline and stabbing into her lower lip. A cruelty-free option certainly tickled her fancy, but this was Malachi. A chaos demon who delighted in wreaking havoc and spilling blood and hoarding power like it was going out of style. There had to be a catch—something he could gain from this.
“Why?” She sounded stronger this time, calmer. Because a part of her was considering this, but not if it meant selling her soul in the process.
If, you know, she even had a soul left to sell.
No, right?
Probably not.
“Because this charade is tiring, and, frankly, boring,” Malachi remarked, wearing his frustration openly now. “You think you’re the first human-turned-creature to have a crisis of self? You aren’t unique in that regards, Ella—” If he could stop growling her name so that she really felt it between her thighs, that would be fan-fucking-tastic. “—but you are unique in so many other ways, and you’re wasting it.” The chaos demon thrust his forearm at her, the tender, smooth underside exposed. “Now come here and put those things in your mouth to use. I doubt you’ll get it right on the first try…”
As desperate as she was to shotgun a chaos demon, the best Ella could manage was a bit of trout-like gawking, firmly planted in place. Where the hell had this Malachi been for the last two weeks? All that brooding, distant, seriousness—had it been an act?
Whatever it was, she was just happy to see him again.
And that should have unsettled her… but it didn’t.
She tentatively swept her tongue over both fangs: razor-sharp and fully extended. Even though human blood was “the good stuff,” apparently demon blood got her hard too. Good to know.
“Ella.” Less of a growl, more of a sexy command, Malachi locked that piercing black gaze on her, his arm extended and waiting. A shiver cut down her spine—which surprised her. She hadn’t felt much of anything over the last week. Not heat, not cold, not pain when she stubbed her pinky toe off the corner of the bed. Inside she had been a mess, while exterior stimuli—nothing. But Malachi’s velvety grumble did something to her.
Hadn’t it always?
Her gulp lacked the brutal slice of daggers this time, and she slowly crawled to the end of the bed, all but foaming at the mouth. Was she really about to do this? And at what cost?
Fuck it.
Settling on her knees before him, her eyes darted between his tempting forearm and that black gaze. A brief beat of hesitation came and went. Malachi said nothing, and neither did she as she wrapped her trembling hands around his forearm.
His skin—so warm. Ella could barely feel the scalding heat of her shower, but this? This she felt. Fangs nudging at her lower lip, she resisted the urge to rub her cheek against him. There was no going back after this; she’d need skin-to-skin contact, a whole lot more, just to feel alive after seven days as a walking, talking, crying corpse.
Beneath her fingertips, his pulse flickered. Dull but constant, it danced for her as Ella moved in closer and trailed her nose along the blue vein ribboning up his arm.
“I doubt you’ll get it right on the first try…”
What if she sucked at this?
Another hesitant glance up.
What if he… made fun of her? Could she handle that right now?
Malachi lifted his arm, bringing it closer to her mouth.
Well. Time to find out.
Ella, bella, sweet girl—
Would you shut the fuck up already?
Her eyes narrowed as she rubbed at her ear with her shoulder. The voice disappeared, all masculine and intrusive, nothing like Malachi’s velvet steel.
“Uhm, you’ll tell me if I hurt you, right?”
The chaos demon snorted. “You can’t hurt me, little vampire.”
Her hunger spiked as she peeled her lips back to reveal her fangs, the storm in her belly intensifying, drowning out everything else.
Ella broke his skin on the first try, fangs plunging deep, and she moaned as piping hot blood filled her mouth. It all happened so fast that she struggled to swallow it down, but after a little choking she managed it with a moan. Overhead, she could have sworn she heard Malachi hiss, his fingers coiling to a fist, then unfurling again, unleashing another tidal wave of delicious metallic fire. She gripped tighter and lapped it down greedily,
desperately, the horrible ache that had plagued her for the last seven days finally relenting.
“Good girl,” he murmured, his free hand ghosting over her hair. While the blood was all-consuming, she vaguely felt him toying with a curl. “That’s it…”
Her eyes fluttered closed, lips lifted dreamily; Ella Thomas had found her happy place.
Malachi’s blood had a saltier taste to it than the human blood she had guzzled that first day—salty like a breath of fresh coastal air.
In the middle of a hurricane.
With storms raging and lightning crashing and waves as tall as skyscrapers. It tasted of power and calamity. Not sweet. Nowhere near sweet. And yet it was heavenly nectar all the same, her tongue assaulted with so many nuanced flavors that she couldn’t describe beyond the feeling of an apocalyptic storm.
Fuck human blood. This was her poison.
And this was her salvation.
Slowly, Malachi steered her against him, lifting his forearm up—and Ella just went along for the ride. Her back molded to the peaks and valleys of his chest, a roaring river of demon blood spilling down her throat. Warmth spiked within her, between them, sharpening from something cozy to something dangerous, and she did nothing to stop it. In fact, Ella welcomed the flame, her nails digging into his flesh. She moaned again, long and low and feral. Malachi growled back, his nose in her hair, his free hand clutching at her thigh.
And his arousal digging into her ass.
“All right,” he rasped, lips brushing against her ear. “That’s enough.”
Yeah. That tone totally sounded like he wanted her to stop. Ella ignored him.
“You’ll make yourself sick,” Malachi growled, firmer this time, like he had finally put his foot down. When she sunk in deeper, the chaos demon cupped her chin none too gently and unlatched her from his arm, removing it from sight immediately. Thick, powerful fingers gripped her cheeks, keeping her lips parted as blood dribbled down her chin, her back still tucked firmly against his chest.
At long last, her body had gone quiet, as quiet as the house around them, but the storm continued to rage in his arms. Encased in the chaotic hum of his being, Ella was free. Safe. Wild.