by Kaia Bennett
I watched him slowly absorb my blood, uncoiling minute by minute from his coma. When he finally woke enough to understand me, he looked shocked and then relieved. Amazing what a stare can tell you. I knew him and he knew me. When I smiled, all of that relief melted under pure terror. He didn’t even have the strength to blink fully. But I knew terror on his face well.
“I’m gonna beat the ever-living fuck out of you, as soon as you can take it.”
His pupils shuddered. I cooed at him like a baby. “Yes I am. I’m gonna break every bone in your body, Vaughn. Bones you didn’t know you had.”
I gave him a vicious grin and a little more of my blood.
“I’m gonna make you bleed for me. And when I’m done, you can tell me why I shouldn’t finish what Evie started.”
When I licked my teeth clean of my own blood, my fangs had already retracted.
Something’s wrong.
I couldn’t seem to get past the numbness to figure out what ‘wrong’ meant, but I knew I felt like Vaughn—like the walking, breathing dead.
2
The doorbell rang upstairs, not long after Vaughn woke. Cai’s food must’ve arrived, reminding me not to waste too much of my blood on my brother.
In truth, a bucket of the stuff wouldn’t heal him as fast as prey would. We’re not designed to feed on our own kind. It’d be like dying of starvation and expecting a tongue kiss to ease the hunger pangs. I’d started the ball rolling, but he needed something to slake the bloodlust. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.
“Shit.” I sighed and stared up at the ceiling. Of course my cell would be useless now, soaked through. I got up, walked over to where Vaughn must have kicked his jeans free and rifled through his pockets. I found his phone, and a token of affection—of weakness—I didn’t expect. Evie’s necklace. The feather I’d placed around her neck when I called her mine shimmered in the white light of the room.
I stared at my brother’s kill trophy, and for a second I remembered how I felt when I placed the golden chain around her throat. I’d let my fingers linger over the creamy expanse of skin covering her narcotic blood, waiting for my blood to heal her.
I clenched the jagged edge of the charm in my palm. I don’t care. She’s dead and it’s a cheap necklace. I wanted to drop the useless gold trinket, but I swallowed and shoved the chain into my pocket instead.
I dialed a number I knew by heart on Vaughn’s phone and got the housekeeper.
“Hello, Jesse. What can I do for you?”
Always the same greeting in the same chipper voice, no matter who picked up the phone. I’d counted maybe six different voices over the years since phones were invented. I figured they were vampires or packless wolves who took turns manning the desk, replaced only when they died. They ran this safe house, put food in the fridge for the witch, kept things clean and had prey ready for delivery when I hit Austin during my travels.
All were strangers, not like in the good old days, when we had live-in maids and manservants, and people couldn’t track me down with these electronic leashes called cell phones. A free run isn’t so free when you can get a text any minute from your dad. Plus, feeding on the help used to be a fun way to piss off the old man, before witch fiascos apparently became my thing.
“I need….” I gave my brother a quick assessment. Vaughn would need at least two helpings of super healthy human to heal his wounds and another to make him more than a bloodthirsty zombie. “Let’s start with three meals. Two medium, one small.”
I didn’t have an appetite, which caused me silent alarm. No stirring in my cock, no tingle in my fangs, nor pangs in my stomach.
I had witch blood not too long ago. I swallowed, tried and failed, to forget the taste of her. I hadn’t fucked anyone—anything—since the witch fed me the blood in her womb. I should want to feed, if only to clear my head and let off steam.
Still, I skipped a meal for myself.
“Very good, sir. We’ll leave maid service on standby for you.”
I eyed Vaughn’s throat. He still looked like a Pez dispenser, but his eyes were very much alive now. His gaze slithered in my direction, wary even in his weakened state. I gave him my best grin. Despite my retracted fangs, the corners of his eyes creased and Vaughn rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. If he could’ve, I bet he’d have gulped.
“I need a new phone, too.” I hung up and went upstairs to wait. Fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rang.
I opened the door to find two wolves in human form crowding my prey. Two big guys about my size, one black with long wavy hair on top and shorn on the sides, and one ambiguously tan. Arab maybe, or Latino. The little guy looked like he could’ve been Vaughn’s younger brother except for his brown eyes. The black man and the little guy were dressed for the club or the bar, but their nice clothes were disheveled, marked by fear, sweat, and dim cologne. The ambiguous one looked like a pro. He smiled at me with a hint of confusion, and I realized with frustration I’d tried and failed to hear his thoughts.
Three hearts raced with panic and aggression, but their emotions were closed to me. No voices in my head to heighten the feeding this time. Only the rush of blood in the veins and the dumb muscles in their chests thumping. Only an empath could render prime prey like this boring.
I gave the guards a nod and they pushed my meals inside the foyer before shutting the door behind them. The door locked.
The black man said, “Look man, I don’t know what kinda twisted shit you got going on here, but they were supposed to take me home. I never got my phone call—”
I grabbed Vaughn’s talkative first meal by the collar of his jacket, and when he struggled, I snapped the back of my hand across his face. He sprawled onto the floor of the wide foyer and thumped against the wall. Blood spilled from his mouth. The little one scrambled for the front door.
“Holy shit! Holy fuck!” The other big guy retreated when I gave him a lopsided grin. He rubbed a nervous hand over his goatee. “My agency didn’t say anything about me getting roughed up like that. Keep your money and open the door.”
Sometimes the meals come willingly, like the escort that didn’t realize this would be his last stop. Sometimes they get detained by ‘cops’ who never book them and never take them home. I got a mixed bag tonight.
Somewhere upstairs, I heard a girl squeal in terror or ecstasy. Or both, maybe. Cai laughed. The steady rhythm of flesh pounding flesh reached my ears, if not my groin. The blood, the smell of fear, the sound of fucking. The once-heady cocktail of feeding swirled around my senses like perfume, but I couldn’t inhale.
I’d lost the fire in my blood, but I shook this off, determined to strike a fucking match.
I grabbed meal number one by his wavy hair and dragged him to a standing position.
“Be good boys and wait here.” I snarled my command to the other two, but they were busy screaming for help. When I left them with The Big One in tow, to pull open the basement door, they scrambled to find other exits.
I pushed Vaughn’s meal down the stairs. He stumbled down the first half, then righted himself and ran the rest of the way.
“So predictable.” I took the steps one at a time, dragging out my prey’s torment. “You’re all like roaches scuttling for a dark crevice when the lights come on. It’s a waste of time.”
When he reached the door at the bottom and realized the only way out was up, he whirled and broke his wrist landing a right hook on my chin. I subdued him easily while he screamed in agony, spun him around, and peeled off his jacket. His T-shirt tore like paper, revealing the wide expanse of his back. Endless hours in the gym and preening in front of the mirror, just to end up a near-dead vampire’s snack.
I wanted to laugh, but taunting him summoned a strange emotion, something that usually followed a good hunt. Exhaustion. Only then did I realize he’d been yelling, pushing against my easy hold on the nape of his neck.
“Fucking get off me!”
He roared the command, but his voice c
racked. That delicious panic would’ve gotten me hard as a rock yesterday. Prey acknowledging that first true flush of dread felt almost as good as a tongue swiping the sweet spot just under the head of my dick. No way out and faced with inhuman strength. A few days ago, I would’ve played with him, maybe fucked him before I fed him to Vaughn, or fucked him in front of my brother just to torture them both. A few days ago, I’d have ordered enough prey for Vaughn and myself in the first place.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
I tapped in the code with my free hand, pushed open the door, and walked The Big One inside. He screamed. I rolled my eyes and kicked the door closed behind me as he swung his fists. The blows pounded my chest like a cheerleader’s pompoms.
“What the fuck! Let me out! Let! Me! Out!”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. ‘No, stop’. ‘Please, don’t’.” I huffed out a breath. Not even a mild stirring of excitement. I ran my tongue over my fangs and felt only the retracted enamel.
“Let’s get this shit over with.”
I dragged him, kicking and wriggling, to Vaughn’s prone body. Only Vaughn’s eyes could move, but the hunger there, the sheer force of his bloodlust, startled me into recognition.
I should be starving, but I’m not. A corpse has more hunger than I do.
Even if Vaughn hadn’t been carved up like confetti, he’d have been foaming at the mouth. I should’ve been, too, but I hadn’t been hungry the way I used to be since….
Since I killed Liam. Not since I drank from Evie on the forest floor. That sweet nectar between her thighs had filled me in ways I’d never been full before. I experienced only a phantom stirring, thinking about that moment in the woods, but I still hungered more for the memory than I did for live prey before me.
Panic later. First I gotta feed this dumb shit.
I leaned the struggling man over Vaughn’s salivating mouth. The blond vampire couldn’t move, but his entire body vibrated with tension. Slowly, so slowly, I lowered The Big One’s neck over Vaughn. “Go ahead, take a bite.”
He strained to comply. I thought I heard a faint gargling whimper under the prey’s screams. The Big One’s fat tears splattered Vaughn’s bloody face. The parched, cracked flesh of my brother’s lips trembled. I yanked the appetizer into the air and heard the beginnings of a relieved breath, which broke off into a scream when I ripped into his throat with my teeth.
Not my fangs.
The fuckers still wouldn’t come out to play, not even with a fresh artery pumping against my tongue and my mind screaming for my fangs to extend. Doesn’t take much pressure to rip through the skin and meat of a human, but I growled in frustration at my loss of control.
“Please, stop! Why are you doing this?”
I pulled away from his throat, and though his blood coated my tongue, I couldn’t taste him. I swallowed and felt ill. The rest of the blood cascaded from my open mouth to splatter against Vaughn’s chest like drool. While the man struggled in my grip, I held his bleeding throat against Vaughn’s lips.
Vaughn’s mouth filled, overflowed. After about thirty seconds, he could swallow the flood healing his throat. Vaughn quivered his lips against the prey’s wounded throat, trying to cup them to the open artery. Then, my brother let out a desperate shriek of relief and closed his eyes as he drew in the first voluntary draw.
Vaughn’s eyes fluttered open again. They’d bloomed black as ink, still dull, but gaining their sheen with every drought from the dying man’s throat. He tried to grab the prey’s body, but Vaughn could only manage to arch his neck and tug at the limp arm cradling him as the man fell into unconsciousness.
The swallowing and suckling sounds became more urgent, damn near sexual, like all our feedings become. Still, I wiped fresh blood from my own lips and spit out the rest. Vaughn watched me with a covetous gaze. Hatred deepened the ebony eyes.
“Aw, poor baby. You mad I’m wasting what you crave?”
I tossed The Big One’s empty shell into the corner, the same corner where I’d found Evie huddled in shock. Not long after I’d left her alone Vaughn had dragged her down here. She’d been sitting beside his comatose body for hours and I tracked the ghost of her movements. Her handprints and footprints mingled with the dull scarlet streaks on the walls and floor. The Big One’s limbs twisted at odd angles, like an abandoned marionette, before he bounced and slumped to the floor. His milky, hooded eyes stared through me with an accusation—like Evie’s.
A throaty groan exited Vaughn’s lips, tugging me away from my staring contest with a corpse and a ghost. My brother’s breathing sped up as the pain of his healing tissue tingled to life. He managed to raise his hands a few inches before they fell limply to the plastic floor. His throat had taken the brunt of the blood and had begun in earnest to thread together. Even his heart would play second fiddle to the mending bone and sinew that would protect his spine and help him swallow more blood.
“You want another one?”
A mucous-filled groan hit the air, so like Liam’s coughs when he got sick. Vaughn shuddered, the muscles moving, stretching, reviving from the rigor of his half death.
Nothing would be real to him until he’d had enough blood. No speech would penetrate the bloodlust, no reason. His cock jerked, trying desperately to participate in the feeding, but lacked blood to harden.
It’d be a few hours before Vaughn could consume his next meal on his own. I trudged up the steps. I didn’t feel like playing with the food, but, dammit, I’d left them free to roam. Their escape attempts had given Cai some inspiration, judging by the energetic screams floating from his bedroom. I felt less inspired.
Should’ve knocked them out or tied them up.
The Pro hammered a bar stool against the impenetrable glass overlooking the lake. Cai had made sure the windows were set to the opaque tint my kind use when prey roams around the house. Even if the windows weren’t tinted, the property was well guarded with trees. No one would witness the last moments of the desperate men and woman who found their way through my door.
“C’mon, hand it over.”
I gestured for the man to hand over the stool. The backwards hand wave turned into a grab when he swung the damn thing at me. Plucking the wood easily from his hands, I snatched him by the neck. His already-wide eyes rounded like a wild tarsier on speed, but he still kicked and struggled. He’d fight, too. I smiled, thinking about Vaughn trying to wrestle this one to the ground in his weakened state. The Little One hid in one of the closets. I could hear the third heart beating, the sobs muffled by a shaking hand. Smart, not like the other two.
I set The Pro down, then jostled him toward the basement. I hadn’t bothered to close the door, so after a shove to his back, all I had to do was funnel him into the basement and close us in. Vaughn clawed his way to a standing position, while his second meal screamed. Vaughn’s prey stared between the two of us at the blood everywhere. The tan-skinned escort’s future lay in a dead, bloodless heap in the corner.
I crossed my arms over my chest and watched the other vampire thaw like frozen meat, zombie limbs struggling towards strength. Soaked in blood, and scenting prey. Vaughn staggered with speed I didn’t think he had in him toward The Pro, just missing his main course. The escort scrambled and slipped in a pool of Vaughn’s blood.
“Why are you doing this?!” He screamed at me over and over, his terror reaching a fever pitch.
Why are you doing this? Why are you hurting me? Questions I’d always had fun answering.
I didn’t answer now. I stared into him, through him, wondering why I saw a man when I should see prey, why when I licked my lips I didn’t taste nourishment where the blood still lingered. I tasted liquid ash. Nothingness.
Vaughn’s hunger, plus his growing strength, meant he stumbled less, but he still looked like a newborn colt. He threw himself from one wall to the next trying to capture his meal. I laughed when he tripped over the first dead body.
Vaughn let out a furious growl and launched himself at the human
’s abdomen. The Pro slipped out of Vaughn’s grip but Vaughn caught his ankle. The pathetic tug Vaughn managed made me laugh again, but the main course went down, thanks to a puddle of clotting blood. He smeared his hand over one of Evie’s footprints and pleaded as Vaughn turned him onto his back and climbed up his body like a vine. The blond vampire bit and clawed exposed flesh where he could, but his destination lay at the throat of his prey.
“Stop! Plea—” The man’s voice caught in a gargling scream, fingernails breaking against the floor and digging into Vaughn’s blanched skin. The rosy glow under the paleness of my brother began to return. His throat looked all but closed and the cuts on his chest, shoulders, and stomach were knitting shut. His hips pumped against the dying man’s, his cock returning to life with every draught of healing blood.
When Vaughn finally released his dead prey, he gasped in a lungful of air and exhaled a roar of life that echoed in the torture room. Muscles flexed and strained. His feral face held something other than bloodlust now. A faint inkling of Vaughn returned with a crazed grin. His semi-hard cock strained between him and the dead man, searching for something living to penetrate.
I smiled, but without mirth. He thought his last meal meant healing, release, and then business as usual. He might’ve forgotten my promise, but I hadn’t.
And I hadn’t forgotten the strange truth itching in my mind where hunger used to be.
I knew I should be starving. Distantly, I felt the first true twist of hunger in my gut. Vaughn had reminded me of my true nature, what hunger looked and felt like. But when I swiped my tongue against my lips, I tasted nothing. No sweetness. No desire.
Liquid ash. Death.
What happens when I need to feed?
By the time Vaughn finished his final meal, he’d begun to remember how he got in this mess in the first place.