Chapter 6 #2
Baz and Nemo didn't react either time people ran from us, so I focused on that, instead of the dread that Orson had abandoned us.
"That's not normal, you know?" Were they really this clueless?
"What's not?" They asked in unison, looking like a pair of murder fuck boy twins.
"People falling over and running in fear."
"Seems pretty normal to me," Nemo commented apathetically.
"What are you looking at?" Baz snapped at an older woman with white hair. She averted her wide eyes and quickly moved from self-checkout to the cashiers on the other side of the store. I sighed.
"Can you two not get the cops called on us?"
"Here are my things," Orson said, coming from nowhere. Thank god. He began handing me an item at a time to scan. Duct tape, a knife set, a five-gallon bucket…
"Well, if we didn't look weird enough."
"Whatever do you mean? It's just some household items," he chuckled and flashed a smile at the self-checkout employee. He then slid a couple of children's tablets to me. That was a weird choice. Was this for Baz and Nemo?
"Um, sir. Sir." Nemo jerked in shock when he realized someone was talking to him. He peered down at the young employee. "You have to wear a shirt here, sir."
"Then give me a shirt. I don't have one."
"You're supposed to have your own," Orson said.
"Am I supposed to weave it with my hands or some shit?"
"You don't weave shirts. Why did we bring him again?" Orson asked while shoving an XXXL tee shirt at me. Nemo’s size. It made me smile. You don't buy shirts for people you plan to leave for dead.
"I'm going to fucking touch her," Baz hissed, straining to look over the cash registers towards his Golden Girls nemesis.
"Are you threatening to sexually harass another customer?" The employee asked, still standing in our space.
"Sexually harass?" Baz asked in confusion. "Jesus, you're sick. I'm talking about killing her." The employee's eyes bugged.
"Murder isn't normal, sweetie," I said, trying to find the barcode on the rope and machete Orson handed me next.
"I was only threatening," Baz grumbled. "Here," he said, slipping a card from his back pocket and sliding it into my hand. He then reached over to the candy and began piling it on the scanning area. Some fell onto the floor.
"What is this?" I asked, staring at what looked to be a credit card.
"My bank card. I made sure to get it from Zero's office before we uh ...." he looked at the employee. "Before we left the BDSM party."
"The what?" I asked in confusion. "Wait, bank card? You have money?" I asked. Baz shrugged, and Nemo began laughing while rubbing his naked chest.
"The asylum wanted Baz for his wallet. Convenient how much money he got after killing his parents, isn’t it?" At that, the employee scampered off.
"No, you forget the real reason I was brought there. Your daddy wanted a friend for his pet dog."
"I'm not a fucking dog," Nemo growled loudly. Apparently, the energy drink was making them aggressive. Who’d have thought?
"Why do you take my cock doggy style if you aren't a mutt?" Baz asked, sounding genuinely confused. Nemo launched at him, and they began wrestling on the ground.
"Let's see who takes it," Nemo snapped. People in the store were freaking out.
This was officially a shit show. Baz attempted to scramble away on his belly.
Nemo reached out and grabbed him by the top of his pants, tugging him hard enough that Baz's muscular ass was revealed. He wasn’t really going to fuck him on the floor of a public grocery store, right?
“You’re not winning this time. I’m in charge now,” Nemo growled. Baz flipped around, biting off a glove before pressing his bare hand to Nemo’s neck. Green veins slid out across skin.
“I can always win,” Baz hissed. Nemo’s pain was evident as the venom soaked in, but he didn’t back away.
“You won’t kill me just to win this fight. You care if I die. It’s over.” Nemo smiled with all his teeth, leaning closer to Baz.
“Get off me,” Baz said, shock-laced in his words. He moved his hand to Nemo’s shoulder, pushing him. More dark veins spread out, faster than before. When Nemo didn’t fall over, Baz’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Oh, fuck.”
Orson pinched the bridge of his nose.
"I didn't plan to do this," he sighed.
"Please don't drug us again," I pleaded.
In a blur, Orson was on Nemo's back, his teeth pressing into his neck.
I could smell the blood released from his vein and into Orson's mouth.
I swayed, grabbing hold of the self-checkout counter as my mouth pooled with saliva.
The sound of Nemo's blood gushing into Orson's greedy mouth filled my ears.
It was followed by the wet sound of his tongue lapping at the wound and the steady swallow as he gulped it all down.
I imagined it traveling down his throat and settling into his belly, full and warm with Nemo's red, wet life force.
My stomach grumbled in hunger, and I felt dizzy.
The edges of my vision went dim, and the metal on the self-checkout counter dented as my grip tightened.
I tried to concentrate on specific details around me as a way to ignore the gnawing hunger rampaging inside me, demanding I drink from my soul mates.
Demanding I also gorged on the humans milling around, gasping in shock and huddling closer to catch a glimpse of what was happening.
Nemo dropped Baz and pressed his forehead into the ground, panting as Orson drank from him.
I tried to steady myself as I listened to his deep breaths.
Orson pulled his mouth away, his lips red and wet.
It was obscene. He flipped Nemo over and looked down at him, capturing the bigger man's eyes in a hypnotic stare.
Nemo's half-lidded gaze gave him the attention he demanded while his hands settled on Orson's hips.
"Put this on," Orson demanded, holding up the shirt I'd scanned. Nemo nodded. Baz was pulling himself up when the self-checkout employee came over and grabbed his arm to help him. Baz sighed.
"Not even a full day outside," he said.
"Huh?" the employee said, not aware his hands were turning black. In the next second, his face creased in pain, and he dropped to the floor, letting out a banshee wail of death as the venom met his nerve endings. Baz watched him with detached curiosity.
I no longer cared. Guess I wasn’t the one who was going to keep us all together because all that mattered was the iron scent of Nemo's blood in the air.
There had always been something about his blood, in particular, that drove me wild.
Orson was clean and sensual but not filling.
It could take the edge off of the hunger and fill my belly, but it didn't satiate me.
Baz's was exotic. Citrus and spice, burning on my tongue and hot in my belly. Like any spicy meal, it offered the pleasurable bite of pain that simmered into numbing ecstasy. Still, it wasn't something I could have much of. Too much turned it from something delightful to something unpleasant.
But my Nemo had the blood of an animalistic king pumping in his veins—visceral, raw power.
I could swallow down gallons and fill my belly until it felt distended on what he had to give me.
He nourished me, but he was only one man—even if he could qualify as the size of two—and he was a man I didn't often want dead.
I should have paid attention to the warning signs of my hunger because right now, I felt logic slipping away, shucked off like a bad outfit. A little laugh bubbled from my lips as my fangs descended slowly. No doubt, my eyes were becoming black pools.
The hunger wasn't just the squeeze in my stomach.
It wasn't just yearning in my throat and saliva pooling in my mouth.
It was an infection that took control of me entirely.
I was no longer Bree. I was the hunger. It was the curse that came with the power.
Something Zero had gifted me when infecting me with his own Eldritch blood.
So much power, it was hard to control. Often, I failed, and this happened.
"Bree," Orson said. He was standing beside me. I hadn't realized he'd moved. My eyes were latched to Nemo. He was still splayed out on the ground, shirtless, and the open indents of Orson's bite leaked a trail of blood down his neck. Delicious.
"Yes, Orson?" I licked my lips.
"You'll be mad at me if I don't remind you not to kill Nemo."
"Will I?" I imagined for a moment drinking Nemo down whole, consuming him until his entire being was inside me forever. A shudder of bone-deep delight rolled over my body.
"Eat the humans first, at least. Save the best for last," he commented. The hunger could see the logic in that. I lunged for the crowd, who were already running in a stampede towards the door after Baz killed the employee.
Bloodbath was the perfect description of what the place turned into.
Neck after glorious neck. I wasn't clean with it.
I quickly sank in my fangs before ripping the vein clean open in a gush of blood that soaked their chest in a matter of seconds.
It sprayed on me, on them, on the floor, the ceiling, the walls.
I tore into neck after neck, killing them all in an attempt to get what was inside on the outside in the swiftest, messiest way possible because I was starved.
Baz was right, we were better off in the asylum. We were unhinged.
My tongue ran up necks and dug into fountaining wounds. My clawed fingers dug into shoulders, holding them in place as I bit their throats to shreds. I shoved them aside when the next fresh neck behind them tempted me more than the one already in my mouth.
The moment was frenzied and pressing. As the sensation of starving subsided and pure unrestrained desire lightened me, it was freedom in the best way. A whole store to gorge on freely. No one to stop me. No moral qualms either. Who cares about those?
"Bree," Orson hissed, attempting to pull me off a human I'd tackled to the ground. Orson's hands slid off my blood-painted body. Even my hair was dripping with red as if I'd been dunked into a vat of the stuff and drank my way out.
I pulled my head from the neck I was feeding on and hissed.
From behind, large arms wrapped around me, trapping me in a bear hug as I was lifted from the ground.
"Nemo!" I wailed. "I'm hungry," I whined.
"You are not hungry," he murmured deep in my ear. I squirmed against him. "And Supra's found us."