2. Amy
Chapter 2
Amy
I followed Rebecca into a small room that looked like a typical doctor’s office. In the middle of the room was a light blue folding screen, the type of thing you would use to divide a room for privacy. A round hole about the size of a large grapefruit was cut into the screen about waist-high from the bottom.
Two people spoke softly on the other side of the screen, and I saw slight movement through the hole.
“Go ahead and have a seat.” Rebecca gestured to a chair next to the divider on our side of the room. I sat down while she went to speak to the people on the other side.
“Hi there, sorry for the wait. Just want to double check a few things. We’ve got a brusang who’s feeding for the first time, so you may experience some irritation while she learns how to bite. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.” The answering voice was masculine. Curiosity got the better of me and I leaned forward in the chair to peek through the hole.
“Please don’t look through the divider.” Rebecca’s voice was sharp. “The blood bank operates on anonymity for the safety of our donors. If you don’t abide by this, we will blacklist you from using our services.”
I straightened, placing my hands in my lap. That actually made a lot of sense and it was embarrassing that I almost screwed up so badly. “Sorry.”
Rebecca gave me stern glances while she and the nurse on the other side compared notes and charts. Matching up a blood donor and recipient seemed a lot more involved than I thought.
“All right, here’s what I can tell you.” Rebecca returned to my side. “You indicated ‘no preference’ on your form where it asked about the species of the blood donor. Since this is your first feeding, we’ve paired you with a human. Their blood will be the least shocking to your system. Everything else is more of an acquired taste.” She shuffled some papers around. “You disclosed your sexuality and gender as heterosexual female, so your donor is a heterosexual male. We aren’t always able to pair up compatible sexual orientations, but the feeding experience tends to be more enjoyable when preferences are a match.”
Rebecca closed my folder. “And that is all you’re entitled to know about your donor. I’ll remind you, if you try to find out any more detailed information such as names, addresses, or what they look like, you will not be permitted to use blood bank services. Understood?”
“Yeah, got it,” I said. “Will I have the same, uh, donor every time I come in?”
“Sometimes that can be arranged if you both come in on a regular schedule. But if you’re just walking in, we pair you with who we have available at the time. We have no shortage of human donors, but in some cases we’ll have to pair you with a female. This won’t affect the quality of the blood you receive. Donors are regularly tested to ensure their blood is the healthiest possible.”
“You sound like a babe,” came the male voice from the other side of the screen. “If you want to keep meeting up like this, I’m so down.”
Rebecca’s eyelid twitched like she was suppressing an eyeroll. “If the donor wishes for their identity to be known to the recipient, they can of course volunteer that information on their own.”
“I’m game if you are,” my anonymous donor piped up.
“No thanks, I’m good.” The words came in a rush. I barely had a handle on myself in this new life. Navigating flirtatious attention from some guy was the last thing I needed.
“All right. It was just an idea,” he huffed, sounding affronted.
“Shall we get the feeding started?” Rebecca suggested.
“Yes, please.”
My fangs ached with the need to pierce through warm flesh. My donor’s heartbeat became the loudest sound in the room, speaking directly to the aches in my empty stomach.
He stuck his forearm through the hole in the screen. Rebecca took his wrist with a gloved hand and swiped over the blue veins with a cotton pad. The sharp scent of alcohol burned my nose, but that was hardly a deterrent. I leaned toward those pulsing veins, so damn hungry I couldn’t stop myself.
“Wait, wait.”
Rebecca put her body between me and the donor’s wrist, and the growl in my throat was not a sound I thought I was capable of making.
“Oh, shit.” I covered my mouth with my hand, pulling back in horror. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I?—”
The human nurse just gave me a knowing look. “I really wish you would have come to us sooner. You’re on the verge of starving.”
I wanted to stand up, get in her face and threaten her to move or she’d become my next meal. At the exact same time, I was horrified that I wanted to do that to her. My hands curled around the edges of my chair because of what I might do.
“Let me feed.” My voice was tinged with a growl. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you if you don’t.”
Rebecca, to her credit, did not look afraid in the slightest. She stood squarely in front of me, and it made me wonder how many threats she’d received from starving brusang and vampires while working here.
“I’m going to put a numbing gel on his wrist so that you don’t hurt him,” she said calmly. “And then I will let you. His vitals are being monitored on the other side, and if it seems like you’re taking too much, we will forcibly remove you if we must.” She let out a wobbly breath, betraying some of the nerves she was good at hiding. “Other than that, follow your instincts. They’ll tell you what to do.”
“Okay.” My teeth clenched with restraint, fangs practically stabbing into my lower lip. “Numbing gel first. Don’t kill him. Got it.”
Rebecca moved quickly, applying the gel and checking in with the donor to make sure he was comfortable before allowing me access to his wrist.
I was horrified and screaming internally at what I was doing, what I’d become. But the scent of his blood was too overwhelming, my hunger too great to stop. I took his forearm and brought my mouth to his wrist.
My lips were sensitive, moving over his skin to find where his pulse was the strongest. When I found it, I didn’t hesitate, and let my fangs sink in.
The first taste that hit me was the numbing gel. It was gross enough to turn my stomach, and the smell overpowering my nose didn’t help. I almost pulled away, but then that first mouthful of blood hit my tongue.
It was…fine. Not as bad as I was expecting. Slightly thicker than water but almost as tasteless. The aches in my stomach and throbbing in my fangs began to ease, a clear signal that this was what my body needed. Blood was the source of strength and vitality, the way to survive.
In a way, this felt natural and made sense. But I couldn’t ignore the part of me that was freaking the fuck out.
Oh God, I’m drinking blood. I’m drinking blood from a person, a fellow human! This is wrong, this is gross, I could kill him. This isn’t me. I don’t want this. I never wanted this. Oh fuck, I’m gonna be sick.
My stomach heaved just as I ripped away from the man’s wrist. I stood up and made it to the sink just in time to vomit everything I’d just swallowed. I had only taken a couple of mouthfuls, and still I dry-heaved after my stomach was empty. Hunger cramped my insides again, along with disgust and despair.
“You all right? Want to take a break?” I heard Rebecca’s voice, followed by the slight weight of her hand on my back.
Ignoring her, I turned on the faucet and rinsed my mouth with water in an attempt to rid myself of the taste of blood and numbing gel. I couldn’t get over how the blood tasted almost like water. It wasn’t supposed to taste like that. This was wrong, so wrong.
“Hey, why don’t we?—”
I shoved away the hands that tried to comfort me and tried to return me to sitting down, and pushed my way through the door. There were too many voices, too many heartbeats and too many walls. I needed space and fresh air.
Eventually I made it through the lobby and out the front door. The noise of Tavia’s voice filtered through my racing thoughts, but her words didn’t register. She was probably demanding to know what happened, what was wrong and where I was going. She was always hovering, always in my space. How did I never notice before?
I screamed, trying to drown out all the noise in my head, all the thudding heartbeats and smells. Why couldn’t I have just a moment of fucking peace?
Heading down the street, I turned into a narrow alley, which dumped out into another busy street filled with restaurants and clubs. Tons of people were out, mostly red-eyed vampires, but I saw a few brusang like me and even some humans.
That was the biggest shock, seeing humans out here enjoying themselves among the vampires like this was also their home, their neighborhood. In Sapien we didn’t have much contact with vampires, despite living in their territory. We prided ourselves on not assimilating to their culture, not becoming their food and pets. Sapien was the last stronghold of humanity, and I had once been proud to be a human surviving with other humans in a supernatural world.
Now I couldn’t keep from staring as a vampire woman with a purple tinge to her red eyes yanked on a human man’s shirt collar, smirked, and snapped her fangs in his face before kissing him. And he kissed her back like the air from her mouth was all he needed to breathe.
How did his mouth not get cut up by those fangs? The man’s expression was dreamy and blissed-out when the kiss ended. His tongue darted out to catch a speck of blood on his lip, and the vampire’s tongue soon joined his. Then the near-pornographic kissing started all over again.
I turned back the way I came, not ready to attempt navigating crowds. Not with all those heartbeats, all the noises and smells. It felt like the perfect storm for a panic attack.
While meandering the quieter streets and alleyways, I brought a hand to my chest to feel my own heartbeat. It was there. I definitely wasn’t undead, a walking corpse like the human-world portrayals of people turned by vampires.
The rhythmic thumping behind my sternum was strong, steady. I only felt my heartbeat elevate at my freak-out over having someone’s blood in my mouth. Never once since my turning did it ever feel too fast, to the point of dizziness and breathlessness.
If becoming a brusang was what it took to fix my heart murmur and my asthma, well, that had to be a cruel joke, right?
“Shit.” I stopped walking and looked around me for the first time in several minutes. I’d been so eager to get away from Tavi and Bea, away from everyone, that I didn’t keep track of where I was going.
This street was quiet, and darker than the vibrant downtown area. I couldn’t have walked very far, but this area looked older, with cobblestone roads instead of paved asphalt. The buildings were taller and made of aged brick. I couldn’t even see the lights of the blood bank or any of the restaurants.
I scratched an itch on my hand as I turned around a few times, trying to decide which way to go, or if it would be worth it to knock on any doors and ask for directions. I didn’t even know how vampires viewed brusang. Was I equal to them? Or some kind of subjugated class? My panic heightened to a new level and I suddenly wished Tavi and Cyan were near. I didn’t even know if I was in danger or not.
“Shit!” I inspected my hand as the itch worsened to a burning sensation. There was a red, raised area on the back of my palm between my thumb and index finger. And it was spreading toward my wrist and across my knuckles.
What could this be? Had I been allergic to that guy’s blood or something? But then why wasn’t my throat swelling up?
“Are you lost, miss?”
I whirled around at the voice, taking in the tall, finely dressed figure standing under a streetlight. The light gave his long hair a yellow sheen but as he came closer, I noticed it was more silver.
The hair color was unique, especially for such a young-looking face. But there was no mistaking his eyes—the deep, ruby red of a vampire.
His pupils dilated, and I noted the slight flare of his nostrils as he approached. He was scenting me. Like a predator. So I did what any self-preserving prey animal would do.
I turned tail and ran.