Chapter Seven
Hilker laid out a series of blood-drawing supplies in front of Isaiah and slowly set to work, explaining each motion as he did. He had Isaiah help him tie the tourniquet and pressed Isaiah’s fingers to the pulse in his arm.
“Can you feel it?” he asked.
“I can always feel the pulse of blood,” Isaiah replied. “How do you think vampires find your veins?”
Hilker laughed. He lifted the syringe toward Isaiah. “Can you find it with a needle instead of a fang this time?”
“Stick the fucking bastard in his beady little eyes!” Landon shouted from within their cell, though there seemed far less anger in their tone than normal, the exclamation a jest instead of a desire. Or, at least, a jest on top of a desire.
“I was under the impression that the eye is not the best place to draw blood, but what do I know?” Hilker replied.
Isaiah snorted a laugh. “We won’t know unless we try it.”
“Stick, stick, stick,” Landon chanted.
Isaiah waggled the needle in Hilker’s face—fuck, he had really pretty eyes—before pressing it precisely into one of the zagging veins in the pit of Hilker’s elbow.
Hilker barely winced. He slid his tube into place on the other end, and suddenly Isaiah couldn’t look away.
He watched, entranced, as blood filled the tube, boldly red and sweet-smelling even through the glass.
His breath came out in a shudder. He licked the inside of his lips.
That one taste he’d had of Hilker had been so good—despite the situation that had birthed it and the way he’d felt after—that it seemed almost worth it for another. Just one more… for one more day…
“Not yet,” Hilker murmured, the edge of his lips quirking like he could see straight into Isaiah’s soul. Not that Isaiah had been at all subtle. “Let me test it first.”
Isaiah nodded, numbly, still unable to tear his gaze away as Hilker withdrew the vial and then the tourniquet, and finally the needle. A little drop of blood appeared in the crook of his arm. It was all Isaiah could do to not lower his mouth to it before Hilker covered the area with a bandage.
He heard himself groan, then bit his own lip.
Hilker winked at him. He took the blood across the lab. Isaiah sat there, feeling equal parts useless and ashamed and somehow not entirely hating that.
“So?” Landon shouted, and then Isaiah began to narrate Hilker’s science—to the best of his knowledge anyway.
He received occasional objections from Hilker, the scientist’s formal tone almost hiding the jest in his words.
“The aliquots allow me to run the test three times to confirm the results. None of it is saved for snacks,” he retorted, when Isaiah observed that he might take one of his portioned blood vials as a shot.
He contradicted Isaiah’s opinion of his white powder with, “Not baking soda or arsenic. It won’t kill you, though I don’t suggest you cook with it. It grows sentience when heated.”
“It’s not a whirly boy,” he corrected, later. “It’s a whirly agender, more commonly referred to as a centrifuge.”
That even got a laugh from Landon, which was probably just as much a sign of their nerves as anything else.
Finally, Hilker stood, and, pulling off his gloves, he said, “It’s finished.”
“And?” Isaiah could barely get the word out. Do I get one more day? he wanted to ask. After all these days, was he at the end?
Hilker smiled. “It’s out of my bloodstream.”
Landon whooped in a way that sounded uncomfortably unsure.
Hilker leaned toward Isaiah, and under his breath, he added, “You know what that means?”
Isaiah swallowed. “One last meal while I still have the fangs?” he whispered.
Something unhappy flashed over Hilker’s face, but it turned back into a smug desire so fast that Isaiah thought perhaps he’d mistaken it.
That he’d seen himself there, instead. Himself, with his fangs, and a life that hadn’t exactly been easy, but which he didn’t hate, either.
But what was the loss of that part of himself, when it was so very unlikely Landon’s mother would let him have any life at all, once Landon was human again, and Isaiah became nothing but a liability?
Before he went, he wanted to taste Hilker again.
Hilker seemed to want that just as much as Isaiah did. He grinned, lifting his chin, and Isaiah could see down the full length of his neck as he slowly pulled back the collar of his lab coat. Still quiet, he asked, “What are you offering me in return?”
“This is what I’m offering you,” Isaiah replied, and he didn’t raise his voice either. He still didn’t want Landon to know about this, he realized. For as much as he wanted it, he hated it too. The desire twisted in his stomach, each disgusted rotation making him crave it more.
“We’ll see about that,” Hilker muttered.
He held out a hand, and at first Isaiah thought—for no reason he could fathom—that he was to put his own into it, like they were a romantic couple, but then Hilker latched his fingers around the front of Isaiah’s gown and pulled him forward.
Isaiah let himself go, let the yearning behind his fangs take over as the pulse in Hilker’s neck neared.
Saliva flooded his mouth and his lashes fluttered as his vision took a back seat to his other senses. Hilker’s scent seemed to wrap around him like manacles.
Isaiah pressed his palm to Hilker’s collarbone, as if that might be enough to ground himself, and leaned in. He set his nose to Hilker’s skin, just breathing at first, but Hilker’s fingers began sweeping through his hair, curling around the back of his neck and he—
He sank his fangs in.
Isaiah drank, closing his eyes and existing in that single moment. Hilker’s life spilled into his mouth with each drag, sweet nearly to the point of overwhelming, with a sharp edge that snuck up at the end of each swallow. Hilker groaned, such a soft noise that it was barely more than a vibration.
Isaiah felt Hilker shift his grip, his hand sliding down Isaiah’s back.
As it dropped lower, it took more and more of his attention, until Hilker’s fingers closed around one of Isaiah’s ass cheeks.
Isaiah nearly pulled back with a squeak, but Hilker tightened his grip, dragging him closer—chest to chest, hip to hip.
The hard outline of Hilker’s dick rubbed against Isaiah’s crotch, and with a few subtle grinds, his own threatened to rise too.
Isaiah tried not to dwell on that, not on the way Hilker’s fingernails dug into his ass or the feel of the man’s whole body against his, instead focusing solely on the blood in his mouth and the flesh beneath his fangs.
But then Hilker’s other hand slid between them.
It took Isaiah a moment to realize Hilker was reaching into his own lab coat, into his own pants.
Isaiah tried to pull back, but Hilker hissed, “Do you really think you’re less of a whore if I do this later instead?”
The question sent a shudder through Isaiah’s body, landing right between his legs and burning there.
He moaned into Hilker’s neck, biting down harder after, like that might stop the lightheaded rush taking control of him.
This was wrong. This was wrong, and terrible, and it was also all he wanted in the moment—all he could think about.
Hilker seemed to know it. He squeezed Isaiah’s ass. “Keep drinking, you pretty little slut,” he whispered.
Isaiah felt Hilker’s hand move inside his pants, up and down, the rhythm vibrating like an echo through the thin fabric of Isaiah’s medical gown.
And he let it happen. He let himself hate it and enjoy it in equal proportions, basking half in the pleasure and half in the disgust it churned inside him. Pretty little slut.
Justin would never have let him do this.
Justin wasn’t here, wasn’t his.
Isaiah was, for one stupid, senseless moment, the possession of a villain, a fucking monster, and for this one stupid, senseless moment, he had no desire to stop it.
The motion of Hilker’s hand increased, building until Isaiah was all but grinding to feel more of it, fangs pressed deep into Hilker’s flesh. He couldn’t even remember how much venom he’d given Hilker, if he’d given any venom, if he’d—
Hilker’s body stiffened as he groaned, his head leaning forward against Isaiah’s shoulder and his hand coming to a stop.
It left Isaiah’s hardened dick tingling.
Slowly, he drew his fangs from Hilker’s neck, forcing his eyes to open.
The sight of Hilker, lab coat nearly off one shoulder and hair mussed from the fingers Isaiah hadn’t even realized he’d been gripping it with, sent a wave of nausea through Isaiah.
He swallowed against the rising of the fresh blood in his stomach.
A bead of it formed in the bite he’d left, and he forced himself to drag his tongue up it.
When he tried to step back this time, Hilker made no move to stop him.
The man looked altogether blissful. A smug smile lounged on his face and his gaze dragged down Isaiah’s body like he was memorizing it.
One last time. Fuck, what if this was really it—the last blood Isaiah would ever have in his mouth, and it was Hilker’s.
The last hand clutching his ass, the last man to tell him he was a slut, even the last one to take just a little more than Isaiah had offered, to make him feel good while it was happening and then terrible after.
Isaiah closed his eyes and tried not to think about it. He took another step back. “I…”
“Go to your cell,” Hilker instructed, like this was any other day. “I’ll bring the serum in a moment.”
Not knowing what else to do, Isaiah went.
Hilker wheeled a chair into Isaiah’s cell, along with the blood pressure monitor, a small metal end table, and a first aid kit—complete with the electric heart shocker that had already brought Isaiah back once.
All the while Landon shouted through the wall for updates that Isaiah wasn’t sure how to give.
“When? How long will it take? Will it hurt?”
“Now, I guess? I don’t know, and probably. The transformation hurts like fuck, so…”