Chapter Sixteen #2
The man is still before me, but now I’m sure he isn’t a man. A demon, maybe. His irises have turned red, almost the color of my blood that’s splattering the stone at my feet.
“Thank you,” he says, almost kindly. “You have a beautiful voice.” He leans down, licking my cheek, and I fall to my knees, exhausted.
“Such a pity for this world to lose you before you could truly become something. But you were such an easy snack, and a delicious one.” The demon licks his fingers and vanishes, but I barely register it.
I’m dying. Whatever he did, it’s killing me.
As my eyes close of their own volition, I’m graced with a vision of her. It’s just a memory, but one of the few good ones I have. I can even smell her, and I let her scent wash over me as I die.
I wake up in my own bed the next morning, no idea how I got here. My clothes are the ones I was wearing yesterday when I met with Simon, but they’re caked in dirt and grime from the alleyway.
The alleyway…
I jump up from my bed, hurrying to the small rectangular mirror hanging over my dresser. I stumble into it, and it sways a bit under my weight as I grip the edges and look at my reflection.
My shirt has holes in it exactly where the demon pierced my skin.
Well, I guess that answers that. I didn’t imagine or dream it. But I’m somehow alive. I ease my shirt off my torso and examine my wounds in the mirror. Except there aren’t any. Just five little scars that are so faded, it seems impossible they could have come from last night.
But I didn’t have them yesterday.
My reflection gazes solemnly back at me. Just more scars to add to all my others. I glance down at my forearms. They’re covered in scars. The worst are from going over the bridge. The others are self-inflicted and quite old.
My jaw aches too for some reason, as if the singing yesterday was too much. I shake my head at my reflection. I’m the biggest idiot in the entire world.
Magic, demons—apparently real.
And I was tricked into feeding that demon?
The vision he showed me must have been fake. He showed me what he needed to, to take what he wanted.
Days later and I’m going hungry. I’ve eaten everything I can get my hands on and I’m still hungry.
I’ve never been one for casual sex. It’s always felt weird to me, being touched by someone I don’t know well.
But there’s this ache in my body, a thirst so awful I can’t figure out how to assuage it.
So I find myself here, in the backroom of the bar Simon and some other friends have pulled me out to, with a girl whose name I don’t know.
She’s kissing my neck. Having gone so long without even my hand for company, I’m torturously hard.
I grind myself into her and she lets out a soft moan.
I want to taste her, want to be inside her. I’m so hungry for her.
I lift her onto a few sturdy boxes and push her dress up her thighs, revealing creamy white flesh that I want to lick. That I want to taste. She widens her legs for me and I get on my knees, ready to worship this woman I’ve barely exchanged a few words with.
I trail kisses up her left thigh, holding her apart with my hands as she runs her fingers through my hair.
I practically purr at the feel of her tugging my head towards her.
I use my right hand to guide her thong aside as I begin to taste her center, slowly licking my way until my tongue slides into her folds.
I groan at the taste.
I’ve always loved giving head. I pride myself on my skill, actually. The taste has always been nice, welcomed, but this woman, or maybe it’s the thought that anyone could walk in and see us—something is making this taste particularly alluring.
I’m almost salivating at it.
And I’m so fucking hungry and thirsty all at the same time.
I give her a playful nip along the inside of her thigh. Teasing her.
She moans and urges me on with her fingers in my hair.
The smooth expanse of her thigh calls to me.
She’s thicker here, her thighs pushing together earlier when she was walking, rubbing together, begging for someone to be between them.
I have an overwhelming urge to nibble her there again and so I do.
I can feel myself salivating more, and an ache has settled around my teeth.
Something feels like it’s shifting in my mouth, but I’m too focused on that pale skin, fixated on it.
I go to nibble her again, but as soon as my teeth touch her flesh, they break it, puncturing in multiple places, and blood floods my mouth. Even though a voice at the back of my mind tells me something is wrong, it feels so good. So I bite harder.
I’m dimly aware that the woman is screaming, trying to push me off, but she tastes so fucking good.
I bite into her over and over, moving up her thigh towards her center.
She struggles to get away from me, but I crave her too much to let go.
My fingers sink into her legs, holding her steady, and I keep taking bites, swallowing her flesh and her blood and reveling in it.
Flesh.
I’m literally eating human flesh.
What the fuck?
I force myself to push away from her, stumbling to the ground as she’s screaming.
Oh God. What have I done?
But the hunger is pushing me towards her again, as I watch blood dripping from her thighs.
I have to get out of here, but I don’t want to just leave.
The woman is looking at me like I’m a monster—which I am.
I can hear people coming, her screams having finally been heard over the loud bar noises and music.
“God, I’m so sorry,” I whisper, but she can’t hear me. I don’t know what to do, but I know if I stay here any longer I’m going to attack her again.
I’m starting to zone in on her throat now, her pulsing neck.
I curse, pushing myself to my feet and forcing myself to the door that leads out back.
I push it open, letting the cool air hit my skin.
I realize the front of my shirt is covered in blood, and so is my face. I probably look like a lunatic.
My pulse is hammering in my veins. I need to get the fuck out of here before I hurt anyone else.
“Get the hell away from me!” I hear a woman shout. I look to my left down the alley and see two figures, one hovering over the other.
“Stop fighting me,” the man tells her sternly, as if she’s a misbehaving kid.
I take a few steps over, my hunger mixing with my anger at this man.
“Leave me alone!” the woman screams.
I stumble towards them, kicking a beer bottle by accident. It goes skittering across the cobblestones. The man turns around. “Nothing here to concern yourself with, mate. I’m just having a fight with my girlfriend.”
“Please help!” she yells to me. “I’m not his girlfriend!”
“Shut the fuck up.” He turns to me. “Seriously, don’t concern yourself, mate. She’s being dramatic.”
I’m still in the shadows, otherwise they both would have taken off running at the sight of me covered in blood. I can smell the woman’s fear and the man’s arousal. It’s odd, the two scents conflicting with each other. I don’t like it.
I reach out and rip the man away from her.
“Thank you!” she says. “Thank you!”
“Run,” I tell her, my face finally coming into the glow of the streetlamp. She lets out another scream and she runs. I turn to the man and he screams too.
He tries to take off in the opposite direction, but I still have hold of his shoulder.
My hunger is practically purring, my jaw aching so desperately that I don’t hesitate. I bite into his neck, ripping chunks out with my teeth. My teeth that seem longer and sharper. I rip at the man’s clothes, exposing his torso. He’s dead now already. I tore his throat out.
But I continue to feast.
He falls limply to the ground and I descend upon his chest, taking more bites.
And then I’m literally ripped off him and thrown through the air into the brick wall behind me.
I crash hard into the ground, too stunned to do much other than fall into a heap.
From the corner of my eye I see another man crouch over the dead guy, checking for a pulse, even though he lies in a pool of his own blood.
Horror works its way through me. I attacked him.
I attacked the girl in the bar.
What the hell? I literally bit into them both and ate pieces of their flesh. I feel like I should vomit, but the hunger, the thirst isn’t there anymore. I feel full. Content.
And horrified.
Another man, the one that threw me into the wall, I think, crouches before me.
He’s probably around five-ten, but he’s obviously strong.
I can see large biceps as he tilts my head to face him.
His dirty blonde hair is cropped close to his head, parted neatly to the side, and his narrowed ice-blue eyes glower down at me angrily.
“Are you stupid?” he asks. “Feeding in public like this? And you just left the girl to bleed out back there.”
“Feeding?” I whisper, not able to make my voice work. “I didn’t. I didn’t mean to—” Didn’t mean to what? Eat them?
“Have you ever done this before?” he asks me, his tone a little softer this time.
“No, of course not. I don’t understand. We were just—I was just eating her out. I didn’t mean to…” I watch, panicked, as the other man pulls the dead man’s body over to the side of the alleyway, taking the man’s wallet and keys out of his pockets and shaking some foul-smelling powder on his body.
The body begins to smoke and then it burns to ash, as if the man never existed at all.
The door swings open and the girl that I bit first stumbles out laughing with her friends. She sees me and she smiles and waves shyly, heading the other way with her friends. She looks to be completely unharmed, not a single drop of blood on her.
I stare after her, my mouth hanging open in shock. “But how?” I ask the men, pointing at her. “How did she? I mean, there was so much blood. I hurt her…”