Ethan
My stomach lurched when I saw the pill she placed in his drink.
Not a roofie. The pill was too small and blue.
I almost laughed.
My eyes flicked to the bar, then back to her. She wasn’t mine. She could drug or destroy whoever she wanted. I had no claim on Anne—I just had the misfortune of being unable to stop watching her.
She’d driven all the way from the city into this quaint village, and that told me everything. Cities had too much surveillance. This was a smart move—smarter than most of my own kind managed.
I’d first seen Anne weeks ago. I’d made the mistake of thinking she was prey.
Then I watched her dead eyes as she smiled and talked like a human being. That particular skill—I recognised it because I’d spent years perfecting my own version of it. Hers was better. More effortless. More dangerous.
She had an advantage over me I’d never fully close.
I had to work to charm my kills. The careful cultivation of trust, the performance of warmth, the slow dismantling of a person’s instincts until they stopped seeing me clearly.
All Anne needed to do was smooth her hands down some bastard’s chest and they were putty.
She raised her glass, but her eyes never left him. This wasn’t careless. This was recon. Tonight she would taste the goods before drawing him in deeper.
The man had returned to her table. She raised one hand and tucked her golden hair behind her ear—a gesture so practised it looked instinctive.
Her natural colour was closer to sandy blonde, but the lighter dye combined with those wide blue eyes completed the illusion.
She looked like prey. That was the point.
Her hand moved back to his thigh.
I clenched my jaw.
My fingers tightened around my glass and I lifted it, draining the last of it in a few long gulps. I set it down and stared at the thin film of froth coating the inside. I was supposed to nurse that drink all night.
I was a stickler for the rules. My rules.
Don’t drink and drive. If you’re going to kill someone, it shouldn’t be by accident.
There wasn’t much light apart from what spilled from the moon, but it was the perfect cover for me.
The man was too eager and Anne didn’t hesitate to guide him up the street. Right. Left. Left again.
Then it came into view.
I waited at the last turn and watched as she led him past the iron gates and onto the church grounds.
By the time I slipped in behind them and pressed myself behind a tree, he was already leaning against a long decorative gravestone while she unfastened his jeans.
“Yeah,” he sighed as she pulled him free.
I narrowed my eyes. Pencil-dicked motherfucker.
She yanked, and he hissed. I shook my head as she knelt on the grass. If I followed him home and cut it off, it would have her DNA on it now. He placed a hand on her head. She slapped it away and continued.
She was good.
He began to moan, which irritated me instantly. It wasn’t long before she reached beneath her dress and removed her underwear.
I watched them move through various positions—her riding him across two graves, his arms spread wide like an offering, then her gripping the gravestone while he worked behind her. The pants, slaps, moans and sighs all reached me through the dark.
Just when I felt like stepping out and slitting both their throats until the blood soaked down to the coffins beneath them, she began to berate him.
“Harder, you bastard. Is that all you’ve got?”
He pumped furiously, enraged by her words. I almost chuckled.
“I can barely feel you,” she said.
He grunted with effort.
“Bitch,” he hissed.
I looked past them. It was the perfect backdrop—the ancient church rising dark and silent behind them, its stones older than anyone buried beneath our feet.
She came with a long moan, hands white-knuckled on the stone, pushing herself back onto him. The ache behind my own zip was becoming difficult to ignore, but I wasn’t about to miss a second of tonight.
He pulled out and finished himself with his hand, spilling onto her bare flesh. Anne reached for him again before he’d even caught his breath.
She didn’t let him rest.
This time he took her up against the church wall. It wasn’t long before she began to berate him again, and this time he slapped her face. I almost stepped out—but she laughed.
“You’re fucking crazy,” he said.
He was wrong. She was perfectly sane.
I wanted to watch her take that maggot’s life. But I could leave now and go to her house instead. The plan formed cleanly in my mind and I felt myself relax.
She wouldn’t like being cornered.
A slow smile crept along my lips.