Chapter 10
Ten
V.
I was leaving to feed because she didn’t deserve to die.
That was the first lie I told myself to appease the part of me that only existed to follow the schedules and quiet mathematics that had kept me alive for so long.
Nineteen days. Never less. Never more. This was a system built on restraint. It had always worked.
Until her.
No. In the darkest parts of my soul, I knew the truth was something far uglier.
Midnight had come and gone without me noticing for the first time in far too long. I had lost track of time in a way I had forgotten existed, and something in my chest twisted around the memory of Ari coming undone beneath me, the feeling tightening in my chest until it threatened to snap.
These were emotions. Human emotions. The fiddly ones I had buried with my family almost a millennium ago.
I’d struggled to keep the crippling feeling of guilt at bay my first hundred years, nearly losing myself until I figured out how to shove everything leftover from my human life into the black hole of darkness that lived in my chest. Emotions fractured at the memory of family, my mind drudging up their faces against my will.
Ari was going to be my downfall. My ruin. I couldn’t let her do this.
I should have killed her years ago.
Hell, I should have killed her at midnight like I’d planned. But something had changed.
For every day spent as this demon, I have lived by the most principled set of rules: be unremembered.
Be unnoticed. Be nothing. It was easy to fade into the background once you learned that all humans were exactly the same.
It didn’t matter where the city was. I crept through time the way a parasite navigates the shape of its host, figuring out where it could hide safely, where it could feed unnoticed, and how to disappear before anyone detects it.
Except Ari had remembered me—found me, seen me, understood me… but my rules were unforgiving.
Anyone who remembered me had to die. That was my number one rule, and of all the others, that was the only one that fucking mattered.
Everything else was a variation of the same truth.
Don’t eat in the same place twice. Never stay in the same country back to back.
Don’t let people take your picture. Never tell anyone your real name.
That was a lesson I had learned the hard way.
A flicker of memory—burnt flesh, the echo of something done to me instead of by me—cut through my mind before I forced it back into the place it belonged. That was never going to happen to me again. I wouldn’t let it.
Survival required severing every possible thread, and I never mourned the ones I disposed of.
I didn't remember their faces. I made sure of it. In the very old days, I would kill without regard, sometimes feeding up to three times per day if the hunger demanded it. Times had changed, so I had adapted alongside it. Figuring out limits. Improving the way I withdrew from society. But this was different. This wasn’t improving.
Being with Ari—not killing her like I knew I had to—that was me going against everything I painstakingly put into place to keep me alive.
If I let things change now… if I let someone live long enough to hold onto the memory of me, I knew that failing to finish things with Ari would force the threads of fate to tighten around my throat until I was snuffed from existence.
Except, against my will, I had changed.
She had changed something.
I left her behind, because if I stayed, the last stitch that was holding me together would’ve snapped.
Before she’d caught me off guard with a kiss, I had been completely and utterly in control.
Playing with my food had been an intoxicating adventure, awakening something long-buried that I thought I’d lost. My fangs had scraped her skin, aching to breach the vein and allow me to taste nectar sweet enough to be sent by the gods, but her lips were a flavor I hadn’t prepared for.
One kiss. My rotting heart had allowed me to justify a single kiss. It meant nothing. I would just be momentarily delaying the inevitable. Except I had lied to myself.
She was just food I was playing with for a little while longer. The kiss didn't matter. I was fine.
I convinced myself that tasting her in as many ways as I could wasn’t for my pleasure. It was for her. To deepen her devotion before ending her life. To trick her into being happy when the light faded from her eyes at my hand. It was a fallacy I had convinced myself was true.
Once she shattered beneath me, I would simply consume the rest of her soul and never think of her again.
I was too old to be this naive.
I couldn’t admit it was over until she touched me.
The illusion was shattered the second she caressed my face and looked at me like she saw something worth loving.
It had nothing to do with the release she had given me, or the fact that she was the first person in almost a thousand years to see me as something other than a monster.
It was more than that.
Something inside me had fractured. Something I didn't even know I had anymore.
My steps were steady as I walked through the cold, my hands trembling slightly as I shoved them into my pockets, curling my fingers into fists until my nails bit crescents into my palms. My head was pounding and my heart was throbbing as I clutched my chest, stumbling through the street like I was drunk.
I wasn’t. I was furious. Confused. Losing control.
If I didn't find someone to feed on, it was going to be her. Her. Her.
The thought of her pounded through my head like a drum, steady and loud like an old war call, so I tried to run from it.
I took a sharp left, unwilling to retrace my steps in the direction of the bar we’d gone to earlier.
The whole point of this was to get her off my mind, not find ways to keep ruminating on the memories, but I didn't know what to do. I didn’t have a rule that would save me from the mess I'd made this time.
I needed to go farther. I needed to run until her scent stopped clinging to me, but I could still taste her on my tongue so it wouldn’t have made any difference at all. I could have run to the other end if the earth and still felt her pressed into every atom of my being.
The most important thing in this moment was replacing the flavor of her with the one that had been my persistent companion.
That was the second lie.
In the beginning, feeding would take away the pain, acting like a drug that fixed every headache; every ailment that lingered within my bones.
I had craved it, spending every aching moment of my existence thinking about getting another drop.
No one had warned me that the euphoria was short-lived.
Now every time I feed, it feels like I’m delaying the inevitable.
Delaying the reaper that should have had my soul a long time ago.
But the taste of Ari on my tongue was different. It was sweet like honeysuckle, a promise of happiness I hadn’t entertained since becoming this monster. I’d never felt anything close to this before, and the truth was… as hungry as I was, I didn’t want to lose the flavor of her. Not yet.
Wanting her was reckless, but desire overpowered any logic, and no matter how hard I tried to regain control, I couldn’t stop.
My footsteps thudded in perfect time as I crossed the street towards the park, scouring the horizon for some poor soul.
Hunger swelled inside me like a second heartbeat, pressing in from the inside until it felt like screws were tightening in my skull.
Nineteen days was almost too long to go without blood, but it was a cycle meant to keep me alive.
A cycle meant to keep me from becoming too reckless.
It was supposed to be just enough, and it always had been.
Before her. Her. Her.
My world had shattered when she tipped her head back, looking up like surrendering to me was worship she never wanted to end. Blood and music had been enough until she smiled against my skin, making me believe that biting her would be the biggest sin in the world.
I scoffed at the idea. I had expected to feel something akin to relief once I’d put space between us, but I didn’t. It only made the ache deeper. This was something far more dangerous than I’d expected.
She made me feel like I found somewhere I belonged.
My body rejected the feeling before it could settle, and I clenched my jaw so hard my teeth ached.
What kind of torturous spell had she placed me under?
I couldn't afford to want her. Wanting her would mean I would have to figure out a way to keep her, and keeping her would mean someone in this world would remember me.
And if someone remembered me, I had to kill them. It was the only way to survive.
The logic was perfect. Brutal. Clean. It had never failed me before now, and I had never even entertained the thought to disobey it, but my body didn’t seem to care.
All I wanted was to go back to my apartment and whisper my real name into her ear, just so I could rip off every last shred of clothing that lingered between us and hear her scream it.
Couldn’t I just pretend for a little while that the world wouldn't demand payment if I let myself have her? I had lived a life of darkness and shadow before I met her. Didn’t I deserve a taste of sunshine?
I knew I hadn’t earned it, but of all the poor bastards in the entire world, didn’t I finally deserve to have a single momentary shred of happiness?
No.
I didn’t.
No matter what happened now, my life was already in ruins, but so was hers.
If I went back to feed from her—went back to end her—my life would be over.
Completely. Fully. I knew that now. But if I didn’t kill her.
.. I couldn’t foresee a different outcome that didn’t end in destruction that consumed us both.
One day she would expose what I was.