Chapter 10 #2
Though technically there was a far worse option… one that made my stomach roil. If by some miracle she remained loyal, time itself would take her away from me. That was the reality for a demon like me.
I stepped back onto the sidewalk and let the dark of the night swallow me whole.
The air was unusually cold, damp with the promise of rain that would cover a city that was half-asleep.
Streetlamps buzzed softly overhead, casting long orange shadows across empty sidewalks that would be busy again by morning, filled with people unaware of the evil that had lurked amongst the shadows only a few hours before.
Somewhere in the distance, a single car drove by, its tires hissing softly over the pavement.
This was the hour I belonged to. This was the moment of the night where I existed without being seen, and Ari didn’t fit into this reality. I needed to come to terms with it now before my heart shattered into tinier pieces.
I let my body drift across the small park without thinking, winding through my favorite path that cut through patches of low grass. The night smelled of summer flowers and cigarettes. And something a few blocks over rotting in a dumpster.
I knew the man was there before I could see him with my eyes, slumped over on a park bench, his cigarette burning without him ever taking a drag.
The man’s shoulders were hunched over, his body doing its best to protect him against the cold, and I smirked.
He was too focused on the phone in his hands to look up.
My hunger stirred at the sight of him, and a wave of relief washed over me. That part of me hadn’t been affected by her. Her. Her.
I tried to shake the thudding beat of her out of my head, focusing instead on the pounding of need in my chest. I let it morph into greed and hunger, until the bloodlust was the loudest thing inside me.
The pain of my primal need drowned out the thought of her, the hunger hardening whatever was left of my rotting heart, until it didn’t care about morality. However brief.
I never made a sound, but the man glanced up at the last second when my movement caught his attention, and surprise flickered across his face as he took me in—my suit, my posture, the wrongness of me appearing suddenly before him in the empty park.
I narrowed my eyes, watching every movement as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Ciao,” he began, uncertainty creeping into his voice. He didn’t get to finish.
I caught his wrist and pushed him down onto the bench in one smooth motion, time slowing down around us as my attention sharpened and narrowed to one thing and one thing only.
Blood. There was the faint sound of his phone clattering to the ground, but it was quickly swallowed by the darkness as I covered his mouth with my other hand, shoving my knee forcefully into his torso.
He wriggled and writhed beneath me as he tried to fight me off, but it made no difference.
I always enjoyed the fight when my victims attempted to delay the inevitable.
I was always stronger, but I let him flail for a moment anyway as a dark grin spread across my face, waiting for the fear to settle in his eyes.
There was no escape.
My teeth sunk into his jugular with ease, the taste of salty flesh immediately replaced with the sweetness of warm iron.
I drank slowly, focusing on the blood as it slid down my esophagus and pooled in my stomach.
I could have stopped. The option always reared its ugly head like some fleeting grotesque sense of remorse, but I continued on, letting gluttony overtake any thoughts or feelings until his movements slowed.
I didn’t stop until his pulse no longer had anything to beat, and grim satisfaction swirled within me, the monster I had become enjoying the kill far more than necessary.
A sense of calm washed over me as I adjusted his lifeless body, letting satisfaction fuel my movements while I adjusted him to look like he had just fallen asleep and slipped away from the cold.
I could have disposed of his corpse, but humans never spent much energy investigating people that didn’t matter.
I felt nothing at all as I reset my mental clock, relieved that the pain of hunger had been replaced with the temporary satisfaction of being full, and my strength returned in full force as my body repaired any small aches or pains I had gathered since last time.
The blood regenerated my mental clarity, and my focus snapped into a sharpness I hadn’t had in weeks. Being this monster was what I understood.
This was what I was good at.
Control returned piece by piece, until I was whole again, reveling in the euphoria I received after every feed. The taste of blood on my tongue was enough to cure any ailment in the world.
Except this time it wasn’t.
The blood hadn’t cured me of her. She was still there like a disease. In my head. In my hands. On my tongue. In the memory of how easily she’d undone me. The blood hadn’t washed the flavor of her from my soul, and the realization was terrifying.
A single drop of blood trickled down my lip, pooling on my chin as I walked away from the man’s lifeless body.
I wiped it off with the back of my sleeve as disgust and confusion danced together in my stomach.
I had expected that to work—had expected that to fix me in a way that would allow me to decide what to do with her, but it hadn’t.
Well, if nothing else, I guess I had bought myself nineteen days to figure out what I was going to do with her.
I walked back toward the direction of my apartment, looking up at the empty streets that separated me from my home… and froze.
At the edge of the small park, half-lit by the streetlamp, stood Ari in one of my white dress shirts hanging off her shoulder, only half the buttons done up.
Her hair was a mess from where my fingers had grabbed it in fistfuls not an hour earlier, and her eyes were locked onto mine like a rabbit caught in a snare.
For a heartbeat, neither of us moved.
Then her gaze dropped, just slightly, to see the man lying lifelessly behind me. Her mouth opened, and I braced myself for a scream that never came. Instead, hurt flashed across her face, and she turned to run, putting the tennis shoes I’d told her to wear to good use.
I had told her to wear them. I had toyed with the idea of making her run from me, frantic with the thrill of the chase, but this was something different. I hadn’t meant for it to go like this.
I would have to catch her before she told anyone what she had seen—and then… then, what? Kill her? Keep her? There wasn’t enough blood-fueled clarity in the world to know what to do now.
Fuck.
This girl was going to be the death of me.