Chapter 7 The Basement #2
In hindsight, maybe not the best choice of media with a hot vampire sitting directly across from me, but it’s far too late to change my mind now.
Not without explaining the ‘why,’ and if I’m honest, I’ve opened up enough to him in the last twenty-four hours.
Physically and emotionally. He really doesn’t need me to trauma dump on him for hours on end.
Every once in a while as the episode rolls on, I glance back at Gray. He looks focused, engrossed in the show much more now that there are actual vampires showing up.
“Thoughts?” I ask, curious to know his opinion. Considering there are a thousand other titles that would be more helpful to him right now, it feels silly to be watching this. Still, I feel like part of it is for me, too.
“Honestly?” Gray shifts his position, spreading his long legs out in front of him, and crosses his arms. “Not terrible. The teeth, though? Not my favorite.”
“What do you mean?”
Gray’s head swivels, and he opens his mouth to reveal his fangs. He points at them. “The canines.”
I look back at the TV for a minute and immediately catch onto what he’s trying to say. “Oh, yeah. I guess that’s… odd.”
“I’ve never seen one of my kind with a bite so… little,” he adds.
“You’ve met a lot of vampires, then?” Asking it aloud makes me wonder how many there really are in the world.
The show makes it so obvious that the vampire population is widespread.
Gray is my first, so it isn’t like they’re running stores or leading normal lives without sticking heavily to the shadows.
“Met? I’ve dated more than my fair share of them. They’re everywhere.” He doesn’t sound too happy about that. In fact, there’s a note of bitterness in his tone that is more familiar than I care to admit. Based on his expression, I attempt to steer the conversation back to the show.
“So the teeth, huh?” I ask.
He sucks on his bottom lip thoughtfully, then says, “It’s making me hungry.”
“Hungry?” I feel instantly dumb for asking.
“The blood.” Gray bobs his head toward the TV. Bill, my favorite southern gentleman, is licking up Sookie’s wounds. She’s covered in blood.
“Oh! I’m sorry… I can turn on something else.”
“No.” He flexes his hands out in front of him and then runs one over his face. “Just… it’s fine. I’m fine.”
I feel myself flush. “How… how often do you need to…?”
“Feed?” he asks, finishing my question for me. “At the moment, more than I care to admit. But don’t worry, I won’t be feeding on you anytime soon.”
“Why?” It’s out of my mouth before I can stop myself.
“Because,” he starts with a shrug, “you serve a higher purpose.”
“You said I was your new favorite snack, though.” Admittedly, I’m a little disappointed.
That makes him smile, even if it is small. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“So?”
His gaze slides over to me. In the darkness of the living room, beyond the bright screen of the television, they seem to shimmer.
His irises are as red as the petals of a fully bloomed rose.
Before, in the basement, they were dark, almost passable for brown.
The way they shift at times is almost unsettling.
At first, the fear I felt so many hours ago when I first saw him in the darkness comes back.
They glittered even then, but only after he fed on my attacker.
“No,” he says.
“Then how will you feed?” I lick my lips, mesmerized by their color. Something in my body thrums with desire, drowning out the fear. Is this me or him? Is it possible that his blood is still having an effect on me even though it’s been hours? I can’t tell.
“Let’s just watch the show, shall we?” He smirks then, looking away. It instantly stops the feeling I have of being pulled in, but the desire still lingers. His misdirection is the only answer I’ll get out of him, and somehow it tells me everything I need to know.
He’ll find his next meal.
We don’t say much more to each other after that.
Gray appears to be watching, but he looks so far away in some dark, unseen part of his mind not even cringey dialogue can reach.
Meanwhile, I’ve resigned myself to the deep and downward spiral of so many ‘what ifs’ that I’ve stopped paying attention altogether.
I don’t fight the onset of sleep when my eyelids grow heavy.
Eventually, when I do wake up, it’s because I hear the creak of a door opening, then shutting.
I sit up, sluggish from sleep, and see that the other end of the couch is vacant.
He’s gone?
Sleepily, I wander over to the front door and peek out into the darkness.
It’s pitch black outside, without a single streetlight or passing car to light the yard or the road.
Maybe I just imagined the door shutting, or dreamed it.
But just as I’m about to turn and head to my room, I see the blink of two bright red dots in the darkness.
For a few beats, they hover, as if hesitating.
“Gray?”
The two red dots blink, and then they’re gone.
Snuffed out like two stars dying in the sky.
I think back to his earlier comment about the hunger he felt watching the blood on screen.
He might not drink from me, but that doesn’t mean anyone else outside of that small exception is safe from a feeding.
A chill races up my spine as I wander back to my room, and despite the covers and the extra layer of warmth from my sweatshirt, I still feel cold.
If not me, I think into my sleep, then who?