I deserved better than that.
I paused at my big living room window. It looked out from my end of the cul-de-sac, all the way down the street, itself lined with houses on either side. Most had big trees out front. Lots of cars were parked out front, too. It was evening. My kids were with my sister. I had begged her to take them. I wasn’t feeling like myself...I’d told her. She had looked oddly at me when I had dropped them off.
Now, along the street, I saw some kids playing. A sort of chasing game as they weaved in and out of parked cars. Reckless. Careless. Shitty parenting. I watched the kids some more. Laughing and now playing a game of tag. Refreshing, actually. Still, why would you let your kids play outside when there were predators out there? Predators watching them, even now. Predators who would snatch their kids away.
Stupid fucking parents.
I paced in front of the window. I wondered what those same parents would think if they knew an honest-to-god vampire lived on their very street. Something that drank blood and stayed up at night and watched their children play.
I shook my head, rubbed my eyes and paced some more...and then, I saw it. The thing I had been hoping to see. It was exactly what I needed, but hadn’t known, until now.
It was a tomcat, walking along the wall that separated my front yard from my neighbor’s front yard.
Before I could think, before I could plan, I was out my front door, pouncing faster than I ever thought I could, and certainly faster than the cat had expected.
It was a short time later when I heard the familiar voice behind me. “Ah, shit, Sam.”
I pushed the remains of the cat away, tossing aside a leg that I had been sucking the marrow out of.
“Aaron,” I said, using Fang’s assumed name. He was, after all, officially on the run and wanted for murder. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Fang spent the next half hour cleaning me up, and cleaning my place up, too.
He deposited what was left of the cat in a heavy trash bag, along with my clothes, which he had made me strip out of in the bathroom and pass through to him. I noted that he averted his eyes.
Rather chivalrous of him.
I also noted that I was still ravenously hungry. The cat hadn’t been nearly enough, although it had, for now, satisfied my need to kill something.
My overwhelming need to kill something.
And when I had killed it, when I had held its broken body in my hands and tore into it with my mouth, I knew something inside of me had died...and might stay dead forever.
My humanity.
This was, I was certain, the first time I had killed something that didn’t deserve to die, something that hadn’t done anything to me. Something that was, in fact, innocent. The cat was not only dead...but I had torn it to shreds, even going so far as breaking apart its bones to get to the good stuff inside.
“This is not like you, Moon Dance,” said Fang from my living room, where he was presently wiping up the bloody mess from the wood floor.
I was dressed in a bathrobe. The now-bloody rag he was using intrigued me. “I suppose not,” I said, and sat down on one end of the couch and watched him.
“You always had so much self-control.”
“I was weak then.”
“No,” said Fang. “You were yourself.”
“Well, this is me now. Get used to it. Did you bring the blood?”
“It’s in the refrigerator.”
He had barely finished the sentence when I was moving, flashing across the room—and probably flashing him, too. I didn’t care if I flashed him. I only cared about the blood.
Human blood.
From Fang’s own blood bank.
And there it was, in a white paper bag. Heavy bag, too, full of life, full of my sweet addiction.
I pulled out the first clear packet. Fang had used plastic medical bags to store his blood, all very official looking. I bit through the corner, spitting out the plastic, and drank deeply from it. I noted immediately—all over again—the difference between human and animal blood.
So different, I thought. So perfect. And so right for me. Clearly, the entity within me preferred human blood.
No, I thought, I preferred it.
I started on the second.
“Easy, Tiger,” said Fang.
I opened my eyes. Yeah, I think they might have rolled back into my head. Like a shark. No, like a predator. Fang was leaning a shoulder against the kitchen doorway, watching me with an expression of bewilderment, amusement and concern.
Pick an expression, asshole, I thought.
And as I drank, I sensed myself slipping a little further away. A little further offshore, so to speak. The tide of hate and anger and hunger was pulling me further out to sea.
“Penny for your thoughts,” said Fang, which was almost funny, since the man had once read my thoughts with ease. Now, no more, being a fellow creature of the night.
I dropped the second bag on my kitchen floor, the remnants of which splattered over my bare feet and up onto the base of my refrigerator. Blood had also spilled onto my robe in my haste to suck down the packages.
I started on the third bag when it occurred to me that I’d killed my neighbor’s cat, Tinker Bell.
It hadn’t been a stray tomcat. It hadn’t been wild. In fact, I had chewed through its collar in my haste to get to its neck, even spitting out the little jingle bell it wore. Something inside me had dehumanized it, so to speak. Had rendered it into nothing but a stray, when, in fact, it had been something: a loving house pet.
But what if, instead of Tinker Bell, one of my elderly neighbors had walked past? Would I have rendered one of them into nothing as well? Would I have convinced myself they were homeless? Or meth addicts? Or something beneath me? Would they, even now, be wrapped in a trash bag, rendered into shreds?
Or what if my kids had been home? Would I have dehumanized them, too? Would they even now be as dead as Tinker Bell?
The thought scared the unholy shit out of me, and I dropped to my knees and buried my face in my hands, and as I wept, I heard a voice not very deep inside my head—my own voice, in fact—whisper: “Pathetic.”
Chapter Twenty-six
“Rough day, Moon Dance?”
“Shut up,” I said, and tried to laugh but failed miserably. It sounded halfway between a cough and a sob.
We were sitting on my bed, with the shades pulled down, and drinking ice water. I couldn’t stand the thought of more blood. I’d had my fill for tonight. For many nights.
“It’s safe to say that you just saw me at my worst.”
“Well, if that’s your worst, Moon Dance, then I think we’re going to be okay.”