I came back to myself with a start, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and the taste of blood in my mouth. The wound I’d made at her neck had already closed, the anticoagulant in my saliva and something about my bite working to make sure she didn’t bleed out. Within the next few minutes, the wound would be fully-healed and it would be as if this had never happened.
Abruptly my walking meal bag became a person again. Someone with thoughts and dreams of their own. Someone I had just turned into my dinner and if I hadn’t been stopped, would have gladly murdered so I could gorge myself on her blood.
Deborah wavered and staggered to a chair, lowering herself with shaky hands. Her skin was pale, and she appeared frail, as if a stiff wind might blow her away.
I stared at her, stricken, my entire being frozen, the warmth of her blood still in my mouth. Despite having just fed, I wanted more. I wanted to do it again and again. I couldn’t wait until the next time.
My line had been crossed. The last line I’d held onto with a fanatic’s zeal—gone. Erased so easily. As if it had never been.
“You may leave,” Thomas told Deborah kindly. Despite the soft words, it wasn’t a request, the steely undercurrent in them making it clear there was only one correct action.
Deborah understood and nodded, her gaze skating to my horrified, sick expression before she lifted herself out of her chair. She snuck one last glance at me as I stared at her feeling more lost and alone than I had felt since day one of this new life. Her path to the door was wobbly and unsure. I’d done that. I’d taken enough that walking was difficult.
She needed a cookie. Orange juice. Something with sugar, I noted distantly. An urge to laugh struck me followed immediately by an urge to cry. I was treating this like she’d just given blood to the Red Cross, not like I’d buried my fangs in her throat and sucked her down like she was an ice cream sundae.
No one spoke until we were alone in the room.
“I feel sick,” I said, bending over as my stomach rebelled and I made a small retching sound. Thomas grabbed my chin and held my mouth closed, his fingers bands of steel around my jaw.
“Oh no, you’re not going to dishonor your donor by throwing up her life’s blood,” he said.
I breathed through my nose, fast pants that did nothing to quell the nausea. A prickling sensation teased the bridge of my nose as tears threatened. I held them back through sheer force of will, unwilling to let this man know just how much this little experience had devastated me.
“Calmastór.Calm. Things are not so bad. You are still you. There is no need for this carrying-on,” Thomas crooned, his hard hold turning soothing. His thumb caressed the skin just below my jaw.
I jerked out of his grip as soon as I was able, unable to help the half-sob that tried to well up. I would have crawled across broken glass if it would have meant escaping him.
My actions seemed to amuse him rather than deliver insult, and he watched me go with a small twist of his lips, his expression calm and unaffected.
He remained crouched for a long moment before standing, adjusting the lapels of his coat and tugging his cuffs down.
“You can thank me later,deartháir, for doing what you could not.” Thomas’s gaze was unsympathetic as he looked to where I huddled in on myself, trying to contain all the broken pieces of me, the ones that had been ripped open again with one simple act— parts I’d stitched together with impossible wishes and broken dreams and held together with sheer willpower and a staunch need to deny the truth.
It felt like I’d been stripped bare, sanded down until all the wounds that had only partially healed were visible again, the air stinging their half-formed scar tissue.
“Why did you do this?” I asked, my voice barely sounding like mine. It was raw and bewildered.
“You like to lie to yourself,” Thomas said. “Tell yourself pretty stories about how human you are, but you’re not; pretending otherwise will only hurt you in the long run. I made you face the truth. One day you will thank me for this.”
“No, I won’t.” Pure conviction sounded in my voice. There was no way I’d be thanking him for this. Never. Not in a million years.
I was beginning to regret stepping in the way of that spell. I should have let it have him.
“There were better ways,” Liam said, his voice quiet in the silence.
Thomas’s snort was elegant, as was everything else about the man. It made me want to rend and tear, leave him maimed and feeling like his world had just been yanked from him. “You know there wasn’t. Not when her blood had already gone toxic.”
The words were delivered like a blow.
Liam went stiller than I’d ever seen, his chest not moving with breath. He was like a painting, life size but just as remote. Slowly, his gaze swung to me a question in his eyes.
I looked away, hugging myself tighter. I might not have realized how bad things had gotten but I couldn’t deny something was drastically wrong, even to myself.
Realization and something like a soft regret filled his expression.
It made me want to withdraw even further into myself, as if I’d disappointed him in some way.
“She had already begun rejecting blood. Had I let it continue she might have entered devolution.” Thomas’s gaze was brooding as he looked down at me. “She needed human blood. Your blood would not have been enough.”
