I’m craving.
A delicious smell jerks me upright.
I don’t see the room around me, don’t hear anything. My sense of smell is the only one that matters now, promising to soothe this aching craving if I just follow the scent to its source.
I’m already moving, already gulping down the scent as I follow its trail, my legs carrying me somewhere my mind hasn’t agreed to go, past a door where the smell thickens in the steam on the other side.
Kallie.
My brain offers the name, but my every thought is about want.
Want to press my nose to the place where her neck meets her shoulder.
Want to feel her pulse against my teeth.
Want to stop thinking about it and do it.
Chapter Thirty
NOT THE DELIVERY I EXPECTED
Once I’m behind a closed door, everything is less… intense. Less suffocating. Less out of my control.
I rest my head against the door, taking a breath, then another. My head is still pounding from the hit earlier, but it’s more of a dull throbbing now rather than a sharp pain.
My hair, loose from its bun, reeks of vomit.
Oh god. I threw up on him. On the pizza vampire. The memory flashes—the forest blurring at impossible speed, my stomach lurching.
Then the fireball, a sudden, horrible sun in the dark.
My own scream, thinking Casey and Alek were gone.
I was so relieved when I saw him on the couch.
Then I got a good look at him.
He’s gotten so much worse.
Then to find out Stark might be the only one who can help him—and that he either couldn't or wouldn't?
Fuck no.
He’s going to fix Casey.
Even if I have to serve myself up on a silver platter.
He wants my blood. Fine.
Take it.
A pint. A gallon. Whatever vampires use for measurements.
Casey has always shown up when I needed him.
It’s my turn.
I turn back around, noticing for the first time the size of the bathroom I locked myself in, everything covered in glistening white marble, with gold fixtures.
