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“No,” I whisper, and feel that this is the closest to Eucharistic rites I’ve been in years. “How do you do it?”

Marcella leans in, her cold fingers closing around mine as she helps me swirl the glass. Devotional, reverent. Something to keep from being broken or mishandled.

I want her to hold me that way.

Her head bows to mine. “Look how the color lightens along the glass. Notice the old sediment inside that band.” She twists a finger into my hair, tugs gently. I gasp. “See?”

I nod, fighting the urge to press my mouth to hers, to shatter the glass beneath us.

Stop, the quiet voice says. Be good!

I crush the voice under my heel. I don’t want this guilt. It will come back soon, maybe within minutes. But now? It’s just this moment.

“It smells delicious.”

Marcella hums her approval, her voice a vibrating whisper. “Bordeaux can have many notes, but it is minerally, grown in limestone and ancient earth. Old vines. It’s the aged things in life that speak of authority. Clarity.” She meets my eyes over the glass’s rim. “Taste.”

She tips the glass to my lips and the bloodred fluid coats my tongue. It’s as sharp as a bitten tongue, and then as sweet as strawberry jam. A low sound comes from deep in my chest, almost a purr. Marcella smiles, her hands knitting so tight together that her joints are a bright white. A muscle jumps in her jaw.

“It’s good,” she tells Caroline, who’s been standing by the table, her eyes flitting between us like she’s jealous of whatever it is that’s sparking between us.

Marcella stands and places a cool palm on my shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” She nods at Caroline. “Could you be so kind as to show me to the restroom?”

THIRTEENMarcella

I could have devoured her right then and there. Her lips pursed over the edge of the glass and her pupils wide in the shadowed dining room, her bare skin tantalizingly close under the table. I wanted to put my teeth to the pulsing point beneath her jaw and lick the plate clean of her.

I promised, but I’m known to break those brittle oaths like kindling.

I need to eat something before the thing inside me turns to flame. Release. I need release.

Caroline leads me down a dark, narrow hall. Behind the walls, the kitchen clatters and hisses with steam and fire, and I am utterly alone with this defenseless thing.

She is a poor substitute for Lacie. Lacie is a delight: sharp and sweet and so, so injured. That doe-like stare over her menu, the way her pulse sped up when I grazed her knee, the wounded, jagged edge of her that wants to repent.

I could have her on her knees, singing devotion, prayerful and pious to me alone.

“Caroline,” I growl, the monster inside of me unrelenting. Hungry, hungry, hungry.

Caroline turns, the prickling of my power making her soft and pliant. “Yes?” she breathes, and I press her into a dark corner, my lips already brushing hers, swallowing her gasp.

“Who—who are you?” she groans as my tongue finds the pounding heat of her jugular, as the monstrosity inside me grows bold.

“Hush,” I growl, nipping her skin, damn near shuddering at the salt of her sweat. “You will forget this in a moment.”

My mouth finds hers again, her fingers tangling desperately in my hair. It’s not fair I should do this to her. It’s not fair that she is blonde and pretty and so very nearby. It’s not fair her eyes are the same glancing green as Lacie’s, that by virtue of her job she has to wear a short black dress and practice the simpering deference all the women in this university have been taught to perform. It’s not fair, but nothing is, and I can spend myself here and no longer be a threat to Lacie.

Lacie, Lacie, my little lamb.

Snarling, my tongue sharpens, muffling Caroline’s panicked scream as pleasure morphs to pain. My spine cracks and my skin splits as I struggle to keep myself from changing, its char-black skin peeking through. Caroline’s blood sluices into my mouth, sticky and coppery and so very sweet.

I suck the wounds I made in her, heat slipping into the thrashing, always-needy bottomless pit inside of me. It writhes, squeals, needs. Caroline goes limp as my tongue finds the core of her, the energy well inside of her. She’s so delicious, so effulgent, her will to live sparklingly bright and sharp. Better than wine, better than fucking in a back alley, a hand around a throat to silence a scream. I tear deep into her, tongue diving down and down, sinew cracking and whining under its pressure. Despite the fact that she’s bloodied, that foam and vermilion loop her chin and slip down her throat, Caroline groans, all animal want.

I am a tick, numbing the flesh before I grow full on her.

I thumb her breast, feel her sharpen to me, press closer. The jagged spear of my tongue rips the soft skin of her mouth open, and all she does is whimper. Her knees jelly and I am riding the high of making a pretty girl shudder and shake.

I feel her body start to slacken, fade, and I want, want, need more than this, I need real sustenance. I want to finish her off the same way I did Arjun, the way that’s best: sucking her up like the dregs of a milkshake through a straw, until she’s an empty husk.