Not too long ago, I had broken up with my last boyfriend in this very garage. That something like me could even have something so normal as a “boyfriend” was almost laughable. But I had tried. And I had tried with a mortal, someone who wasn’t a bloodsucker.
I swiped open a packet of cow and pig blood with a fingernail that was too long and too sharp to be normal. Concealing my hands was one of the many drags in my life. Drinking from these filthy packets was another.
Yes, a few months ago, my relationship had come to an end when I had finally realized that my boyfriend, Russell, was, in fact, a love slave. No, not a sex slave. There’s a difference. He was devoted to me unerringly, irrationally, supernaturally. I didn’t so much as break up with him as release him.
Instantly, the strong, coppery, putrid smell of nearly rancid animal blood wafted up from the open packet. Mercifully, the butchery had delivered a cleaner-than-usual batch of blood, with the last few packets being nearly contaminant-free. In fact, I had almost—almost—enjoyed the packets.
Okay, that might be pushing it. But at least I hadn’t gagged.
I wasn’t so lucky with this bag. As I looked at the opaque bag, now swollen with blood—like a fat, wingless mosquito—I saw the hair and flotsam. Bits of bone and dirt and muscle and sinew—whatever had been collected as the pigs and cows bled out.
As I watched the particles drift within the bag, I realized something disconcerting. There were, if anything, even more particles. Perhaps the other bags had been cleaner, but I doubted it. I had assumed they were cleaner because I hadn’t gagged, because I had, in fact, quite enjoyed the bag of filth. No, not as much as I enjoyed drinking from Allison. Drinking from her was...heavenly.
But the past two bags had been quite...tasty.
Uh oh, I thought.
Now, as I raised it before me, careful not to spill the precious contents and watched the constellation of filth rotate slowly, I knew I was in trouble.
Real trouble.
But I didn’t care. This was blood, after all. Precious blood.
Delicious blood.
Not as delicious as Allison, but it was good enough.
“Good enough,” I whispered, and a small part of me tried to rebel when I licked my lips. “Yes, good enough.”
Now, with my children doing homework in the house adjacent to the garage—and, no doubt, sneaking in time on the Xbox One—I tilted the bag of filth to my lips...and drained every last drop. I even tore open the bag and licked it clean.
Lord help me.
Chapter Nine
You there, Fang?
It was the same question I asked night after night, for the past three weeks, logging on to my old AIM instant message account. The same account Fang and I had first connected through. The account where I had told a complete stranger all of my secrets. Secrets he had used to eventually find me.
I often wondered if I had wanted Fang to find me. If I had, in fact, purposely dropped enough clues for him to eventually locate me in my small part of the world.
Fang, at the time, had been my only connection to the supernatural. Although not supernatural himself at that time, he had been my source of all things vampiric. His knowledge had been deep and accurate and I missed our easy word play and mild flirtation. In short, I missed my confidant.
Sometimes, I wanted to believe that he had been stolen from me, but I knew that wasn’t the case. He got exactly what he had always wanted: immortality. He had simply taken matters into his own hands...and had joined the wrong team.
But what was done was done. Fang had gotten his wish, and a whole lot of people were dead because of it. No, my ex-husband’s murder wasn’t a direct result, but the turning of Fang had caused a domino effect that was still reverberating in my life to this day.
And, yeah, there was the small matter of those joggers Fang had killed. Those and surely others. Perhaps many others.
I couldn’t think about that.
Suddenly depressed, I sat back in my office chair and looked at my cell phone. No texts. No missed calls. Not even a Facebook update. The world was asleep at this hour. The mortal world. My kids were sound asleep. Although Anthony was showing some disturbing vampiric tendencies, one of them, thankfully, was not sleeping during the day.
Thank God.
Sure, I had plenty of work to do. These were, after all, my working hours. I knew that most freaks like me were out partying or hunting or running through graveyards, or whatever the hell it was that vampires did together. I had a car payment due next week, not to mention the taxes on the house were due in two weeks. I didn’t have time to run through graveyards. I had to make some money.
I looked at the stack of printouts next to my computer. One of my jobs was to run background checks for various companies. I had, for instance, a deal with the Hyundai dealership down the road. When they got new prospects, they provided me with their job applications, and I checked out their criminal histories.