Die By the Drop: Shivers and Sins Volume 1

by Kaia Bennett

  I can’t do this. I can’t. I can’t.

  I’m not strong enough.

  Not my voice.

  Not Liam’s.

  The unadulterated anguish tearing me apart from the inside out belonged to Jesse. That quiet plea for help on the wind from the strongest creature I’d ever seen made me clutch my stomach. Grief hit me like a punch to the gut. I took a deep breath and inhaled as Jesse did, knowing when I stifled the need to cry that Jesse sat alone in the woods, suppressing his tears.

  Help me. I need you to help me. I can’t do this alone.

  My eyes closed. I realized Jesse’s silent call for help was for me, the vision of my arms wrapped around him so vivid I yearned for nothing more than to cradle him in my embrace. Anger flared in the parts of me that I could still claim for my own. I didn’t want his sadness. I hated him for foisting his ache onto me. But the call grew louder, unavoidable, his desperation to feel my lips against his neck and my fingers wiping away his tears the most powerful urge I’d ever felt.

  Evie…

  I felt the tug of his weakness, my strength rising up to meet the opposition. In the distance Liam writhed in agony, his hunger mounting with every passing second. Jesse knew he had to kill him. I could feel his fingers wrapped around the back of Liam’s neck, but he couldn’t flex his grip. He couldn’t let go, so they suffered together.

  Help me…

  With the same urgency I’d once felt to escape Jesse, I got out of the car and dashed into the woods.

  Veering off the path like my heart had become a compass, I trampled through the underbrush until the only light came from the stars above.

  Logic hadn’t been my friend for days now, but logic pressed me now.

  Why are you going to him? He doesn’t deserve your pity. He has no right to borrow strength from you.

  He had no right, and yet, he could’ve claimed much more than my comfort. Our link, the blood-soaked thread tied around our hearts, pulled me deep into the woods, deep into his unguarded mind. Like a dam bursting, Jesse’s walls came tumbling down. I stood with him, exposed to the cruel elements he’d so callously inflicted on others.

  Still, I ran. I ran until I found Jesse, kneeling over Liam’s squirming body. They both scented me. Liam redoubled his efforts to escape. Jesse slammed him to the ground and knocked him out with a blow to the back of the head.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  I inhaled, but I barely needed to catch my breath.

  I didn’t speak. I still had trouble wrangling the depth of his sadness. I wondered if he’d known that just minutes before, he’d called out to me like Liam had for my blood, like a dying man praying for life.

  Instead of answering, I joined his side and knelt with him. He didn’t look at me. His gaze was focused on Liam’s unconscious form. When he swallowed and his eyes swam with the first of his tears, I reached for his hand and gripped tight. My fingers curled into his palm and my thumb stroked the veined skin on the back of his hand. He met my gaze for the first time and his chin trembled. The dam I’d felt burst within him finally poured from his eyes. His sobs were silent. He refused to make a sound, but he let me see everything broken in him for a moment. He let me see his dread, his weakness, and he gripped my hand as hard as I gripped his.

  “Do it quick.” I looked down at Liam. He looked like a sleeping child to Jesse. To me. The weak one. The baby brother. I ached with the primal need Jesse felt to protect him, and the shame weighing on his shoulders when he realized he’d let his baby brother down.

  “I’m here. I’m here with you.”

  Jesse ran a hand over the back of Liam’s head, through the dark curls, and down the nape of his neck.

  Just get to the spine. Base of the skull. One quick yank and my brother’s at peace.

  He gave a solitary sob and clamped his fingers around Liam’s neck, digging into the skin with a gut-dropping squelch. I heard the sickening crack of bone. Blood painted Jesse’s hand ebony, but all the darkness faded from Liam’s face.

  Leaving peace.

  I wiped a hand down my wet cheek, then covered my mouth to strangle a cry.

  As Jesse’s shoulders sagged, I squeezed his hand to let him know he wasn’t alone. Moonlight gleamed off the brackish blood still spilling from the back of Liam’s severed neck. I focused on the small ripples in the widening puddle. Tipped in pearlescent light, I pretended the puddle wasn’t blood, but instead, was Liam’s human spirit slipping into a small pool of calm water. Then, the ripples ceased. Jesse whimpered, a wounded sound that struck my soul.

  He jerked around to face me. I shrank from the rage flaring in his eyes, but held fast to his hand. He wrenched free. If I’d been smart, I would’ve returned to the car, and waited.

  The pain he held at bay with his building rage danced on the slight breeze, something I could almost scent, and pity pinned me in place.

  For a moment, Jesse sank deeper into despair. He allowed me to rub his back in a wide circle of comfort. Just a moment. Then he let out roar and batted my arm away.

  Jesse leaped to his feet and stalked away from Liam’s body. I said a silent goodbye to the young vampire. I closed the door in my mind that still somehow held his imprint, his memories. His humanity.

  It was Jesse’s humanity I searched for now. I followed him as he strode to the car. The two-legged predator crashed through the underbrush in one direction. The woodland creatures that had withdrawn to a safe distance scented Jesse’s rage and raced in the opposite direction. I followed Jesse until light burst through a small clearing and he stared up at the sky to see the moon overhead.

  Grief had a taste, a smell. Grief smelled like blood, and tasted like tears and regret. I tasted my own tears and regretted ever stumbling alone into the woods the night Jesse took me. I wondered if he regretted that night, too. That night led us here, to this strange moment of vulnerability and truth. Jesse wasn’t just a monster. I wasn’t just his victim. Not anymore.

  I stepped closer, hovering behind Jesse. His shoulders drooped, reminding me of the night I’d tried to escape and Liam got sick.

  Help me. Hold me.

  I don’t know why, but I knew to touch his hair, to stroke the back of his head first, before I touched him anywhere else. For Jesse, the root of all comfort started with that gesture, a gesture he remembered from boyhood.

  Jesse never showed me anything beyond the moment and his desires when we linked minds. I never saw memories of his human life, of his family, or his anguish. But now, I felt a woman’s hand on his head, the soothing touch of a mother caring for her young child, a mother with hair as long as her son’s. I felt Jesse’s hair flow through my fingers—through a mother’s fingers—and I recalled, with memories not my own, how his mother used to braid his hair. How she used to sing to him, low and sweet, in quiet moments. I saw dark eyes and great blue skies as he lay in her lap and stared up at the heavens. I felt peace and love, two things that had long been absent in Jesse’s mind.

  Jesse spun and pounced, shoving me to the ground and crouching over me. Black blood covered his hands, smearing my face when he grasped my jaw.

  “Get out of my head, witch!”

  “I don’t know how to turn it off, Jesse.” I spoke in measured tones like I would to a spooked horse. “Even if I did, I don’t think you want me to right now. I don’t think you want to be alone in there. You called me and I answered.”

  Seeing a monster cry was surreal. Jesse’s eyes bloomed a terrifying black, his face twisted into the fury that came before a certain kill. Yet tears ran down his pained face, streaming endlessly. The fury melted into confusion, then shame, and embarrassment. He’d been stricken by the memories he’d shared with me by accident, but he knew I spoke the truth. He craved comfort. His chin trembled, but he clamped his mouth shut and flexed the muscles in his jaw to keep from sobbing.

  He looked helpless for all his strength, all his terrible beauty. Helpless and lonely. Maybe I saw my loneliness staring back at me
and not his. Maybe I’d cast my strongest spell on myself and convinced my malleable mind that he and I shared more than blood and bodily fluids. How else to explain this feeling of commonality with a killer? My killer. Had I not flexed the muscle he wanted to punish me for using, I’d have been another dead body on his hands. On Liam’s hands. The people inspiring my sympathy were the people who’d taken everything from me. I wanted to hurt Jesse. I wanted to relish his pain, but I hadn’t been designed that way. I’d been designed to feel his pain like my own, to make him feel my pain.

  And to take the pain away.

  I reached up and traced his cheek with my fingertips.

  He has nothing to offer but beautiful bone structure.

  The way his muscle and skin fell over bone might be pleasing, but inside, bloody pulp and stolen lives were the attributes that made up Jesse. He’d tortured countless people, as had his crew. They were like rabid strays with no sense of time or place, no sense of the future, and no care for right or wrong.

  And me? I’d become the girl who managed to stare into the monster’s eyes. I could touch his face and watch with relief when the dark fringe of Jesse’s long lashes fluttered with pleasure instead of malice. He tilted his lips over mine, settled his weight on top of me. I didn’t resist when his tongue pillaged my mouth for everything he needed. I kissed him back, licked the salt off his lips, the droplets sweeter than his blood.

  Help me. God, make this stop!

  My pussy pulsed and another rush of blood exited my body. Jesse groaned as he scented my blood on the air. He lifted his head and breathed deep, just above my face. His expression, the tilt of his head, put me in mind of a bloodhound. Every time my heart tricked me with emotion, my mind pointed to proof Jesse would always be the lion to my lamb.

  “What is it about you, witch?” he whispered. He met my gaze and I became undone by the wonder in his black eyes, by the tears brimming on his lower lashes. One of those tears fell on my check. He closed his eyes, lowered his face to nuzzle my neck, and asked again, “What is it about you, Evie?”

  The impossible pace of his heartbeat thrummed against my chest. And then against my stomach as he lowered himself down the length of my body. I clenched my thighs reflexively, embarrassed at the bloody ooze, even more by my arousal despite my messy womanhood.

  I sensed my menstrual blood would quicken his appetite rather than deter him, but still, I wanted to preserve a strange modesty.

  He tore my panties off so quickly, I felt only a slight sting of fabric lost. When he flattened his tongue against my pulsing pussy, I shuddered.

  “Jesse…unh….”

  I arched as he groaned against my sensitive flesh, parting the lips and diving inside to drag his tongue through my slit. Blood swelled in my channel like a tide. He lapped up the waves, swallowing every drop while the night swallowed my moans.

  Cold earth and dead leaves, soft hair and brisk wind. My clenching hands caught them all as my pussy clamped around Jesse’s tongue. I vibrated with my release, riding the wave and still wanting more, when Jesse finally came up for air.

  All the times he’d taken blood from me, all the times he’d forced himself on me—forced me to come for him—had been for his pleasure. This time, he banished his grief and his lust for power. He focused everything on the slick cleft between my thighs.

  We became one body, hurtling through time and away from the pain. His breath against my cunt, my inner thighs, my navel, grounded me more than did the dirt at my back, made me soar higher than the stars. His hair tickled my thighs when he lay his head against one and he sounded as breathless as me.

  He swept his hand reverently across my navel, the pulsating womb under my skin heating his palm.

  “It’s like I’ve been drinking grape juice all this time, and now I’ve had a taste of wine. You taste like nothing else. Like heaven.” He returned to my gasping pussy in a frenzy, lapping, while I struggled to a sitting position so I could press his face into the feast.

  I whispered for him not to stop when I could remember to speak. I became an instrument of need, and his name, the notes. When our gazes met, lightning struck between my thighs, straight to my heart. My orgasm knocked me onto the cold ground. The heat Jesse ignited could melt snow, make rain sizzle, bring the world back to springing life. Everything could change, if this strange sharing had linked us, instead of torment and bloodlust.

  I vibrated from the aftershocks, then rose again, flying higher with each lick and nip. My heart beat in my womb. His tongue caught each pulse. I rocked into his mouth, dying over and over, dying for him and coming back to life. I closed my eyes and watched outside of my body, as he devoured me, as my hips pumped his mouth and his hips humped the ground. Finally, I gave up soaring above us to watch, and opened my eyes, tumbling into my body to stare at the stars above.

  He released me from his relentless tongue and the suction of his full lips at last. He kissed my mound and I felt the sticky caress of my own blood against my sweaty skin. The gentlest kiss since my capture. The first sweet kiss from Jesse, with no hint of teasing or cruelty. He kissed me like a lover. And I sighed and caressed his hair like I had a choice.

  “This used to nourish us like mother’s milk. But they took it from us.” Jesse’s voice rose on the wind, but carried a weight unlike his own. “We’ve wandered, lost and alone, ever since.” He spoke nonsense but his nonsense triggered something deep and yearning in me.

  A vision, sweet and primal. A fantasy.

  No, a memory, coded into me like a chain in my DNA, rose to the surface of my mind. I smelled ancient smoke and bonfires and sweat. Bodies everywhere heeding the call of the moon, bodies splayed under the stars, feasting on all the foods vibrant life can provide.

  Lust.

  Blood.

  Connection.

  Predators lay their heads on the bare breasts and thighs of witches and wept like me, cleansing themselves in the waters of forgiveness. Tears as sweet as honeysuckle were kissed from the cheeks of the creatures who cried like Jesse cried now. Men lay with men and women lay with women without judgment or fear. Couples writhed like supplicants to the heavens. Their bodies said prayers to some familiar deity wearing an unfamiliar face, and the deity answered with pleasure amidst the pain.

  Women like me made offerings of the blood tide rising and falling between their thighs, feeding beasts with the promise of life. The beasts fed and their bloodlust abated. At least for a while, at least enough to seek something greater than the kill.

  I heard my voice, but the sound chimed and echoed, like I’d been possessed by another being. Like, for just a moment, the truth inhabited my fragile human frame.

  “We stalled death together, circling each other round and round, in and out, orgasm after orgasm. Completing something bigger than us.”

  I am the fount, the bearer of life. Drink of life, as I drink of death. Drink of me. Drop by drop—

  This dance between Jesse and I seemed as simple as predator and victim, and yet, maybe we’d stumbled onto more in these woods. Maybe this push and pull between us had always been ancient and primordial. Unavoidable.

  Jesse fed from me, swallowing me down drop by drop, and later, I fed from him. While he drank, he felt no pain. While I came, I felt no pain. We existed in a fugue, the bloody tendril uniting us, winding tighter, drawing us ever closer.

  In the distance, the beast and the girl in my mind screamed for me to stop, to turn back, but like Nora in my dream, I didn’t listen. I let Jesse drag me under. I wanted him too much to do anything other than pull him to me. I wanted a euphoria I sensed slipping away even as we reached a higher peak. I closed my eyes and let everything but him and me and desire fade away.

  The orgasms he’d given me still vibrated in my body an hour later. When we found the strength to return to the car, I rooted in my bag for the box of tampons.

  “It soothes me.” Jesse wrenched my fingers away from the box and knelt. Pressing his head to my abdomen, he circled my thighs in
an iron grip. “Right now all I want to do is tear the world down around me, kill everything in sight. If you hadn’t been here, I’d have gone on a hunt. I wouldn’t have stopped until I’d drowned out Liam’s screams in my head. I’d never have stopped. But the taste of you, your scent,”—his earnest stare shook something loose in my chest—“keep me calm.”

  I stroked his hair and closed my eyes. My body forgot he’d taken me against my will when he lifted my skirt and kissed my cleft. He drank from me again, emptying me of energy and blood, and when he got to his feet, when he gazed at me like a man drunk on wine, I kissed him. I kissed the bloody taste of life and death off his lips and he wiped an unexpected tear from my eye.

  “Not just me, huh?”

  I knew what he meant, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak the truth.

  No, it’s not just you under this strange spell. It’s not just you who wants me. I want you, too.

  And I hate myself because of it.

  20

  We drove in silence, the absence of Liam and Vaughn as palpable as a passenger. When Jesse had taken me to buy clothes, there’d been no sense of reprieve from the group. Vaughn and Liam were his right and left hands. It seemed I’d never been alone with Jesse until we returned to the car and resumed the journey.

  We turned down a long driveway a half hour later, lined with marker lights. Porch lights in front of a huge house beckoned. I swiveled in my seat to gape.

  “This is the safe house?”

  He didn’t answer. Jesse pulled all the way up to the first bay of a three-car garage, leaving the car running as he hopped out to punch a code into a keypad. The bay door opened, and when he pulled inside, the door remained open behind us. I stared at two other cars already inside the garage, a black BMW and a black Audi, shiny as the day they came off the lot. Jesse touched my thigh to get my attention, then pointed toward the door leading into the house.

  “I’ll get the bags. You go inside and get the shower running. I need to make a phone call.” Jesse opened his door.