by Mason Sabre
“It’s moon-night,” he said.
It might have been moon-night, but that didn’t stop the disappointment for Yvette. Moon-night was always so damn crazy. “I know, but you did the last one.” Troy worked for the DSA—not in any special place. Strays like them, and Others with no connection, never got the good jobs, but it was a job and a part of the world they could participate in. He worked for the night crew, trying to stay ahead of the sweepers, sending people home when it was past curfew. On Moon-nights there was no curfew, but they still had to patrol and keep Others in check, reminding them to stay off Human lands, and making sure that there was nothing that would bring about the pathetic Humans’ fears.
She shoved glasses onto the tray. It wasn’t a problem really. It was just the lack of blood that was making her feel so damn edgy.
“We’ve got five crews out. I’ll be back before dawn.”
Yvette sighed. "Fine." She was just going to go home and eat anyway. What did it matter? Her blood was thick inside, making her move stiffly. It really had been too long since she had fed. Troy would be pissed if he knew. Him working was better. She could drink and catch up, and he would be none the wiser. She was sure that the crappy, dead blood they got, didn't help with the aging thing, either. They needed thick, warm, live blood—blood where the cells still swam and filled her veins with the nutrients she needed to nourish her living flesh. It made her understand why some of her kind chose to go rogue and paid to use blood brothels for sips of blood here and there.
There was a blood brothel not so far away. Raven’s bar was situated on the edge of town, a border between the stray lands and Society. Hidden all over the stray lands were places that catered for those not signed up for the fantastic protection of Society law. Those who didn’t hand over ten percent of their living wage in order to bask in the delights of it all.
Being free came with a downside, though. They had starvation, disease and death. They had to scavenge for food and shelter. Every day was another moment to fight to survive. With freedom came a price.
Yvette had never used a blood brothel. There were stories circulating of blood whores dressed up to the nines with poisons—crumbs filled with rat poison. It wasn’t worth the risk. Not in Yvette’s mind, at least.
Troy carried the tray to the bar and loaded it into the washing machine. “I can finish up here if you need to go,” she said, leaning into the back of him. She rested her head against the space between his shoulder blades and let her eyes close, enjoying the feel of him for a moment. She needed the contact—just for a minute. Something that would stave off the hunger for just a while longer.
When the last of the patrons had left, all she still had to do was clean the glasses and shelve them, mop and take out the rubbish. It didn’t matter that she’d have to do it alone. She liked alone.
Troy turned so that he could take her in his arms. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” She leaned up to kiss him, her lips lingering against his. Troy’s arms tightened around her waist.
"I miss you, Mrs Grimes," he said.
She placed a last, brief kiss on his warm lips. At least one of them had been smart this evening. Troy had fed. “I miss you, too.”
He held her tightly for a moment, and she let his body heat seep into her. He nuzzled the side of her neck before finally letting her go. “I’ll see you at home.”
“Be safe,” she whispered as his hand slipped from hers and she watched him leave.
She locked the main doors after he had driven away, sliding the deadbolt into position. Raven lived at the back of the bar but he would be a while yet.
Yvette cleared away the rest of the bottles, throwing them into the bottle bin one by one and enjoying the smashing sound as each glass shattered. She wiped down the bar, lined the taps with clean drip trays and set them in place ready for tomorrow. Turning off the lights, she grabbed the bags of rubbish and closed the door between bar and kitchen and set the alarms.
Raven’s bar was a standalone place. At the front of it was a main carpark for the patrons, and at the back was the loading bay for wagons and staff parking. Beyond that, it was woodlands and waste. There was an empty power plant not far from them, too. The tall chimney stood out in the night. It was no longer in use, but Yvette remembered all the days and nights when it would belch out toxic fumes across the town.
Yvette hauled the bags out to the large rubbish cart. She opened the top to swing the bags in, but a smell caught her attention. She spun on her heel, dropping the bags she had been about to dump and letting the lid slam shut. The coppery scent, mingled with iron was unmistakable.
Blood.
Yvette’s fangs extended, pushing against her bottom lip, bringing a growl from her throat. Her veins ached with the need to feed, her fangs throbbing as the hunger for blood came alive inside her.
“Help me,” a girl shrieked. “Help me, please.”
Yvette turned to the sound of the voice, colliding with a girl … It was one of the girls from earlier with the boys. Blood dripped down her face, staining the front of her dress. She clawed at Yvette, struggling to find her feet again, her eyes wild and desperate.
“He’s coming,” she screamed. “Help me …”
Chapter Two
Yvette tried to grab onto her, but her arms were slick with blood. She slipped from her grasp and slid to the ground in a sobbing heap. Delirious, she tried to crawl away, screaming and crying. “Help me. Someone help me.” She dragged herself through the gravel and dirt on the hard ground on bare knees, tears and blood dripping from her face, her arms and legs. Long claw marks had split open the top layer of her supple thigh.
Yvette gripped onto the edge of the rubbish cart, panting, calming herself, hungering for the delicious scent of fear-fuelled blood. It called to her, echoing through her veins. A fucking delicacy ready for her to take. Blood pumped in her temples, flushing her vision with crimson hunger, urging her forward to the frightened girl. Time slowed down. The edge of the cart twisted in Yvette’s grip—the only thing keeping the girl safe at that very moment. She bowed her head, resisting the desire to drop to her knees and sink her fangs into the girl’s delectably bleeding flesh. A guttural cry tore from her. To take this girl’s life. To relish in the taste of her sweet blood. To drink. To feel the life flowing into her. One sip, that was all. One moment of sinking her teeth into that perfect fine flesh ...
Stop it. Stop it.
This was a delicacy that she would not take. She wouldn’t.
She couldn’t.
It was forbidden by Humans—once her own kind. God, how she fucking hated them just now. They had cast her out like vermin with their fucking rules. Yvette closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the cart, shutting out the sound of the girl’s helpless whining.
She’s going to die anyway. She’s already clawed up … The thoughts echoed through Yvette’s mind. Temptation and hunger goaded her and justified that this was okay. But it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t. Yvette dug her hands into her dark hair, pulling at it, giving herself sharp pain until it was bigger than the hunger that she felt. She would not succumb to this hunger. She could save this girl.
She panted heavily as she turned to see where the girl was. She hadn’t moved too far away. She had reached the end where the building went around to the car park and to the entrance of Raven’s house—to where Raven parked his jeep.
To where the girl was trapped, and Yvette could corner her …
Feed on her ...
Take every last delicious drop of blood …
Shit.
Yvette gritted her teeth. She wasn’t doing this. She pulled images of Troy to her mind. His face and what he would think if she did this. Her children. How they would be treated if their mother was a killer. No. This wasn’t worth it. Her family meant more than the hunger inside her veins.
She kept the images in her mind as she allowed herself to uncurl her fingers and let go of the cart. Her entire being shook as she took a
wkward steps to the snack in the corner. She took a moment to stand over the girl before kneeling. Think of Troy. Think of them all.
“Hey,” Yvette said, her voice belying the calm she wanted to portray.
Without warning, the girl suddenly sprang to life, swinging her arms out, blindly thrashing. Yvette jumped back, dodging her.
“It’s okay,” she reassured her as she crouched down slowly. “Let me help you.” Blood dripped from the gash in the girl’s forehead, and Yvette clenched her fists to her side.
Why had she not fed? Why?
“Get off me,” the girl cried. “He’s coming. He’ll kill us.” She dragged herself away on weak arms. Her knees were cut, tiny bits of gravel digging into the bleeding flesh.
When the girl jerkily turned and got onto her hands and knees, Yvette grabbed her around the waist and lifted her. Despite her weakened state from not having fed, she lifted her easily, the girl light in her arms. She struggled against Yvette, legs kicking, arms flailing.
Yvette leaned back, angling her face out of the girl’s way. “Stop it. I’m trying to help you.” The girl continued to fight so hard that Yvette had no choice but to let her go again. She hit the ground hard, rolling onto her side. The movement made her retch and, in a matter of seconds, she had brought up all the drinks that she had consumed earlier in the bar.
“Let me help you,” Yvette ground out, trying to get some fucking sense into her.
The girl sobbed and continued to try to crawl away. The scent of vomit temporarily tainted the delicious aroma of blood, and Yvette was relieved. It momentarily damped her appetite and she was able to focus a little better.
Yvette let the girl have a moment to calm herself. There was no one coming. Whoever had attacked her hadn’t followed her. Yvette would have felt it. And heard it. But aside from the girl’s whimpering, the only sounds that could be heard were that of the crickets chirping on the cool evening.
“No one is coming,” Yvette soothed, trying to control her voice and the edge under her skin. “It’s just us here.”
The girl slowly stopped crawling, her screaming gradually dying down to sobs. She sat back, rocking backwards and forwards and staring ahead at nothing. She held out her shaking hands in front of her as if suddenly they were alien. Yvette realised she was going into shock. “H-He killed them,” she stuttered. “He k-killed them a-all.”
“Your friends?”
There was no response and Yvette wasn’t even sure the girl knew that she was there. “H-he k-killed them.” She said it over and over until she put her shaking hands to her mouth to keep the words from coming out. Her teeth chattered and her entire body trembled like a leaf. Her dark hair that had been neatly curled when Yvette had seen her earlier was now dishevelled and plastered to the side of her head.
“Who killed them?” Yvette urged softly.
The girl slowly raised her eyes to meet Yvette’s.
“Who killed your friends?”
She shook her head, her face contorting, ready to cry again, but she was all out of tears now. "We w-went …" Her words shook almost as much as she did. "W-We went …"
Yvette tamped down her impatience along with her hunger.
“W-We …”
The girl was a stuck record. They were safe outside for now, but a sense of foreboding had Yvette glancing over her shoulder into the darkness. With Raven not here yet, they were alone. And she had no idea who—or what—had done this to the girl. A sudden strange sense of fear had the tiny hairs at the back of her neck standing on end. A chill ran down her spine. “Maybe we should go inside? It’s safer.”
Safer maybe ...
If Troy wasn’t working, he could have dealt with this. He was better at this kind of shit. When Yvette closed her eyes, all she could smell was blood, thick, heady. It was a hard balance between trying to care and wanting to bite into the girl and drink.
“Let me help you.” Yvette edged closer, trying not to startle or scare the girl more than she already was. “I need to put my arm under yours. Is that okay?”
When the girl said nothing in response, Yvette slid her arm under hers, keeping her movement slow and cautious, partly to keep the girl calm, but mostly not to set off the hunger inside her to the point that she wouldn’t give a shit about any laws.
“W-We w-went … W-We just …” If she bit the girl, at least she’d stop this damn chanting or even get onto the next word. Yvette couldn’t risk slapping the girl across the face to snap her out of it. In this state, the girl could be set off once more and start struggling and fighting her all over again.
The girl wasn’t heavy at all. Not that it mattered with Yvette’s strength. She had that part of being a vampire, at least, but the girl was scrawny—a tiny creature whose delicate bones would snap in a flash.
Yvette tried not to breathe in as they walked, keeping the scent of blood and temptation out of her nostrils. She practically dragged the shaking girl along, realising she had lost a shoe when she felt her limping.
Yvette got the girl into the cellar and couldn’t help but sigh in relief when she managed to lock the door behind them. There would be nothing getting in without Yvette knowing about it now. Only a fool would try to break into Raven’s bar. A man had tried once. He would be lucky if he even tried to break into a pack of beer after that day.
She dragged the girl through the kitchen and to the bar, and then to the main seating area. The girl’s blood was on Yvette’s arm and on the side of her face. It was everywhere, tantalising her with delicious food that she wasn’t allowed to eat. Whoever had thought up this kind of torture had done a fantastic job.
She deposited the girl in one of the booths and quickly backed away. The closed space was making it hard for Yvette to ignore the smell of blood. She put as much distance between them as she could. It was safer for the girl this way.
One thing was certain: there was blood on the girl that wasn’t hers—in her hair and on her body. The scents were too thick and mingled for them to have come only from the girl.
Another thing was certain as well.
Whoever had bled out onto her was now indubitably dead.
“I’ll get you some water,” Yvette muttered, darting off before her hunger took over. Fuck it. She would have to drink that shit. Raven had to have blood in the freezer. He ran a bar for god’s sake. It would serve all kinds. She raced down the small steps into the kitchen and to the small chest freezer at the back. He kept hunks of meat there. Frozen garbage, but better than nothing. She threw open the lid to reveal sealed plastic packets. She pushed them out of the way. They really would be her last resort. Blood from animals didn’t suit vampires. She had been Human—she needed Human blood to retain her life. Animal blood would do it to an extent and, if she had to, she would suck out from the meat, but it would come with a cost. She would be sick. She had tried animal blood once, when she hadn’t been able to stand the donated shit any longer. Maybe live animal blood would work. It made her sick for days, delirious with fever. She thought that she would die. Again.
She plunged a hand to the bottom and yanked out a box. It was marked with an ‘O’ for Type-O blood. Fucking O, as plain as they come. She hefted the box out and ripped it open. It held a line of twenty-four bags of blood, fresh from the drip machine—fresh and then frozen so no longer fresh anymore. It was probably dead blood, too. Humans just didn’t understand, did they? They had to take the blood from a living Human. Even if the Human was dead, it had to be taken when the Human was on life support or something. It didn’t take long for cells to downregulate once the heart stopped pumping.
She pulled out two … no … three bags, just to be sure, then she dumped the box back into the freezer. She closed it and popped the three bags into the microwave. These were different kinds of microwaves. Not like the ones the Humans had. Human microwaves had timers for how long things needed in order to be done; Others’ microwaves had temperatures. It didn’t matter how long it took, but it had to get to the right temp
erature.
Yvette set the dial to thirty-seven degrees and turned it on.
While it warmed, she dared to peek at the girl. She was still sitting there, although she had stopped the rocking. She had her head down and her hands in front of her. She wasn’t dead. Yvette would have known if she were. The constant beats of Human hearts were like white noise to her.
Going back to the kitchen Yvette pulled out a tall glass, the kind that held those ice-cream sundae desserts. She cut open the first bag, ready to dump it into the glass, but she was so fucking hungry it never made it that far. The scent caught her nose and that was it. She brought the bag to her mouth and sucked on the corner, gulping down all the warmed blood. It didn’t matter what it tasted like just then. She really didn’t care. Her hunger caught the blood, and that was all that mattered. She knocked it back, thick, warm blood gushing down her throat in a satisfying gloop, her throat working to get it down. She squeezed the bag to get the last drops out, running it between her fingers until there was nothing left at all.
The blood travelled through her body, tiny, worm-like slivers that she could trace as they slithered under her skin, giving her life, pumping into areas of her body that hadn’t lived in years. The warmth from it bathed her skin from the inside, fuelling her muscles, infusing her body with throbbing life. She placed a hand over her chest, almost certain that she would feel her heart beating—but, of course, there was none.
She cut the corner off the next bag. Would it be greedy to have all of these? Shit, Raven could take it from her wages if he needed to. She tipped the bag to her lips and drew in the rejuvenating liquid. Not with the same desperation as before, but the warmth of it was pleasing. Her mind cleared with each swallow, her thoughts seeming to order themselves. The world that had been cloudy just moments before was now lucid. She would never go this long without feeding again.
