AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And with my deeper understanding of its inner workings, I’ve come to possess her heart. None other will comprehend its flaws… the way it beats so desperately, but hides itself to everybody else through pride and sarcasm. They cannot possibly hope to understand her intricacies the way I have.
With every new piece of information, the beast inside me grows more persistent - roars more loudly. I have contained the beast for as long as I can, sating its thirst with eventualities and empty promises.
I had to have a taste - had to give in, or else the beast inside me would destroy itself, and I would be left a shell of a creature. I can still remember the taste of her sweet nectar on my lips - the way her juices flowed into me, possessing my every thought. I am a prisoner to that nectar, consistently begging for it, always one step away from tasting too much.
In truth, right now, I own her, but she has a hold on me too. We hold each others’ keys, and in moments of subjugation and acquiescence, we trade ownership. As I prowl the cities, mirroring her every movement, the promise of her blood tests me; but as I bait her forward with another trinket, another resource, I am in control.
This case tests my focus.
I want to tear away from it and leave it behind me, except that Quinn is in its crossfire still, beholden to the every whim of these vampires…
Or no, they’re not vampires, I remind myself. Vampires could not be this stupid, as to leave a trail of drained corpses. Maybe I haven’t fully succumbed to this taste, but I know that we don’t become mindless beasts, bereft of a consciousness or motivation when we do. That’s preposterous.
Ren’s eyes have not left me since I divulged my true intentions, slipping that the subject of interest I chased was a girl tied to the investigation. I see them sizing me up at every key moment, analyzing my likeliness to waver to my baser needs.
“Looks like another vampire attack,” he says. “Neck wounds, blood drained…”
I agree on the surface, nodding impartially as I jot down a note on my steno pad… not one to let my inner bias come forward, but I know the truth.
As he stands over a room full of corpses, all drained of their blood, in this bar very similar to the one where Quinn works, I worry that we may not stop them in time.
I need for this investigation to be over, so that his eyes leave me. I can see in his eyes a deeper questioning that interrogates me. Maybe he hasn’t admitted it, even to himself, but I can tell that he suspects me of this.
“What do you think?” He asks me, testing my commitment to our cause.
“I still think that vampires would not do this,” I reply. “This seems more like a caricature of vampire behavior. They don’t understand the intricacies of a vampire’s thirst. This is a massacre, plain and simple - there’s no calculation behind it, save for the question of ‘how do I get away with this’.”
“These killings are becoming more and more frequent, Caspian,” Ren growls. “If we’re to understand the danger they pose, we need to treat them with utmost severity. Even if they’re humans or some other creature imitating vampire attacks, if we move forward assuming they’re vampire attacks, we will gain insight.”
I hear his words, but they don’t make sense to me.
“I know you hesitate to put the goodness of your own kind into question, but the reality is that you’re capable of this. And if I doubt, even for a minute, that your judgment is compromised, I can report that to the captain.”
Our relationship has become more strained since I confided in him, and that feels a bit like a betrayal to me.
“Even if this isn’t a vampire attack,” he asks me, as I continue scrawling nonsense on my notepad. “What do you think we can learn from this?”
“That our killers have no conscience,” I answer simply.
“Explain.”
“These were innocents,” I reply. “There’s no sign that this attack was gang-related. There’s no connection between any of these victims, beyond the fact that they were all human.”
“And?”
“...and if the attack wasn’t personal, driven by some kind of a grudge, then our killers must have derived some other satisfaction from it.”
“Which would make sense if they were vampires,” he replies.
“Or psychopaths. Or a group of people with a hatred for vampires, who wanted to make sure that we all seemed guilty for this.”
He looks at me, and I can see the disappointment in his eyes.
Does he really expect me to blame my own kind for this?
“You can go,” he says. “We’ll get forensics in here.”
I feel an immense sense of relief. The thought of Quinn’s delicate, white skin in my mouth, her blood flowing into me, has been tearing me apart the entire time we’ve spoken.
