Pain detonates in my chest. My ribs cave inward. My knees smash into glass. Shards cut into my skin but I barely feel them over the hollow tearing through me as everything is ripped out.
The curse takes. Hard and fast and wild.
I thought the pain of cannibalizing myself by masturbation was bad. Compared to this, that sensation was a lover’s caress.
I’m emptied in an instant. My vision runs red and pink. My hand shoots out, grasping a stranger’s face. My mouth opens before I can stop myself. Power drags into me and I almost choke on the relief. He groans under my grip, pleasure tangled with pain.
My name echoes from somewhere far away.
As my vision clears slightly I see patrons stagger. Some collapse.
Enough sense returns to me that I release the man I've been feeding on. He drops to the ground like a bag of bones.
I have no idea if I’ve killed him, but I can’t stop to check. The instant I stop feeding, my body convulses. The rush that had filled me vanishes, leaving every nerve flayed raw. My skinburns cold, my insides claw at themselves, desperate, empty. The hunger isn’t gnawing anymore. It’s ripping me apart.
I seize a woman and yank her close. Her scream cuts short against me as more power floods in. It does not fill me. Nothing does.
I am ripped away, hauled through the air.
The searing heat on my exposed waist tells me it’s Talon. The blistering touch jerks me back to some clarity.
We crash onto the platform by the front door and he lets me down. My ribs convulse. Pain throbs with a new rhythm.
Talon’s mouth moves at my ear, but I can’t hear him. All I catch is the thunder of my pulse hammering in my skull, the blood rushing so loud it drowns the world.
Snow grips the table, her eyes wide, as if she doesn’t know me. Ariel holds her forehead as she tries to shake off her daze.
Their faces are masks of horror. The people who were my family now look at me like I’m nothing but a nightmare in their midst.
I fed off them.
Oh fae lords.
I hurt my friends.
My throat locks. I cannot breathe. My stomach twists and heaves. Shame crashes over me, heavier than the hunger, sharper than the pain. I clutch my chest, but it does nothing.
All eyes are fastened on me.
The weight of their stares crushes me, pinning me in chains of judgment and fear. My breath stutters, my knees buckle.
They know.
Succubus.
The word pulses in the air. I hear it in the mutters. In the silence. In the recoil of bodies pulling back.
Every drop of hope I carried for the last month drains away.
There’s no hiding anymore. No future. I’m a monster exposed, and the way everyone stares at me makes me want to shrivel up and die.
In one moment, I’ve lost everything, and I may have left dead bodies on the floor of Poison Apple. I’m not sure.
They are going to string me up and burn me. At the very least they’ll exile me like Mal. I search the spot where I last spotted the vampire, but she’s disappeared.
I’m dragged out into the night by Talon. I’ve lost everything except for one thing.
The hunger.
