Whichever human found themselves up here in this kind of weather is free game. They’re bleeding—and a lot—which means they’re probably halfway dead and will thank me for ending their pain sooner.
The scent leads a few minutes’ run away to one of the main roads connecting to the upper part of the mountain.
A car flipped onto its roof brings me to a halt. Glass is scattered all over the icy road and nearby snowbanks. The passenger-side door is crumpled in on itself, and given the faint trace of moose, it’s easy to guess what happened.
Human is human, and if they’re half-dead, even better.
I pace forward, but only for a step as the scent is…different than what I’ve smelled before. It stands out against all the numerous other ones, and instead of propelling me across the road to eat, it urges me to move slow. The scent is delicate, whatever that means. Something to cherish rather than devour.
Curious.
Snow crunches beneath my feet as I head to the driver’s side and crouch down, inspecting what it’ll take to remove whoever’s trapped in there. A person is upside down, the tight seatbelt and airbag keeping them from being crumpled.
Long dark hair and the scent of strawberries mingled with blood clears my vision from red to pink.
Female.
It’s been a while since I’ve drank from a woman. Their blood’s always sweeter than a male’s.Merry Christmas, indeed.
She whimpers and coughs, and her head angles slightly towards me, but her eyes remain shut. She senses I’m here, but soon, she’ll wish I wasn’t.
A quick snap of the seat belt allows me to dislodge her body, and then I clear the broken shards lining the window. She groans as I cautiously pull her from the vehicle, working at a human pace rather than a vampire’s, careful not to harm her further.
Seems pointless to care for her in this manner, considering my teeth will be buried in her pretty little throat in a moment, but it feels right to.
She’s limp as I tug her onto my lap and behind the shelter of her crashed vehicle. While immortality means the temperature doesn’t inconvenience me, the wind is harsh to her, blowing strands of hair all over the place and reddening her cheeks. If only I could recall what temperature is and isn’t safe for humans.
Her head is flopped to the side, covered with dark hair made brighter by snowflakes falling from above and the cut on her forehead. Smaller slices run up and down her neck and anywhere uncovered by her coat.
It’s her blood staining my hands, butmyblood that’s racing in a way that it hasn’t since my mortal years. My fangs throb again, anticipating draining her dry. She’ll be the sweetest treat. A flavour I’ll spend the rest of forever hunting for to taste again. If I had better control, perhaps I’d keep her alive and savour her for months, maybe even years.
“You’ll thank me for this,” I murmur, wiping her neck and baring it for my bite. With more time, I’d clean every single shard from her hair and make it as soft as it should be, but I’ve already waited long enough to consume her.
Her pulse races as my nose slides up her throat. Unfortunate time to wake up.
“H-he…”
I nearly ignore her. By all accounts, there’s no reason to be lifting my head and to pay her any sort of attention, but I do. As my fingers move her hair aside, she turns her face towards meand her eyelids flutter just enough for me to catch the colour of her irises.
A colour only found in my memories, the shade of the sky during the day. Sunlight after a lifetime spent in the dark, providing a chance to relive the daytime I occasionally miss.
Shecan be that daylight.
Something deep and heavy in my stomach pushes down on the urges that led me here. Something that chimeskeep, keep, keepthrough my head and prevents me from killing her. Even my fangs retract while studying her, trying to determine where the sudden shift in impulses came from.
Instead of biting to feed, to kill, to drain, I want to bite to mark her up, to keep her. To ensure any vampire passing through is aware she’s claimed, branded, and all mine.
Mymeal, my prey, and no one else’s.
With these thoughts, I take her in, noting she’s younger than anticipated. Twenty, perhaps? It’s getting more and more difficult to track humans’ aging.
She’s also gorgeous.
There’s objective beauty, of course. Soft face, symmetrical features, and all that. Then there’s genuine beauty. The kind found in a certain kind of strength. A survivor’s strength. That’s what this girl is. Somehow, as strange as the need to pull away from her and not kill her, I know it with every fibre of my being.
Not only does her nose have a little uptick, but her lips are full and red, only a few shades lighter than her blood. My thumb glides over the smooth skin of her cheek, but the scars on her neck and down the collar of her shirt tells me another story.
Someone’s hurt her before. My fangs return, this time not for hunger.
