I grabbed his wrist, turned him hard enough to send him stumbling, then slammed him face-first into the refrigerator door. Magnets scattered. A drawing of a goose wearing a crown fluttered to the floor. One of Billie’s spelling tests drifted after it, marked with a purpleExcellent work!sticker.
My fury spiked so fast my vision narrowed.
They had walked into the children’s home. Their safe place. They had put filthy hands on the walls where Bianca read, the kitchen where CJ told his stories, the floor where Billie staged diplomatic negotiations between plastic dinosaurs.
The thin man bolted toward the doorway. I caught him before he made it out. He screamed when my hand closed around the back of his jacket and yanked him backward. I spun him into the kitchen island, hard enough that the marble rattled and a stack of lunch containers toppled sideways.
“Please,” he gasped. “Please, we didn’t know?—”
“No,” I said, my throat rough with pain and hunger. “You didn’t.”
Unfortunately, the larger man was still conscious. He came at me from the side with a knife he must have pulled from the block by the stove.
For one dreadful second, I imagined that knife upstairs. Near the children.
I moved without thinking. I caught his arm mid-swing, drove my elbow into his stomach, then used his own momentum to toss him into the wall. He hit hard, head snapping back with a sickening thud. The knife clattered across the floor.
He slid down the wall, unconscious.
The thin man stared at him, then at me, shaking. “Lady,” he whispered, “what the fuckareyou?”
I was too tired to answer. I drew my fist back and landed a precise punch. Enough to end the fight, not the man.
He dropped beside the island.
Silence rushed in afterward.
For a few seconds, all I could hear was the faint sizzle of my skin where daylight exposure had done its work. The overcast afternoon light coming through the kitchen windows was muted, but not harmless. Not to me. Not after running through it half-awake and terrified.
The robbers were down. The children were safe. The danger had been mitigated. Which meant my body finally allowed me to feel everything. Pain tore through me from head to toe.
I gripped the counter, bowing my head as heat pulsed through my hands, my throat, the exposed skin near my collar. Smokestill curled in thin wisps from the worst patches, carrying that scorched smell I had not endured this strongly in years.
My knees trembled. I hated that. I hated weakness more than pain.
The thin man groaned softly from the floor. My head snapped toward him.
Blood.
Warm blood beneath skin. Human blood. Fresh enough to heal quickly. Strong enough to soothe the burning, restore the strength daylight had stripped from me, clear the fog still clinging to the edges of my mind.
Only a sip.
The thought arrived before I could stop it.
I had not drunk directly from a human in over a century. I drank from blood bags. I had a system designed specifically so I never needed to hover over an unconscious human and negotiate with the ancient, ugly part of myself that didn’t care about consent when the pain was severe enough.
I swallowed hard.
The man groaned again.
My gums ached as my fangs descended again.
I hated the relief of it. Hated how natural it felt.
I leaned closer, mouth parting and breath catching from the hunger. My hands still trembled, and everything in me narrowed to the beat of blood under his skin.
Then I felt them. Three little heartbeats in the foyer.
