Page 55 of We Were Eternal Once

I do not even need to show them. It is a lesson best learned in blood.

Will they crawl on hands and knees to us? Will they have tried to resist the call of the sun to practice into the morning, to try to outpace each other?

As if a few hours can help a gift that takes years to learn. Will they have succumbed to their exhaustion and instead eaten the humans? Was Theon alive enough to hear it all, the sound of his beloved humans screaming for freedom?

I try to keep a steady pace, even as my feet want to move faster.

“Shall we feed first?” you ask.

“Together?” I ask.

“Yes,” you say. This is the only thing that could draw me from the temple, the promise of time alone with you. We’ve not hunted together in so long, but we fall into it immediately.

We move through the streets of Alexandria, following the flow of humans through markets and plays. I’ve forgotten what joy exists outside the temple, what new experiences have arisen in the years. It is so much time for a human, but a blink for you and me.

We inquire over goods from merchants, smelling their spices and thumbing through their wares. I may not eat like the humans, but I love the smells of their food all the same. I do not recall what it feels like to eat as I once did. I only recall the first time I tasted your blood, and every time after that, and the euphoria I never felt when sipping wine or eating bread.

“This,” you say, picking a necklace from a merchant. The chain is long, adorned with red gems that seem muted and dull until the moonlight catches them.

“That?” the merchant asks, wrinkling his nose. “That style is no longer in fashion. Surely the lady would like something more modern.”

“It’s perfect,” I say, taking the chain from you. It’s light and cool in my hands. When I turn the gems to the moon, they twinkle, the exact color of your eyes.

Of my eyes.

You take the chain back and place it over my head, letting it fall against my skin. Every place it touches sears with the warmth of you, your love and affection.

I am forgiven at last.

I am wholly yours once more.

“Psiche mou, it is flawless.”

Perhaps we pay the merchant, perhaps we compel him to give it to us. I don’t remember. All I remember is the weight of your love against my chest and the promise of the hunt to come.

We find our prey—some solo traveler in a tavern who follows us willingly to the temple. We slip into the first room and feast on him, sharing the blood that runs down our chins. You lick his blood from my breasts, biting into me, tasting me.

We try to be quiet, lest the rest of the temple hear us and interrupt. But I cannot keep my voice silent as you dive between my legs, bringing me to climax as I suck the last mouthfuls of blood before he dies.

We lie on the floor of the temple, covered in blood and pleasure, until the quietness that comes post feeding wears off.

The temple is oddly silent—I expected to hear the cries of the humans, or the monotonous droll of the acolytes while they try to coerce them to silence.

Instead, I hear nothing.

You sit upright as I do, your head tilted, ears straining.

We stand slowly and dress. There is no point in trying to remain quiet—if anyone remains in the temple, they’ve heard us.

It doesn’t take us long to find the reason for the silence.

The roof to the altar room has collapsed, letting the moonlight shine through its opening. There isn’t a corner safe from its rays, open to the air as it is. The rocks have crushed the humans, their bodies broken in the rubble.

We cross the threshold into the room and something crunches under my feet.

Ashes.

All around the altar, dusted amongst the rubble, are the ashen remains of the acolytes.