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When I’m done, I pocket my phone again and take a furtive glance at the vampire. He’s still standing there, still focusing on me, still glowering. Hasn’t moved a muscle, altogether happy to stay where he is. His neck and chest look raw, swollen, and riddled with the deep acid burns the amulet caused. The other wounds, all the bruises and gashes, don’t look any better either, almost as if he’s not healing at all. At least he isn’t bleeding to death. We still got time to fix this.

I sigh deeply and settle in for the wait. He and I, we’re not going anywhere for the foreseeable future. And here I thought the night couldn’t possibly get any longer.

STANLEY ARRIVES AN eternity and thirty minutes later, jogging up the steps with casual worry. I hear him more than I get a look at him, and I only turn when he knocks at the steel door behind me. I open it and he weasels inside, muttering a jovial, “—so what was so urgent you had me come all the way out he—” His eyes meet the vampire’s, and he stumbles back, gasping, “Holy shit on a cracker!”

I frown, closing the door before I look from the hyperventilating vampire to the statuesque one. Only my friend isn’t so statuesque anymore. Quite contrary, he is now cowering, growling, eyes fixated on Stanley as the man squeezes himself into the corner next to the door. Stanley even tries to open it, but a sharp, teeth-baring bark has him jerk back his hand.

Stanley is white as a sheet. I thought he was near fainting back at the café, but this is something else. He looks like he is staring at the devil himself and realizing there is nothing, no wall, no bars, between him and a gruesome death. His voice becomes a high-pitched whimper. “What the fuck are you doing here with him? Are you completely mad? Gideon, do you even know who that is?”

It’s a weird feeling, finally not being the one about to pee themselves. I’m not half as freaked out as Stanley, but to answer his question, no, I don’t. My vampire looks like some kind of ancient warrior with his scars, the tanned skin, and the storm of knotty dark hair on his head, but he could very well be a knight, or a World War Two hero. Who am I to know? I shrug and step away, placing myself roughly in the way of my growling savior, who at least stays put, if crouching and ready to pounce. “I just know that he saved my life and needed help,” I say, scratching my cheek. Something flakes off my skin, and I shake out my hand, doing my best not to look what it is. “I kinda hoped you’d help him, but going by your reaction, that’s a no. You know him?”

Stanley cackles, still trying his best to meld into the corner. “You don’t even know, that’s hilarious,” he squeaks, muttering lower, “standing there like it’s a petting zoo.” It takes a while—and a pointed cough on my part—to get him to talk again, still half laughing, either at me or at the situation.

“Gideon, that is Cor. The Cor. The lone surviving Strigan.”

Speaking the name out loud does something to my vampire. His growl gets quieter but even more threatening, and he leans forward on one hand, poised for an attack, maybe, or to defend himself? I don’t know. I keep an eye on Cor—finally a name to the face—, frowning at the unfamiliar word. “What’s a Strigan?”

“A Strigan—he—is to us what we are to humans. He can live off vampire blood, and he can, uh, ensnare vampires, control their dreams, their feelings. People say he can even eat fear and love and hate, the big emotions, but that might be poppycock. Some six-hundred years ago, some big-shot vampire warlord they call the Norseman killed the whole bloodline except for him. Kept him like a pet. But I tell you, he is mad. They made him mad. There are stories about how they did it, stories that would make your skin crawl. I used to feel bad for him until I saw what he can do. What he does. Nothing but animal left inside him,” Stanley whispers.

“I have no idea how you are still alive. I’ve seen him being let out once, forty years ago.” He swallows, and his eyes finally find mine. “It was a massacre, Gideon. I’ve never seen anything like it. Friends, enemies, he mowed through everything that moved, no hesitation. The Norseman himself had to go down into the arena and force him back into his prison. I thought they finally put him down after that. Seems I was mistaken.” A pause, then he hisses urgently, “You’ve got to kill him as long as he’s weak. Do it now, there’s still time!”

I take a breath to reply, and Stanley’s eyes go wide as saucers, staring at something behind me. I feel it then, a sudden presence, like static crackling along my skin, a brush of hot and cold pushing against my back. Something wild, unknown, other.

He is behind me. Close. So very close.

The rabbit inside me tries to make a run for it, but strong arms wrap around me in a flash, pull me against a way too hot, way too hard chest. A scent cloud of salty pain, blood, grime, and something muskier washes over me and drives the fight right out of my limbs. My heart becomes a throbbing, squirming thing in my chest, slippery and feeble. Teeth rip at the skin-colored bandage on my bite wound, tearing it from my skin. Sharp, long fangs sink into the crook of my neck at the exact spot I’ve been bitten before. I yelp at the pain and try to scream, but my throat won’t let me. So this is how it ends. Seems my luck has finally run out.

Only he doesn’t drink. And his teeth burn in my skin, but nowhere near as painful as the bite of Stanley’s vampire child. I don’t dare to move, gasping short little breaths to keep myself from hyperventilating as my heart struggles against its confines. This is not like they told me. This is not something my training could help me solve. I am a puppet in the arms of a creature that could grind me down into shivering pulp and not break a sweat.

Cor keeps me pressed against his chest, growling softly, but I’m not dead. Not even dying. And even the bite stops to hurt and changes into something warm, prickly, relaxing. This strange feeling is only a vague tingle, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. And it grows, slowly, steadily, cancerous.

Stanley watches all of this with a kind of death grimace on his face. Something like recognition flits over his face, and he quickly turns his eyes away. “Oh,” he mutters breathlessly.

My body is chaos. My mind is drowning in fear and whatever strange cloud of pain-induced trance I’m in, so it latches on to the one real thing. Stanley. I try talking, because it’s not like Cor couldn’t have killed me a hundred times over by this point. And I can’t stand there like this forever; my adrenaline will run out at some point. The bite will hurt. The vampire will change his mind and eat me, as he is supposed to. I just hope I pass out when it happens. “Oh, what? What is he doing? What’s going on?” I mumble through numb lips.

“He’s not draining you, so there’s that,” Stanley says hesitantly, relaxing a fraction. He keeps his eyes firmly turned away, though. “And I’m not an expert in crazy vampire behavior, but what he’s doing there, that looks a lot like a claim. Some of the old ones do it with their thralls, or children.” He falls quiet, squirming a little as if embarrassed, then clears his throat and adds, “I think he thinks I left that mark on your neck. And he doesn’t like it. Looks like he sees you as his. He’s staring me down as if he’s challenging me to do something about it. If you were my thrall, we would have to fight over you now.”

I suck in a shaky breath and force myself to relax. It’s frighteningly easy, my mind wrapping itself in the growing tide of warm, fuzzy ecstasy his bite pumps into my body. I’ve heard of vampires’ ability to make their bite a pleasant, even orgasmic thing. ‘Venom’, they call it. But I couldn’t have imagined a feeling like this, not in my wildest dreams. It’s like my thoughts float away before I’ve finished thinking them. “How do I tell him it wasn’t you? He doesn’t seem to understand me.” If he even speaks. I’ve heard nothing but growls.

“I don’t think he cares,” Stanley retorts. “And I should leave. Calmly. And then run like hell. It’ll give you a chance of survival, I think. But you,…” He sneaks a quick glance up, inching his hand towards the door knob. Cor doesn’t growl this time, he just stares, teeth buried in my neck. His warm breath wafts along my neck, calm and immovable. Stanley twists the knob and opens the door a few inches, then he looks at me. “You should kill him.”

And then he’s gone.

THIS FEELING, IT is like a maelstrom. It pulls at me, tugs softly, mildly, until it has me in its claws and I don’t remember how it happened. A short, flimsy thought flits through my dazed head, a simple ‘so this is why people become thralls’, then it drifts away like everything else. There are teeth in my neck and somehow I’ve forgotten about it as I stare belatedly at the swinging door. I should worry about it, but I don’t. I should be in a world of pain, but I’m not. None of my wounds hurt anymore, which is bliss itself. There is nothing but the rush of his venom and the growing need to lie down and give in. Just give in and let it happen, whatever ‘it’ may be. It would be so peaceful.

I ram my elbow into Cor’s stomach, as hard as I can.

He makes a garbled sound and stumbles back, his fangs leaving bloody grooves on my neck as they slip out of my flesh. I falter without the safety of his arms, half boneless and half drunk, and catch myself against the steel door before I topple over. My mind swims in a soup of poison, making me clumsy and slow and dizzy, my chest hot and tight, and my senses so, so confused. The only thing keeping me upright is that voice inside my head that is screaming at me to remember Cor, remember the Hunter’s handbook.

It’s not the thought of my training that gets me out of this stupor. It’s the disapproving voice of my mentors that forces me to move, to get going, to stop turning my back towards danger. How they would tear me a new one if I died now, after all the shit I’ve survived today.

I force myself to turn around, my back scraping against the sharp cracks in the metal surface, and try to remember what to do next. He is on me before I can finish that thought, his sculpted body a hard, hot line against my shivering limbs. He grabs me, digs his hands into my button-down shirt until it rips open and gives way to his searching fingers. They draw scorching lines over my ribs, up and up until they wander towards my back and force their way between my body and the wall. It feels like he’s setting me on fire, like every nerve ending is dancing to his touch. Touch has never felt like this before. Never been this intimate. I was never as aware of anyone as I am now of him. It takes my breath away.

Then his lips find my throat and hot breath wafts over my sensitized skin. His tongue licks a warm, quick line over my pulse. He growls against the wetness he left, deep and drawn out. My cock jumps at the sound, hardening in its confines. I want him closer, want to melt into him, possess him, fuse myself to his body. God, I wish he would—

No. No! Nothing good lies this way. This is not how I’m going to die. I will not let this vampire eat me while I hang in his arms, limp, and whimpering, wet dick throbbing and throat bared. I will not be the victim, a statistic, a disgrace to my clan. I won’t. I can’t!

I inhale sharply and ram my knee into his crotch. He twists away before I can make contact with his dick, snarling like an angry dog. A hurt expression flashes through his eyes as he hops back and bares his fangs, as if he didn’t expect me to get violent with him. As if I don’t have a reason to. He thinks his venom has made me complacent, and now wonders why I am not. His face twists into a snarl, and he takes a quick, ducking step closer, one hand snatching at my gaping shirt like I’m a fly he’s trying to catch mid-flight. I gasp and roll along the door, out of his reach, until my back rests against the crumbling wall. If I don’t draw my gun right now, he will kill me. I just can’t quite remember how. Fuck, why is my head still swimming? How long does his venom last?