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Talk about puppets. All the arms and legs clapped against the filthy wall with a fine show of herky-jerky, the heads bucking, the gurgling quiet.
With a curling anticipation, he knew he was going to do this a hundred more times. A thousand.
The good thing about humans, for his purposes, was that they were easy to come by, and equally easily exploited, their modern-life ennui a perfect entry point for promises of power that would come at a very high price.
Breathing in deeply through his nose again, the copper perfume was nuanced as each of the drug dealers brought their own particular tilt to the common scent—and he knew, as he measured the puddles forming under the boots and sneakers, that this was going to take a long time. They were just beginning the inductions. Add the recovery time afterward? He wouldn’t be able to use these new lessers tonight at all unless he hurried shit up.
Stepping into Stump, he reholstered his knife and went for the button and zipper on the front of those jeans. As he took care of business and then yanked the waistband down to the knees, blood dropped on the backs of his hands and he paused to lick it off. It tasted like crap, watered down and contaminated with chemicals. Whatever.
Ah, yes, commando. Of course. And it appeared, given the open sores on the flaccid penis, that someone had been getting busy without using proper protection.
What was going to happen next would take care of that. Not the herpes, but the dipshit’s ability to spread the virus—
Lash re-palmed the hunting knife and plunged the point into the sinew just below where the thigh plugged into the pelvis. In response, the body did a siezure-jump, everything animating for a brief second, and the same thing happened when he sliced into the femoral artery on the other side.
“That’s better,” he said, as the blood flowed even faster.
With Stump’s puddle immediately doubling in size, the punk next door knew what was coming, and as Lash stepped up to him, the guy fought hard, so very hard, until he choked himself out, his eyes rolling back as he lost consciousness.
“This won’t take long,” Lash drawled. “Don’t worry.”
As he went on a pants-down repeat, he thought of his father. The Omega had had a special way of welcoming his inductees into the Lessening Society, but Lash had no interest in that sexual shit. This was absolutely not a turn-on for him, and there was a shot of superiority that he remained detached.
Sloppy, really, to fuck your acolytes.
“Say cheese,” he said just before he made the cut in the left artery first.
As the dealer woke back up, his face stretched like Silly Putty, the features elongating as he hollered for help and made no sound at all. And things got even more strain-tastic as Lash sliced into things on the right side.
Continuing on to the third punk, Lash checked on Stump—and decided not to forge ahead. Things were getting bone-dry in the circulatory system over there, and he didn’t want the cardiac muscle starved for oxygen for too long. He needed it in good pumping order.
“You’ll have to wait,” he told the third in line. “But be ready. I won’t be long.”
Back at the head of the class, Stump was on the verge of losing consciousness, but the surge of adrenaline that came with Lash returning was enough to perk him up into a panic.
“Open wide,” Lash said.
Bringing his own wrist to his mouth, he scored his vein and thought that his sire had had his own way of doing this part, too. But as he’d resolved the night before, it was a new era, and he felt like honoring his vampire roots. Feedings, after all, were a necessity for the species that had taken him in and raised him.
So this unnatural event felt more natural this way
Willing the human’s head back, Lash went to put the puncture wounds over that goldfish mouth. “Drink and join me in forever.”
The black ooze that came out of him gave him a pause, and he had the sense that he was never going to get used to it. His blood had been red, once. Like the humans’ in that regard. And it had smelled of copper, too.
Not anymore.
Curling his lip in disgust, he told himself to refocus. Some gifts came with complications, and did he really want to be powerless and mortal? Did the appearance and odor of what was in his veins matter so much?
“The fuck it does,” he said softly as he pressed his bite to the human’s mouth and made the man start swallowing, even as he choked.
Because hello, there was a slice across his windpipe. Enough got down, though, and the thrashing was nearly instantaneous. These movements now were different from the struggle to get free, the epileptic activity repetitive and spastic in its uncoordination, no larger purpose to it—
