Wild Side (Dark Side Series: Book 2)

Twenty-Four

Snow is clean perfume, the wind wooden and chipped with frost. Looking toward the far flung heavens, I savor the night as it exists for monsters. Underneath the hoary crinkle of winter, a scent as old as centuries festers, the dry ice smoke of hot blood spilled. Ancient, organic, not sensual but pleasure in a different way.

One dark claw sinks into the heat blistered wound, tentative probing. Lisa's stomach twitches, but she does not awaken, so I pull it out. Gently, because I do not want to hurt but fuck I am so hungry why can't I just listen to my body, why does it ache so bad?

I suck my finger readily, greedily. I am disgusted with myself.

And content, the way you are content to have that first sweet bite of toasted marshmallow beside a bonfire. Sticky fingers is part of the fun.

I look at Lisa, her pale hide both dry and wet with the blood of transformation and a bullet.

Blood is what we are, I think.

Blood is all there is, purrs the voice that scars my soul. I feel his claws grip me now, his teeth sinking into my skull, dragging me into the dark cave of the unknown, as it was in the old days, as it would be once again. To a predator she is just blood, just meat. It is not cruel to take what keeps you alive. It is necessary.

"No!" I say. All I hear is a screeching howl drawn from my lungs. No, there is more than that. I am more than this.

You must feed, he says. It isn't evil. It isn't wrong.

My body aches, trembles, quivers with anticipation. He is right, but my eyes scrunch with tears that will not fall. I stumble away, clutching my aching stomach, wobbling on lean legs.

Hunger is not a sin.

His words are magic, back bending, bone breaking, will snapping magic. The hunger spikes and twists, more and more the farther I stumble. The hunger burns, knots, wrenches like a knife in my stomach, surges up a throat craving thick sweet crimson. The only way to stop it is to return. So I do. My teeth gnash and click above Lisa, sharp spires deciding where to bite first. I run my tongue over the back of them, over the teeth that sank into Luciano, over the fangs that ripped him apart. That should matter. That does not matter. He is dead and I am undead and so, so hungry.

With pleading whines of protest my claws rake through Lisa's fur. Whatever Zakar is—demon, beast, fiend, wendigo—pushes into my body like a lover large and cruel, forcing and ripping and tearing until I realize once for all that there's no stopping the hunger. There's only acceptance. There's only feeding.

My muscles tighten.

And in that last moment of me I launch myself into the ragged stag. It hits the snow in a peaceful drift, then my face is in its stomach, my claws are sinking in glorious freedom. Unrestrained and wild oh I love this feeling.

But deep under the freedom I feel dirty.

The deer's neck cracks and turns to watch with green-eyed delight. Baby steps, Zakar says. His words are florid magic over the rhythm of bite, chew, swallow. The pain in my belly retreats. There's a good girl. So beautiful. Don't worry, my love. That first time can be so frightening. You won't feel so dirty the next time. I'll reward you next time.

I wish he would take me then, black me out into oblivion until the dawn comes and I awaken human as if this were all a faerie spell. I want to help Lisa, but the best I can do is eat the dead so I don't eat her. And as I crouch over the stag, its heart in hand, chewing the rubber of veins, I hear the compact crunch of snow under paw.