Rush of Dusk (Dusk Series - Book 1)

Chapter 6 (Part 2)

Mer must be asleep again, though it felt like she was fully awake. It was the dripping of water and the moldy scent of air that needed some serious ventilation that gave it away. She was in the cave again, though the man was pacing back and forth. The movement had her dizzy, and he paused once he sensed her presence.

"You're back again," the man said, the one whose eyes she was seeing through, and he looked around to the cave more like he was giving her a view than he cares. What she saw meant little compared to the stench in the air. It smelled like death.

"You are curious?" he asked, and Mer wondered just who he was and why she was here. There had to be a reason she was coming to his mind. Damien was his name, and he was a vampire, but she knew little else. It was so hard to remember him when she was conscious, but now it seemed so easy. That was likely no coincidence.

"What am I? Who am I? I can hear the questions in your mind. I feel those questions too but..." The man pauses as his ear picked up on footsteps in the distance. "You should leave tonight. You don't want to be here."

Why should she not be here? What was he hiding? The footsteps ended, a screech like someone had pulled the rustiest lever in the world near deafened her, and then the whole cave shook. A door opened in the wall, and a smell took her senses for a ride as her stomach leaped with anticipation.

It smelled like food.

A man skittered into the cave and fell on his hands, and the door shut behind him with a crashing the had him whimpering as he crawled back. Mer realized, to her horror, as she watched the man wrap and start to mumble a prayer, that it was him who smelled like food. Holy hell...

"Please leave," Damien begged, but his mind warped as his mouth salivated. "I don't have great control of myself, so I can't refrain from eating and wait for you to go. I wish I could."

Damien stood, she stood, drawn by the smell of food, blood, and life. It skittered away, and that excited her, the pumping of blood in its veins urging her to chase. Where did it think it was going? Mer's jaw unhinged and a growl rolled through her throat, his throat.

God, who was she anymore? Their minds were so connected that everything was tangling together. So Hungry. Mer was desperate to open the man's veins, and the imperative screamed in her mind. Devour him! It clawed at her insides until she was in front of her meal and lifting the man by his dirty, short hair. It struggled and squealed so that she had to dig her fingers into his skull and she pushed him up against one of the cave walls. There, now it wouldn't struggle as much.

Her fangs sank into his throat, and warmth flowed down onto her tongue. It was heavy and sweet, like sugared molasses, and she clutched the man harder to her body to bury her fangs in deeper. Sucking on his neck and pulling the blood into her mouth felt so good, easing the pain in her stomach and filling her with a tingling feeling of euphoria as she drank deeper. More of this. Yes, this.