night seemed very cliché, something a horror movie vampire would do. Avoiding busy areas and obvious public places was necessary in this day and age of camera phones and fearless idiots. Stalking the quiet park for late night joggers was not my MO. So why was I doing it? Even I wasn’t sure. The FPA would catch up to me either way.
“Why don’t we go to The Wicked Kiss?” Kale suggested. His brown and blue eyes were haunted as he struggled against the dark hunger. He couldn’t resist. Being bound to me made it futile for him to try.
Waking up in the vampire friendly nightclub had been a nightmare come true for me. I wasn’t ready to go back there. I wasn’t able to keep myself from turning it into an all out buffet of slaughter and mayhem.
“We will. Eventually. When I can keep myself from having an all I can eat extravaganza.” I avoided his gaze, not wanting him to see the truth I was about to give voice to. “I’m not ready for them all to see me like this.”
Kale nodded, a quick, sharp bob of his head in my peripheral vision. “I understand. But you know you can’t go on like this much longer.”
I slid him a sidelong glance, a vicious grin curving my lips. “When did you have such a change of heart? It wasn’t so long ago that you were hunting innocents… and loving it.” I made air quotes as I said the word ‘innocent.’ I had once mistaken humans for innocents. It took only turning on the news each night to see that just wasn’t true.
He frowned and seemed to angle himself even further away. “This isn’t about me. It’s about you not having to live with an eternity of regret.”
“I don’t need a babysitter, Kale.”
“Is that so?” He countered, his tone hard and brittle. “Since when is it like you to kill at random without a second thought? That’s not you, Alexa. It’s the hunger.”
“Let’s not do this again.” I laughed him off, receiving a glare that I shrugged off as well. I couldn’t help but find it funny that the only thing that could return Kale’s sanity was my loss of it.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Let’s not.”
I stopped in my tracks, listening to the faint murmur of voices that drifted over to us on the evening air. A man and a woman. Their scent followed, and I breathed it in with the excitement of a kid smelling freshly baked cookies.
Following the scent, I ignored Kale who said my name in a harsh whisper. I was on the trail of my prey, and I would not be deterred. When I didn’t pay him any attention, Kale swore and followed me.
There they were, seated on a park bench, totally lost in one another. The couple oozed desire, which was as tantalizing as the blood pounding through their veins.
My fangs itched with the need to bury them in flesh. I was still growing accustomed to having the two fierce points in my mouth all the time. It was much different from wolf fangs that only appeared when the wolf surfaced. I ran my tongue over one of the sharp points, smiling when I tasted my own blood.
Kale grabbed hold of me from behind, his hand on the curve of my hip. “No,” he whispered in my ear. “We’re not doing this.”
It sounded very much like something I’d said to him not so long ago. So I answered him the way he had replied to me. I pulled away, easing out of the shadows, into the small splash of light from the closest streetlight.
“Looks like we are,” I said, raising my voice to announce our presence.
The couple broke apart, looking at us like the unwelcome interruption we were. I didn’t bother to study them closely: dark hair, wide eyes, audible heartbeats. That’s all I took in before the last of my control slipped away.
I grabbed the woman and dragged her off the bench. The man shouted and reached to stop me, but I flung him back with a flick of my wrist. Without hesitation, I bit into the woman’s neck. Her blood spilled over my tongue, and I groaned. Somehow I managed to restrain myself long enough to thrust her into Kale’s arms.
Agony was short lived in his eyes. Once she was bleeding and screaming in his embrace, he was gone, swallowed up by his own inner demons. I watched the bloodlust take him. From one blink