Part Two

Part Two

I grab for the bottle and touch it with the tips of my fingers. Squeezing it in between them while stroking it. I close my eyes, and listen to its siren song of temptation, willing myself to resist it for as long as I can. Why do I even do this to myself, it's not like I have to or anything. I should just open it, let the aroma touch my nostrils, empower me. To just taste the emotions, the thoughts of whomever the blood belonged to. I can smell the fear in the blood, a fear to die, a fear for worse. That's why I refuse I guess.

I don't want to admit I hunger for it, that I need it. Like an addiction that I can never quite quit. I keep it an inch away from my nose, barely out of reach. "You want to be alone with your bottle?" I shriek back and the bottle drops between my hands. It crashes against the ground. The blood splatters up, bits of it hit my pants and drop on my knees trying to save it, sipping my fingers in it, licking them of. "Xander?" She stares at me, her eyes wide open.
How can she be surprised, she knows what I am. I never lied about that. Never. Unlike a certain dark brooder of the night I know.

I crawl back, trembling in shame as I realize what's happening, what she's seeing.
I want her to run, to leave my alone with my shame and the blood spread on my clothes as I lunged for it like an animal.

"I'm sorry." For a moment I'm not sure if it's her or me who's saying it.

Then I realize it's her. Why? What does she have to be sorry for?
I'm the one who … "Yeah well, you know I'm just one of them deadboys." I snipe at her. Much harder than I ever intended it.
"Now see what you did to my lunch."

She should go all angry now. But she's not. "I'm sorry. Was that…"

I interrupt her.
"Human?" My voice sounds angrier than it's supposed to be.
"Of course it is. What else did you think I eat. Cow? Like some tamed pet that you can keep huddled at your feet to do your bidding."
I won't tell her that's what I usually eat. She's grossed out, as she ought to be.

But still she isn't angry. "Yuck!" You can say that again.

My grocery bag is still standing there, empty.
The bottle of human was supposed to be my treat. I saved up for it after weeks and weeks of cow. Building up my strength. I don't want to drink to much of it. I can't count the number of bottles my grandsire sent me, that are now resting up the crooked boards above my hide out. The ones I won't touch, no matter the threats he makes. And the ones that make him smile every times he smells them, because he knows I won't throw them away. Human is an addiction.
It isn't so much the taste, the scent, the knowing of what it is. There's a presence in it, feelings, awareness.
When it's fresh enough.
I sip my lips, wetting them.
Oh God the need.

I put my fangs in my wrist and slit it open, draining from the vain, anything to overcome this lust. "I'm sorry, she repeats. Then she leaves. I don't even dare look after her, to afraid for my own control. Or lack of it. I just sit here, staring at the blood caked on the floor. It's dried up, such a nice mixture between red and brown. Its scent almost overcomes me. I move away.