Chapter pic: bit(dot)ly/sotpm05-pic

Chapter music: bit(dot)ly/sotpm05-music

"SINS OF THE PIANO MAN"
CHAPTER 05: MAN VS. SELF

The rain comes down like angry bees,
And the streetlight flickers on.
I thought that I could overcome this all,
But now I see I was wrong.

"Alone Again" by Assemblage 23

EDWARD MASEN
I decided to leave my room when I heard Ian enter the kitchen early Sunday morning. His thoughts were pleasant to listen to, almost as soothing as the nebulous dreams that were yet filtering throughout the house; he went through a mundane checklist. Coffeepot? On. Juice in pitchers? Check. Apples, oranges, bananas? Check, check, check. He lived to make the guests in his home comfortable.

Closing and locking my bedroom door, I turned toward the stairwell, but I was stopped in my tracks by a lovely fragrance of freesias and roses. The scent had obviously faded in the night, but I thought that it might belong to the guest in the room opposite my own. It was a sweet, floral scent: female, early twenties.

Since taming my bloodlust, I'd found it easier to catalogue this sort of objective information without associating it with salty, sticky blood on my tongue. Without hunger crazing me at every turn, I could simply admire the bouquet, as it were.

Still, it was never wise to tempt myself, particularly when it came to young females who I knew from experience had a tendency to all too willingly fall into my traps—even those I didn't intentionally set for them. Sighing, I turned away from the scent and went downstairs.

After greeting Ian and politely refusing breakfast, as I had done each morning since I arrived at the bed and breakfast, I sat at one end of the long, white breakfast table. Newspaper flat on the wooden surface, I propped reading glasses up on the bridge of my nose; they weren't magnified, of course, but they made me appear more human by providing a flaw to my unnaturally "perfect" exterior.

I'd found that little things, like the reading glasses, made humans more comfortable around me. I had no desire to draw them closer into my predatory web, as I might have once; it was merely a matter of enjoying being more human, when I could be. It was nice to pretend sometimes, to believe I was as clueless about my own nature as the relatively unsuperstitious humans around me were.

As Ian hummed while frying bacon, I began to read The Seattle Times' leading headline—Families on desperate search after newlyweds go missing in Seward Park. I lost focus slightly when another fluttering heartbeat entered the room. Without moving my head, I regarded the petite, brown-haired woman out of the corner of my eye as she somewhat sleepily shuffled over to Ian. Though she wasn't close enough for me to pick up on the subtle nuances of her scent, I certainly caught a hint of freesias as she moved. Delicious.

I glanced away from my paper to stare at the woman's slender back and waist. There was something peculiar about her, something that bothered me.

When I realized what it was, it was as if my world had tilted.

I couldn't hear her thoughts.

Ian greeted her, calling her by name—Bella—his thoughts buzzing along with his speech; but even as she spoke to him, even as I knew she must surely be formulating replies in that head of hers, her mind remained quiet.

No, not quiet, I decided.

Completely, eerily, infuriatingly silent. I was shut out, like a leper from an ancient city.

How?

I'd never needed to make my ability work, just as humans don't think to breathe. Mind reading was natural to my unnatural state, completely involuntary. I'd woken to this existence with a dozen minds infiltrating my own, and since my transformation, my ability had only grown in power. What had started out as "hearing" everyone in a room had grown to hearing everyone on a street block, to everyone within a one-mile radius, then two-mile, and in the last decade, three miles for the inner voices I was more familiar with. I was hoping that was going to be as far as it'd go.

But try as I might to push my ability now, to wrap my mind around this human's fragile little skull, I could not hear her thoughts at all, even though she stood fewer than ten feet away from me. I wanted to go to her, shake her and ask how she was keeping me out. The silence should have been a welcomed change, but it only felt uncomfortable and foreign, almost threatening. It was patently absurd for me to feel threatened, but that was exactly how I felt.

What is she thinking?

Unaware of the mass confusion she was causing, Bella went about making herself a cup of coffee with unsteady hands. She hadn't looked my way yet, but I hoped that when she did I might be able to read her, once I saw her eyes. As it was now, I could only see her side profile as she stared down at a coffee cup. A long scar ran from her right temple down to her soft jaw line; the skin was slightly pink there, ragged and raised along its edges. She obviously used her thick hair to obscure it, but it still stood out noticeably from her pale skin, at least to my superior eyesight.

Apparently she was not paying attention, for the coffee she'd been pouring soon overflowed, splashing out along the countertop, where it collected in the dips and grooves of the tile grouting. "Motherfucker," she murmured.

Laughter bubbled up out of me before I could suppress it. For one so meek and mild looking, and certainly quiet, I never would have pegged her to swear over something as ordinary as spilled coffee. It was so strange not knowing what she was going to do or say!

She looked up at me suddenly, catching my stare. I watched as a brilliant, blood rose blush lit her cheeks. Her heart thudded faster—thump-thump-thump, thump-thump-thump. The pulse point on her neck twitched and jerked rhythmically, gaining my attention, and I had to curb the innate desire to lick my lips in hunger.

I really should have hunted yesterday.

With some effort, I forced my eyes back on hers. They were a dark cocoa brown, deeper-seeming than most brown eyes I'd seen—wise in a way that seemed far too tired and ancient for the youthful, heart-shaped face that regarded me. What story lay behind those eyes? I wondered. She was an enigma dressed in faded jeans.

I found myself once again attempting to find her thoughts, hoping that if I strained hard enough, I might grasp them with my fingertips. But even when ignoring Ian's thoughts and the thoughts of the other waking members in the house, as best I could, I found nothing in the mental space around Bella. It was both intriguing and maddening. Who the hell did this woman think she was?

What's wrong with you? I asked her silently. Of course, she did not answer my unvoiced question. My mind was as silent to her as hers was to me.

Long before I could have ever desired her to do so, she pulled away from our stare down; she frowned again, upon seeing the coffee on the countertop.

"Uh, Ian? Do you have something I can clean this up with?" Her voice was soft, but a little gravely. Perhaps she'd been drinking.

Looking back over his shoulder and chuckling at her, Ian threw her a dishcloth, and she went about cleaning her mess, but I didn't miss the way her eyes cut over to me every few seconds. She chewed on her plump bottom lip, bringing it under her two front teeth over and over again, gnawing away so vigorously that I was amazed she didn't draw blood.

All three of us were very lucky that she didn't. As it was, I already needed to hunt after spending most of the previous day sitting next to Alexander in his posh—if heavily-curtained—studio apartment. Animal blood was perhaps a substitute, but being the supernatural equivalent of an alcoholic seated by a bottle of brandy for hours on end was not exactly easy.

A few moments passed before Bella looked up at me again. "Would you like a cup of coffee, too?" she asked. Her eyes widened a split second later, as if she were embarrassed to have spoken. I didn't understand the sentiment at all and realized that I had relied upon telepathy for so long that I had less understanding of facial expressions without hearing the thoughts that accompanied them.

I felt myself smiling, even as I tried to remain aloof. I stared at her over the useless lenses of my glasses. "No, thank you," I said. "I don't drink coffee." She would never guess my preferred drink, and I was fairly certain that Ian didn't keep such things in his pantry.

She nodded, a slight crease appearing between her eyebrows as she turned away—an annoying crease that I wanted to rub away from her skin.

I forced my eyes back to the newspaper, but the words no longer held my attention. Bella clearly felt embarrassed that I'd turned her offer for coffee down, perhaps even disappointed, but I couldn't be sure of any of the reasoning behind those emotions. I felt so clueless.

My muscles tensed as she moved away from the coffeepot. She seemed more awake than when she'd entered the kitchen, but she still walked with a slight shuffle, as if she weren't surefooted.

She sat at the opposite end of the table, which became a yawning white chasm between us. A strange, unfamiliar part of me wanted to move closer, but I forced myself to stay where I was. I wanted to figure her out, not scare her.

Or eat her in my frustration.

I stared at her bony fingers as they hovered around her coffee cup, undoubtedly seeking the steaming warmth, as I'd watched so many humans do over the decades. Seeking warmth was one of the most basic elements of human survival.

A part of me wanted to feel her warmth. Outside of Lucky and the wildlife I'd hunted these past few years, I'd had no close contact with warm-blooded mammals; the last human I had touched was Renée. I didn't need the warmth to survive, but I missed it. Not having it left me cold in a way that had nothing to do with survival.

It was unfathomably cruel that this existence stripped me of nearly all my human nature, but left intact the desire to be connected to something. I missed physical touch, but I knew better than to give into my desires.

Bella said nothing else to me, and I openly watched her face as she gazed out the window at the backyard gardens, a distant sadness darkening her eyes as she took in the blossoming flowers that were bathed in muted morning light. Her eyes shut seconds later, her lips parting as she breathed in and out in tired little sighs.

So curious, so confusing.

"Not a morning person?" I heard myself saying.

Her eyes flew open, and I held back a smile. "No—no, I guess not," she answered. A lovely little pout set along her lips as she eyed my shirt. "You sure seem to be, though. You're all up and cheery."

It was difficult for one to be a morning person when he had no need for sleep, day or night. "I'm not sure about that. I keep rather…odd hours." Or all hours.

Semantics, yet again.

Bella's piercing stare became unnerving as the seconds passed. The most natural vampiric response to nervousness was to freeze in place, almost as if in a state of mild catatonia, and so I forced myself to do the opposite: I fidgeted and squirmed, because that's what humans do under such scrutiny. Removing my glasses, I leaned back in my chair and scrubbed at my eyes with the heels of my palms.

"What brings you here?" she asked after taking a tentative sip of her coffee. She grimaced, her button nose turning up, upon finding the drink was still too hot for her liking.

"Well, this was one of the few quieter places that permitted animals," I replied, looking out at my dog—my only companion in the world, really—who was in the backyard. "And music," I said. "Gary and Ian have a lovely instrument in the room I'm staying in."

She smiled as I did, and an inexplicable warmth spread throughout my cold being. "I've been helping a pianist with some composition work." And trying not to scare him to death, I added silently. Poor Alexander. At the best of times, he was a shy, nervous recluse; welcoming a being into his house that frightened him with his proximity was a difficult thing, but he did it for the music. Like it was for me, so much for Alexander came down to the notes on the music sheets, the notes in his head and ears. We had that in common, if nothing else.

"So you were the one in the music room. You were playing last night," Bella declared.

"Did I wake you?" Guilt hit me as I took in the dark circles that surrounded her eyes. She looked so tired, so fragile. "I'm sorry, I—"

She waved a hand at me, but my guilt did not subside. "I sleep a little strangely when I've had a lot to drink…and, well, I did last night." She laughed quietly and shook her head. "Besides, you play beautifully." Another enticing blush painted her cheeks. "I'm glad I was awake to hear your music. Even if a lot of it is very sad."

If she only knew.

"Not everyone thinks it is," I said. "There are many opinions about what my music means and sounds like." Of course, most of those opinions were idiotic, just like the humans who held them, but I didn't say that.

Frowning, she grumbled, "I don't think they're really listening, then."

Perceptive girl.

"You're right. Most don't."

Leaning back in my chair again, I looked out at the gardens. Lucky was milling about at one end of the yard, occasionally jumping up as he snapped his slobbery jaws at a stray bumblebee. There was so much life in him and surrounding him—and so much death in me. Try as I might to memorialize my innocent victims, my efforts were inadequate in the end. They were still dead. The music didn't bring them back from the dirty, makeshift graves I'd given them, nor did it often communicate their lives to the few who listened. The families I'd ruined were not repaired through music.

I said to Bella, "Many listen because others do or because they believe that listening to piano music somehow makes them more sophisticated—more intellectual—either in reality or just through social perception. Few try to read between the lines, when it comes to instrumentation."

Of those who did listen, few if any grasped the meaning behind my work.

"That sounds about right," she said with a little snort.

Why did that seem so cynical?

Why does it matter?

What I wouldn't give to read her mind! I had no doubt that I would find her thoughts to be the same uninteresting nonsense that I heard from humans all the time, but that somehow didn't make my inability to hear her any less aggravating.

"What's your inspiration?" she asked.

The people I've murdered, I thought easily, but I didn't answer her. Instead, I coughed against my fist distractedly, ignoring her words through the action. "So, you're here with friends," I hedged.

Bella's eyes narrowed at my change of subject, but she eventually relented with a nod. "They surprised me. Coming here was a birthday gift."

"Your birthday, then?"

"Yeah," she said, frowning down into her still-full coffee cup.

Weren't humans supposed to be happy over birthdays? Most I'd encountered were at least secretly excited over the day, especially when they were yet as young as she. It was far too soon for her to be fretting over wrinkles.

"Well, happy birthday," I offered, internally cringing when I heard how awkward the sentiment came out. I had once been so charming around humans, but I was out of practice now.

I wanted to be charming to her.

Careful, I warned myself. You know what using that charm was about in the past. You know what it led to…

Bella seemed oblivious to my awkwardness, however. A soft smile played on her lips, and it warmed me once more. "Thank you," she said simply before ducking her head again, veiling herself in thick, dark waves of hair that had fallen out of the clasp at the back of her head. The natural veil made her more difficult to read, and I wanted to push the strands out of the way. I needed to see her face.

A moment later, laughter filtered in from the living room as the two remaining guests—Bella's friends, I realized—and Ian's partner Gary spoke to each other. Bella turned in her seat and waved at the two young women who entered the kitchen a moment later. As Gary went to Ian's side and began chopping apples into slices, I attempted to swallow my annoyance over having our conversation interrupted by Bella's friends. It took considerable effort on my part, truly.

One of them, a toothpick-skinny blonde-haired woman, immediately glanced at me from where she stood with her hand on the back of Bella's chair, her fingers ineffectually digging into the wood. She didn't give me the glance I usually received, the one of mixed curiosity and barely-contained lust; instead, she looked on warily, like a skittish animal caught in the sight of its predator. It was an oddly appropriate response to what I was, but I knew she wasn't wary of my nature, just my sexuality. She noted all the doorways in the room, as if planning for a quick escape. I had sadly been in enough minds to know that someone must have abused her in the past.

Beside her stood a very tall woman who was speaking quietly to Bella and worrying over her wellbeing. She obviously didn't sleep well, she thought, looking over Bella's features. She can't keep on like this.

Keep on like what? I nearly growled in frustration as the woman's thoughts changed to fit their conversation, which was now on the topic of a chemistry class that she—Angela, I learned—was taking in college.

"Have you had breakfast?" the blonde-haired woman asked Bella, while happily accepting a plate of bacon and eggs from Ian. She was trying desperately to quash her fear of me. He can't hurt you. You're in a room full of people. He would never hurt you. He's just a stranger—probably a really great guy.

Her instinctual fear was much closer to the mark, even if it was misdirected.

"Thanks, Lauren, but I'm not hungry," Bella said with a shake of her head. Her eyes flickered over to me for the briefest of moments.

I frowned. She was small and bony, as if she were bad about caring for herself. She needed to eat. I wanted her to eat.

Of course, it wasn't my concern, so I tried to ignore it—and her—as the humans' breakfast commenced. I tried—and completely failed—to read my newspaper, my thoughts consumed by the silent mind at the other end of the table. Every now and again, I felt her stare, but our short conversation was now over. I'd probably never speak to her again, I realized, and that bothered me far more than it should have. I still hadn't figured her out, which was rather unsurprisingly frustrating to me, considering my accidental mind reading for the past nine decades.

Smiling, portly Gary placed a plate of sliced apples and oranges on the table. He pulled back and looked through the window at the backyard, his mind taking note of the way a gentle breeze shook the bushes. "Warm in here," he mumbled before going around Bella's chair to unlock and lift the window.

Soft wind whispered through the opened square, blowing past Bella as it flowed into the room. Her hair flickered up around her, like windswept autumnal leaves, and it was just enough to swirl up her blood scent, so that it hit me like a wrecking ball to the gut.

Out of all the time I'd spent on this earth, out of all the victims I'd hunted and murdered, I had never smelled anything as delicious as this woman. Had I not been seated, I would have fallen to my knees or jumped at her throat—one or the other. She was female and freesias, roses and freshly cut Bermuda grass, a brilliantly full-bodied wine that left me lightheaded and hungry for more.

I gripped at the sides of my chair, locking my muscles as I felt my ever-fragile hold on my humanity melt away. I held my breath, as I'd learned to do long ago in the face of inconvenient bloodlust. Vampires didn't need oxygen to survive, but cutting off what was essentially my most important sense was enough to put me on edge; it was my only option now, though.

It hardly helped—not when I was facing the most appetizing smell in the world. Holding my breath removed her scent from the present, but it was too fresh in my mind; it was not as if I could forget something as potent as that. The demon inside jerked at his chains with a sudden burst of strength and clawed his razor-sharp nails down my throat. I swallowed venom and flames.

Her blood will soothe you, the monster said in his familiar, silky purr. You know this is what you were made to do.

Remember how it used feel? How you'd work them up until they tasted the sweetest? You'd get them as wet as blood, and they tasted so good, didn't they? You can do that again, you know.

You can have her. You can even make it good for her. That's more than can be said of others in your position, don't you think?

You don't have to feel guilty. It's just nature.

You're the spider. She's the fly.

Humans come and go. Death is part of life.

Who is to say that today should not be her day to die?

No one has to know. You can leave the area.

My chest shook in a silent, tormented cry. I wanted her, as if she were the best meal, the last meal I would ever have. It was as if she were tailor-made for me—perfect blood and an interesting, silent mind that wouldn't bother me with its musings as I pulled every last drop from her veins. I imagined the sweet sin: Kiss, lick, bite, suck and suck and suck.

Don't do it, a gentler voice said to me.

The man's voice was relatively new, and so weak in comparison to the monster's, but I tried to focus on this rational part of myself, that little bit of goodness that I'd managed to grasp onto in the black shadows of my existence.

If I gave in, what would the last twenty-one years have been for? I couldn't go back now, not after this much time, not after so much work, not after finally discovering there was a substitute for human blood.

But it's a poor one, countered the beast. He was always full of black velvet temptation.

Fear and indecision kept me seated, kept my fingers grinding into the chair's wood, which chipped and ground easily at the pressure; it was taking everything in me not to snap the whole thing in half.

I was not calm enough. If I moved right now, I knew I would kill everyone. Parts of my mind were already plotting that path. I wouldn't drink from the others, but they would get in my way and could cause problems for me later. They would be collateral damage. I could snap their necks and be done with them in less than a second; then I could savor Bella's blood.

If I held my breath, surely I could seduce her before doing anything, make her feel comfortable. If I couldn't…I'd snap her neck. She wouldn't feel anything. I couldn't let her feel pain.

But as I looked up, I saw I was already scaring her.

Through the red haze muddling my vision, I saw Bella staring at me from the other end of the table, while Gary, Angela and Lauren spoke beside her, completely unaware of the immense distress at either end of the table. Bella's eyes were wide in alarm, and her heart stammered through an unnatural, thunderous tattoo. I didn't have to be able to see myself through her eyes to know that my carefully crafted façade had fallen away moments before; I knew my eyes would be black, my face hard and menacing.

And I knew that if I breathed in again, I'd smell her adrenaline, knew that her already-perfect blood would somehow be even more enticing. On her cheeks lay another curiously beautiful and maddeningly delicious blush that only furthered my hunger.

Another breeze passed through the window, kicking up her hair again, and I knew that a single breath would end everything and everyone in this room.

Her life and my own pitiful excuse for one would go down most violently.

My control had improved over the years, and I'd worked especially hard to master it since giving up human blood entirely, but this was different. Nothing I had done or been through could have possibly prepared me for this moment.

But as I stared into brown eyes, striving with everything in me to keep the monster in his cage, I thought of Renée and of the horrible mistake I'd nearly made two decades ago that had so thoroughly changed my unchanging existence. I could not go back to what I had been before that night. I wouldn't—not even in the face of this temptation.

Renée's blood had smelled of freesias, too. It was almost comical. Who knew petite women and a flower native to Africa would be my undoing?

In an odd sort of way, Bella even reminded me of Renée, as she stared at me in fear and confusion. Her face was that same soft heart shape, her skin the same creamy white, beyond the ragged pink scar.

As the seconds wore on and our eyes remained locked, the venom kept flowing down my throat in an unending stream of slick, sickly sweet syrup. Burn. Swallow. Burn. Swallow. Burn. Swallow. I did not breathe, though, and the longer I held my breath, the clearer my head became.

I was still a coiled cobra waiting to strike, but I decided Bella's fear was enough, that it had to be enough for me to stop. Killing this woman would be like killing myself. It would be the murder of five hundred and sixteen innocent people, all over again. It would be the undoing and undermining of every memorial I'd composed.

Leave her be, the man said.

Digging my fingers into my palms until I felt pain, I rose from the breakfast table, distantly aware that the chair toppled to the floor behind me, that Gary called my name as I swiftly exited the house through the back door. Bella stopped him from coming after me. I supposed she knew a monster when she stared one in the eye.

The monster growled in agony as I ran.

I didn't breathe until I was a good thirty feet away, and still the fire roared. It was unlike anything I had ever endured. It was nearer to the inner flames of the transformation from man to vampire than it was to simple bloodlust.

Everything was falling apart, spiraling downward.

Because of a fucking breeze.

Because of blood.

Again.

It always came back to blood.

I knew I couldn't return to The Rosebud until she was gone. The bloodlust abated in the fresh air, but the pain remained, and I knew that a large part of me still wanted to go back into the house and kill everyone, if only to taste her flawless nectar. I knew it would soothe the burn that seemed to be eating through my throat and down into my chest, down into everything I was. I wanted to be angry at her for causing me such pain, but it was I who was at fault. I was weak. I was evil.

She was innocent.

I was not.

I gave a dry, high-pitched whistle, and Lucky came bounding up to me, happy as ever; he didn't even seem to register my agitated state. My hands were shaking when I bent down to one knee and ran my fingers over his small, shaggy head. It was hard to contain my strength at the moment, but I loved the damn dog far too much to hurt him. "I'll be back in a little while, pup," I told him, my voice surfacing in a dry rasp. "Be good." He looked at me with trusting brown eyes and licked the inside of my wrist. I really didn't deserve his strange, unconditional love, but I was selfish enough to take it.

For the sake of keeping up appearances, I rounded the house and went to my car, which thankfully only smelled of Lucky and me. I couldn't exactly go running off at vampire speed in daytime Seattle.

So I drove.

And drove.

And hunted.

And then I drove some more.

And I began to wonder why I hadn't brought Lucky, why I hadn't left the bed and breakfast and Seattle for good. I could have. My work with Alexander had finished yesterday. I had only stayed another day, with the intention of visiting the Seattle Art Museum. I could have left money, taken my dog and suitcase, and simply left, but I had't done that. I left Lucky there.

I didn't have to speculate for very long as to why my subconscious led me to leave him behind. He was a reason for me to go back, a reason for me to return…to her. I still wanted Bella. I wanted her lifeblood, and I wanted her mind. If I'd thought the pull to Renée had been difficult to ignore, it was only because I had not encountered this woman. She was in a league of her own.

By mid-afternoon, I turned back toward the bed and breakfast, completely unsure of what I would do once there. What good could possibly come from seeing her again? Was she even staying another night?

It was difficult to know which side of me was in control. The man said, "Get Lucky and turn away from this." The beast told me to go back, to recommit to the life I'd once led. I drove in circles more than once, feeling as though I had two warring personalities.

The car that Bella had come in with her friends was gone by the time I got back. I was once again the sole guest at the bed and breakfast. A strange, contradictory knot of anger and relief formed deep in my stomach. The monster was frustrated that Bella had gotten away, but the man felt at peace. She's safe, he seemed to sigh.

Gary and Ian were watching television in the living room when I entered. They looked at me from where they sat on their couch, a confused wariness in their eyes.

"Are you okay, Mr. Masen?" Ian asked, muting the television.

"You sure ran out of here fast," Gary commented. In his memory, he saw me moving in a blur to the backyard. A man of science at heart, he was trying to calculate how I had moved at such a seemingly unnatural speed; the only conclusion he was willing to consider thus far was that he had actually missed some of my movement, that his eyes had failed, and his brain had filled in the blanks with poor data.

When humans saw too much, it was best to play dumb, as if nothing strange had happened. Modern, human skepticism usually protected my kind. "I'm fine," I answered in the soothing tone I reserved for unfortunate situations like this one and for when I wanted to unfairly get my way. "I remembered I was late for an appointment and had to leave quickly. I'm sorry if I caused any alarm."

Ian was going to say something, but Gary stopped him with a hand to his shoulder. He was rightfully unnerved by my presence and didn't think I should be pressed. "That's all right," he said in a placating tone. "We've had to run out on short notice before ourselves." His eyes flashed over to Ian. "Are you staying another night?"

"No, I don't think so," I said, surprising myself. "I'm only going up to pack now."

Ian nodded slowly. "O-okay, just come down and tell us when you're ready to leave."

I only had one bag, though, and it was packed. Instead, when I went upstairs, I picked the lock to the bedroom Bella had stayed in; the monster was very pleased to find it hadn't been cleaned yet. I scoffed. As if it would matter. I was sure that her scent wouldn't wash out any time soon. Surely not even bleach could cut through this.

Carefully, silently closing the door behind me, I fell onto her bed, drinking in her scent like the masochist I was. I buried and rubbed my face into her pillow, fisted my hands into the sheets she'd lain between.

It felt as though my body were vibrating, humming with a million unspent and curious energies. This close to her concentrated scent, I burned for her blood, just as I burned to unlock the secrets of her mind. This close to where she had lain, I even lusted for her body. It was a sudden, powerful urge that easily surpassed any sexual desire I had felt in the past.

I had never been physically attracted to a human before, but now I felt an all-consuming fire through my whole body, a fire more powerful than any attraction I expected myself capable of feeling, that left my cock hard and straining. I imagined tasting her blood, imagined freesias on my tongue as I came undone inside her. Her mind would be all at once blissfully and frustratingly silent, even as she moaned in an ecstasy that only I would give her. As I sank my teeth into her flesh and pushed my cock into her tight body, I would not hear her inner cries of pleasure or pain.

See? There'd be no guilt over this one, the monster said.

Kiss. Lick. Fuck. Bite. Suck, suck, suck.

Letting out a strangled groan into the pillow my face was pressed against, I turned on my side and unzipped my pants to free myself from the confines of my jeans. I couldn't remember ever being this painfully hard, not even after a particularly passionate hunt. I was steadily leaking venom, and I ran my fingers over it and down my length, gripping myself as hard as I imagined Bella's body might—tight, but with a delicious, perfect give.

With my head swirling with the scent of freesias and roses and green, green grass, I pumped myself, rocking my hips back and forth so forcefully that the bed shook and squeaked. I needed to slow down and keep quiet—I needed to stop—but I couldn't control the urges that had consumed me.

With a feral growl that reverberated around the room, I released a glistening stream of venom over the heavily-scented sheets. Under the pale afternoon light filtering through the window, my venom stood out starkly against the cream-colored bed linens. I panted as my body slowly calmed.

Though guilt and its cousin shame wanted to overwhelm me, and might yet do so, I mainly felt satisfaction from giving in to the animalism. Just imagining Bella was better than the sex I'd had in the past.

Man and monster were in curious harmony as my hand drifted downward once again.

Each night, just as the moon began to fill the sky with its soft glowing light, Gary and Ian took a leisurely walk around their property. While they were gone, I pulled the sheets off Bella's bed, crumpling them into a pile by the door in an effort to hide half a dozen obvious stains. I folded and kept her pillowcase in my back pocket.

As if being a vampire was not bad enough, I was now a fucking pervert who carried around mementos.

Though my body was calmer after an hour or two of tainting Bella's bed sheets, my head was still racing through all the possibilities surrounding this strange young woman.

Leaving her alone no longer seemed to be one of those possibilities. My senses, my mind, my body were all filled with one thing that pulsed through my consciousness like a steady heartbeat: Bella, Bella, Bella.

I wanted more, and I was afraid to realize that I was not sure what more represented.

Yes, hissed the monster.

You can't have everything, the man warned, but he had become strangely quiet on the matter of whether I should be around her.

That was how it came to pass that I illegally acquired Lauren's address from the computer in Gary and Ian's bedroom—another bedroom whose lock had picked. I added this to my list of sins.

Lauren—Lauren Mallory, according to her credit card details—Angela and Bella lived in a small residential area in the middle of Port Angeles, Washington. The slightly rundown home they lived in—a rental, I could only hope—was a two-bedroom house with an attic, a small backyard and an old roof that desperately needed to be retiled. Heated by a heat pump, the house smelled musty and old as I lurked outside in the shadows, like the foul creature I was.

It had been far too easy to get this far, to get so close to her. Gary and Ian hadn't even password-protected their spreadsheets. I'd gotten Lauren Mallory's information, placed money in an envelope for Gary and Ian, and left with Lucky in the passenger's seat—in less time than it took for them to return from their evening walk. By speeding, I cut a three hour drive from their home in the outer suburbs of Seattle, to Port Angeles, down to two, and I stopped at the first hotel I came across in the tourist town. They accepted pets of Lucky's size, and so I'd left him there, tipping someone three hundred dollars to make sure he was fed and let out on occasion, and made my way to Lauren's home, in hopes that I could find out more about Bella.

I'd not expected Lauren's home to also be Bella's. In a mere handful of hours, I had tracked down the place she was most likely to let her guard down in.

It's all so easy. It's like fate wants you to suck her dry, the venomous devil told me.

The only thing that had slowed me down at all was to find their home was empty when I arrived around nine o'clock. It gave me reason to pause, to consider my actions, and despite my discovering that at least one of the windows was unlocked, I still lurked outside, debating with myself in overgrown and scratchy holly berry bushes. What on earth was I doing?

In fewer than twenty-four hours, I'd gone from having some modicum of a…well, if not peaceful, then tolerable existence, to this. And what was this, exactly?

Was I hunting this girl?

Yes, the monster said.

No, the man replied simultaneously. You only want to understand her.

Was that all?

Was I really so daft and weak-willed that I couldn't handle the unknown that she presented me with?

Confusing questions continued to swirl in my mind, questions I had no answers to. They were nearly as frustrating as the emotional turmoil. I felt excited and ensnared, afraid and aroused, infuriated and intrigued, possessive and protective and predatory.

Conflicted. That was the word, and it was the only thing that kept me outside. Running into a situation with conflicted emotions was exactly what I had done with Renee, even if that had ended on a somewhat strangely positive note.

Angela returned to the house around ten, driving up in an old, white Camry that had a badly-dented fender; Lauren arrived shortly after on a motorbike, stupidly sans helmet. Neither thought of Bella for any length of time, dedicating only the occasional, fleeting thought to their friend.

Wonder when she'll get home?

I hope Bella finds a new job tomorrow. We can't make rent without her.

Fleeting as their thoughts were, they only added to the puzzle that was Bella.

Both Lauren and Angela had long gone to bed by the time Bella pulled up in the driveway in her old gray and black Honda. It was nearly two in the morning.

Cloaked in darkness, I held my breath and watched her from a distance. She was heartbreakingly…lovely…in the gray-blue moonlight that shone through her windshield. Her hands were folded, raised and resting along the curving arch of the steering wheel; she pressed the left side of her face against her fingers. A thrilling, almost frightening sensation rippled through me; she was angled so that she faced me, though I knew her eyesight was far too weak to perceive my form in the shadows. I saw her, but she did not see me, even as she looked right in my direction.

I could even see the finer details, the way her lips were bowed downward, the way her brow was slightly wrinkled. And I could see redness around her eyes—a sign of weariness and tears. My chest clenched painfully at the sight, and I rested a palm over my still heart.

What was this woman's story?

She stayed in her car for fourteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds; her heart beat one thousand and forty-six times. Twice, I contemplated killing her. Three times, I wanted to comfort her. I did neither in the end.

When she finally got out of her car and headed toward the front of the house she shared with her two friends, she was humming a haunting, forlorn tune, but for several seconds, all I could think about was her blood and pulse. Thump-thump-whoosh, thump-thump-whoosh. It beckoned to me as surely as one of my high-frequency whistles called Lucky from a distance.

My head cleared after a moment, allowing me to focus on the hum that passed through her lips. Though she was in a key slightly lower than I'd written, I recognized the piece immediately.

It was one of my swan songs.

The innocent, quiet way she sang it sent a fearful chill through me. I never wanted to write her swan song. It was that fear that drove me into the darkness, running away from my weak and curious prey.

And yet, no matter the mounting fears, no matter how far I might run, I knew I would return, for Bella pulled at me, yanking an invisible rope to my chest.

Author's Notes (July 29, 2010): Thanks should go out to ProjectTeamBeta's duskwatcher and itsange. Also, thank you to Aleeab4u for pre-reading and putting up with my rambling.

Author's Notes (January 25, 2011): Cleaning house / editing.