Page 52 of A Taste of Bliss

I’m starting to zone in on her throat now, her pulsing neck. I curse, pushing myself to my feet and forcing myself to the door that leads out back. I push it open, letting the cool air hit my skin. I realize the front of my shirt is covered in blood, and so is my face. I probably look like a lunatic.

My pulse is hammering in my veins. I need to get the fuck out of here before I hurt anyone else.

“Get the hell away from me!” I hear a woman shout. I look to my left down the alley and see two figures, one hovering over the other.

“Stop fighting me,” the man tells her sternly, as if she’s a misbehaving kid.

I take a few steps over, my hunger mixing with my anger at this man.

“Leave me alone!” the woman screams.

I stumble towards them, kicking a beer bottle by accident. It goes skittering across the cobblestones. The man turns around. “Nothing here to concern yourself with, mate. I’m just having a fight with my girlfriend.”

“Please help!” she yells to me. “I’m not his girlfriend!”

“Shut the fuck up.” He turns to me. “Seriously, don’t concern yourself, mate. She’s being dramatic.”

I’m still in the shadows, otherwise they both would have taken off running at the sight of me covered in blood. I can smell the woman’s fear and the man’s arousal. It’s odd, the two scents conflicting with each other. I don’t like it.

I reach out and rip the man away from her.

“Thank you!” she says. “Thank you!”

“Run,” I tell her, my face finally coming into the glow of the streetlamp. She lets out another scream and she runs. I turn to the man and he screams too.

He tries to take off in the opposite direction, but I still have hold of his shoulder.

My hunger is practically purring, my jaw aching so desperately that I don’t hesitate. I bite into his neck, ripping chunks out with my teeth. My teeth that seem longer and sharper. I rip at the man’s clothes, exposing his torso. He’s dead now already. I tore his throat out.

But I continue to feast.

He falls limply to the ground and I descend upon his chest, taking more bites.

And then I’m literally ripped off him and thrown through the air into the brick wall behind me. I crash hard into the ground,too stunned to do much other than fall into a heap. From the corner of my eye I see another man crouch over the dead guy, checking for a pulse, even though he lies in a pool of his own blood.

Horror works its way through me. I attacked him.

I attacked the girl in the bar.

What the hell? I literally bit into them both andatepieces of their flesh. I feel like I should vomit, but the hunger, the thirst isn’t there anymore. I feel full. Content.

And horrified.

Another man, the one that threw me into the wall, I think, crouches before me. He’s probably around five-ten, but he’s obviously strong. I can see large biceps as he tilts my head to face him. His dirty blonde hair is cropped close to his head, parted neatly to the side, and his narrowed ice-blue eyes glower down at me angrily. “Are you stupid?” he asks. “Feeding in public like this? And you just left the girl to bleed out back there.”

“Feeding?” I whisper, not able to make my voice work. “I didn’t. I didn’t mean to—” Didn’t mean to what?Eat them?

“Have you ever done this before?” he asks me, his tone a little softer this time.

“No, of course not. I don’t understand. We were just—I was just eating her out. I didn’t mean to…” I watch, panicked, as the other man pulls the dead man’s body over to the side of the alleyway, taking the man’s wallet and keys out of his pockets and shaking some foul-smelling powder on his body.

The body begins to smoke and then it burns to ash, as if the man never existed at all.

The door swings open and the girl that I bit first stumbles out laughing with her friends. She sees me and she smiles and waves shyly, heading the other way with her friends. She looks to be completely unharmed, not a single drop of blood on her.

I stare after her, my mouth hanging open in shock. “But how?” I ask the men, pointing at her. “How did she? I mean, there was so much blood. I hurt her…”

The man squatting in front of me shrugs and hooks a thumb over his shoulder at his friend. “He healed her and compelled her to forget what really happened. Pretty sure he made her believe you were the best sex of her life and to go home with her friends and sleep it off. Compulsion is a handy trick. One you should really know, but you’re brand new, aren’t you?”