Page 10 of Bite Back

ASHER

God. Things went south fast.

My mind reels as I take things in. I didn’t even get her name, and she completely wrecked me.

I replay it all in my head, each strobe of the club’s flashing lights illuminating a new memory. The way she shattered on my hand is something I’ll remember for the rest of my life. I only wish that memory wasn’t followed by the discovery that came after.

The sharp sting of bile still coats my mouth.

I should have known better. I made an assumption I never should have made.

Look where it got me. I don’t know what I’m more torn up about, that I got so close to a vampire or that I made a big deal about it.

Because despite the fact that it goes against every boundary I’ve established, every rule I’ve made, I’m tempted to turn around, to go back, to apologize.

I ignore it though. I won’t throw away everything I’ve worked and trained for over a stranger, however alluring she might be. Nope. I shake my head and wind my way through the crowd of dancers, shoulders and elbows colliding with my body. Each touch punctuates the sinking sensation in my gut.

She might be a good vampire. She might never have hurt anyone. Never have murdered. But that doesn’t mean the instinct’s not there. All it takes is one bad moment, one slipup, and a life’s gone. It’s a story I know all too well. It’s a story I’ve lived.

I won’t watch that story unfold again. I won’t be complicit in another family’s pain.

I may be deadly, but that’s a skill I’ve honed. I don’t attack out of bloodlust, I defend my fellow humans within carefully prescribed rules and boundaries. For vampires, it’s all too easy for instinct, for impulse to override all of that.

I gulp down the fresh air when I finally escape the throng and reach the edge of the room. The glowing sign for the men’s room beckons, and I plunge inside, door slamming violently. I need peace and quiet, or whatever the best approximation of those things is that can be reached here.

The bathroom’s lone occupant, a vampire with russet brown skin and a winding rose tattoo crawling up his arm, looks up from the sink, startled by my entrance.

His eyes grow wide, and he wordlessly backs up and leaves the bathroom.

On another day, I might feel bad. Now, though, I exhale and my shoulders fall.

I stalk over to the pedestal sink and brace my hands on the porcelain rim.

My head dips down. I’m imagining worst case scenarios and projecting my own pain and problems onto a woman I don’t know.

But the bottom line is, I can’t trust her.

Not after what happened. Maybe that’s not fair, but that’s how it is.

I flick on the faucet and splash cold water on myself.

The icy stream cascades down my face. Normally, a splash of water washes my mind clear.

It’s a trick I’ve relied on since I was a child.

This time though, it doesn’t work. When I bring my eyes up to the dirty mirror, they look unfocused.

Water beads drip down my face, decorating my beard like tiny dew drops.

It’s not going to be easy to get this woman out of my head. Tonight was a total mindfuck.

My phone buzzes. I’m tempted to ignore it. But training says I can’t. Despite the fact that tonight’s made me question myself, I’m still the best slayer the Academy has. That means I always check my phone. Even now, when the sinking feeling in my stomach begs me to avoid any and all responsibility.

Sure enough, it’s an alert from the Academy. I’ve acquired a new target.

I lean against the bathroom wall, resting my back against the gilded, ornate wallpaper. I scroll through the information, flicking through pages and pages of the digital file. It’s a long one. That’s never a good sign.

The basic stats come first: White, six foot, blond hair, gray eyes.

There’s a picture of him. He’s handsome.

Artfully cropped blond hair frames a face that’s all sharp angles.

His cheekbones look like they could cut glass.

A hint of stubble dusts his chin. It’s the eyes that pull me in the longest though.

They’re unusual, the gray of the sky in the depths of winter.

Looking at them sends a shiver down my spine.

There’s something unsettling about them.

I’ve skimmed pages and pages on who this man is and what he’s capable of, but to someone who didn’t know the shit he’s done, those eyes would seem magnetic—compelling even.

After all, that’s his entire shtick. Masquerading as the perfect, handsome gentleman.

In reality, he’s anything but. He dates women, lures them in, lets them fall in love.

Promises them forever, convinces them to turn.

And then leaves them, nearly drained, dead or alive.

Why though? It doesn’t make sense to me, unless the cruelty is the point.

The mechanics of vampire bites are simple.

Vampire fangs contain a toxic venom that enters the bloodstream during a bite.

Deposited in small quantities, the effects are negligible.

Pleasant even. Thats why so many humans flock to places like this, looking for a bite and a fuck.

Apparently, sex heightens the experience.

Introduce too much of the toxin into the bloodstream, though, and it overwhelms the body’s immune system and takes over. Creates something new.

Most vampires get their blood from the banks readily available across the city. Human donors are well compensated, and vamps get their sustenance no muss, no fuss. Some still prefer the thrill of drinking straight from the vein. Most have no problem stopping before the change takes over.

But a few vamps, the worst of the worst, can’t—or won’t—stop drinking.

That’s all it takes to turn: one long bite.

And once the transition starts to happen, once the toxin reaches high levels, it’s near impossible for the human to protest. The pain from the transformation will have already started to kick in.

The transitioning vampire spends days, sometimes weeks, feverish, aching, often unconscious with pain.

Of course, plenty of vampires safely transform their loved ones. With permission, it’s not a crime.

This fucker, though, gets his victims to agree to a transformation, gets them to serve themselves up on a silver platter. He doesn’t stop though, not when the transition starts, not until they’re on the brink of death, nearly totally exsanguinated. And sometimes he doesn’t stop at all.

He’s left a trail of bodies up and down the east coast. He’ll spend a year or two somewhere, building a life, building trust. And then when it’s all over, he’ll start fresh somewhere else.

New York, though, seems to be his favorite location, the one place he always comes back to.

My jaw tenses. How did he get away with this shit for so long? Did no one notice? Or did no one care?

One of his most recent victims’ sister hired the Academy to track him down and bring him to justice.

And now, that task has fallen on me. I look at the picture included in the file.

Two smiling white women, clad in printed, puffy dresses, hair blonde and teased.

Sutton and Mary Emma. Their faces look so alike, the same tanned skin, the same smile, dimple only on the left side.

And now only one of them’s left. I know what it’s like to look in the mirror and see everything, everyone you’ve lost.

Looking up at my reflection, I see it now. It was worse before I grew out the beard. When I could trace how the angles of my chin mimicked my father’s, my older brother’s. I like the beard. And I love that it masks that.

Nothing can mask my eyes. They share the exact cinnamon hue of my mother’s, and the similarities only increased the older I got, as the laugh lines started to crease out from them. Hers looked happier though. Less haunted.

It’s interesting. In general, grief gets easier the older I get. I never grow out of it, but I grow into it and around it. My appearance though, the ways time molded my face into the familiar ones I’ve lost, was an unexpected source of pain.

Poor Mary Emma. Over time, she’ll grow older, face creasing, hair turning gray. But the mirror will always remind her exactly how the future Sutton never got would have looked. Fucking hell.

I give the file one last scroll through, committing the details to memory.

I roll the name around in my mind as I head out the door.

Luka Morgan.