Page 88

Lucien

S es longs mugissements font trembler le rivage,

Le ciel avec horreur voit ce monstre sauvage.

Those lines from the old tragedy kept ringing around in Luc’s head, making themselves heard even above the whimpers of the man he was draining. It was distracting, honestly. Luc hated when he thought in French. It brought back too many old memories.

Memories he had no need for. People he’d rather forget.

Luc pushed the drained body away with a sigh, letting it flop unceremoniously onto the hot concrete.

Another disgusting cretin for the books. More rat than man, really.

Luc licked stray drops of blood from his lips anyway, not willing to waste the feed, even if he was repelled by the source.

It wasn’t the blood’s fault. The blood had been fine—food was food—but he didn’t want to touch the scum it came from any more than he had to.

He knew the horrible things his newly deceased prey was capable of.

Those horrible things were exactly why he had been chosen in the first place.

And now what? Luc held himself still, assessing. He waited for that internal push . The drive to go further, to hunt more. But the monster inside him was feeling satisfied for the moment, satiated by the dregs of society they’d just feasted on.

Luc stretched languidly, cracking his back with a satisfying pop, catching sight of the freeway sign ahead of him as he did.

Only a few miles outside of Phoenix.

Ridiculous how far Luc had sunk, to be caught dead—well, undead —in such a graceless town. There was just no elegance to it. A concrete jungle smack dab in the middle of the desert, where human society had no right to be.

But then again, there was no elegance to Luc himself these days either. He’d been reduced to a mindless fucking beast, the monster inside him driving his actions, his appearance, sometimes his very thoughts.

And where to next? he asked his internal master. There was no answer, not when it was feeling so docile from the kill, but Luc felt the hint of a pull. Further south, it seemed. Phoenix wasn’t their destination, just a pit stop to grab a little…snack.

Luc had thought too, for a moment, that he’d caught a certain scent. A cinnamon…something…driving him to stop the car. But it had been gone the very next instant.

He sighed, checking his reflection in the car window to see if he’d missed any spots of blood. He was probably chasing phantoms anyway. What did he think he was going to find? A mate waiting for him in the desert? Some cactus flower meant only for him?

Unlikely.

And who would want to be mated to you anyway? Shackled to an honest-to-God monster.

He was taken away from his own maudlin thoughts by an older man—at least, older in terms of appearance —turning onto the side street where Luc was standing, the drained body conspicuously at his feet.

Luc shoved at it indelicately with his shoe, pushing it behind his car and out of the intruder’s eyeline.

He supposed he could have been more discreet with his choice of location, gone inside a building or something. But ah well, done was done. He hadn’t been thinking very logically at the time.

The older man shuffled toward him, the smell of his sweat invading Luc’s nostrils, and Luc wrinkled his nose in distaste.

Summer in Arizona, a horrific blow to the senses.

The heat itself didn’t bother Luc—he could feel a pleasant warmth, nothing beyond that—but he hated what it did to the humans around him. The sweaty gracelessness of it all.

Perhaps if he were somewhere with more class. Corsica, possibly. People there knew how to handle the elements with style. Luc sighed wistfully to himself at the memories of sleek tanned bodies in pale linen, salty skin paired with dry white wines.

Life had been good, once.

And now he was…here. They all were.

Himself, the geriatric, and the corpse.

Said geriatric lifted his head to give Luc a nod, mere steps away from coming into sight of the drained body at Luc’s feet.

Luc smiled easily at the stranger, taking sick satisfaction in the way the man instantly paled under the flickering streetlight, all the delicious blood draining from his face.

Luc couldn’t blame him.

He knew exactly what kind of monster the man saw.

Subtle, perhaps, but nonetheless terrifying to humans, in Luc’s extensive experience.

All-black eyes without a hint of white, veritable pools of darkness, with fangs glinting from between his bared teeth.

Luc hadn’t had his human face out in he didn’t know how long.

The monster was always front and center. Always in fucking charge.

The stranger tripped over his own feet, his frightened eyes on Luc’s unnatural pair. “S-Sorry,” he stammered.

Luc smirked at him. Poor little lamb. “And what are you apologizing for, exactly?”

“Didn’t—didn’t know anyone was here,” the man said, backing away hastily.

“On this very public street?”

But the stranger had no response to that, already disappearing back around the corner he’d arrived from.

Spineless little hamster.

Luc could follow him, he supposed. Drain the little hamster and show him what kind of nightmare Luc really was. The monster may not be hungry anymore, but it never said no to a bit of bloodshed.

So why wasn’t Luc moving forward, going for the chase?

Why did his limbs feel so heavy and unwilling?

Just because the man was a potential “innocent”?

What was the point of hanging on to any last-ditch morality anyway?

Luc would descend into a feral state soon enough, whether he liked it or not.

He was only delaying the inevitable with his lack of action.

He ducked back into his car, annoyed with himself and the endless cycling of his thoughts. He already knew what stopped him. His very own goddamn words. A promise to a lovely, naive boy, freshly turned. I can hang on.

He spoke the words again now to himself, hands gripping the steering wheel tight enough to crack the leather. “I can hang on.”

He had so far, more or less. Over a year spent wandering around the American Southwest, unable to bring himself to stray any further away than that.

Something held him here. And it wasn’t the charm of the fucking locals.

He wondered how young Daniel was faring these days. His monster perked up at the thought. It had liked Danny very much. The sweet, lovely look of him. The honeyed taste of his blood.

And that’s how you justified turning a young man against his will? Liking the taste?

Luc didn’t know if he was asking those questions of himself or his monster.

He wasn’t even sure he could tell the difference anymore.

Well, he hadn’t gotten very far at all, had he?

Luc leaned against his car, the hood still warm from his drive. He watched the foot traffic on the street ahead, his jeans-clad legs crossed.

Tucson.

Still in fucking Arizona. He’d thought he’d be crossing the border tonight, with the way he kept getting pulled south, but his monster had other ideas. And now here he was, still in the goddamn desert.

Nonetheless, there was a certain appeal. A—dare he say— charm here that Phoenix had been lacking. He’d pulled into a street with rows of adorable one-story adobe houses, their front yards a mix of spiky desert plants and decorative rocks.

No Corsica, surely. But cute enough.

The houses were right on the edge of a small downtown, and a good number of people were out and about for so late in the night, more than half of them looking like drunk college students—tipsy infants toddling around looking for the right place to grind against each other before the bars closed for the night.

One such group passed by him now, the young men rowdy, the young women wearing tight, short dresses, miles of tanned legs on display.

Luc grimaced as one of the men—clad in a loose tank top and board shorts—bumped into him, displacing Luc’s crossed legs.

“Whoa, dude. Sorry ’bout that.” The man used a hand on Luc’s arm to steady himself, flashing him a smile, the expression freezing on his young face the moment he got a better look.

“Dude. Freaky eyes.”

Luc bared his teeth in the approximation of a grin. “Are they?”

The guy nodded, patting Luc’s arm again, his own eyes glazed with liquor. Or, judging by the look of him, cheap beer. “Yeah, but that’s okay. You do you, bro.”

Luc resisted—just barely—the urge to snap the man’s fingers. Bro? There was only one man Luc had ever called brother, and that man had forsaken him long ago. Driven away by Luc’s rage, by the monster under his skin that called to him at that very moment to erase this buffoon from existence.

But Luc held it together. Again.

He pinched the bridge of his nose as the young man swayed off.

The mix of perfumes and body sprays here was giving him a headache and—more importantly—making it hard to grasp onto the one scent he wanted to focus on.

There was that cinnamon smell again that kept pulling at the edge of his consciousness, just strong enough to distract him, too faint to pinpoint where it was actually coming from.

A drink. He needed a drink. And not of the hot blood pumping under these coeds’ skin. The alcoholic kind, preferably strong enough to strip paint. Maybe there was a decent bar here, one with passable whiskey. Or would that be too much to ask from a place like this?

Luc reached into a pocket for his sunglasses, the ones he often wore regardless of night or day.

He’d had enough of humans staring at him.

He took off down the street in the direction of downtown, where the revelers seemed to be coming from.

Hopefully where that scent was coming from as well.

Maybe—just maybe—he’d get a special treat tonight.

A meal that wasn’t the worst of the worst of humanity.

Maybe this time it would be a beautiful human, someone small and pliable.

Someone Luc could sink his cock as well as his teeth into.

Do you really trust yourself enough to go that far?

Luc didn’t answer his own question. He just walked until his monster pulled him to a stop at a dive bar on the corner, only a few blocks from where he’d started. There was that delicious cinnamon smell again, stronger than before.

Something is here , Luc’s monster crooned. Something delicious. Something just for us.

Luc was about to enter the dimly lit establishment when he realized the scent wasn’t coming from inside the bar.

It was coming from out back.

He made his way around the corner on silent feet, back into the alleyway bordering the bar. His monster tensed with anticipation. Here was the source of the delicious scent. At last.

A young man was there, leaning against the brick wall of the building with his eyes closed, a cigarette in hand, one knee bent with his foot planted behind him.

He had on ratty, torn black jeans, and a worn gray T-shirt with cuffed sleeves.

His hair, which hung almost to his shoulders in messy disarray, was…

green. A deep green with flashes of dark roots peeking through.

My eyes used to be green once.

Luc wasn’t sure why that was the thought that came to him, looking at the young man.

Luc couldn’t stop looking.

He wasn’t sure why. The stranger was handsome, sure enough, with a smooth, sharp jawline, tawny skin, and thick sooty eyelashes any woman would kill for. But he wasn’t Luc’s type. Not at all. Luc preferred delicate, refined lovers.

Not wiry alleyway punks with nicotine addictions.

The young man finally seemed to notice there was someone else in the alley with him, opening his eyes as his head turned Luc’s way.

Luc watched first in fascination as a myriad of different expressions crossed the man’s face in an instant—shock, delight, hope, awe—and then in increasing confusion as a wide smile stretched across full, surprisingly red lips.

What was that smile for?

No one had greeted the sight of Luc with a smile like that since…maybe ever. No one had ever reacted with such pure and simple delight to his presence.

Luc couldn’t tear his gaze away from the sight of it as the green-haired man slowly dropped his cigarette, crushing it under one booted heel, never taking his eyes off Luc as he crossed over to him with slinky grace. One of his incisors was crooked, Luc noticed.

It was infuriatingly charming.

“You came.” The young man’s voice was soft and smooth, almost melodic. Luc wanted to hear more. He wanted to lick the very air.

He wanted to—

He wanted to run . He felt as if he was caught in something massive and weighty and beyond his ability to bear.

But he just stood there, barely daring to breathe, and his monster remained just as frozen, caught in the man’s eyes, which were almost as dark as Luc’s own, hardly a border distinguishing between pupil and iris.

Luc was worried if he moved, if he broke his statuesque stillness, his monster might snap and eat the stranger right up.

Devour him without a thought to the consequences.

The man’s scent was just too delicious—cinnamon and spice with just a hint of peaches underneath—even with the disgusting cigarette smoke mucking it all up.

No wonder that cinnamon scent had been so hard to track down, with all those toxic chemicals masking it.

The stranger stopped just a hair’s breadth from Luc—much, much too close, yet still Luc couldn’t move—and cocked his head, the movement of his hair revealing piercings all along his ear. “ There you are, monster. Where have you been?”

His voice was smooth and soft, and he asked the question like they’d known each other for a lifetime.

Luc didn’t know how to answer. “Hell” was what wanted to come out, of all things. “Utter hell. The depths of despair. Get me out. Help me.”

But that would be an insane thing to say. This young man wasn’t really asking him at all. He couldn’t be. He didn’t know who Luc was .

So why did it feel like he did?

Luc’s silence did nothing to diminish the man’s smile. He was busy running his eyes over every inch of Luc’s face, pausing at the sunglasses for a moment, his slender fingers twitching as if he was tempted to take them off.

Luc was tempted to let him.

Luc wasn’t sure how long they stood there, he and his monster both mesmerized, while the stranger seemed to drink in the very sight of him.

But finally, at the end of his perusal, the green-haired man gave a long, deep sigh, then turned dark, glittering eyes to meet Luc’s.

“I’ve been waiting for you, you know. What took you so long? ”

And then the stranger leaned in and slammed his mouth against him.