Page 79 of The Cruelty of Thorns

She had been fucked and completely drained.

And I knew she had been left here for me to find.

I don’t know how long I stood there staring at her until I became aware of a distinct noise outside. The squawking of a radio. I froze, listening. Two heartbeats approaching. Two sets of footsteps on the front porch.

Police.

Someone had called them. Had sent them to this house. And I was standing over the corpse.

I moved without thought, a silent ghost stealing down the hallway toward the back of the house. There was a knock on the door, a man’s voice calling out.

“Police. Open the door.”

The hallway was a dead end, which meant I had to go back toward the front of the house. I moved as quickly and quietly as possible, not wanting to alert them to my presence, but one of the cops was peering in the front window when I emerged in the livingroom.

“There’s someone in there,” I heard him tell his partner. I knew as soon as they tried the door, they’d be inside. Foregoing stealth, I ran through the small dining room to the kitchen, where a door was located on the back wall. The front door opened as I slipped out the back.

“Hey, you!” the cop yelled, running after me. I vaulted the fence in the backyard and ran down the next street, instinctively staying to the shadows. The second cop must have gone back to his car and decided to follow me. I hid behind a hedge as the car slowly rolled down the street, the spotlight playing along the side of the road, the radio chattering through the open window.

Once he was past me, I jumped up and ran as fast as I could, clearing fences and cutting through yards until I was several blocks away. I didn’t slow down even then, knowing that they had probably found the body of the woman and thought I was her killer. I kept going, skirting through the alleyways that crisscrossed through the bar district until I came to its southern end.

Luckily they hadn’t seen my face since I’d had my hood up, but I figured the entire police force was probably now on high alert for a man in a black hoodie. I ripped off the sweatshirt and tossed it in a dumpster, taking my chances on looking like some deranged fool who ran out on a cold night in just a tee shirt.

The wisest choice would have been to go home and lay low, but I had to feed or risk losing what little control I still possessed. I was pretty sure the person who murdered my blood source was the same one who’d called the police, meaning the game they were playing had just become personal.

I was livid and starving, a bad combination for anyone who crossed my path. I melted into the shadows of the sketchy strip of road, watching the hookers move between their corners and the occasional cars that rolled up to the curb. Picking one girl standing off by herself, I left my hiding place and approached her, pretending to be a drunk stumbling home from the bars.

“You looking to party, baby?” she asked.

I leered at her and nodded. “How much?”

If she noticed the murderous look in my eye, she didn’t react. Instead, she looked me up and down and, liking what she saw, smiled. “For you baby, twenty bucks.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a bill without looking at it, stuffing it in her hand. It could have been twenty, could have been fifty for all I knew. I wasn’t really thinking about the money. I needed blood, and she was warm and available. She tucked the bill into her bra, all business now.

“You got a car?”

“No. Let’s just go to the alley.”

She shrugged. “It’s your money.”

I led her around the corner to the alley where I’d been hiding and shoved her up against the wall.

“You like the rough stuff, huh?” she purred.

I unzipped my jeans and pulled out my cock, pushing up her short skirt and ramming into her cunt in one vicious stroke. She gasped, momentarily stunned, then began to meet my desperate thrusts with her own.

“That’s good, baby. Fuck me harder.”

“Shut up,” I growled. I pounded her until I could feel my bloodlust rising to the point of no return, my cock ready to explode as I bent my head and found the pulse on her neck. I came hard when I sank my teeth into her flesh. She grunted then said something about not marking up the merchandise, but I ignored her as I drank my fill. Maybe too much.

When I was done, I brought my mouth to her ear and whispered an insidious command.

“You’ll forget you ever saw me.”

She looked dazed, but at least I left her standing on her own.

As I walked away, sated but unsatisfied, I had one thought on my mind.

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