Page 39 of The Blood we Crave

I never understood the carnal passion of sexual attraction. The way people throw themselves at one another, freely roaming strangers’ bodies in search of release. There’s never been a single person I’ve met that has made me seek their body the way I crave blood.

The shuffle of feet keeps me from replying, and I turn my gaze to the reason we came all this way. Seeing Silas’s face almost made listening to Alistair’s metal music worth it.

His body looks fuller, filling out his gray long-sleeve shirt like he spends all his free time in the gym. His light brown skin is full of color. Before he was admitted, his eyes sockets were nearly hollow from the weight he’d lost. But the person in front of me almost looks human.

If it weren’t for his eyes.

Those are still very much dead.

Looking into them reminds me of staring into a graveyard. Empty, decrepit, and full of mourning souls.

When he takes his seat across from us, I take a second to enjoy the silence he provides. It’s not an awkward one; it’s soothing. It’s Silas. When I’m normally arguing with one of the guys and Rook is being his obnoxiously loud self, I have come to miss the quiet he provides to our group.

“You look surprisingly good,” I say candidly.

Rook’s head nearly snaps from his neck as he whirls to stare a hole into the side of my face.

“What?” I hold my hands out in defense, leaning back in my seat to rest one leg across my knee. “I’m just being honest.”

“Can you not be a fucking asshole for twenty seconds?”

“I feel good,” Silas tells us with a shocking lightness in his voice that hadn’t been there three weeks ago when I stopped by to visit him.

“So they are treating you alright? No issues?” Rook pushes, his knee bouncing beneath the table so hard I’m afraid he might knock the entire thing over.

“I’m fine. The new meds make me a little nauseous in the mornings, but other than that, I’m okay,” Silas replies, looking him in the eyes for good measure. “Just like I said the last ten times you asked me.”

That pulls a chuckle from Alistair, who has remained quiet since we got inside. “It’s good to see you, man,” he says with a tight smile.

I sit motionless while they catch up, just hovering beside them as they talk and lightly joke about trivial things. Silas, like me, says little and shows even less. It’s just like the way we were when we all drove to the Cliff in the evenings.

If I tried hard enough, I could almost convince myself all the tragedy that had wrecked its way through our lives wasn’t real and we were seniors in high school all over again.

But life doesn’t work that way. It always has a way of squirming up and reminding you it’s filled with barbarous horror and misery.

“Did you change the flowers?” Silas asks, reaching up and grabbing the dark beanie from his head, exposing his high and tight buzz cut.

Rook nods, but I answer instead.

“I went with violets and tulips this time. If I were her, I would’ve gotten bored with peonies.” I swipe a piece of dust away from my suit before looking back at him.

“You changed them?”

“I did,” I say easily. “It was your one request while you were away, and these two were frolicking in different states, so I was the last line of defense to lazy cemetery workers.”

He stares at me for a beat, then another, just looking at me with those eyes that see far more than I want.Far more than I allow.

“Thank you. I’m sure Rosemary would’ve loved tulips and violets.”

Rosemary Donahue.

Her death had been the catalyst of our retribution on Ponderosa Springs. The town had this terror coming from the moment it exiled us into the shadows. But when Rose was murdered, we had no reason to withhold our chaos.

I don’t believe anyone is truly innocent and undeserving of death. Everyone has evil secrets buried in their backyard or vicious lies under the floorboards of their closets.

But if there was anyone pure and honest in this devilish world, it was Rosemary—light, graceful, and she laughed. I remember the first time I heard it. A joke from Rook had pulled it from deep in her stomach. It wasn’t even a noise that came from her mouth.

It was in her eyes; they kindled and twinkled. Wrinkles tinted the corners of her eyes, and it made her entire body shake with joy. The voice almost scared me because I’d never seen someone filled with that emotion before.

---