Page 172 of White Wolf

Sasha stroked his hair, rubbed the back of his neck. “Come on,” he said, sweetly. “You’ll be better after. You have to. It’s alright. I’ve got you.”

The pressure inside him was a vacuum, pulling hard,hardat his insides, an emptiness that no food or drink could ever fill. He’d tried before, eaten until he was sick, but it didn’t matter. The ungodly strong cells of his body wanted blood, too, needed it. Demanded it of him until he was no longer a man at all, but a monster.

With a hand resting on the back of his neck, Sasha leaned in close, the smell of him perfect, sweet.“It’s alright, Nik,”he whispered in Russian.“There’s no one here but us animals.”

The pressure snapped, like it always did.

And though he always wanted to be gentle, he wasn’t.

He lunged, grabbed Sasha roughly by the shoulders, and pressed him flat to the bed. He went willingly, turning his head to the side, baring his throat. He’d worn an old, stretched-out shirt just for this purpose, one that exposed him from jaw to clavicle. He held Nikita’s arms and urged him down with quiet, soothing words.

Nikita saw and understood all of this, on some plane of his mind capable of thought. But it was instinct that brought the growl up out of his throat, low and deep like a panther’s; that bent his head, and bared his fangs. Sasha neck was very pale, and very vulnerable, the shapes of tendons and blue tracks of veins visible just beneath the skin.

Nikita breathed in –blood, blood, blood– and then sank his fangs deep. The skin gave, and then the blood was in his mouth, hot, salty, thick. Wolf blood wasn’t quite like human blood – it wasbetter, rich and strong, metal and chocolate, wine and opium.

Cars slipped past on the street below, muted honks and engine sounds through the window. A vendor across the street hawked bagels and coffee. A tumble of children’s voices, squeal of industrial brakes: a school bus loading. Someone in the unit down the hall slammed a door, and a baby started crying. The world was waking up.

And in the fat bars of sunlight that striped his bed, Nikita drank.

The worst part was that though he hated it, he loved it, too. When the first swallow went down his throat, a violent chemical reaction kicked off inside his too-strong, immortal body. All the hollow, dark corners of his insides lit up like Christmas day. Every sense sharpened. Strength surged in tides through his veins. When he drank, he felt ten-feet-tall and unstoppable. And he got hard. It was the best he’d ever felt in his life – and that was what always told him that it was wrong. Nothing that perfect could really exist.

He took seven deep gulps, and then pulled back, his lips and the inside of his mouth slick and warm with blood, bright pearls of it sliding down Sasha’s throat and landing on the pillow. He stared at the wound – already closing – and hovered a long moment, braced on his hands, dizzy, his whole body throbbing. It took every ounce of self-control not to move his hips, not to grind his cock into Sasha’s hip. No doubt Sasha felt it, but he never said anything, never moved away, either. There had been once, early on, in Siberia…and Nikita said no…and that had been that. He couldn’t control his own body, and they didn’t talk about it.

“It’s alright,” Sasha said, voice strong and soft at once. He wasn’t hurt, his eyes still bright and full of warmth. He was strong, could stand to lose a little blood. “Come here, brother.”

He cupped the back of Nikita’s head and pulled him down so they lay overlapping. “It’ll be alright in a minute,” he soothed, fingers sifting through Nikita’s hair. “It’ll pass.”

Nikita closed his eyes and pressed his face into the worn cotton of Sasha’s shirt, smearing blood all over it.

The clock out in the living room ticked, and his heart eventually slowed to match it. The morning continued to unfold around them, and it did indeed pass. For a little while, a few days at least, he could fight the craving, until he was weak and shaking, and it started all over again, and Sasha offered his clean, white throat, a sacrifice he didn’t deserve…but could never refuse.

38

LION’S DEN

“This goddamn thing,” Lanny muttered, jabbing at the USB port on his computer with the flash drive they’d gotten from the hospital. His hands were shaking too badly to make the connection.

“Here.” Trina leaned over him and tried to take the drive, but he finally managed to slide it into the port.

“I’m fine,” he said, too harshly, and she sighed. All his drunken vulnerability of last night was gone now, replaced by a grouchy, nauseas, bleary-eyed asshole who had either forgotten what he’d said to her, or was pretending it had never happened.

She resisted the urge to whack him across the back of the head – but just barely.

On the screen, a browser full of video files popped up, and Lanny clicked on the latest one, the one which had hopefully caught their body-snatcher leaving the morgue.

“It’s those cult people again, ten to one,” Lanny said. “They got spooked and didn’t have a chance to take the body, so then they decided…”

He trailed off.

On the screen, the heavy double doors to the morgue opened from the inside, and someone stepped out into the hallway. Someone pale and naked, clutching a white sheet around himself. Deep circles under his eyes, a fading bruise on his neck where before there had been a bloody bite mark.

The bustling detective bullpen around them faded into dull background noise. Trina couldn’t even blink.

“Chad Edwards,” she said.

Lanny said, “Holy Jesus. Holyshit.”

On the video, Chad’s eyes seemed to glow.

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