Page 82 of This Vicious Hunger
“Fuck,” Olea grunts. She wraps her hands around me, her body slamming against mine as she hooks her arms around my waist and pulls. Hard.
“Let me go!” I yell. I try to punch again but it’s hard with one arm still through the gate. Leo lies on the ground. He’s still crying. He’s not dead yet. I can smell the fear in him, and, oh, it’s like sweet pistachio cream. Nutty and delicious. I bet his blood would taste as good. I lick my lips. “Just a taste,” I beg. “Please, just one.”
“Thora.” Olea lifts one arm up and chops her hand down at the crook of my elbow. The pain ricochets through me and I cry out. She uses the opportunity to finally yank my arm back through, releasing Leo’s trouser leg. He stays on the ground, stunned and in pain, his heart slamming about inside his pathetic little chest. “Thora, you’re not yourself. Look at me. LOOK.”
Olea grips my face with her hand, digging her nails into my flesh. I writhe but am forced to look at her. And when I do I see the pale oval of her face, bright like the moon, her eyes the colour of a chocolate torte with rich mint filling. They shine with fear and unshed tears. Her lip is bloody from my punch, already healing, and the honeyed scent of her sings to me. It soothes me.
“Breathe,” she hisses.
I draw in a breath. Deep. Painful. My ribs are on fire. My belly is the pit of a fire, coal and ash and crumpled paper. Slowly the inferno dulls. I breathe again. Again.
“That’s it.”
“Leo,” I sob.
Olea, still holding my face, looks to the gate. Leonardo is collecting himself slowly. His expression is that of a man who has just found out his sentence is death: he is greying, dark hollows already in his formerly olive cheeks, his eyes like dinner plates. His brush with my hand has not, thank god, killed him. Yet.
“Can you move?” Olea demands. Leo nods. “Good,” she says. Then she thrusts me behind her, baring her sharp teeth as she rushes at him. “Then you should run.”
Leonardo doesn’t run. He stares at the two of us, the familiar touch of our bodies, the shine of our teeth. Matching moonlit gowns in the black garden. Poison in our veins—on his skin.
“What are you?” he breathes.
“Better you don’t find out.”
“But—”
“Leonardo,” I growl, infusing my voice with every bit of malice I can. I don’t want this to happen, I don’t want our friendship to end like this, but—I nearly killed him. I’d kill him again in less than a heartbeat without these walls to hold me. “We don’t want you here. If you come to these walls again, one of us will kill you. Do you understand me?”
“Thora—”
Olea hisses, and the sound is guttural. Primal. Leonardo shrinks back, clutching his injured hand to his chest. I can already see the black marks stretching across his skin, and distantly, the sane part of me hopes they don’t get any bigger.
“Do you understand me?” I grind out. I show him my teeth again. “I’m going to give you ten seconds. Olea is right. If you value your life, you should run.”
Olea slams her body against the gate. There’s no hunger in it, not like when I did the same, but Leonardo doesn’t know that.
“RUN!”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
After Leonardo is gone Olea leads me back to the tower like a wayward child, holding my hand. Half, I suspect, to guide me and half so I don’t bolt. I don’t tell her not to worry—after all, if you’d asked me an hour ago whether I wished any harm towards Leo, it would have been an emphaticno. I stumble and sway as she leads me into the sitting room and deposits me on the chaise. I know I’m not myself, but I can’t think what else I might be.
“Do you want to talk about what happened out there?” Olea says once I’m settled. She’s antsy, has barely stopped moving since we got back. Her fingers dance like butterfly wings trapped under a glass dome. She lights a couple of candles, but otherwise the room, with its bright tapestries, is left wrapped in gloom. I’m glad. I don’t think I could face Olea’s sunshine hopes.
It’s too warm in here. I miss the cool breeze of the garden. I want to go back out there and run my hands through the loamy soil where Olea has watered the nettles. I want to bury my hands and my face in the earth.
“No,” I say.
“Are you sure?” Olea comes to kneel at my feet. She takes my hand in hers and massages my palm.
“What’s the point?” The touch of Olea’s skin is both soothing and, as always, deeply erotic. I wriggle, withdrawing my hand. Olea’s fingers gravitate towards my knee instead and I feel my heart trip. “You said yourself: It’s my fault. I brewed the antidote. I’m the one who got us in this deep.”
“You were trying to save me,” Olea corrects me, her voice soft. She lifts one hand to my chin, the skin there no longer bruised but still surprisingly tender. I turn away.
“You don’t have to console me.”
“No?” She grips my chin harder and turns my face back towards her. I try to fight but she’s surprisingly strong. Her eyes glitter; her lips—are they darker than they were a few days ago?
