Chapter 654
The others broke off in little knots, leaving Katelina and Jorick alone on the sidewalk. "Iwe can't drink from people," she whispered fiercely.
"Unless you're hoping for a Chihuahua, that's what you'll have to do," Jorick replied. "Come, little, one. I can enchant them. They'll never know you've been there."
She wanted to refuse, wanted to hold the moral high ground, but she was thirsty, and she could smell the blood all around them.
A bar two blocks down glowed with neon signs, orbited by a knot of smokers dressed to impress. "One of them?" Jorick asked.
"Don't make me pick!"
"Whether you choose or I choose will make no difference in the moral implications, Katelina. You have a fledgling of your own to teach. It's time you embraced all the aspects of immortality, otherwise you can't instruct someone else."
She looked past the crowd to a guy standing alone on his phone. "Him. The group would be hard to handle."
Jorick patted her shoulder. "Good instincts. Now come."
She reluctantly followed him down the sidewalk. The closer they drew to the bar and the people, the more her throat burned. When they passed the humans, it took all of her self-control not to grab one.
"It's like walking through a bakery," she whispered. She'd been to one on a fourth grade field trip. Sick, she hadn't eaten breakfast. By the time they toured the bakery she'd felt betterand hungry. She'd never wanted bread more in her life. Luckily, at the end of the tour, they'd each gotten a bread roll. That was the best roll she'd ever had. For a while afterwards, she'd demanded her mother buy that brand. Sadly, none of them ever tasted as good as that one roll.
Katelina and Jorick caught up to the lone guy. He snapped at the person on the other end of the phone conversation, "You know what, fuck you."
With a snarl he hung up and shoved the phone in his pocket. Jorick stepped close. Katelina expected some cheesy vampire lines, or a clich¨¦ "do you have a light?" instead, Jorick looked at him and the guy went slack.
Together, the three of them walked the quarter of a block to an alley. Jorick led them about halfway down it. He looked both directions, then motioned to her. "Go first, little one."
Somewhere in the back of her mind, her good sense was trapped, shouting that this guy was a human being with a family, with friends, with freckles on his nose and a scar on his ear from an old piercing. Only, she couldn't hear the pleas over the pounding of his heart.
She pushed the guy back against the building. His slight body was warm and compliantso warm. She swore she could see the vein in his neck pulsing, begging to be bitten, consumed.
Like that fluffy little bread roll.
His flesh sliced neatly under her fangs. She gulped a mouthful of hot fresh blood, then another and another. The alley faded. She saw an apartment living room. A half-naked man was draped across the couch, smoking. His hair was mussed. His expression unrepentant.
The voice came from her lips, but it wasn't hers. "You're serious? You're throwing away three years of us for him?"
"I'd say I was sorry, but I'm not. It isn't working, Caden. It hasn't been working for months. You know it, I know it. Stop being a whiny drama queen and walk away with some grace."
She grabbed a potted cactus and flung it. The pot shattered. Dirt scattered. "How's that for grace, Devon? Or this?" She grabbed a piece of Pueblo pottery and smashed it against the wall. "How could you?" she screamed over Devon's shouts. "How could you do this?"
"Katelina!"
She jerked back to the alley. The guy Cadenleaned against the wall, eyes frozen open, chest heaving with strangled breaths. A wound on his neck bled onto his white pullover. Jorick stood next to her, his hands on her arm. For a second anger flared in her again; the blinding fury.
How could you do this?
Except he hadn't done anything. The anger, the betrayal, both belonged to Caden, not her.
"I'm sorry," Jorick said. "Had you continued, you'd have drained him. I assumed you didn't want that."
"No." She wiped her mouth. "Now what? I guess that means you can't drink from him?"
"I could." She gave him a sharp look and he shrugged. "I've killed before, little one, though as a demonstration I won't tonight. Come, we'll find another and I'll show you how to stop without being told." The twinkle in his eye said it was a tease, but the heat rose in her cheeks. That she was such a glutton-
"You'll get better. Come."
She took an uncertain step. "What about him?"
"He has a phone. In roughly five minutes he'll come to and immediately call an ambulance."
"I thought you weren't supposed to leave them when it was obvious what happened? All of that secrecy stuff?"
"Technically, you're not. If I followed the letter of the law, I'd finish him, then mangle or burn the body, but I thought you'd object."
"Obviously. I thought you'd make him forget about being injured altogether."
Jorick coughed. "At this point that's impossible, assuming you want him to live. You took a good deal of blood. He'll need medical attention. If I made him forget he was injured, how would he receive it? Perhaps his injury will heal his broken relationship. People find they care more when near death experiences are involved."
"If he's smart he won't take the guy back."
Jorick arched a surprised brow, but made no comment as he guided her back to the street. They walked another block before he chose his intended victim. Like before, the human went slack and willingly followed them into an alley. Katelina looked away as he drank, torn between jealousy, hunger, and revulsion. She didn't want to explore the complex feelings, and was grateful when he finished.
"You can't get lost in their memories," he explained as they headed back to the van. "Of course, it won't hurt you to drink them to death, or to drink from them after they're dead, but with your sensitivities-"
"I understand."
"There is one thing." He looked carefully ahead. "You're not a whisperer. You can't control them, and you can't make them forget. Unless you're planning to kill them you should avoid human victims on your own, or with someone who isn't a whisperer, like the Neanderthal."
"Micah? Why would I be with him and not you?"
Jorick's jaw tightened. "One can't know what the future holds."
She squeezed his hand. "I know what's in my future: you. So, I don't need to worry about it."
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