“Hey now, sweetheart. I could have called the cops when I saw you. Still could. Girl like you, looking like that—”
Eddie’s hand ventured from my shoulder down my collarbone, and something inside of me snapped. One second I was me, and the next, I’d been pushed outside of my body, and I was watching my mouth move and listening to words that weren’t mine snaking their way out of my lips.
“She probably wouldn’t kill you. She has a certain fondness for humans, thinks she’s one of them.”
I watched, disembodied, as a dangerous, glittering smile cut across the features of my face, and I flashed back to the moment at the ice rink when I’d lost control of my body, when something or someone else had thrown it out of the dragon’s line of fire.
“What in the blazing hell are you talking about?” Eddie didn’t remove his hand from my collarbone, but it didn’t venture any lower, either.
“The girl won’t kill you, but I will. I’ll take this knife and slit you from the throat down, split your body in two along the lines of your delicate human spine.”
Zev’s voice was lower than mine, almost mechanical in the way it left my mouth.
I fought for control of my own body.
I can handle this!
I am handling this, Zev said calmly, and I knew by his tone of voice that he wasn’t arguing with me. He was simply stating a fact.
I was beginning to wish I’d never gotten into a car with Eddie.
Eddie—who was likely coming to a similar conclusion himself—stupidly persisted in trying to make a point with the creature wearing my body.
“Now, look here, girl.”
“Leave.” In the span of a heartbeat, Zev had my knife in his hand, and he dragged the point gently across the surface of my assailant’s Adam’s apple. “Run.”
Eddie froze. “You crazy bitch.”
Within a second, Zev had the edge of the knife pressed to the underside of the man’s chin, hard enough to draw blood. Small red spheres beaded up on the surface of Eddie’s skin, coating his stubble.
Zev licked his lips.
Or rather, he licked mine.
My tongue. My lips. My hand holding the knife.
I clung to that thought, and somehow, my mind overpowered Zev’s and shoved him out.
The ouroboros on my stomach burned like dry ice, like fire.
“I don’t think he likes it when you call me a bitch,” I told Eddie dryly, trying not to sound as thrown as I felt.
“He?” Eddie’s Adam’s apple bobbed upward, and my eyes lit on a series of tiny cuts in the surface of his skin.
Blood.
People like me didn’t get hungry. We didn’t even need to eat. But for a moment, a split second that rocked me to the core, I was very, very thirsty.
“I should go,” I said, forcing myself to pull the knife from Eddie’s throat, trying not to look at the blood beading up on its surface.
“I’m calling the cops!” Eddie seemed intent on proving that he wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box. I gave him a look.
“And telling them what? That you picked up a girl covered in blood, and when you tried to put the moves on her, the demon inside of her threatened your life?” I snorted. “Good luck with that one.”
I am not a demon. Zev sounded extremely put out. Demon is a very offensive word.
I rolled my eyes. You would have killed him, Zev.
Yes.
And you don’t see anything wrong with that?
He would have hurt you, came the reply. He may well hurt someone else.
One hand on the hilt of my knife and the other on the door handle, I turned my gaze back to Eddie. The last thing I wanted was him doing this to someone else—someone who might not have a knife strapped to one leg and a would-be murderer inside her brain.
“We have your scent now,” I said, sounding less than human myself. “I wouldn’t recommend picking up any more teenage girls.”
To hit home the point, I brought the bloodstained knife to my nose and breathed in deeply. My tongue flickered out between my lips, but I pulled the blade back before the two could touch.
“Good-bye, Eddie.”
I opened the car door, hopped to the ground, and without ever turning back to look over my shoulder, walked back toward the highway and started to jog.
With my endurance, I could have run all the way home, but I was still covered in my own blood and didn’t want to risk being seen any more than I had to.
I needed a shower and a change of clothing. I needed to blend, and growing up in academia, I knew college campuses the way other girls knew the layout of the local mall. The university was close enough, and it wasn’t hard to find a block of dorms. Sticking to the shadows as much as possible, I found a door that had been propped open and headed to the second-floor communal bathroom.
As I’d suspected, there weren’t many people up this early in the morning. I took my hair down from its ponytail and let it hang in my face, masking the blood there and praying that my dark T-shirt—or at least, what was left of it—would hide the rest.
I made it to the bathroom without being spotted and surveyed my surroundings. One shower was already in use, and the occupant had hung her clothes on a hook outside the curtain: jeans, a tank top, a sizeable bra. Deciding the third item wouldn’t fit, I gently slipped the first two off the hook and walked back out the door, up another flight of stairs, and into the third-floor bathroom. I tossed the clothes over the shower rod, pulled the curtain, and started stripping off my own.
Hot water should have felt good on my ravaged body, but it didn’t. I could feel the warmth, but my muscles weren’t sore and they weren’t looking for relief. Mechanically, I ran my hands over my limbs, checking for injuries that hadn’t yet healed. A few areas were raw and red, but as I washed the blood and dirt from my pores, decorating the drain in shades of black and red, even those areas began to fade, leaving my light brown skin creamy and smooth.
Untouched.
As I turned my attention to my hair, it occurred to me that if Zev was there, in my mind, he might be getting quite the show. I paused, searching for him, but for the first time, I felt nothing. I dug deeper, pushed harder, and the image I’d seen while I was lying on the side of the road pulsed like a strobe light in front of my eyes.
Cement walls, scorch marks on the floor, and a figure swathed in shadow, lying on one side.
As quick as a camera flash, the image was gone. The steam from the shower settled on my skin, and I could feel my mind loosening up, until an idea took shape.
Zev had said that chupacabra bites were fatal in humans, but that some people could handle being bitten. Some people benefited from it. People like me.
And when I’d asked Zev what he was, he’d thrown the question back to me, like we were the same.
I’d spent my entire life looking for answers, and now, against all odds, they were there, in my head.
I wrung the last of the bloodied water from my hair and wrenched the shower knob into the OFF position. Quickly, silently, I put on the jeans I’d stolen and slipped the tank top over my head. My boots had survived the crash mostly intact, and without even thinking, I sheathed my knife, securing it in place beneath the leg of the pilfered Sevens. My body hummed where it came in contact with the blade, and a familiar urge began to beckon to me in rhythm with my own heartbeat.
I wanted to hunt. I needed to kill. And when a human girl brushed past me and hopped into the shower stall next to mine, I caught the scent of her blood in the air.
Wet. Coppery. Honey.
Easy, Kali. The thirst isn’t yours. It’s the Nibbler’s.
I tried to process what he was saying. Wasn’t the chupacabra supposed to be draining my blood?
It’s a part of you now. It makes you stronger. It connects us. And sooner or later, you’ll have to feed it.
I had to get out of there—away from the smell of the girl in the shower, away from the suggestion that the chupacabra inside of me wanted blood. An uncomfortable idea—not to mention impossible—was taking form in my mind, and I didn’t want to give life to it.
I didn’t want to think about the kind of creature that could heal from any wound and thirsted for human blood.
You should burn the clothing.