Lawrence returned bearing the gift of a young man in his early twenties with attractive features, the type of man who doubtless had many admirers. “Here, my dear. For you.” Lawrence held the man in front of him, keeping his grip tight enough to leave bruises against the man’s futile struggles.
Amaia approached, and as the breeze picked up, a scent wafted to her nose that made her stomach lurch. She stopped breathing to curtail the scent. It was the only way she’d be able to get through her meal.
“Now come here. You have to kill him. Eventually, you’ll learn to feed more discreetly, leaving the victim alive, but these first few times, we’ll just work on achieving a clean kill.”
The man who had appeared to be shocked into silence found his tongue at the repeated use of the word “kill.”
“Please, don’t. Don’t do this,” he stuttered. Despite his hysterical pleas, her meal hardly moved. Lawrence’s hold was firm, and the man was petrified by terror. His eyes widened, the whites standing out against his dark pupils. A fresh wave of scent drifted to Amaia, and she noticed a line of moisture above the man’s lip. Terror made him sweat. His eyes met hers, pleading with her. She had all the power, and this man knew it.
Amaia took a deep breath, and her lungs filled with the scent of her power. She felt a familiar rush. She had always enjoyed wielding power over men. She would be the arbiter of his fate.
“How do I do it?” The instinct was there, but she didn’t want to repeat the gruesome mess of her first kill. It was unbecoming of someone capable of calmly deciding life and death matters.
“Your fangs grew during your transformation sleep. It’s time to use them. Simply think about applying pressure with your top teeth, and they’ll emerge.”
Amaia concentrated, pushing her tongue to the roof of her mouth, and was stunned when she felt a gentle pressure lower her canines. After they descended, she caressed them with her tongue. How had she not noticed sooner how sharp they were? These would make for a much more elegant kill. As quickly as she thought it, she was at his neck. Her teeth hovered over his skin where his heartbeat visibly throbbed. Her sleek fangs sank smoothly into his skin. As the blood rushed into her mouth, the air that reached her nose smelled more divine than any bouquet. She hardly noticed the scent of urine.
“Make note of how you feel, my child. It is important. Can you feel his life slipping away?”
Amaia drank and drank, losing herself in the ecstasy of the warm current of life flowing into her. This was a much better way to live than subsisting off food and water. She tried to follow Lawrence’s directions and focus on more than the taste. She felt the man’s energy flowing out of his body and into hers until the buzz of his fear subsided into a faint hum and then ceased altogether.
She released his neck, taking care to lap up the stray blood before stepping back. His head lolled to the side as Lawrence threw him to the ground.
“Better?”
Amaia smirked. “Much.”
“Good. We’ll have to bury or burn the body. That’s your first lesson: we never draw attention to our kills or our feeding.”
“Why does it matter? What could humans do to us?” Amaia’s words slurred. She rode the high of her kill.
“One? Nothing. But a mob with torches? Quite a lot. We’re not invincible.” Lawrence knelt and dug a shallow grave with his hands. “We have no natural predators. Our prey is our only enemy. Remember that. Our prey and each other.” Before rolling the body into the hole, Lawrence ripped off a piece of the man’s shirt. After the body was covered with dirt, he wiped his hands on the cloth and buried it with his foot. “The graves don’t have to be deep. The wolves will stay away. There’s no blood to interest them, and they hate our scent on their food.”
“What about you?”
Lawrence cocked his head.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Part of Amaia was eager to see Lawrence feed. She had always been in awe of him, and she wondered what it would look like when he did it.
“I ate when I was getting him.”
“Oh.” Amaia tried not to sound too disappointed. There would be plenty of opportunity to see everything.
Lawrence adjusted her cloak, making sure her dress was well hidden. “Think about that kill on our way home. We’ll discuss it there. You performed beautifully.”
Amaia beamed under the praise and followed him from the cover of the trees, matching his human pace. As they made their way home, Amaia tried to focus her mind, but distractions were all around. She ceased breathing to avoid the smell, although it was more tolerable knowing that the fresh scent of blood lurked just below the surface.