Chapter 4

Jinx sat primly on the stainless steel surface, her mismatched eyes—one gray, one green—fixed on me with an expression that I'd learned to read after a century of cohabitation. She was hungry too.

"What?" I asked, though I already knew what she wanted. Jinx never begged for my artificial blood—she'd tried it once, when she was newly turned and still learning what she could and couldn't eat, and the look of betrayal on her tiny face when she realized it tasted nothing like real blood had been almost comical. She was a purist, my little monster, and she preferred her meals warm and struggling.

Jinx's tail swished once, twice, and she turned her head toward the window, toward the distant sounds of the party that had woken us both. Her meaning was clear: if I wasn't going to feed her, she'd go hunting on her own.

I felt my lips curve into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Fine," I said, reaching out to scratch behind her ears the way she liked. "Go ahead. Just try to stick to the ones who deserve it, alright? The drunk ones, the ones who are too loud, the ones who are probably stumbling around looking for a place to piss or pass out."

The ones like she usually hunted—the alcoholics, the drug users, the ones who came out to these parties to get wasted and cause trouble. People who probably wouldn't even notice two small puncture wounds among all their other poor life choices.

Jinx purred and bumped her head against my hand, then leaped down from the counter and disappeared into the darkness of the castle's interior, heading for one of the many exits she'd claimed as her own over the years. I watched her go with a mixture of affection and envy—she made it look so easy, the hunting and the feeding, the casual violence that was supposed to be as natural to our kind as breathing. But I'd long ago lost my taste for it, for the chase and the fear and the inevitable mess that came with draining a human dry.

Not that Jinx killed her victims, of course. She was too small to take more than a pint or two before her stomach couldn't hold any more. The blood loss was negligible, the puncture wounds easily dismissed as insect bites or scratches from the wrought-iron fencing that decorated half the balconies in the Quarter. By morning, her targets would be nursing hangovers and chalking up their lightheadedness to tequila shots, never suspecting that the adorable kitten they'd tried to pet had been something far more dangerous.

I turned back to my beaker, which had finished mixing, and carefully poured the contents into a clean glass. The color was perfect, a deep garnet red that caught the lamplight and gleamed like a liquid ruby, and when I lifted it to my nose, the scent that rose from it was rich and complex, with notes of iron and salt and something darker, something that spoke to the predator that still lived beneath my carefully cultivated veneer of civilization. I took a sip, letting the blood coat my tongue and slide down my throat, and felt the hollow ache in my stomach begin to ease.

It wasn't as good as fresh blood, not really, but it was good enough. Good enough that I could drink it without feeling like I was choking down medicine, good enough that it satisfied the hunger without forcing me to interact with the humans I'd grown to despise over my three centuries of existence. They were so predictable, so tedious in their desperation to please me, to touch me, to possess some small piece of the beauty and power they sensed but couldn't name. I'd had my fill of their fawning and their neediness a hundred years ago, and now I preferred the quiet solitude of my laboratory and the company of my cat to anything the human world had to offer.

I finished my glass and set it in the sink, running water over it to prevent the blood from drying and staining the glass, then wiped down the counter and put away my equipment with the methodical precision of long practice. The magnetic stirrer would continue its slow rotation for another hour, ensuring the mixture stayed properly homogenized, and I'd bottle it tomorrow for storage. For now, I was fed and awake and vaguely curious about what Jinx was getting up to out there in the forest.

I made my way through the castle's dark corridors, my bare feet silent on the ancient stone floors, until I reached the heavy wooden door that led out to the grounds. The night air hit me as soon as I stepped outside, warm and humid and thick with the scent of growing things, and I paused for a moment to let my eyes adjust to the deeper darkness beneath the trees. Not that I needed to adjust, not really—my night vision was perfect, better than any human's could ever be—but there was something soothing about the ritual of it, the moment of stillness before I started moving again.

I followed my instincts deeper into the forest, keeping to the shadows and moving with the silent grace that came as naturally to me as walking, listening for any sign of Jinx. The party sounds had faded to a distant murmur by the time I spotted her—a small black shadow sitting calmly near a young man in a part of the forest that was far from the campground, deep enough that any human who'd wandered this far had either gotten seriously lost or was deliberately trying to escape the noise.

The man was crouched down, one hand extended toward Jinx, and even from this distance I could see the gentle way he moved, coaxing her closer with soft words I couldn't quite hear. He was tall and lean, and his movements were steady and controlled, not the stumbling gait of someone who'd been drinking. His white hair caught the moonlight filtering through the canopy, making him easy to track as Jinx allowed him to touch her, rubbing against his fingers in that deceptively sweet way she had when she was luring in prey.

Not Jinx's usual prey, then. This one looked sober, lost perhaps, but not the kind of drunk or high troublemaker she typically targeted. He seemed kind, actually, the way he spoke to her and stroked her fur with such careful tenderness. I frowned, watching as Jinx settled into his touch, and I was about to turn away and leave her to her hunt when the wind shifted, carrying his scent directly to me.

I froze, every muscle in my body going rigid as the smell hit me like a physical blow. It was blood, yes, but not just any blood—this was something different, something I'd never encountered in three hundred years of existence. It was sweet and rich and complex, with layers of flavor that unfolded across my senses like a symphony, and underneath it all was something that made my mouth water and my fangs ache in a way they hadn't in nearly a century.

This human smelled like heaven. Like everything I'd been searching for without knowing it for the past hundred years, like a flavor profile so perfect and complex that no amount of laboratory work could ever hope to achieve. Like the answer to a question I hadn't known I was asking.

Nearly a hundred years. That's how long it had been since I'd felt even the slightest urge to sink my fangs into human flesh, since I'd wanted anything more than the sterile comfort of my artificial blood and the solitude of my laboratory. And now, standing here in the darkness with this stranger's scent flooding my senses, I felt that old hunger roar to life with a ferocity that stole my breath.

I watched as Jinx suddenly tensed, her body coiling as she prepared to strike, her hindquarters wiggling as she got ready to launch herself at the man's exposed throat while he was distracted by petting her. The man continued stroking her fur, completely unaware of the danger, his guard utterly down, and something hot and violent surged through my chest.

Mine.

The thought came unbidden, irrational, overwhelming in its intensity, and with it came a flash of pure rage at the sight of Jinx preparing to bite him, to taste what was mine, to mark him with her fangs instead of—

I stepped forward before I could stop myself, my eyes locking onto Jinx with an intensity that made the air between us crackle with tension. Stop.