My Precious Nightmare

4: Ambrosia

A week after meeting the strawberry milkshake girl, while on a hunt for an old scent, Husani hit the ground without knowing why. The scent of his vampire target vanished beneath the acrid, sickly sweet musk of his own blood. He registered the thirst before the pain.

Cursing, he rolled into a nearby stairwell. A few years worth of garbage and fallen leaves cushioned his fall and dimmed the reek of his wound. Careful not to bite his lip, he twisted around to get a look at his hip where a patch of too dark spread through the thigh of his black denim pants. The wound went clean through, starting from the outside to the inside of his leg, even grazing the top of his other thigh.

Someone's shooting at me? The idea wasn't totally ludicrous, but it did add a plethora of other problems, namely the rising bloodthirst which was coiling his muscles and burning the back of his throat. He grunted from the effort to stay conscious. Instinct had risen up to swallow it whole.

"Damn it." If only a bullet could kill him.

His heightened hearing picked up footsteps at the end of the alley. With a silence that came naturally to night creatures like him, he dug beneath the leaves and garbage. Mold and rot pulled his lips back from his teeth. Disgusting.

The footsteps hesitated near the top of the staircase. Husani held his breath, both for silence as well as to prevent the smell of humans feeding his bloodlust.

After far too long, they finally moved on. Husani pulled himself out of the stairwell. His vision fuzzed and his mouth had gone dry. Painfully dry. At least he could still stand on one leg.

Figuring he should avoid the sky for a little while, Husani limped heavily away, clinging to brick walls and fences when his vision flickered in, crouching to all fours like an animal when it did not. The last of his consciousness was losing fast to his instincts.

When his vision finally went, the smells scrambled his brain. The piercing fumes of cars. The piss of the rogue vampire he had been stalking. The various savory whiffs of humans blended together like the aroma of a buffet. The soft, water-like sky served as a clear, gentle background to it all.

He fought desperately for control of his senses. Strands of thought bled through his fingertips.

I have to hunker down, find a basement, somewhere out of sight that hasn't seen humans in while. Find a dog or a cat or raccoon, anything.

A burst of consciousness told him he'd gone somewhere far from the place he had started. The next burst was clearer, longer, displaying a familiar street and happy, yellow 'M' sign a block down. The monster within had taken him far.

Clinging to the old dumpster for both stability and a means of focus, he gathered his bearings while panting through elongated fangs. His arms trembled from the effort.

Why'd my instincts bring me here? He glanced back at the McDonalds and to the empty pizza joint across the street. It was a lower-end neighborhood, like many he haunted. In places of misery, where crime and violence ran rampant, it was easy for one vampire to go unnoticed. A few of the street lamps were dead, and almost just as many were on the way out, though it didn't matter much as the oncoming dawn shed a gray light.

A memory of a slight girl with strawberry milkshake on her feet flashed across his mind's eye. With it came the memory of her scent: buttery sweet and hinted with lavender.

Metal squealed beneath his claws as his instincts heaved against his conscious thought; the monster strained at its feeble bonds. Each yank spiked horror through his gut.

Why her? Why the funny, cute little woman? Why not the aimless drug-addicted hobo that was near the end of his life anyway? Why not any of the other ghostlike humans that foolishly chose to stay out in the night?

The metal of the dumpster popped as his fingers punctured holes.

"No," he growled towards his chest. His subconscious had some say in where his blood-starved instincts took his body, after all. It had to. "Find something else." Dog. Raccoon. Cat. He chanted to himself.

But in the ripe memory of the girl's scent, his stomach turned at the thought of sinking his fangs into the messy hide of an animal. He could almost feel the fur tickling the back of his throat, gagging him.

Just as he thought his mind would give out, his legs did, bringing him to the cool ground.

For a space of time, he hung by his fingertips, face first against the grimy side of the dumpster, pain pushing his maddening cravings to the back for a blessed moment. He gasped in relief, tasting metal and rotten stink from years of trash.

Maybe if I put something sharp in the wound...the pain will keep it at bay until—

"Red-eye guy?"

Dread turned his mind into an icy blank.

Strawberry milkshake girl.

"Oh my gosh, are you okay? What hap—is that blood?"

He opened his mouth to bark at her, to scream if he had to, but instead got a mouthful of her warm, butter-sugar smell. The hints of lavender made the locked muscles of his hand go involuntarily lax. He felt himself slide, felt the scream of his legs even as the monster within him rose up with renewed vigor.

In the last of his dying vision, he saw her long mane of wavy, light brown hair lit by the first golden strands of dawn. Though the shadow of the alley kept the light from touching her directly, it backlit her, giving her a sort of angelic glow and bringing out the honey highlights in her curls. Her eyes were large like a doe's, and framed by black lashes.

She really was so tiny.

"Mr. Red-eyes?"

With an effort that stole his breath, he dug the mental nails of his will into the hide of his instincts and held it back by the skin of his teeth.

The result was pain, mind-crushing pain. His arms gave out, smearing his cheek against the filthy side of the dumpster.

She was running towards him, hands outstretched.

"Run," he gasped. "Get away."

She was too small, too delicate. He would kill her. His injured, bloodthirsty body would kill her.

Then her warm, tiny hands touched his arm.

He wrenched back, but his body tore free of his consciousness. Only a strand of awareness let him watch as he sat up and reached out, scooping her in as easily as chaff in the wind. His hand went over her mouth. He dragged her behind the dumpster, hidden from view of the street. Then even that little bit of vision faded away to the euphoria of his fangs breaking through her thin skin and filling his mouth with ambrosia.