Thirst

THIRST

By Claire
Farrell

A Paranormal /
Urban Fantasy Novella

Ava Delaney calls
herself a hybrid—a living, breathing human who happens to have
vampire poison running through her veins. The only thing greater
than her thirst for human blood is her capacity for guilt. She does
her best to avoid the human world, for everyone's sake.

When Ava
accidentally enslaves a human while saving him from a vampire, she
realises she has to look for help setting him free. Despite her
misgivings, she expands her world but finds herself dragged into a
possible vampire civil war. With the help of some new friends with
ambiguous loyalties, she tries to find a way to keep her human, and
herself, alive.

At approx. 45,000
words, Thirst is the first in a series of paranormal
novellas.

Smashwords
Edition

May
2011

Copyright © Claire Farrell 2010

[email protected]

Book cover image provided by
Inga Marchuk
@
Dreamstime.com

Licence Notes

This
eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thank you for
respecting the hard work of this author.

The scent of fear
mixed with fresh blood stopped me in my tracks. My fangs slid out
rapidly—too many missed meals. Feeling like a monster, I made an
effort to retract them and sniffed the air again. Definitely human,
definitely in trouble.

I closed my eyes
and listened to my senses, the extra ones I usually ignored,
relishing the opportunity to indulge. In my mind, I sensed rather
than saw the streets around me. Nothing but darkness filled with
the occasional red throbbing of a human heart.

Probing further
into the dark, I found the injured human’s presence easily. He
stood in an alleyway nearby, his pulse calling to me—strong and
loud. An emptiness appeared, too close to the human. A void in my
other sight screaming supernatural. A dead, soulless vampire
stalking his prey, tantalised by the scent of fear.

Just like
me.

That’s why the
guilt always hit me so hard. If I didn’t help then it meant I was
bad as the vampires. I couldn’t conquer the thirst, but I could
keep my humanity, even if I did my best to avoid humans.

Sometimes I interfered and helped humans
escape from prowling vampires. It’s never been a big deal, usually
over before anyone gets hurt. The vampires never realised what I am
because they didn’t believe someone like me could exist. The humans
never realised they’ve almost been slaughtered by a mythical
creature
they
didn’t
believe could exist.

Adrenalin coursed
through my body at the thought of confronting a vampire with a
bleeding human. I knew I had to calm down, or the vampire would
hear my heartbeat a mile away. I took fourteen steps. A good number
because one plus four equalled five. Five was safe. Unlike six. Too
many sixes scared me. Fourteen more steps. Relief. My pulse
slowed.

Too human to be
stealthy, I embraced my clunky stride. Swallowing my fear, I walked
into the alley as if I owned the place. Fourteen steps.

A dark cloud
blocked the moon, leaving me pretty much sightless. I rested my
hands on my hips and waited, hoping I made a believable vampire. My
eyes didn’t adjust to the dark straight away, but that racing
heartbeat drew my head in the right direction, hiding my lack of
night vision. My eyes focused in time for me to see the vampire’s
surprise. He drew back from the human’s throat, revealing a gaunt
face with concave cheeks and desperate eyes that glittered with
hunger.

Nineteen, twenty,
twenty-one...
I thought
I had long grown out of counting people’s heartbeats, but there I
was using my fingers to keep track of every batch of forty-one.
Almost as good as fourteen.

The vampire kept
his eyes on me, his dark hair slicked back behind his ears. In
life, he might have been handsome once, but not anymore. Most
vampires were ugly. Death did that to you.

Hoping to
intimidate him, I looked him up and down. He hadn’t yet noticed
anything off about me, and I counted on the human’s stench covering
me until I got him away.

The vampire
watched me but didn’t make a move. He had already tasted the human,
but I could tell the wounds were shallow. He was still at the
taunting stage vampires seem to like so much. As cruel as cats,
they enjoyed playing with their food. My insides tensed with
anticipation. Faking confidence, I tapped my foot five times while
I stared him down. He licked blood from his lips with slow, careful
movements.

14, 28, 56, 112...
I hoped I wasn’t mouthing the numbers I
doubled in my head.

Mr. Vampire
finally relaxed, but his hand remained on the human’s chest,
keeping him pinned. I stayed mute and prayed the human would stop
making those cornered animal noises. They provoked me, so I could
only imagine what they did to a real vampire. Creatures without a
soul, vampires didn’t bother trying to control their instincts.
However, they were smart enough to rein in their impulses in order
to survive. Although this one didn’t seem to be particularly
clever. He still hadn’t noticed my heart beating.

“
Share?” The vampire spoke
at last, his voice hoarse. I raised my eyebrows and tapped my foot
another five times. I didn’t know
that
much about vampires, so I tended to trust my instincts and
hope for the best. It’s worked so far.

“He’s yours?” the
vampire asked, his voice holding a more respectful tone. He thought
I was above him on the pecking order, I realised.

“Yeah, he’s
mine,” I said, meaning it. I gestured toward the human. “Come
here.”

The human pushed
aside the vampire as if he were made of cardboard. I tried to act
unsurprised when he trotted to my side like an obedient
puppy.

The vampire bowed
his head. “Apologies. I didn’t smell a bond on him.”

I shrugged and
turned to leave, my anxiety growing. I had already seen the strange
query spark in the vampire’s eyes, as if he noticed my own eyes
lacked the red tint that his held—or maybe he realised he could
hear another heart beating. Unsurprising, considering how much my
heart rate had increased since the still-bleeding human moved
closer to me.

I grabbed the
man’s arm and dragged him out of the alleyway after me. Thankfully,
he didn’t panic and followed me without protest. Most people lost
the plot when total strangers bit them, so it was a relief to see
he was able to hold it together.

“Run!” I hissed,
as soon as we were out of the vampire’s sight. Despite his dazed
expression, the human sprinted onwards, forcing me into a run just
to catch up to him.

A forceful sensation washed over me,
making me shiver. The vampire knew something was wrong with me, and
he was going to follow us. It was as though he’d sent a silent
message straight to my brain, letting me know his intentions.
Creepy
and
invasive.

Glancing over my
shoulder, I spotted him following us from a distance. His footsteps
were completely silent. He didn’t even appear to be running, but he
was fast, and his face was full of solid determination.

“Shit.” His
expression scared me more than anger would have. A persistent
vampire meant I’d have to keep the human with me until the coast
was clear. That could be a problem.

“Hurry! Keep
running until we get to my place,” I told the human.

He moved faster
than I could have believed possible. He also ran in the right
direction ahead of me, which made no sense. I was too busy counting
our collective footsteps to really consider the implications. We
reached my home unharmed, but I was sure the vampire could have
caught us easily.

The apartment
block I lived in was protected by magical safeguards to ward off
unwelcome visitors. I had purchased most of them online, so their
authenticity is probably dodgy, but enough of them worked to hide
us if we needed it. I hoped.

Opening the front
door of my apartment building as fast as I could, I pushed the
human man ahead of me. Skidding in after him, I slammed the door
shut, praying we were safe. I watched through the door’s glass
panel with my fingers crossed, trying to ignore the heavy breathing
of the human.

The vampire
wandered around outside, looking puzzled but not altogether
concerned. To my relief, the spells hid us well. When he finally
left, he made an outstanding jump upward and out of my line of
sight. Letting out a shaky breath, I closed my eyes and leaned my
forehead against the door. Too close, my existence was meant to be
a secret. Lucky this time, but at least the vampire was gone.
Relieved, I thought it was all over.

Then I smelled
him. The human. The blood on his neck had congealed, but the odour
was still there, tempting me. Too close. He did everything to
provoke my instincts whether he knew it or not. I whirled around
and glared at him, bolstered by anger.

“Get upstairs to
my apartment, and clean yourself up. It’s on the
third....”

He was already
heading up the stairs as if he knew exactly where to go. The door
to my apartment was unlocked, so I figured he’d find his way
eventually. As soon as he went upstairs, I leaned against the wall
and sank to the floor, light-headed with weariness, tension and
thirst.

The last thing I
needed to do was taste his wound, but that was all I wanted to do.
Breathing deeply, I tried not to think about the one time I tasted
a human’s blood. I focused on sunlight and churches, cartoons and
music. Anything that reminded me of being human, but it wasn’t
working.

The only thing
that had ever helped with the thirst was counting. I was never sure
if the counting was a side effect of the thirst, or if I would have
counted numbers anyway, but as I sat there drumming my fingers in
sets of three, I didn’t care.

Five fingers,
five fingers then four. My nails tapped out the rhythm on the wall.
Three sets adding up to fourteen. Because four minus one equals
three. Safe numbers to calm my nerves.

At last, the
spinning stopped, and I felt more like myself. My breathing slowed;
the raw intensity of my thirst subsided. I even stopped drumming my
fingers. But I didn’t trust myself. I couldn’t, not until the human
left.

After I had
calmed down some more, I followed the human upstairs. It seemed
like the vampire was long gone, so I contemplated kicking the human
out and letting him fend for himself. He was in the bathroom still,
so I waited. I drank a whole litre of milk, hoping it would help
with the thirst. I could survive on real food and had my whole
life, but I thirsted constantly for blood.

The thirst was
the biggest problem in my life. I literally planned my days around
it. It was always worse at night. Something about the moon dug the
craving from me and gave it a new spark of power. It was like a raw
hunger that came from somewhere other than my stomach.

I tidied up my
tiny living room until the human strolled back in, unfazed. I
really looked at him for the first time. After ignoring people for
so long, I tended to forget how distinctive their faces could be. A
handsome man, he had thick blond hair and clear blue eyes—a poster
boy for healthy living. Over a foot taller than me, he was built to
be touched. I wasn’t technically attracted to him, not really, but
the miniscule wounds on his neck drew me in straight away. I found
myself wandering over to him, entranced.

My mind went
blank. His blood would taste like heaven. I could take it easily.
My eyes fluttered upward, stilling him with one look. His heartbeat
slowed as my gaze turned darkly seductive. My tongue snaked out of
its own accord, curling up to moisten my top lip. He inched
forward, drawn by an unseen force. I felt like a predator: powerful
and sexy. The compulsion to count vanished. I curved myself against
him, my eyes widening at the contact. He stood there as if the way
I was behaving was completely normal.