Chapter 6: The Fire and the Feeding
The rain had stopped sometime around three in the morning, leaving the city washed clean and glittering under the streetlights. But inside Julian's apartment, the storm still raged—just a different kind.
Astrid lay curled against his chest, her ear pressed to the place where his heart should have been beating. It wasn't. Hadn't for nearly two centuries. But she could feel something else there, something deeper than a pulse, some vibration that hummed through his ribs like a plucked string.
She counted the breaths he didn't need to take. Fourteen since they'd collapsed onto the rug. Fifteen.
"You're thinking too loud," Julian murmured. His voice was rough, scraped raw by the night's violence.
"I'm not thinking at all."
"Liar." His hand moved in slow circles on her back, tracing patterns she couldn't follow. "You've got that look. The one where you're trying to decide if you should say something."
Astrid lifted her head. His face was half in shadow, the dying fire casting flickers of orange across his cheekbones. There was blood on his jaw—not his own—and a bruise flowering purple on his collarbone.
"What happened tonight," she started.
"I know."
"The thing we killed—"
"I know, Astrid."
She closed her mouth. The thing they'd killed—the creature that had been terrorizing the lower wards for weeks, leaving bodies drained and desiccated in its wake—had been something old. Something that had once been human. Something that had made Julian's bloodlust look like a mild appetite.
She'd seen him lose control before. In the alley behind the speakeasy, with Marcel's taunts ringing in his ears. But tonight had been different. Tonight, the beast had surfaced not from anger but from fear. Fear that he couldn't protect her. Fear that the creature would take her the way it had taken so many others.
He'd nearly torn it apart with his bare hands. Would have, if she hadn't pulled him back.
"I'm not going to apologize," he said quietly.
"I didn't ask you to."
"I know you didn't. But I can feel you wanting to tell me it's okay. That I didn't do anything wrong." He shifted beneath her, his fingers finding the edge of her jaw. "It's not okay. I lost control. I put us both at risk."
"You saved us."
"I terrified you."
Astrid was quiet for a moment. Outside, a car passed, its headlights sweeping across the ceiling like searchlights. The jazz from the Quarter had faded to a whisper, the musicians finally calling it a night.
"You didn't terrify me," she said finally. "You reminded me of something."
"What's that?"
"That I'm not the only one who's been pretending to be human for a long time."
Julian's hand stilled on her jaw. The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.
"That's not—" He stopped. Started again. "I don't pretend. Not with you."
"I know." She pushed herself up, straddling his hips, her hair falling around them like a curtain. "That's what I meant. You don't pretend. You never have. Even when you should."
His eyes searched hers. In the dim light, they looked almost silver.
"You make it sound like a compliment."
"It is." She leaned down, her lips brushing the corner of his mouth. "You're the first person in five hundred years who's seen me—really seen me—and didn't look away."
His hands found her hips. Gripped them. Held her steady.
"I couldn't look away," he said. "Even if I wanted to. You're like gravity."
"Cheesy."
"I know. But true."
She kissed him then. Soft and slow, the kind of kiss that wasn't about hunger or need but about something else entirely. Something that didn't have a name.
When she pulled back, his eyes were wet.
"Julian."
"I'm fine." He blinked hard, turning his face toward the ceiling. "It's just—it's been a long night."
"It's been a long two hundred years."
That startled a laugh out of him. A real one, cracked and disbelieving.
"Yeah," he said. "Something like that."
The fire had died down to embers, casting the room in shades of red and amber. His apartment looked different in this light. Softer. Less like a museum and more like a home.
She'd noticed that before—the way he curated his space like a stage set. Velvet drapes and antique mirrors, a grand piano he rarely played, whiskey decanters arranged just so. All of it beautiful. None of it touched. For months, she'd assumed it was vanity. The performance of wealth, of taste, of the man he'd been before the turning.
But now she understood. It wasn't a stage. It was a fortress. Every object carefully chosen, every corner meticulously arranged, because chaos lived inside him. Because if he let one thing slip, if he allowed even a single item to be out of place, the rest might follow. The hunger. The rage. The grief.
Control was all he had. And tonight, he'd lost it.
"You know what I think?" she said.
"I'm afraid to ask."
"I think you need to redecorate."
He stared at her.
"Excuse me?"
"Redecorate." She gestured vaguely at the room. "All this—it's beautiful. It's also cold. The piano's dusty. The mirrors are fogged. You've got candles everywhere, and I'm pretty sure that rug cost more than my first apartment, but you know what's missing?"
"I have absolutely no idea."
"Actual living." She poked his chest. "You live here, Julian. Or you should. But it feels like you're just... waiting. Every room is a waiting room."
He was quiet for a long time. The embers shifted in the fireplace.
"You're not wrong," he said finally. "But you're also being awfully presumptuous about my interior design choices."
"I'm being honest."
"You're being mean." But he was smiling. Just a little. Just enough. "I'll have you know, the piano gets plenty of use. When I'm the only one here. And the mirrors are fogged because they're old. It's called character."
"It's called neglect."
"You're exhausting."
"You love it."
His smile widened. Reached his eyes. The grip on her hips loosened, then tightened again in a different way.
"Yeah," he said. "I do."
She kissed him again. Deeper this time. The fire crackled behind them, and somewhere in the building, a neighbor's alarm clock went off—someone who lived a normal life, a mortal life, a life of early mornings and coffee and deadlines.
Astrid ignored it. She ignored everything except the feel of Julian beneath her. The solid reality of his body, the weight of his hands on her skin.
"I want to try something," she said against his mouth.
"Anything."
"Don't say that until you hear what it is."
He pulled back, raising an eyebrow. "Should I be worried?"
"No." She sat up, her hands resting on his chest. "Maybe. I don't know. Just... let me."
She leaned down again, but this time she didn't go for his mouth. She went for his throat. The space where his pulse would have been, if he'd had one. The vein that still carried blood, slow and sluggish, through a body that had stopped needing it centuries ago.
He tensed beneath her.
"Astrid."
"Shh." She pressed her lips to his skin. "Just let me."
His hands found her hair. Tangled there. Didn't pull her away.
She kissed a slow path along the column of his throat. His jaw. The dip where his neck met his shoulder. He tasted of smoke and old blood and something else—something like rain, like the storm that had ravaged the city just hours ago.
He groaned when her fangs brushed his skin.
"You don't have to," he said. His voice was strained. "You don't have to do this for me."
"I know." She nipped at his collarbone. "I want to."
"Astrid—"
"I want to taste you." She lifted her head, meeting his eyes. "Not because you need it. Not because I'm hungry. Because I want to know what you taste like. Every part of you."
His eyes had gone dark. Not the black of bloodlust. Something else. Something softer.
"Okay," he whispered. "Okay."
She bit down.
The blood flowed hot and thick, richer than any human blood she'd ever tasted. It tasted like memory. Like the first time she'd seen him across a crowded bar, six months ago, when she'd thought he was just another predator wearing a pretty face. Like the night on the balcony, when he'd confessed his hunger and she'd confessed her grief. Like every moment since, every touch and every word and every silence that had passed between them.
Julian made a sound—half groan, half prayer—and his body arched beneath her. His hands went to her hips, pulling her closer, and she could feel him hard against her thigh.
She pulled back after a few seconds. Licked the wound closed. His blood was on her lips, her tongue, in her throat. She could feel it spreading through her, warm and alive, and she understood suddenly why he'd been so careful with her. Why he'd spent months feeding on himself rather than risk hurting her.
This was power. This was intimacy. This was trust.
"Okay?" she asked.
His eyes opened. Met hers.
"More than okay," he said. "Come here."
He didn't wait for her to comply. He sat up, pulling her into his lap, his mouth finding hers in a kiss that tasted of blood and want and something deeper than either.
Then he lifted her.
She wrapped her legs around his waist as he rose, his hands supporting her, his mouth never leaving hers. He carried her through the apartment with unerring grace, past the piano and the mirrors and the candles, until they reached his bedroom.
The bed was huge and soft, the sheets cool against her back as he laid her down. He followed, his body covering hers, his weight pressing her into the mattress in a way that made her feel anchored. Real. Present.
"Tell me what you want," he said against her throat.
"You."
"I need more than that."
She tangled her fingers in his hair. Pulled his head up until he was looking at her.
"I want you to make love to me," she said. "I want you to take your time. I want to feel every second of it."
His breath caught.
"You're going to be the death of me."
"Promises, promises."
He laughed. A real laugh, bright and surprised, and the sound of it warmed something cold inside her.
Then he kissed her again. And again. And again.
He took his time. He'd promised, and Julian Marchand, for all his faults, kept his promises.
He kissed every inch of her. The hollow of her throat. The curve of her shoulder. The inside of her wrist. He traced the lines of her body with his fingertips, with his lips, with his tongue. He found places that made her gasp and places that made her laugh and places that made her forget, for the first time in centuries, exactly what she was.
When he finally slid inside her, it was slow. Deliberate. A question and an answer all at once.
She arched beneath him, her nails raking down his back, and he groaned her name like it was the only word he knew.
"You feel—" He stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. "You feel like home."
"I am."
"No, I mean—"
"I know what you mean." She pulled his mouth down to hers. "Keep moving."
He did. Slow and deep, his hips rolling against hers in a rhythm that felt older than both of them. The bed creaked beneath them. The city woke outside the windows, cars and voices and the first birdsong of a morning that neither of them would see.
She didn't care. She didn't care about the dawn, or the sun, or the threat of Marcel and whatever revenge he was plotting. She didn't care about the creature they'd killed or the blood on their hands or the centuries of grief that had brought them both to this room.
All she cared about was him.
When she shattered, it was with his name on her lips and his body wrapped around hers. When he followed—seconds later, minutes later, she couldn't tell—it was with a sound that broke her heart and put it back together all at once.
They lay tangled together afterward, sweaty and breathless and utterly spent. The fire had died completely. The first rays of sunlight crept beneath the curtains, painting thin lines across the floor.
"We need to talk about Marcel," she said eventually.
"I know."
"And the thing we killed. There might be more of them."
"I know."
"And we need to figure out what—"
"Astrid." He turned her face toward him. His eyes were soft. Sleepy. Satisfied. "Can we have five minutes? Just five minutes where the world isn't ending?"
She looked at him. At the dark circles under his eyes. At the bruise on his collarbone and the scratches on his back. At the mouth that was still stained with her blood and the hands that were still trembling, just slightly, from the effort of holding on.
"Five minutes," she agreed.
He closed his eyes. Buried his face in her hair.
"Thank you," he whispered.
"For what?"
"For staying."
She wrapped her arms around him. Held on tight.
"I'm not going anywhere," she said.
And for five minutes—maybe longer—the world stopped ending.
Then a knock sounded at the door.
They both froze.
"Expecting someone?" Astrid murmured.
"No." Julian lifted his head. His eyes had gone sharp. Alert. The softness of moments ago was gone, replaced by something harder. Something lethal.
The knock came again. Louder this time.
"Julian Marchand," a voice called through the door. Female. Accented. Furious. "I know you're in there. Open up before I break the door down."
Julian's face went pale.
"Shit," he breathed.
"Who is it?"
He looked at her. His expression was caught somewhere between dread and resignation.
"My sister."