Chapter 3: The Long Walk Home
Rainwater ran in thin sheets along the gutters, and the streetlights laid down ovals of amber that broke apart under their feet. Lovers' Lane sat four blocks behind them now, its neon bleeding off into the low clouds. Amy walked on the outside of the sidewalk with her right hand buried in the pocket of her jeans, thumb resting on the little ridged wheel of the controller.
The effect was immediate and constant. Sarah made it half a block before her stride fell apart.
"Are you going to keep that in your pocket the whole way home?" Danielle asked from behind them.
Amy didn't turn around. "Probably."
Sarah's boot heel skidded on wet concrete. She caught herself on a fire hydrant and pressed her palm flat against its cold iron, chest heaving. The PVC catsuit caught the streetlight and threw it back in oily bands. Every seam of it was tight enough to show the shape of her thighs, the flat of her belly, the dark wet line of her where the suit sealed against her.
"You're doing it on purpose," Sarah said.
"Mm."
"Amy."
Amy turned the wheel a quarter inch up. Sarah's knees unlocked. She made a low, thick sound and folded forward over the hydrant, both hands planted, red hair hanging down over her face and dripping.
"She's shaking," Danielle said. She had drifted up closer, close enough that her shoulder almost touched Amy's. "Look at the backs of her legs. That little flutter, right under the seam. She's doing it again."
"I can see."
"And her voice keeps breaking on the vowels. Every time you move your thumb, her throat closes a little."
Amy kept walking. Sarah peeled herself off the hydrant and followed, two paces behind now, arms crossed tight over her chest like she could hold herself together by hand.
Danielle cleared her throat. "So. About the panties."
"What about them."
"I want to say something and I need you not to laugh at me."
Amy glanced sideways at her. Danielle's hair was plastered dark to her temples, and there was still a smear of the second man's blood dried in the hollow of her throat, which she had not bothered to wipe. She looked sheepish, which was not a look her new face wore well. The crimson eyes made it strange, the slit pupils narrowing and widening with every pool of light they passed.
"Say it," Amy said.
"When we were outside the shop you buzzed her. You had it on low. Remember that?"
"Yes."
"I felt something too." Danielle put a hand low on her own stomach. "I thought it was just, you know. The whole thing. Her, the suit, the way she looked coming out of that dressing room. But it wasn't that. It kept going after."
Amy slowed.
"There's a nub on the controller," Danielle said. "Little silver button, bottom left. I pressed it on the way out. I thought it was for the light."
"It's not for the light."
"No." Danielle stopped walking entirely. "No, it isn't."
Sarah had stopped too, a few feet ahead, because Amy had stopped. She stood under the streetlight with her arms still crossed and her mouth slightly open, and she was breathing through it fast. Not from the walk.
"It's inflating," Sarah said, very quietly. "It's been inflating the whole time."
Amy looked down at the controller in her pocket and found the button without looking. Small, cool, silver. She pressed it. The little motor inside whined once against her palm.
Sarah's whole body jolted like someone had hooked a live wire to the base of her spine. She grabbed the lamppost with both hands and bowed her head against it, and the sound that came out of her was not a word.
"Jesus," Danielle whispered, delighted. "It's still going."
Amy held the button down. The device inside Sarah had started as a flat nub the size of a thumbnail, the thing she had taken for a clitoral stimulator when she'd pulled the package out of the display rack. It had a bulb of soft silicone threaded onto a stem, and the stem was attached to a little hand pump built into the waistband, and the whole honest truth was that Amy had read the front of the box and not the back.
Now Sarah's pussy was being slowly filled. Amy could see it happening, could see the seam of the catsuit strain, could see the wet dark spot at the crotch spread from the size of a coin to the size of a palm. Sarah's thighs pressed together and then apart, and then together again, and the silicone kept going, fattening, pressing her walls open and holding them open.
"How does it feel," Amy said.
"Full." Sarah's voice came out in pieces. "It's so fucking full. It's in me all the way up to, oh, fuck, it's past my fingers, it's past where your fingers were, it's pushing on something."
Amy released the button and gave the wheel a slow turn upward.
Sarah's hips bucked off the lamppost. She ground down against nothing, against thin air, and her fangs came down over her lip when she hissed. Rain ran off her chin. She had her hands fisted in the front of the catsuit and she was pulling it away from her body, or trying to, and the PVC wouldn't give.
"You're going to come on a street corner," Danielle said. She had her hands in her pockets too, casual, watching with her head tilted. "In that suit. For a plastic ball."
"I don't care. I don't care. Make it go again."
Amy made it go again. Sarah's orgasm hit her sideways and folded her at the waist, and she came standing up with both hands braced on her knees, shaking the whole length of her spine, the wet spot on the suit turning glossy and running down the inside of one thigh to her boot.
Danielle let out a breath she'd been holding. "Okay. That's better than the ones I had when I was alive."
Then she stopped talking, because someone was coming.
Footsteps at the far end of the block, quick and light and regular, the slap of rubber on wet pavement. A woman rounded the corner from the direction of the park, ponytail swinging, earbuds in, in shorts and a sleeveless top despite the cold. She was moving well. She was maybe thirty feet out and closing, and she had not seen anything but three women standing under a streetlight in the rain.
Amy reached into her pocket and pulled out the controller. Small black plastic, silver wheel, silver button. She held it out to Sarah, who straightened up with her hair in her face and her eyes narrow and starving.
"Here," Amy said. "Pace yourself."
Sarah took it. Her fingers closed around it and she looked down at it and then up at the jogger, and the grin that spread over her face was too wide for the neat row of her human teeth.
The jogger saw them then. She slowed, one earbud out, the polite hesitation of someone deciding whether to nod or cross the street.
Sarah moaned with delight, low in her chest, and went.
Sarah didn't run. She walked, at first, with her shoulders squared and the controller loose in her left hand, and that was somehow worse than a charge. The jogger slowed to a walk herself and lifted a hand, half a wave, the polite reflex of a woman deciding these were just neighbors out in bad weather.
"Hey," the jogger said. "You guys lose power over here too?"
Sarah got within ten feet and then she quit pretending. She put on a burst of speed that had no sound in it at all, and the jogger's face did something Amy liked very much, that little collapse of comprehension, the mouth opening on a word that never got used.
Sarah came up on her from the side, not head-on, and by the time the jogger turned to run she had already turned into her, hip to hip, one arm hooked around the woman's chest and the other hand fisted in the wet ponytail.
"Don't," the jogger said.
Sarah pulled her head back and went into the side of her throat.
The woman made a wet, high sound and her sneakers skated on the asphalt. Sarah held her up. She had the whole weight of her against her front and she was feeding with her mouth sealed to the wound, throat working, and the rain came down on both of them and washed the overflow off the jogger's collarbone in pink streaks.
Amy stopped ten feet back to watch. Water dripped off her chin. She had her hands in her pockets and her eyes on Sarah's jaw, on the tendon standing up in it, on the tiny white roll of the woman's eye.
Danielle came up beside her and stood with her. "She's fast," Danielle said. "Did you see how she took her off the angle? She went around her."
"She watched me do it."
"No, she didn't. You pinned that girl in the alley. Sarah went around."
Amy said nothing. The jogger's hand had found Sarah's shoulder and was holding it, not pushing, just holding, fingers curled into the PVC.
Then Danielle went quiet.
Amy noticed that before she noticed anything else. Danielle had a running mouth on her, all the time, and now she had stopped with her lips parted and her head cocked, eyes on the two women in the road.
"What," Amy said.
"Look at her arm."
Sarah's right arm was down at her side, and her hand was on the controller. Not holding it. Working it. Her thumb was on the silver wheel and she was rolling it, slow, back a notch, up a notch, and every time she turned it her throat would stall for half a second and then start swallowing again.
She was pacing herself.
"You're joking," Amy said.
"Look at her feet," Danielle said. "Look at her feet, Amy."
Sarah was standing still. That was the thing. For a hungry fledgling on a live woman she was standing flat-footed, weight even, patient, and she was taking the jogger in measured pulls instead of the way she had gutted the second man behind the dumpster. Her hips kept a small rolling rhythm against the woman's thigh, like the silicone inside her was keeping time, and the juiced little whine of the motor carried over the rain every time her thumb clicked the wheel up.
The controller made the pace. She made the controller. She'd figured it out in the four minutes since Amy handed it to her.
"Fuck me," Danielle said. "She's farming her."
The jogger's knees gave, and Sarah gathered her up, took her weight, and kept her mouth on the puncture. She turned the wheel down and the swallows got slower. Then up and they got faster, and the woman's pulse started showing in her throat above the fang marks, that thin flutter Amy could see from a distance, and Sarah held right at the edge of it.
Amy felt something turn over in her chest that was not hunger. It was closer to the feeling she got standing in a doorway watching Danielle work a bar. Proud, with a bad smell under it.
"Sarah," Amy called.
Sarah's ear flicked back toward her. She didn't stop.
"Sarah. Leave it."
That one she obeyed. She pulled her fangs out with a wet click and the jogger slid down her front, boneless, and Sarah caught her under the arms and knelt with her and laid her down on the asphalt, careful, one hand behind the back of her skull so her head didn't hit.
The woman was still breathing. Her chest was going up and down and red was running out of her neck into the gutter, but she was breathing, and she was going to keep breathing.
Sarah stood up. Her mouth was red to the jaw. She had the controller against her sternum now, both hands around it, and the front of the catsuit was glossy black and slicked with rain, and between her legs the wet shine had spread all the way down the inside of her thigh to the boot.
"I left her some," Sarah said.
Amy looked at the woman on the ground. Nobody had taught her that either.
"Why," Amy said.
Sarah's slitted eyes caught the streetlight and went thin. She shrugged with one shoulder, and she was smiling, and her fangs still hadn't gone back up.
"She's got a heartbeat," Sarah said. "I could hear it the whole time. It's a nice noise."
Danielle turned her head slowly and looked at Amy. Under the rain and the blood and the two red eyes, her face was doing the exact thing it had done behind the dumpster.
"That's not how we do it," Danielle said.
"No," Amy said. She was still looking at Sarah. Sarah was looking back, patient, clicking the wheel down to zero, and the little motor in her cunt went quiet and she breathed out and the breath fogged in the cold like anyone's.
"Whose idea was it to leave her alive?" Danielle asked.
Amy started walking, and both of them fell in behind her without being told.
They got twenty paces before Amy stopped walking.
The drizzle had thinned to nothing much and the gutter still ran. Behind them, under the streetlight, the jogger's sneaker lay on its side in the water. Amy could hear the woman's heart from here. Thin, fast, winding down.
Danielle stopped beside her. "You're hearing it too."
"Her heart."
"Yeah."
Sarah walked a few steps past them, then turned and came back, the controller tucked under her arm against the catsuit. Blood was drying in the corners of her mouth and she hadn't wiped it.
"You want to go back," Sarah said.
Amy looked at the shape on the asphalt. One leg bent, ponytail fanned out, chest going up and down.
"I want to keep her," Amy said.
Danielle's mouth opened and shut. "Keep her."
"Turn her."
"You're going back for her," Danielle said.
"Yes."
Rain ticked off the hood of a parked car. Danielle dragged a hand down her face and looked at the sky.
"Why?"
"Nobody's found her yet. And she's got a runner's heart." Amy turned her head. "Sarah's right about that. She was fast."
"She's a stranger."
"So were you. So was Sarah. So was Renee."
Danielle walked a tight circle under the light, boots slapping water. "Two nights. Two new mouths in two nights. Renee is going to run out of dumpsters."
"Renee will manage."
"That's not what I'm saying." Danielle stopped. Her voice dropped, which was worse. "When Sarah woke up in that alley she walked straight at two men with nothing in her head but blood. What happens when this one wakes up in your basement?"
"I'll be standing right there."
"That is not an answer."
Sarah had drifted back in close. She stood at Amy's shoulder, both of them facing Danielle, and the streetlight ran down the wet black of her suit.
"I think it's a good idea," Sarah said.
Danielle laughed once, with no joy in it. "Of course you do."
"She ran four miles before I caught her. That's a strong heart. She'll be quick at night."
"That's not the point."
"I could hear it the whole time I was on her." Sarah's tongue passed over her fang. "It was nice. Then I stopped and it was still nice. She's got a good face too."
"You are not helping."
Amy stepped off the curb into the gutter. Water came over the tops of her boots.
"Danielle. Look at me."
"I'm looking at you."
"You came up behind me in that alley and told me I was building an army."
"I said you might be."
Amy held her hand out flat and let the rain fill the palm. "Two is a hobby. Three is a pattern. Four is a coven."
Danielle watched the water spill between Amy's fingers. Then she said, "And if she wakes up hating you?"
Amy considered it honestly, the way she'd consider a bill.
"Then I'll be the one holding the controller," she said.
Danielle blew out a breath. "Do I get a vote?"
"No. You get to hold her legs."
Sarah was already moving. "Can I do it?"
"Do what?"
"Give her the blood. Turn her." Sarah's fingers drummed on the PVC over her hip. "You did it to me. I want to know what it feels like."
"No," Amy said. "That's mine to give."
She crossed the street.
The jogger was still conscious. That was the first thing Amy clocked. The woman's eyes tracked her the whole way down and one hand was pressed flat to her own throat, useless, blood piping through the fingers.
"Please," the woman said. It came out wet. "Please don't."
Amy took the wrist and pulled the hand away. Two punctures, neat and close together, still seeping. Sarah had taken a lot but not all of it. Under Amy's palm the heartbeat was going like a bird in a fist.
Sharp jaw. Dark eyebrows. Maybe twenty-nine. A stranger, yes. Everyone had been.
Amy lifted her own wrist to her mouth and bit.
The fangs went in clean and the blood came up hot. She got the woman's jaw open with her thumb on the chin, then pressed her wrist down over the mouth, over the teeth, over the tongue, and held it.
The woman fought. She got a hand up and clawed at Amy's forearm and kicked her heel in the puddle. Amy didn't move. Blood ran out of the corner of her mouth and down her cheek onto the asphalt, wasted, so Amy pinched her nose shut and made her swallow.
"Get on her legs," Amy said.
Danielle did it. She came down on the woman's thighs with both knees and took the ankles, and her face was shut and angry while she did it. Sarah knelt on the other side, at the woman's head, and put her palms flat on her shoulders.
"Hold her still," Amy said.
Sarah didn't hold her still. She stroked the wet hair back off the woman's forehead and tucked it behind her ear. Then she laid her thumb on the pulse under the jaw and left it there, feeling it.
Amy felt it too. Through her wrist, through her own blood, she felt the exact moment the heart quit.
It stopped. Everything in the woman went slack and empty at once, and her eyes stayed open with nothing behind them.
"Now we wait," Amy said.
"How long?"
"With Sarah it was seconds."
It was closer to a minute. One long minute kneeling in cold water with a dead woman's head in her lap. Then the chest heaved and the spine arched off the asphalt and the woman made a sound like a drain clearing.
The punctures closed first. Amy watched the two holes pinch shut and smooth over, and the skin around them went from pink to gray. Gray like slate. It spread up the jaw and down under the collar, and the color went out of her hands.
Her eyes opened.
They'd been open before; now there was somebody behind them. The irises lit crimson and the pupils drew down to slits. Her mouth came open on a gasp with the canines already long and sharp, and the tops of her ears had come to points under the wet hair.
"Hey," Sarah said, very softly. "Hey, you."
The woman looked up at her. Then at Amy. Her nostrils were working.
"What," she said. Her voice was different already, lower, scraped. "What did you do to me?"
Amy let go of her wrist. The cut there had closed.
"I gave you something," Amy said. "Stand up and I'll show you what for."
She didn't stand. She lay in the water and stared at her own hands, turning them over. Then she found her own throat with her fingers and felt nothing there, no wound, just skin, and no blood came off on her hand.
"I was bleeding," she said.
"Yes."
"I remember bleeding."
"Your heart stopped." Amy stood up out of the gutter and wrung the water off her hands. "I heard it go. Then it started again and it doesn't work the same. That's the whole trick."
The woman rolled onto an elbow and got her knees under her. Sarah took her arm and hauled her upright, and she stood swaying under the light with her shorts soaked through and her hair stuck to her cheek.
"I'm cold," she said.
"You'll always be a little cold."
"And hungry," Sarah said.
The woman's head snapped toward her. "What?"
"Hungry." Sarah took the woman's hand and pressed it flat against her own belly, over the PVC, over the wet seam at the middle. "Feel that. That's what it is."
"Sarah."
"Shut up, she's not wrong." Sarah moved the woman's fingers down, slow, dragging. "Yeah. Like that."
The woman pulled her hand back like it had burned her. Then she put it there again on her own, palm flat, fingers spread, and pressed until the suit squeaked.
"I don't," she said. "I've never."
"Neither had I," Sarah said. "Four hours ago."
Amy crossed to her and took her jaw in one hand and turned her face up. Gray skin, wet hair, two red eyes slit wide in the dark. The woman's lips were still bloodied and her fangs hadn't retracted and she was shaking.
"What's your name," Amy said.
"Jules."
"Jules. Take the suit off her."
It took a while. The PVC had sealed to Sarah's skin like a wet glove and it came away in strips, Sarah turning and lifting her arms while Jules worked the stuff down over her hips. By the time it was around her knees Sarah was bare to the shoulders and slick with rain and her own come, and there was dried blood all down her tits from the jogger's throat.
"On your back," Amy said.
Sarah got down in the water. She didn't ask why.
Amy knelt over her and put a hand flat on the inside of her thigh and opened her up. The silicone bulb was still inside, fat and shining, the stem running down between the lips of her cunt to the strap at her waist. Amy took the stem between two fingers and drew it out, slow, and Sarah's hips came up off the asphalt to follow it.
It came free with a wet pop. Water and come ran out of her after it.
Amy set the thing in the gutter and put her mouth where it had been.
Sarah's whole body locked. She tasted like rubber and salt and come and rain, and Amy worked her tongue up the wet slit and into her, deep, then out, then up over the clit, and Sarah's hand came down and grabbed a fistful of Amy's hair and held her there.
"Fuck," Sarah said. "Fuck, that's it, right there, don't stop."
Amy didn't stop. She got two fingers in her and curled them up and put her mouth back on the clit and sucked, and Sarah started making a noise low in her throat that kept breaking.
Jules was standing over them with her hands in fists, staring down between her own legs at nothing.
"Come here," Danielle said.
She took Jules by the shoulders and turned her around and got the shorts down over her hips, then the underwear, both of them soaked. Jules stepped out of them with one shoe. Her cunt was dark with hair and slick down the inside of both thighs already, from nothing but watching.
Danielle pushed two fingers into her without asking and Jules' knees buckled.
Amy watched sideways while she ate Sarah out. Danielle had her back against the parked car with Jules braced on the hood, working her fingers in and out and thumbing the clit, and Jules was gasping at the streetlight with her mouth wide open and her fangs out.
"Is that what you wanted," Danielle said into her ear.
"Yes. God. Yes."
"You don't have a god anymore."
Sarah came on Amy's mouth with her heels skidding in the puddle and her whole spine bowed off the road. Amy stayed on her through it, tongue flat, until Sarah pushed her head away.
Then Amy stood up and wiped her face and turned Jules around by the hip.
Sarah got up off the asphalt. She didn't bother with the suit. She just came over naked and wet and knelt down behind Jules on the hood of the car, and put both hands on her ass and spread her, and put her mouth between her legs.
Jules screamed at the streetlight.
Amy stepped out of her jeans. Danielle was already working her own off, impatient, and then she was on Amy against the car door with her hand between her legs and her mouth on her throat.
"How many," Danielle said against her skin.
Amy tipped her head back and let the rain hit her face and didn't answer.
"Four," Danielle said. "Say it. Four."
"Four," Amy said, and then Danielle's fingers slid into her and she stopped saying anything at all.