Chapter 2: The Huntress's Thirst
Sleep, when it finally came, was not an escape. It was a theatre, and Rumi was the sole performer.
Benno dreamt of the red water. He was submerged, weightless, watching her swim above him, a pale distortion against a blood-red sky. Her hair fanned like reaching tendrils. She looked down, met his gaze, and opened her mouth. A cloud of dark crimson blossomed from between her lips, flooding the water between them. It didn’t disperse. It solidified into words, thick and drifting: You’re already mine.
He woke with a choked gasp, the words echoing in the silent room.
And she was there.
Crouched at the foot of his narrow bed like a gargoyle come to life, her knees drawn up to her chin. The moon through the barred window sliced across her, painting one porcelain cheek and a single crimson eye in cold silver. The rest of her was swallowed by the velvet dark of the room. She was dressed in a simple, dark shift now, her hair a loose river over her shoulders.
“You talk in your sleep,” she said. Her voice was a dry rustle in the stillness. “It’s not German. It’s just… noises.”
Benno’s heart hammered against his ribs. He pushed himself up on his elbows. “What’s the etiquette here? Do I offer you a nightcap? A pillow?”
“You were dreaming of the pool.” It wasn’t a question.
He didn’t answer. The memory of the kiss, the bite, the shocking heat of his own desire, flooded back, vivid and shameful. The sheets felt suddenly restrictive.
Rumi unfolded herself. She didn’t stand. She crawled up the length of the bed with a feline slowness that made the breath catch in his throat. The old mattress barely creaked. She stopped when her face was level with his, hovering over him. The scent of lavender and old copper filled the space between them.
“You didn’t try the window,” she whispered. Her eyes traced the line of his nose, his lips, the frantic pulse in his throat. “The storm has passed. The drop is survivable. Possibly. Yet here you are.”
“Maybe I like the decor. The velvet is… oppressive.”
A faint smile touched her lips, but it didn’t reach her eyes. They were different tonight. The playful amusement was sanded away, leaving something sharper, hungrier beneath. The darkness around her pupils seemed to swallow the red.
“My sisters are hunting in the lower villages,” she said, her gaze fixed on his throat. “They’ll return soon. Loud. Satisfied. The castle will smell of their joy for days.” She spoke as if describing a distant, unpleasant weather system. “I find I have no appetite for their leftovers.”
Her hand came up, cool fingers brushing the fresh punctures on his neck from the pool. A jolt went through him. “These are almost gone. You heal so quickly for a fragile thing.”
“Efficient metabolism,” he breathed.
“I’m starving, Benno.”
The way she said it was flat, factual. It wasn’t a seduction. It was a warning. The air in the room tightened.
Before he could muster a quip, she moved. One hand pinned his shoulder to the mattress. The other fisted in his hair, yanking his head to the side, exposing the column of his throat. It was not the guided embrace of the hall or the feverish collision by the pool. This was predation, pure and simple. Her control was a frayed wire.
Her teeth pierced his skin with no preamble, no teasing pressure.
The pain was instantaneous—a white, shocking lance that ripped a strangled cry from his throat. It was nothing like the soft, melting puncture he’d come to expect. This was violation, a tearing. His body arched off the bed, a spasm of pure instinct fighting against her immovable weight.
She drank in deep, urgent pulls, a low, desperate sound vibrating against his neck.
Tears of pain and shock welled in his eyes. The primal part of his brain screamed to fight, to shove her off, to run. But another part, the part she had cultivated, observed with a detached horror. This is what she is. This is the truth. This is what the others get.
And he hated it. He hated the loss of the tenderness, the cruel subtraction of that specific, perverse intimacy.
His hand, trapped by her weight, flailed and found the curve of her hip. He didn’t push. He gripped. As if to hold her there, to anchor himself to the pain.
As if sensing the storm within him, her body shifted. The hand in his hair loosened, becoming a cradle rather than a restraint. The punishing pull at his throat gentled, just a fraction. And then her other hand, the one that had pinned his shoulder, slid down.
It smoothed over his chest, his stomach, leaving a trail of cool sensation through his thin shirt. It didn’t stop.
Her palm pressed against the hard, aching line of his erection straining against the sheets. He gasped, the sound wet and ragged against her hair.
She didn’t pause her feeding. But her hand began to move. A slow, firm stroke over the fabric, the friction brutal and perfect. It was a distraction and an accusation, a mercy and a deeper violation. The sharp, burning pain in his neck melted, bleeding into a rush of stunned, overwhelming pleasure. The two sensations wound together, inseparable, one feeding the other.
He cried out again, but this time it was a different kind of rupture. His hips bucked involuntarily into her touch. His grip on her hip tightened, fingers digging into the firm muscle beneath the shift.
“Rumi…” It was a plea, a protest, a name given to the chaos.
She responded by taking another, deeper pull from his throat, the sensation blurring into a bright line of white-hot need. Her hand worked him with an uncanny, rhythmic certainty, as if she could taste his climax approaching in his blood.
It built too fast, a tidal wave swamping all thought, all fear, all pretense. The portrait faces on the walls watched, hollow and knowing. The moon gleamed on the iron bars. The single candle guttered, its light leaping as Benno’s body bowed off the bed.
He came with a violent, silent shudder, the world dissolving into a series of pulsing, blinding flashes behind his eyelids. His release was a surrender so complete it felt like annihilation. Through it, he felt the final, soft draw of her mouth on his neck, then the familiar, soothing stroke of her tongue.
She went still atop him. The only sounds were his ragged, sobbing breaths and the distant, lonely sigh of the wind against the castle stone.
Slowly, carefully, she withdrew her teeth. She lapped at the wounds once more, then rested her forehead against his damp temple. Her own breathing was even, controlled. Sated.
He was boneless, spent, floating in a hollowed-out shell of himself. The pain in his neck had faded to a dull, persistent throb, already being subsumed by the rapid, miraculous healing she found so interesting. The stain of pleasure on his stomach felt like a brand.
She pushed herself up, looking down at him. Her crimson eyes were lucid now, the frantic hunger gone, replaced by something unreadable. Shame? Triumph? He couldn’t tell. A trickle of blood, his blood, marked the corner of her perfect mouth. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, studying the crimson smear on her knuckle.
“See?” she murmured, her voice husky. “You didn’t break.”
He couldn’t speak. He could only stare at her, at the moonlit vampire in his bed, at the evidence of his own degrading complicity cooling on his skin.
She leaned down, her lips brushing his ear. “The window latch is loose. You should try it sometime.”
Then she was gone. A rustle of fabric, a whisper of movement, and the space at the foot of the bed was empty. The door to his room, which he had locked from the inside, stood slightly ajar.
He lay there for a long time, listening to the thunder of his own heart gradually slow. The candle burned lower. The moon tracked across the bars.
Eventually, he swung his legs over the side of the bed. His body felt foreign, used. He walked to the window on unsteady legs. He touched the latch. It was cold, solid, undeniably loose.
He didn’t open it. He looked out at the jagged landscape, silver and black under the moon. The world out there was empty, frozen, simple. It offered a clean death.
The world in here was impossible. It was pain and velvet and a predator’s hands giving mercies that felt like love. It was a locked door she could open at will.
Benno, the pragmatic travel writer, the man of dry humor and restless curiosity, rested his burning forehead against the cold glass.
He was no longer testing the lock to see if it would hold.
He was waiting to hear her footsteps in the hall again.