Chapter 13: First Feast
The cold air over Sandale University was not just a temperature anymore; it was a texture, a medium she could swim through. Alisha Vance soared, the campus unfolding beneath her like a three-dimensional map lit by the sterile white of security lights and the warm gold of dormitory windows. Her body thrummed with a power that made decades of academic fatigue feel like a discarded skin.
She flexed her hands, remembering the weight of Ellie’s breasts, the taste of Laura’s wrist—coppery and thick with transformative promise. They had wrecked her and rebuilt her on a desk littered with her own life’s work. The memory should have horrified her. Instead, a slick, undeniable heat pulsed between her legs. The submission, the violation, the sheer physicality of it had been the most alive she’d felt in twenty years. And now she was dead. The irony was delicious.
A new hunger, sharper and more directive than any scholarly craving, coiled in her gut. It wasn’t just for blood. It was for the act. The taking. Laura had shown her that. The connection between feeding and fucking was absolute, a circuit of pure possession.
Movement below. A figure in grey coveralls emerged from the service door of the chemistry building, pulling a wheeled trash bin. The scent of industrial cleaner and sweat wafted up, but beneath it, a vibrant, salty warmth called to her. A night janitor. Middle-aged, balding, trudging with the resigned gait of a man counting the hours until dawn.
Descent was a thought. She dropped silently, a shadow detaching from a greater darkness, and landed on the gravel roof of the adjacent humanities building just as he passed beneath its eaves. He didn’t hear her. He was listening to something through cheap earbuds, his head nodding slightly.
She leaped, not flying, but falling with purpose. Her hands clamped onto his shoulders from behind. A muffled yelp was lost in the night as she kicked off from the ground, her new strength propising them upward in a giddy, terrifying arc. He flailed, a wordless scream ripped away by the wind, the trash bin clattering over behind him. In seconds, they were on the flat, gravel-strewn roof where she had landed moments before.
She threw him down. He skidded, gravel biting into his palms. “My wallet’s in my back pocket,” he stammered, scrambling to his knees, his face a mask of confusion and fear. “Just take it, lady, please—”
“I don’t want your wallet.” Her voice was different to her own ears—lower, melodic, saturated with a predatory calm.
She was on him before he could rise. One hand fisted in his coveralls, pinning him. The other tore at the tough fabric until it gave way, exposing his lower belly and the waistband of his boxers. He struggled, a weak, frantic motion. She smelled his fear, acrid and exciting, and the deeper, richer scent of his life pumping just beneath the skin of his throat.
With a brutal jerk, she ripped his pants and boxers down to his thighs. His cock, soft and shriveled with terror, lay exposed. Her own body responded fiercely, a throbbing emptiness demanding to be filled. She wasn’t gentle. She positioned herself over him, guiding him inside her with one impatient hand. He was still flaccid, so she slammed her hips down, forcing his flesh into the tight, wet heat of her.
He cried out, a sound of shock more than pain. “What the fuck are you doing?!”
“Quiet,” she whispered, leaning over him. Her auburn hair fell around their faces like a curtain. Her mouth found his neck. The pulse there was a frantic drumbeat against her lips. She didn’t play. Her fangs pierced deep.
The effect was instantaneous. His body arched beneath her, a strangled gurgle escaping his throat as pleasure and terror collided. The flood of his blood into her mouth was earthy, unrefined, laced with cheap beer and processed food. It was nothing like Laura’s potent, ancient vintage or the complex bouquet of her own former life. It was simple fuel. And it was good.
As she drank, she began to move. Her hips rocked, taking him deeper with each stroke. The friction, combined with the liquid life flooding her system, ignited a pleasure so intense it bordered on agony. His body, reacting on some primal level, began to harden inside her despite his dying panic.
“Fuck,” she groaned against his neck, her rhythm becoming jagged, desperate. “Yes… you feel that? You’re dying inside me.”
His hands, which had been pushing weakly at her shoulders, now clutched at her back, fingers digging in. His hips bucked upward, meeting her thrusts with a reflexive, final urgency. The connection was complete—the taking of his life and the taking of his body were one savage act.
She drank deeper, swallowing great gulps of him. His thoughts, fragmented and simple, flashed through her—a memory of a wife’s face, the worry over a car payment, the crushing boredom of the night shift. She consumed it all. His vitality surged into her, a raw, orgasmic current. Her own climax ripped through her, a silent scream into his skin, as his heart gave one last, violent shudder and stopped.
She rode the stillness, milking the last pulses of blood, shuddering through the aftershocks of a pleasure magnified a hundredfold by the kill. It was the ultimate surrender, the final possession. He was utterly, irrevocably hers.
When she finally pulled her fangs free and lifted her head, she felt drunk, satiated, and powerfully alive. She looked down at the man’s ashen, vacant face. A trophy. She extracted herself from his body, slick with their mingled fluids.
Disposal was a practical matter. She dressed quickly in the clothes from her office, now feeling oddly constrictive. Wrapping the janitor’s body in a tarpaulin she found beside a rooftop ventilation unit, she lifted him easily. The woods bordering the northern edge of campus received him, buried in a shallow grave dug with her bare hands in minutes. The soil was cold and rich in her fingers.
Dawn was still a distant rumor. The library, a Gothic silhouette of stone and stained glass, called to her. Agnes. The head librarian. The rigid woman from the disciplinary board, who moved through the stacks with a silent, predatory grace Alisha now recognized. Of course. It made a terrible, beautiful sense.
She flew, the wind cleansing the scent of death and sex from her. She landed softly on a stone gargoyle’s head near the library’s highest tower. From here, she could see the sliver of light emanating from a basement window—Agnes’s private office.
With the grace of a spider, she descended the rough-hewn stone wall, her fingers finding holds no mortal could see. She perched outside the window, peering in.
The room was as described: honey-colored walls, flickering fluorescent light, shelves of obscure texts. And there, at the cracked desk, sat Agnes. Her grey hair was in its usual severe bun, her reading glasses perched on her nose. But the book before her was not a library ledger. It was the dog-eared copy of "The Art of the Undead."
Alisha smiled, a slow reveal of sharp, white teeth. She tapped lightly on the stained-glass pane.
Agnes looked up. Not startled. Not surprised. A slow, knowing smile spread across her own thin lips. She closed the book, stood, and walked to the window, unlocking it from the inside.
The two women faced each other, the older and the newly made, the scent of old paper and cold earth between them.
“Dr. Vance,” Agnes said, her voice a dry whisper. “I wondered when you’d come. Your thesis committee has been waiting.”