Chapter 8: First Blood
The world had a new texture. Brenda stood behind the main library’s admin desk, her fingers resting on the cool laminate surface. Every whispered conversation from the study carrels, every rustle of a page, every footfall on the marble floor echoed in her skull with crystalline clarity. She could smell the ink from the printers, the faint lemon of the cleaning spray, the wool of a student’s sweater three aisles over. And underneath it all, the siren song: the warm, salt-and-iron scent of blood pumping through a hundred living hearts.
It was a symphony of temptation. She found her tongue running over the points of her canines, a newly instinctual motion. The prim cardigan she wore felt like a costume. I died over a desk, she thought, a dark thrill curling in her stomach. Now I live.
The landline phone on the desk chirped. The sound was a razor scratch on her new senses. She picked it up.
“Yes?”
“Basement office. Now.” Agnes’s voice was a drop of ink in water, effortless and commanding. The line went dead.
Brenda moved. Her walk was different—a fluid, silent glide that felt more natural than her old, clicking steps. She passed students bent over books, their heads down, utterly unaware of the predator moving among them. The thought made her mouth water.
The stairs to the basement were poorly lit, the air growing cooler, damper. The hum of the fluorescents was a drone in her ears. She reached the heavy metal door marked ‘Archives & Head Librarian’. She could hear things now, from behind it. A thumping rhythm. A muffled, wet sound. A low, pained whimper.
She pushed the door open.
The scene was illuminated in the stark, unforgiving light of Agnes’s desk lamp. A young man—a student, wiry, with a geology textbook spilled on the floor beside him—was pinned against the metal shelving unit. Agnes had him by the throat, his feet dangling a few inches off the concrete. His eyes were wide, tear-tracked, pleading silently over Agnes’s shoulder. Agnes’s mouth was buried in the junction of his neck and shoulder. Her body was pressed against his, one thigh hiked up between his legs, rocking slowly, rhythmically, as she fed. The student’s jeans were tented, a pathetic, instinctual response to the terror and the strange, invasive intimacy of the attack.
Brenda’s own breath caught. Not in horror. In hunger. The scent of blood—hot, coppery, alive—flooded the room. It was the most delicious thing she had ever smelled. Her fangs descended fully, a sharp, aching pressure. She heard the wet, sucking pulls as Agnes drank, and a corresponding pulse throbbed low in her own belly.
Agnes’s eyes opened, meeting Brenda’s over the boy’s shuddering shoulder. They were black pools, lit with red embers. She detached her mouth with a soft, wet pop, a single trickle of blood tracing a path down her chin. The boy mewled, his head lolling.
“The Dean’s nephew,” Agnes said casually, as if discussing a troublesome inter-library loan. “Came looking for a rare map. Found something rarer.” She lowered him, letting him slump, semi-conscious, against the shelves. She turned, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, her movements supremely languid. She was dressed in a simple black sheath dress now, sleek and powerful.
She gestured to the other side of the room.
Another student sat tied to a wooden office chair with heavy-duty zip ties. This one was bigger, athletic, with broad shoulders straining against a university hoodie. A strip of duct tape was across his mouth. His eyes, darting between Agnes and the blood-smeared boy by the shelves, were pure animal panic. He strained against his bonds, the chair legs screeching on the concrete.
“Welcome to your first night,” Agnes said, her smile a blade. “Consider him a gift. An orientation. You need to feed, Brenda. The hunger will only sharpen until you do.”
Brenda approached the tied student. His fear was a scent now, acrid and sweat-slick. It mixed with the blood-scent, creating a perfume that made her senses sing. She circled him, her hand trailing over his shoulders, feeling the powerful muscles quiver beneath the fabric. He jerked away from her touch as if burned.
“Shhh,” she murmured, a sound she’d used a thousand times to quiet a noisy patron. It felt different now. Predatory. “It’s alright.”
It was a lie, and the delicious wrongness of it thrilled her. This was nothing like the forced, awkward couplings of her mortal life. This was power, stripped bare. Her former self, the meticulous associate librarian, was a shed skin. This new creature wanted to taste, to dominate.
She leaned down, her lips close to his ear. “You’re going to help me,” she whispered, her breath cool on his skin. “And then it will be over.”
She straightened and looked at Agnes, who gave a slight, approving nod.
With a sudden, vicious pull, Brenda ripped the front of his hoodie and the t-shirt beneath it, exposing his chest. He grunted behind the tape, his pectorals heaving. Her nails, no longer merely human, traced down his sternum, leaving faint red welts. She unfastened his jeans, her movements deliberately slow. He shook his head wildly, a desperate, muffled noise escaping him.
She yanked his jeans and boxers down to his thighs. His cock, flaccid with terror, lay against his leg. Brenda looked at it, then up at his terrified eyes. A cruel curiosity took hold. She wrapped her cool fingers around him, pumping roughly. He flinched, his body betraying him as a traitorous, reluctant stiffness began to grow under her ministrations.
“See?” Brenda said, more to herself than to him. “Your body knows what it’s for. Even now.”
She hiked up her own sensible skirt, not bothering to remove her tights, simply tearing the crotch aside. She was already wet, a slick, cold arousal born of the hunt, the scent of blood, and the absolute control. She guided his now-hard cock to her entrance. She paused, savoring the moment—the fear in his eyes, the pounding of his heart in her ears, the way Agnes watched, a proud maker observing her progeny.
Then she sank down onto him in one brutal, sheathing motion.
He cried out, the sound muffled by the tape. He was big, and the invasion was sudden and unyielding. Brenda gasped, her head falling back. The sensation was not about pleasure, not yet. It was about fullness. About possession. She began to ride him, her hips pistoning, the chair creaking violently with each downward thrust. The slap of her flesh against his, the ragged gasps from them both, filled the basement.
“Look at him,” Agnes commanded, her voice close. She had moved to watch. “Look into his eyes while you take his life.”
Brenda forced her gaze down, locking onto the student’s wide, glazing eyes. She saw the exact moment his terror began to blur into a helpless, involuntary response. His hips twitched upward to meet her descent. A tear leaked from the corner of his eye. She rode him harder, faster, using the strength in her new body to drive him deeper, to chase the coiling tightness in her own core. This was fucking as annihilation.
Her climax approached, a cold wave cresting. She leaned forward, her mouth hovering over his throbbing neck. She could see the vein jumping beneath the skin.
“Now, Brenda,” Agnes hissed. “Take it. All of it.”
Brenda’s fangs sank into his neck as her orgasm ripped through her. The two sensations were inseparable—the piercing ecstasy between her legs and the piercing of his flesh. The first spurt of blood into her mouth was transcendent. It was heat and power and life, flooding her, more potent than any mortal pleasure. She drank in deep, gulping pulls, her hips still grinding against him in diminishing waves.
His body bucked beneath her, a final, weak spasm. The vivid, coppery taste filled her, saturated her. She felt his heartbeat, once frantic, stutter and slow under her lips. It grew fainter, a fading echo, as the glorious heat of his blood spread through her veins, mending the last lingering shadows of her humanity.
When it was done, she detached, licking the wound closed with a tongue that felt newly sensitive. She climbed off him, his now-limp cock slick with her fluids. She stood, breathing evenly, not a hair out of place. The hunger was gone, replaced by a profound, humming satisfaction. The student’s head lolled against his chest, his skin pale and waxy in the lamplight.
Agnes came forward, placing a hand on Brenda’s cheek. Her thumb smeared a stray drop of blood from Brenda’s lip. “Beautiful,” she whispered. “You are a natural.”
Brenda looked from the drained boy in the chair to the other student, now weakly crawling towards the door. Agnes followed her gaze.
“He’s for the furnace,” Agnes said dismissively. “The janitor is… understanding. He’ll be ash in the morning, and the nephew will wake up with a bad dream and a mark he’ll hide with a scarf.” She linked her arm with Brenda’s, leading her towards the door. “Come. We have a library to run. And the night is long. So many books need… special handling.”
Brenda walked beside her, the taste of blood and power a permanent stain on her new tongue. The basement door swung shut behind them, locking away the silent, drained things in the dark. Upstairs, the ordinary world of whispered study and rustling pages waited, unaware that its keepers had changed. Forever.