Chapter 5: The Turning
The basement stairs groaned under their weight, a sound Nancy had grown to love. It was the sound of secrets descending, of the world above being left behind. Carol carried the clerk's legs, her blonde hair brushing against her pale cheeks, her crimson eyes fixed on the sleeping woman's face with a predator's reverence.
"She's light," Carol whispered. "Like she's already dreaming."
Nancy smiled, her fangs catching the dim lamplight. "She is. And the dream is about to become so much more."
They laid the woman on the old velvet couch, its burgundy fabric worn soft by decades of hidden sins. The clerk's messy bun had come loose during the hunt, spilling dark brown hair across the cushion. Her glasses were gone, lost somewhere in the parking lot, and without them her face looked younger, more vulnerable. A thin sheen of sweat still clung to her forehead, and the two small puncture wounds on her neck had already closed, leaving only faint red marks like the memory of a kiss.
Nancy knelt beside the couch, her fingers tracing the woman's jawline. "What's your name, little clerk?" she murmured, though the woman couldn't answer. "Doesn't matter. Names are for the living. You'll pick a new one anyway."
Carol settled onto the arm of the couch, her thighs pressing together as she watched. "She reacted so beautifully when I fed on her. The way her body arched, the sounds she made. It was like she was coming undone."
"She was." Nancy stroked the woman's cheek, her touch impossibly gentle for a creature that had drained half a liter of her blood. "The feeding is a release. It strips away everything they've been taught to be, everything they've built to protect themselves. What's left underneath is pure."
The clerk stirred, a soft moan escaping her lips. Her eyes fluttered but didn't open. Nancy felt the woman's pulse under her fingertips, weak but steady. She had time.
"There's a moment," Nancy said, her voice dropping to a husky whisper, "between the last drop of her blood and the first breath of her new life. It's the most intimate thing two women can share. More intimate than sex. More intimate than love." She looked up at Carol, her crimson eyes burning. "I gave it to you. Now we give it to her."
Carol's lips parted, her fangs gleaming. "I want to watch. I want to see her become one of us."
Nancy nodded, then turned back to the clerk. She raised her left wrist to her mouth and bit down, her fangs sinking deep into her own flesh. The pain was a familiar pleasure, sharp and electric, and the blood that welled up was thick and dark, almost black in the dim light. She held her wrist over the woman's parted lips and let the blood drip down, drop by drop, painting her mouth a deep ruby.
"Drink," Nancy whispered, pressing her wrist against the clerk's lips. "Drink and become what you were always meant to be."
For a moment, nothing happened. The clerk's lips remained slack, her breath shallow. Carol leaned forward, her fingers curling into the velvet, her whole body tense with anticipation.
Then the woman's lips moved. A tiny, reflexive suckle. Then another. Her tongue emerged, pink and eager, lapping at the blood that coated Nancy's wrist. Nancy let out a soft hiss of pleasure as the clerk began to drink in earnest, her mouth latching on like a newborn at the breast, her throat working as she swallowed.
Carol moaned, pressing her thighs together. "Oh, fuck. Look at her. She's starving."
"She doesn't know it yet," Nancy said, her voice strained as the clerk pulled harder at her wrist. "But her body remembers. Her blood remembers. We all come from the dark, Carol. We just forgot for a while."
The clerk drank for minutes, her hands coming up to grip Nancy's arm, her fingers digging in with surprising strength. The color began to drain from her face, leaving it pale, then paler still, until it matched the gray-white of Nancy's own skin. Her ears began to shift, the lobes pulling back and tapering into subtle points. Her fingernails grew darker, sharper.
Nancy felt the woman's pulse quicken under her touch, felt the heat building in her veins. The transformation was always violent, always beautiful. The body fought it for a moment, then surrendered.
The clerk's back arched off the couch. Her eyes flew open, and for an instant they were human, wide and terrified, staring up at Nancy's face. Then the crimson flooded in, swallowing the brown, turning them into twin pools of burning red. Her pupils narrowed to vertical slits, and her jaw opened in a silent scream of awakening.
Nancy pulled her wrist away and watched the puncture wounds close, the flesh knitting itself together in seconds. The clerk gasped, her chest heaving, her hands clawing at the velvet. She coughed, spat, and her fangs descended with an audible click.
"Oh," the woman breathed, her voice raw and thick. "Oh, holy fucking shit."
Nancy laughed, low and warm. "Welcome to the night, darling."
The clerk sat up slowly, her head turning as if she were seeing the room for the first time. Her gaze swept over the velvet drapes, the flickering candles, the shadows that seemed to cling to every corner. Then it landed on Carol, and her lips curled into a hungry smile.
"You're like me," she said. It wasn't a question.
"We're all like you now," Carol said, sliding off the arm of the couch to kneel beside her. "You're one of us. Nancy gave you the gift."
The woman turned to Nancy, her crimson eyes searching. "Why? Why me?"
Nancy reached out and cupped her face, tilting it up. "Because I saw you through that window, hunched over your work in the middle of the night, all alone. And I knew you were dying for something you couldn't name. I know that hunger, girl. It was eating me alive for forty-five years. I'm not letting it eat anyone else." She stroked the woman's cheek with her thumb. "You're going to be magnificent. I can feel it."
The clerk's fangs glistened. "What do I do now?"
Nancy smiled, and her eyes flicked to Carol. "Now, we teach you to hunt."