Chapter 2: The First Feeding
Morrigan’s grip on his arm shifted from desperate clinging to something more deliberate as they stepped from the alley mouth onto the bustling sidewalk. She looped her arm through his with a surprising formality, her fingers resting lightly on his forearm as if they were departing a theatre. The contact was cool and firm, an anchor point in the streaming river of nighttime pedestrians.
Thomas blinked, disoriented by the sudden shift in her demeanor. One moment she’d been a terrified creature, the next she walked beside him with a poised, regal grace that seemed to hold the chaotic street at a disdainful distance. Her overt sexuality, announced by every strap and curve of her outfit, was undeniable, but it was framed by an elegance that made the lewd stares of passing men seem crude and foolish. She moved with a mesmerising, hypnotic sway, a wiggle-walk that was less an invitation and more a statement of natural law.
“Just keep walking,” she murmured, her voice low beside his ear. It had lost its frantic edge, settling into a smoky, captivating register. “Do not look at them. Look ahead, as if I am yours and this is normal.”
Thomas tried. He focused on the glowing hotel sign two blocks away, a beacon of normalcy. He was acutely aware of the heads turning, the abrupt silences in conversations, the outright stares from salarymen and tourists alike. A young man on a bicycle nearly swerved into a pole. A strange, unfamiliar feeling bubbled up in Thomas’s chest, cutting through his lingering fear. It was his ego, buoyed absurdly by their attention. Him, Thomas Abernathy, with her on his arm. The sheer, impossible spectacle of it was a kind of armour.
“They see only the shape,” Morrigan said softly, reading his tension. “They do not see the fear. Or the sword. It is a useful mask.”
He gave a stiff nod, his sandals slapping the pavement in time with the sharper, precise clicks of her heels. The hotel lobby was a blessedly quiet, fluorescent space. The night clerk, a young man with round glasses, looked up from his manga and froze, his mouth slightly agape. Thomas managed a weak, nonsensical smile and fumbled for his key card, painfully aware of the clerk’s eyes burning into Morrigan’s back (or more likely her perfectly sculpted ass) as they headed for the stairs.
The climb to the third floor was silent but for their footsteps. His room was at the end of a narrow, musty hall. The air conditioner hummed a dismal, struggling tune. He slid the key card, the little green light flickered, and he pushed the door open onto the cramped, monk-like cell he’d rented. A single, half-empty bottle of sake sat beside his crumpled map of Tokyo.
He barely got the door closed behind them, the soft click of the latch sounding horribly final. He turned, meaning to ask if she wanted water, or to sit, or to explain what the hell happened next.
Morrigan was already on her knees.
The movement was swift, silent, and utterly decisive. The elegant composure she’d maintained on the street shattered into a new kind of intensity. Her liquid green eyes looked up at him, wide and unblinking, as her fingers went to his waist. They worked with a deft, expert speed, unfastening his belt, the button of his trousers, the zipper.
Thomas’s breath hitched, trapped in his throat. All the blood in his body seemed to rush inward, leaving him lightheaded. “Whoa, hey, what are you—”
“You promised,” she interrupted, her voice a low, urgent thrum. It wasn’t seductive. It was stark, a statement of terrifying need. “You said you would take care of my needs. This is the first one. The most basic one. I have nothing left. The fear… it burned everything away.”
Her fingers brushed against him. Thomas jerked back, his shoulders hitting the door. “Wait, just wait a second. You mean this? This is how you… eat?”
“It is a way,” she said, her hands pausing but not retreating. Her gaze was unwavering, desperate, and utterly frank. “Not the only way. But the most direct for now. Essence, life, a spark… it passes on a breath, on a touch, on… this. I am empty, Thomas. The Dhylek’s hunger left a vacuum inside me. I need to be filled with something real or I will start to… unravel.”
He stared down at her, this breathtaking, ancient being kneeling on the cheap tatami mat, amidst his scattered socks and guidebooks. Her earlier terror was gone, replaced by a frighteningly pragmatic hunger. Donovan’s warning echoed in his mind: She will consume the light she says she sees in you.
“You said I had a light,” he whispered, his voice raw.
“You do,” she said, and for a second, her expression softened, something like genuine awe mixing with the need. “It’s why I chose you in that alley. It’s a quiet, stubborn little flame. But I am a shadow now. I need its heat, or I will cease to be.”
She leaned forward, her green hair falling like a curtain. Her breath was warm against his skin. “And you will be glad,” she vowed, her words a hushed promise that vibrated in the small, humid room. “You will be ever so glad you came to my rescue. Let me show you.”
She didn’t wait for his permission this time.
Her fingers found him, already half-hard from adrenaline and shock and the sheer overwhelming reality of her. There was a terrifying authority in her touch. In twenty-seven years, Thomas had had several girlfriends, but none ever approached blow jobs the way this ancient demon woman did. It wasn't just skill, though the skill was otherworldly. It was her total, absorbed focus, treating his manhood with a tender reverence that felt shocking and bizarrely sacred in the fluorescent gloom of the cheap hotel room.
Her mouth was a sublime, velvet heat. She coaxed him to orgasm as if his pleasure were the single most important thing in the universe, a puzzle she was determined to solve with infinite patience and escalating, devastating technique. Her eyes, glowing with that soft, liquid emerald, remained locked on his, watching every twitch, every gasp, reading the subtle shifts in his breath like a scholar deciphering a vital text. All the while, he felt a strange, gentle tugging deep in his gut, not physical but somewhere behind his navel—a soft, pulling sensation that was weirdly pleasant, like the release of a tension he hadn't known he was holding. She was savouring his life force in heady draughts, siphoning the primal energy of his climax as it built, drawing the very spark from him until his knees buckled and he exploded in her mouth with a choked, ragged cry that was equal parts terror and ecstasy.
She took everything he had, swallowing convulsively with her eyes shut in what looked like profound relief. A faint, rosy flush bloomed across her pale skin, starting at her throat and spreading upwards to her cheeks. The trembling in her hands ceased. She drew back slowly, releasing him with a soft, final kiss that felt startlingly tender. She looked up, and for the first time since the alley, something like her true self—not the mask, not the terror, but a core of serene, self-possessed power—glinted in her eyes. It was quickly veiled.
Thomas slumped against the door, his legs like water. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the sudden, ringing silence of the room. The broken air conditioner hummed its one, tired note. He slid down the wood paneling until he was sitting on the tatami, staring at nothing. A profound, tingling exhaustion seeped into his bones, but it was clean, devoid of the clinging fear from before. He felt… used. And strangely, wonderfully empty.
“Okay,” he breathed out, the word hanging in the air. He looked at her, still kneeling gracefully a few feet away. She looked vitalised, composed, almost radiant. “So that’s… lunch.”
A genuine, surprised laugh escaped her. It was a low, musical sound, completely unlike her previous sobs or whispers. “A light snack,” she corrected softly, a ghost of a smile touching her lips. “A necessary one. Thank you, Thomas. Truly.”
He fumbled to refasten his trousers, his fingers clumsy. The mundane act felt absurd. “Don’t mention it. Literally. Please don’t ever mention it to anyone.”
“My secrets are safer than yours,” she said, her voice regaining that smoky, amused quality. She rose fluidly to her feet, not a hint of stiffness in her movements. She glanced around the sparse room, her nose wrinkling slightly at the peeling tatami, the flickering drunk-dragon sign outside the window painting her in pulses of garish red and blue. “This is where you live?”
“For this week,” he said, pushing himself up. The energy drain was real; he felt like he’d run a marathon. “It’s a vacation. Was a vacation.”
She walked to the single, narrow bed and sat on the edge, testing the firmness of the thin mattress. She looked out of place, like a priceless sculpture left in a storage locker. “You said you would take care of me. This room is… insufficient. We are not safe here.”
“We?” Thomas blinked. “He’s gone. You said the sword wouldn’t harm a true human. He backed off.”
“Donovan Baine is a dhampir, a creature of terrible patience and sharper purpose,” she said, her gaze distant. “He did not ‘back off.’ He recalculated. He will watch. He will wait for you to fail, for me to revert, for the moment my need makes me dangerous to you or others. Then he will return, and his argument will be stronger.” She looked directly at him, her earlier vulnerability now layered with a chilling pragmatism. “You promised protection. That requires more than a hotel room key and a… light snack.”
Thomas ran a hand over his face. The jet lag he thought he’d beaten crashed over him anew, mingled with supernatural exhaustion. “What, then? You want me to rent a penthouse? I’m an insurance adjuster from Ohio, Morrigan. My travel budget is… this.” He gestured vaguely at the room.
“I have resources,” she said simply. “Dispersed, obscured. But accessible, if we are careful. I need a sanctuary, a place with certain… wardings. A place where my presence can be muted from those who hunt with living swords.” She looked him up and down, a clinical assessment. “And you need more than a Hawaiian shirt. Your light is dimmer now. I took only what was offered in the moment, but you are depleted. You will need to be replenished.”
Thomas felt a hot flush creep up his neck. “Replenished how, exactly? A steak dinner?”
“Food would be a start,” she said, a faint smile returning. “Actual food.For you. Your physical vessel must be strong to host the essence I require. And for me…” She trailed off, looking thoughtful. “The fear created a void. Sex is one fill. Emotion is another. Experience. The taste of a perfect peach. The feeling of sunlight on skin after a century in shadows. You must live, Thomas, vividly. And I must partake. It is my nature.”
He sank into the room’s single, spindly chair. It groaned under his weight. “So let me get this straight. To protect you from the scary sword guy, I have to… live it up? And let you, what, siphon off my good time?”
“It is a symbiosis,” she said, folding her hands in her lap. The regal posture was back. “I am not a parasite, not in the way he thinks. I am a conduit, an intensifier. With me, your joy will be sharper. Your pleasure, deeper. Your steak will taste of primal fire and sacrifice. Your sadness, when it comes, will be a profound, beautiful melancholy. I take the excess, the ambient energy. You feel more alive for it.” She leaned forward slightly. “Or, I can leave now. I am strong enough to walk out that door. Donovan will find me within days, likely hours, and he will use that terrible weapon on me. The Dhylek will feast, and I will die screaming. And you will return to your tour of temples, wondering if you hallucinated it all in a sake stupor.”
The image of that pulsing bone-white blade flared in his mind. The memory of her desperate weight against him in the alley. He thought of going home, of sitting in his beige cubicle, of the flat, predictable texture of his old life. It now seemed not safe, but dead.
“What’s the first step?” he asked, his voice quiet.
She stood, a smooth, unhurried motion. “First, we leave this place. It is watched, or will be. There is a private club in Ginza. It has certain protections and discretion is its currency. We will go there.” She glanced at his small suitcase, open and spilling out socks and guidebooks. “Do you own any clothing that is not a cartoon of fruit?”
“It’s pineapples,” he said, defensive.
“They are still fruit,” she replied, heading for the door. “Bring what you have. We will acquire more suitable things. And Thomas?” She paused, her hand on the doorknob, looking back at him over her shoulder. The flickering neon lit her profile in red and blue. “Do not look so grim. You saved a damsel in distress. Now you get to keep her.” A sly, authentic smirk, the first he’d seen, played on her lips. “The stories humans tell never get to this part, do they? The part where you have to take her shopping.”
A reluctant laugh escaped him. It felt strange in his chest. “They usually end with a kiss.”
“We have already moved well beyond a kiss,” she said, opening the door. The hall light framed her in a mundane yellow glow. “Now hurry. I can already feel the weight of his attention gathering at the edges of this district. The hunter is thinking. We must stop him from finishing his thought. Because that's just a moment away from finishing ME.”