Michelle and Stephen looked up at each other across the lifeless body of the woman they had just feasted on. Her short black dress was torn in the front from shoulder to shoulder and tiny rivulets of blood trickled down her chest and pooled on her stomach.
"You have a real gift for finding the tastiest victims," Michelle complimented, licking the girl's blood from between her fingers.
"Well I learned from the best," Stephen admitted with a wink. He leaned down and sunk his fangs into the soft flesh of the girl's neck and took one last thorough drink. His body tingled with pleasure as it was powered by her delicious blood.
"Haven't you had enough yet?" Michelle asked. Stephen shook his head.
"I can never have enough blood. Or enough of you."
"You are too sweet to me," Michelle told him, batting her eyelashes.
"Never sweet enough," Stephen insisted. He smiled and pushed the corpse toward Michelle.
"Are you done?"
She nodded as she looked down at the body between them.
"I wonder what her name was and why she was out tonight."
Stephen shrugged and got to his feet.
"Don't you ever wonder that, Stephen? About the people we eat? Don't you ever wonder who they are or what their story is?"
"No," Stephen said simply. "I sat alone on a bar stool for years and no one bothered to ask for my name or my story. Why should I care about anyone else's?"
"I bothered to ask," Michelle told him, a hint of sadness in her voice.
"Yes you did," Stephen agreed, taking her hands and pulling her up to stand next to him.
"And that is why I can't ever let you go."
Stephen sat alone in the darkness mindlessly flipping through the pages of a novel he had read at least eight times. The record machine was skipping again but he didn't care enough to get up and fix it. Cicadas were beginning their evening song from the trees outside and the very last of the sun's rays would soon disappear.
"Darby and Bailey have been gone a long time," he thought to himself. "They must really be hungry."
Stephen knew he would soon be hungry as well. Hopefully Darby would remember to fill a bag to bring home to him. He thought of the early days as a young vampire when he would yearn for the cover of darkness and the thrill of the hunt, the overwhelming sense of power and pride that came from overtaking an innocent victim and watching the life drain from their eyes.
He thought of Michelle and her pale white fingers delicately caressing him as he satiated his thirst with their kills. He remembered the way her soft pink lips felt when they would kiss and lick the blood from each other's mouths. The pain and hurt he had suffered after losing Beth slowly faded away and was replaced by new love, new strength and new hope.
And then suddenly things had begun to change. Michelle stopped smiling and grew distant. She didn't want to go on hunts with him anymore. And then there was that one horrible day...
Stephen jerked himself out of his reverie. Marching across the room, he grabbed the skipping record and smashed it against the wall. The pieces fell all over the floor and then the room was silent.
"I'm getting hungry," Stephen thought to himself, trying desperately to push away all thoughts of Michelle. He was hoping for some new blood but the girls had been gone too long and he was getting hungrier by the minute.
Grabbing the ring of keys from his desk, he marched up the stairs. He had really been enjoying drinking from that one prisoner. What was his name? Timothy? Trevor? Darby had said it several times but he could never remember.
"What does it matter anyway?" Stephen thought to himself. No one had even come looking for the boy. He couldn't be that important.
As Stephen inserted the old rusty key into the lock of the door at the top of the stairs, the sound of another door slamming made him stop. Loud footsteps echoed overhead and he could hear a woman's voice screaming incoherent words.
The footsteps got closer and closer and before he had the chance to finish unlocking the door a fist began furiously pounding on it.
"Where is he?" the same voice screamed, sounding angrier and more frazzled than before.
"Where is who?" Stephen asked, withdrawing the key from the lock.
"You know damn well who," the voice shrieked. Stephen identified it as Bailey and was surprised. She had never dared to speak with so much force to him or Darby before.
"I'm sure I don't know," Stephen insisted.
"Don't play games with me, Stephen," Bailey ordered, punctuating every word with a pound of her fist.
"Darby said you locked up my friend Thomas and you're going to tell me where he is right now!"
"Ah, Thomas," Stephen thought. "So that's his name."
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