Damnation

Sanguine 1: Damnation Blayne Edwards All rights reserved.

Copyright ©2005 by Blayne Edwards

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Chapter One “I’m infected.” Madeline could barely hear his words. Nothing could break the barrier of sheer desire he’d managed to wrap around her. She could only remember the simplest of things. His name. Micah. An agreement to go home with him. The fact that he had already told her they wouldn’t be alone. They were already inside her. Both of them. A cock glided back and forth within the tight slickness of her sex while the virus carved a pathway to hell through her veins. And yet he hadn’t penetrated her in any way, so neither of them had started the journey to find her soul. But they were like that. The research had shown the virus made sexual pheromones surge in a Vamp’s body when he needed to feed. It was a surge that gave off a hormonal pull capable of drawing his victims physically to him. Capable of seducing them sans effort. Granting him the power to emit low frequency vibrations that could manipulate, read and even transmit thoughts. “If you want to leave, I suggest you go now.” This warning she had somehow heard. But Madeline didn’t want to go. She had known she wouldn’t. Especially with Micah as her host. So she ignored the man and continued to enjoy what his illness had to offer. Gently, the nick of teeth against flesh on the inside of her thigh forced her to focus on what he’d said. Madeline tugged her leg away from him just slightly, and noticed the way her stocking had dropped below her knee. Long, slender, masculine fingers reached for it and skillfully pulled it back up to its proper thigh high position. Her muscles quivered.

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“It knows I’m immune,” she whispered. “It knows you can’t infect me.” The man now between her legs, bathing her clit with his tongue, didn’t nod or speak. But he didn’t have to. “Yes, Madeline… I know.” The voice of the virus was one she would never forget. Silent -- without a real throat of its own -- it invaded a woman’s mind where it planted inhuman yet strangely sensual images. Images rude and molesting to the imagination and filled with perversions and desires risqué enough to offend even the most sexually liberated of women. But neither the mood nor the images could be called pornographic while under the influence of the virus. It was a web of intrigue it wove. A mood of extreme arousal. And as the vibrations and warmth of viral pheromones began to flow through her body, Madeline could find nothing distasteful in the things she would be willing to do for it or this man. “How many immune women have you had?” she managed to say while she watched the man delicately run his finger over the scratch his bite had inflicted, and then lick the minuscule amount of blood from its tip. “Thousands.” The hair on the back of her neck stood on end at the arrogant tone of the virus and at the firm pull of the man’s mouth when it returned to her pussy. When she whimpered, as if sensing and enjoying such conflicted arousal in a woman, the virus laughed while it brushed its own warm, unseen tongue across a nipple that wasn’t even exposed. Madeline shivered, and then grew tense when the juices of her cunt surged into the man’s mouth. “A Vamp is by necessity a predatory creature, Madeline,” Micah hummed, the tips of his fingers stroking and petted the lips of her sex. “You of all people should know what we are.” As she considered the truth in his words, Madeline felt his tongue go to the

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scratch on her leg. Immediately the unseen beast at her breast latched onto her nipple and quickly sucked it inside the wet, nonexistent warmth of a mouth. She gasped and reached down to find the aching slit between her legs as the man freed her wound of any remaining discoloration or hint of blood. Madeline knew it was the beast, and not the man, who made her cry out. Granted, it was the warm licking motion of a human tongue sweeping from the slight wound they had inflicted up to the remaining length of her leg. But it was the virus that shot into her. Entering her as if it had some right. And immediately upon entering her, it headed straight for her mind. The low, pulsing throb of a profound mental and physical climax -- so far the only benefit that had been found in the disease -- started to grow deep within her body. Madeline breathed, trying to maintain some control over her body. But then Micah stroked firmly at her clit, pulled her fingers away from her cunt and offered them to his mouth before she could speak. Coherency flew from her mind. She wrestled for control, barely managing. “Did you offer to let all of them leave?” Blue-green eyes, fine cut jade submerged in the most vulgar sky, examined her. The jet black lashes blinked slowly before the virus allowed him to reply. “Yes.” She wanted so badly to bleed for him. The virus whispered to her that her blood was already coursing through his veins. Her essence and soul had already joined his and they were already one. All that was left was the physical. The taking of her life. “Are you staying?” She heard the unspoken question through ears that had already begun to drown in the depths of their pleasure. To stay with them. To let them feed from her until they had destroyed her with their disease. Madeline could think of nothing else she’d rather do. “I want to,” she breathed. “I want…” “You want it inside you,” Micah finished for her. “You want the pleasure it can bring you even if it means dying to have it.” He was right. Something in the recesses of Madeline’s consciousness still heard

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this. But it also heard what had not yet been said. “The virus is brilliant, Madeline,” he murmured. His fingers slowly stroked the inside of her thigh to finally find the warm, wet slit of her cunt and then he delved in. “It knows how to get what it needs. And it doesn’t care who it destroys to get it.” Only one thing could account for the blasphemous words the man had managed to slip past the censoring powers of his disease. “You still have compassion for the women you kill.” Had death been given a living face, the one in front of her would be it. “I don’t feel anything while I’m killing them, Madeline. The virus won’t let me.” The honesty and humanity in his claim stunned her for a moment. But no sooner had the trance-breaking words left his mouth than the virus began its silent damage control. And so Madeline was taken once again. “That’s only so you can enjoy it all, Madeline,” the virus soothed. “No man can make you come like I can.” Micah’s breath warmed the skin between her legs. The physical man helped her tormentor seduce their next meal. “I’ll use his body,” the virus continued. “I’ll use his cock to please you… his tongue… his fingers. I’ll make him harder and needier than he’s ever been… and then together, we’ll fuck you. The both of us, Madeline. We’ll give you a satisfaction so complete it resembles death.” The sentence was punctuated by a warm, roughened, human thumb flicking over her clit. Madeline shifted and somewhat unconsciously spread her legs to allow the man’s fondling of her to continue. “Because I will die,” Madeline softly countered the virus. “You can’t live inside me and you know that. I’m immune and that makes me of no use to you.” She closed her eyes, a slight moan escaping as the virus directed the man to push two thick, warm fingers deep inside her. Madeline whimpered as they found the swollen and eager-to-be-milked area inside her pussy and dragged teasingly across it. “You’re simply a broken womb to me.” She could hear it smiling behind its words.

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“You’re a barren wife, Madeline. Your immunity prevents you from carrying my young inside you. You will have no real value when the blood of every capable human female pulses thick -inseminated with me -- and the world is ruled by me and mine.” Her eyes opened in shock at such a callous and unholy claim. Madeline’s gaze sought contact with the man who unwillingly housed her offender and then she spoke. “Bastard.” “Yes,” Micah replied. Without missing a beat, his fingers reached back inside her to torture the throbbing wall of her cunt. This time, Madeline fought the unnatural waves of pleasure as he urged her body to release. But then she helplessly begged those waves to stay. “Why is it letting you offer me the chance to leave?” Madeline observed the man and his actions closely as she waited for an answer. It was obvious he was being commanded to perform, controlled by his disease. Still, she could see the telltale signs of his arousal while he continued to encourage a rush of female cum from her pussy, but they were definitely not those of a man possessed by mere sexual need. Micah’s pupils had dilated, creating an all-encompassing black void where compassionate life had once lived. His breathing mirrored the rapid strum of a man in fight or flight reaction when he is not the one pursued. It intoxicated her mind when his mouth began to lap and suck and nurse the flesh between her legs. His body, stringent cords of flesh and muscle flexing, was obviously readying itself to strike when he could no longer restrain his appetite with the taste of her cunt. Poised for the destruction of what it would soon devour. The virus could already taste her blood in his mouth. “How are you showing me pity?” She posed the question again, sensing that in anticipation of feeding, his plague was too far beyond reason to have heard her single inquiry. Her nails, embedded lightly on the side of his throat as they delighted in the salty whisperings of what he’d coaxed from her sex, finally broke his state. But only for a moment.

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The answer to her question was in his eyes. “And how many barren wives has it killed?” The life was all but gone from the man before her. He didn’t answer. She noticed what had been human just a minute before now resembled something else as the virus began to manipulate the actions of a man pleasing a woman to a predator feasting on prey. It demanded she take this example of its pleasure, leaving her no choice but to want more. Finally, the fingers found their mark. They flexed, pulled forward and down, and in doing so, purged the swollen wall of her sex. Madeline’s body was milked, dragged forcefully into release -- an ocean of feminine taste and smell spilling from her. She found herself crying out in the desire to take even more. The man, he would probably always be one at some level, lapped hungrily at the results while Madeline’s body pulsed and wept. Her fingers wound themselves gratefully into his hair, wanting nothing more than for both of them to savor the preciousness of finding such intimacy with another human being. But the virus pressed its lips to her ear. “I killed them all.” Teeth. Evolved. Sharpened. Dragged against the center of her sex this time, traveling up and down the lips of her pussy, skillfully, stroking with obvious male sexual intent, yet nipping at each pass. Each bite growing more urgent. Deliberate. But none of them taking what she knew his virus craved from her. Madeline shifted; his hands clutched her thighs as the virus made him move to wedge his mouth more firmly between her legs and then bring his tongue to the top of her cunt. Her clit, now bared by her own fingers in her body’s eagerness to take every pleasure from his disease and offer nourishment in return, caught his attention. He sucked the nub before sinking his teeth just a little harder into the flesh above it. The sting she was rewarded with this time was much stronger than any of the others so far, but not the final blow. She didn’t know him, but still guessed it wasn’t his way.

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Micah would not be so gentle when he fed. “I want to stay,” she heard in a voice that although growling in a viral timbre, she suspected was her own. And just as it had promised -- and as Micah had warned -- its offering to her began. The virus infecting his soul surged violently through her veins as it sensed her willingness to nourish it, and Madeline found everything around and inside her disappearing in its wake. Gripping the carpet on either side of her, Madeline struggled for breath while the pulsing dance of disease and sex moved to take complete control of her body. Micah’s mouth left her pussy and traveled up the expanse of her belly. She felt his breath on her breasts. Her neck. The hollow of her throat. “I know you do…” The waves of pleasure now began their ascent into her mind as she reached for him, joining his lips to hers. It was her turn to savor. And his lips, seasoned with the taste of her body, would be the feast. At the tense set of his jaw and careful restraint of teeth, Madeline could only wonder how long it would be before his hunger grew stronger than his self-control. Her own control, and the fear of what she was about to become, had already fallen by the wayside. “I want you inside me,” she sighed. “Yes.” “I want to be inside you.” “Yesss…” Madeline moved and his hands followed so when she rose up to her knees, his fingers effortlessly glided inside her body. Deep within her. Gripping his shoulders, Madeline considered they shouldn’t be as hard and warm as they were, belonging to a man who’d been ill for so long. The sting of a rather severe and very pronounced bite on her nipple corrected her assumption. Firm, strong upper arms were there to hold her steady as Madeline moved onto him. Circling on his fingers first. Grinding and arousing herself so the walls of her

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pussy would be thoroughly wet and completely willing to take every inch of his erection. As her eyes bore into his and her body clenched and swallowed as much of his hand as it could, Madeline spoke to the man. “I want as much of you inside me as I can take.” Micah didn’t reply. He couldn’t. But his possessor had no problem returning her erotic banter. “You want his prick, don’t you, Madeline?” it teased like the devil himself. “You want every inch of his beautiful, engorged cock sliding deep inside your cunt, don’t you?” Madeline tried to shove away the arousal and pleasure the virus induced in her with its barrage of erotic images and feathery touches. But the icy fire it had started was too intense, quickly spreading throughout her body, for her to simply ignore. “It doesn’t even matter that I made his dick this hard for you. Not him but me, does it, Madeline?” “No.” Madeline hated herself for letting the word slip from her mouth, especially when she opened her eyes and discovered Micah’s expression. She quickly found a way to salvage the situation. “I made him this way. Not you.” As if for a brief moment the man in him had control of his desire, Micah’s erection suddenly bulged at her comment and Madeline watched it flex behind his zipper. Grateful that her sentiment had worked, she reached for the organ with hands unsteady by desire. Her fingers examined it, traced the outline of his shaft through the cloth of his pants. It was her touch passing over the head and shaft of his cock, and not the beast flowing through him that was causing his arousal to grow even larger. “I made this,” she boasted to her unseen enemy. “And I want all of it inside me.” His mouth came back to hers. His lips, those no doubt of a man who’d been very talented in the art of sexual pleasure even before his illness, took hers with a pressure and intimacy Madeline had never felt before. Micah burrowed within her mouth as he

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had between her thighs. Deeply. Firmly. As if yearning for a place to live or a place where at least part of him might finally die. But his strength began to weaken. Madeline pulled away to judge a stance that had told of a man in extreme sexual need just moments earlier. It had wilted into a new kind of need that tugged at her heart. “You’re hungry.” His fingers drove deeper inside her at the sentiment, causing her to gasp when he raked her clit with his thumb. “You’re fighting it, aren’t you?” she mused. “That’s why you’re so tense and quiet.” Micah nodded. Slightly. “I want to be the only one pleasing you.” Madeline leaned into him, snuggling closer due to the sexy generosity so clear in his own desires. She smiled at the man who’d been somewhat left behind so far in their lovemaking and brushed his face softly with her own. After he nuzzled her for a moment, kissing and nipping without biting into the skin on her neck, she returned the action before taking an earlobe into her mouth and suckling it. “I just wish we were alone,” Micah stated hoarsely, the strain of some unseen fight still tainting his voice. Madeline sighed in agreement and ran her fingertips down the side of Micah’s face before whispering, “So do I.” But they weren’t alone. Madeline knew that. Just as she knew the virus was boiling in a hungry pot of impatience somewhere inside his skin. She was aware of this because she found it once again wrapping its power around her. And because Madeline could see that in the man before her a helplessness was growing larger. “See how hard I’ve made him, Madeline.” As if taking its cue to speak, the virus murmured out to her through Micah’s eyes. “Touch what I’ve created for you, my beautiful, useless whore.” Ignoring the virus’s claims, Madeline tugged at Micah’s zipper and was rewarded by the velvet tip of his prick anxiously springing out for her.

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“I made him like thisss…” the virus hissed. “It wasn’t you. I made him hard and horny for YOU. Now I want you to climb on top of his cock and ride him for me while I watch.” Was it merely the power of the virus controlling her actions? Or was her need simply the result of the pheromones in which Micah’s body seemed to have bathed? Madeline wasn’t sure of either thing as she stroked his length and then pulled his fingers from her body so she could do the very thing she’d been ordered to do. She straddled his erection and felt the hot length of his shaft slide deep inside her. “Take some of me to keep it quiet for a while.” His cock spasmed inside her at those words, the action making her grip his shoulders tighter. She grabbed his arms -- hard -- as she moved on him. Her nails punctured his skin as her pussy enjoyed being filled by him. Bringing her hands to his face, one at a time, Madeline attempted to satiate the virus’s hunger with blood from his own wounds. “Take just a little,” she encouraged as he greedily cleaned her fingers of himself. “Take just a little of me and maybe it will leave us alone.” Micah’s mouth bit down on her fingers, and she cried out in pain as she rode his prick. He sucked her wound voraciously. Greedily. Fighting for the minute amount of sustenance he could get from such a meager meal -- a meal that would not be enough to feed the virus inside him. A monster that destroyed red blood cells as fast as his body could make them. Madeline’s heart surged in compassion at the sight of the creature who needed something from her, from someone, that he couldn’t live without. He needed her blood as badly as she needed it herself. And in order to let them have a moment alone, free of the intrusive sound of his sickness’s voice, Madeline was willing to give him that. “You need more, Micah,” Madeline said as her pussy ground down around his erection and her clit throbbed, aroused within his bristly patch of hair. “But you aren’t feeding him, darling.” The virus laughed at her words. “You’re feeding me. And you’re right. I need MORE.” Madeline closed her eyes and shivered at the pleasant, unholy jolt that ran

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through her entire body immediately following the vibration of words. She then started in horror when she opened them and once again found Micah. His skin had grown sallow in the span of just a minute or so. The ruddy color of health and vitality was literally draining from his face as Madeline watched. The virus was growing angry. Impatient. And anemic-like symptoms were present as the result of its feeding frenzy, rendering him helpless within moments if he didn’t replenish the red blood cells it devoured. His refusal to properly feed from her had cost him dearly. “Micah, you need more blood.” He knew this. His body, although still firm and warm to the touch, had already begun to lose its will to live. Madeline noticed the strength slipping away from him even as she rocked back and forth on his swollen prick. “I’m hungry, Madeline,” the virus growled. “Either feed me, or I’ll gorge myself on him.” “Take more of me,” she begged Micah, scared of the virus’s demands. Her body started to flex within itself at the insistence of his cock deep within her and of his virus flowing from her fresh wounds. So she lowered herself more, pushed down harder. She pressed her clit against him, aching for him to take more of her, so he could both live and give her more of the virus that would allow her to come. “Please take just a little more, Micah.” His breath caressed her ear while the massive erection continued to pulse hard and demanding inside her. His illness offered her a pleasure she’d never felt before. Madeline felt all resistance leave her body. Her mind. And finally, her very will to live was gone. “I’m about to be more a part of you than any man has ever been, Madeline,” came the insidious voice. “Are you ready to take all of me, my love?” Madeline nodded helplessly. Lips like warm velvet razors, shielding teeth sharpened into weapons by a sickness that had no natural right to consume as it did, pressed into her neck. The outer

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layer of her skin was compromised somewhat. But Micah didn’t puncture enough to draw blood. And so Madeline’s body refused to climax. “Help me, Madeline,” the virus now pleaded, negotiating with her desire. “Make him give you what you want.” Madeline struggled for breath as a battle ensued between her sex and her heart. Her pussy screamed that she take in more of the virus so it might come hard around the throbbing length inside it while her more sympathetic desires tried to remain with the man. “You need more,” she repeated in the husky, throaty silk of a woman merging with a passion so intense that female and male had begun to collide within her own body. It seemed even the minute amount of the virus already inside her had started to make her blood and sex willing to spill out in order to reach him. Madeline could only imagine what more it had to offer. “You can take more and still stop in time, can’t you, Micah?” Yesss… Her pussy contracted with a brutal intensity provoked by just one word of the virus. A silent, insidious voice promising a pleasure she’d never imagined possible. Skin heated and then chilled in anticipation while his virus continued to drive her closer to the brink. Madeline ground harder against Micah. Then heard deep within her womb the curses of the viral offspring never to be born, leading her down the final pathway into death’s home. As for the man who was with her, he rumbled what sounded like a guttural desire to take much, much more than the warmth and envelopment of her body from her. Micah pulled his mouth away from her wound. “I can stop, Madeline, but only if I stop now.” Madeline cried out to him when his mouth left her neck and the virus stopped flowing within her. She cried out to herself, begging for mercy from the sexual torment

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which his scent, his eyes and this abomination of nature residing within his veins had forced onto her. Her body writhed more from agony than excitement. “I need…” she gasped to him as she ground her cunt around his cock, but cut her words and actions short even while her body cried out for more. To ask him for her pleasure would be inhuman of her. The beautiful creature underneath her was starving. Madeline’s body was aching for mere sexual release. But it was an ache that was deeper and more controlling than any she’d ever known. She ground herself once again onto his cock until the very tip of its head found the top of her womb and then pressed her neck to his mouth. “I know,” Micah soothed into her ear, his hands and fingers caressing her arms and shoulders. He pressed her down more firmly around his erection, grinding himself into her. Trying to give her what she couldn’t ask for and wouldn’t achieve without a price she shouldn’t have to pay. The breath of a human man and a lover’s kisses trailed down her throat. “Madeline,” the virus hummed deep inside her mind. “Don’t stop, Madeline… help me.” “You need more,” she cooed to Micah in response to the plea she’d just heard. “I want you to have more of me.” “Yes,” it murmured, bringing Micah’s head up, and pressing the firm outline of his very decidedly male lips into her neck. Madeline felt the sweet pressure of intimacy and the prick of her skin as his mouth sucked harder than even the most passionate of kisses, barely splitting the tender flesh of her throat with pressure alone. “Hmm… Yesss…” Most pronounced was the tongue. The one that had evolved within the scope of the virus’s demands was very talented in its ability to stimulate flesh and to produce fluids even from the smallest of wounds. Its purpose and skill developed to aid the host it occupied with his obtaining and consuming of precious lifeblood. The benefits of this mutation Madeline hadn’t considered before tonight. Stroking. Teasing. A warm, moist tip teasing the insignificant wound he’d

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inflicted and then retreating to lick away what it had aroused from her. Madeline sensed when more of the virus entered her, nerve and blood and muscle cells pulsing together in a song of death she longed to hear completely. The breath Micah drew was merely to keep the virus alive. His pulse was transportation for his disease. His cock filled her sex in the way the beast inside him demanded. Vamps existed for the purpose of giving this monster life. But Madeline’s heart had somehow glimpsed the tenderness of Micah’s soul. They were not the undead. They were not some abhorrence destined to be hunted and killed by fantasy bounty hunters and comic book legends. They were vampires in the most literal sense of the word, but they were also something no one would have feared had they lived in that fantasy realm. They were living men. Human. They were men, and they lived in a world where HIV had been eradicated by way of a scientific miracle. Just like some of its most frightening predecessors, polio or smallpox, a simple HIV-based vaccine was well on its way of ridding the world of AIDS. But it was a miracle vaccine that hadn’t come easily without more than its fair share of disappointments and failures. And a very high price. Slowly, through a haze of seduction and disease, Madeline started to realize who she was with. “It was your research. You developed the Batch Six vaccine to prevent HIV,” Madeline noted quietly. He answered only by avoiding her eyes. “And you used yourself as a test subject in the first five.” “Yes,” Micah whispered. “No one in their right mind would have volunteered to be injected by an experimental AIDS vaccine,” he added while threading his fingers through her hair. “That’s why they call you the Head Vamp.” Her somber comment was more to herself than to the man in her arms. “You spread the virus without knowing what else to do when its hunger struck.”

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“And now I have more control over mankind than AIDS ever did, Madeline.” The entity chuckled after its remark, and Micah pulled her even closer to him. “Not all of mankind,” Madeline refuted. “It’s not until a woman gets pregnant that the hormonal changes destroy her immunity to the virus.” “But you’re not a mother, are you, Madeline?” Micah whispered. “No.” Go… Madeline heard the word -- the whispered warning -- but it had not been in a voice she recognized. Within seconds however, Micah seemed to agree with it by pushing her, forcing her sex and body away from him. Shoving her mouth and bleeding flesh away from his hunger. “Go!” Very clearly Micah’s voice this time. Madeline opened her eyes and fell into the drowning pools where her own soul longed to swim. He was fighting the virus inside him. And she’d been chosen for an ally. “Get out!” Her breath rushed in and out of her lungs, her blood disappointed to have been spared the journey it still longed to make. Madeline pulled herself off of him and stood before gazing down at the trembling man at her feet. “Don’t try and find me again,” he ordered. She watched him grip his hands to keep them from showing his hunger as he spoke. “And never allow anyone else like me to touch you, Madeline.” She reached to stroke the side of his face and he winced. Not to have done so would have seemed cold. But attempting a true human touch and companionship with Micah, it appeared, was cruel. “Just go.” Softly this time. Defeated. Madeline watched him struggle to rise as she made her way to the door of his home. Micah was a man so many in her world detested due to an illness that was not his fault. They hated him for his mere existence and because

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they saw him as something inhuman and foul. But these opinions were unfounded. Madeline glanced back at the man to whom she’d almost given her life for the sake of pleasure and compassion. She found no scourge of nature residing in this home. No horrible monster stared back at her from his famished state. In fact, Madeline could see that no such evil had ever resided inside his veins. All that now truly existed in this man, it would seem, was loneliness.

Chapter Two Micah sat alone in the darkest corner of the restaurant. He’d never liked being conspicuous. The upstarts of recent had defiled so many of the places and habits he’d indulged in when he’d first become infected. It sickened him now to mix among them, no matter how delightful the tastes they could offer. But it was here he’d first seen her. His eyes, and all others, had found her the minute she’d come through the door. She had walked in among them untouched. No one had dared to approach her, even those most experienced and profane. No one else had lived with the virus long enough to disrespect or rival the first carrier of their curse and Micah’s steady gaze on her had told them she was to be his. The virus had captured her attention by only mentioning her favorite childhood toy. “How could you know that?” Micah had seen eyes bright with excitement and a smile as she marveled in what had to be mock acceptance and/or approval of him. And he wished for the first time in years that he’d been wrong about them all. “It was just a guess. I took you for a woman who would have loved that doll.” “I did.” She smiled, never letting go of him with her eyes. “What was your favorite?” He reached out and touched her then. A simple brush of his hand across her shoulder, appearing to remove some unwanted lint, but in reality, the virus was removing the last question from her mind. She’d looked at the shoulder he touched and then back to his eyes. “So?” she inquired. Micah had been stunned when she had pressed, because it wasn’t possible.

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There was no one who could simply deny the powers his virus carried. No woman was able to simply outwit such a formidable enemy. Not one who walked the earth. But she had insisted. “What was your favorite?” They’d taken her back to his home and proceeded to use the strength of his illness and the man he used to be to try and overtake her. The virus had wanted to feed from her almost as badly as Micah wanted to fuck her. The man in him had wanted to imbed a part of his body and soul in her while the virus had screamed for him to try and impregnate her with his disease. The promise of such sweet, giving blood had sharpened his already hypersensitive desire in anticipation of having her. And his virus had created a hunger like none Micah had ever felt before. The deliciously feminine curves, the softness of her body and such loving woman eyes had created a hunger inside Micah he would have reveled in were he the man he’d been just a few short years ago. But Micah was no longer a man fit to love such a passionate, wonderful, healthy creature. His illness had taken even the pleasure of sexual love from him. Although leaving him human enough to still crave the act and sense of belonging. The togetherness as well. Micah studied a woman on the dance floor without even seeing her, and replayed yet another waking nightmare in his mind. When he’d had the chance to indulge in every pleasure Madeline’s flesh could give, he’d managed to force her to go from him in a bout of compassion and affection that he’d been certain had deserted him years ago. She’d left his illness hungry and Micah alone. So Micah had been forced by the virus and his own repulsive will to live to seek out less desirable companionship and make suffering into what it was meant to be. “Haven’t seen you here in a while.” Micah wasn’t sure what the waitress who had just approached him had seen more of. Feeders drowning their hunger with blood or those same men drowning their

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self-hatred with alcohol. “I’ve been ill,” Micah stated, avoiding the woman’s eyes. “Ill,” she replied as she pushed a bottle across to Micah. A laugh almost made its way from her throat before she finished. “Sure it wasn’t because she’s still alive?” She. Madeline. A living smudge on his plague’s record of death. “I will never let you live this down.” The grunt that came from Micah was mocking despite the virus’s threat. Madeline was right. The virus was an arrogant son of a bitch. And one of its proudest accomplishments was Micah’s reputation. “You act like what I’ve done is some kind of accomplishment.” “Well?” An eyebrow cocked his way and she smiled. “Isn’t it, Micah?” There was such coldness in the laughter that answered her. A coldness meant as a warning to the woman who was obviously aroused by the idea of Micah fulfilling some dangerous fantasy she had. Unfortunately, the tone only seemed to arouse her more. “I’m responsible for infecting mankind with the worst plague since AIDS. Do you consider that an accomplishment?” She shrugged at his question. Used her hand to swipe an invisible crumb from the tabletop. And then leaned forward to give Micah a better view of her breasts. “Some women think you’re hot,” she flirted while her thigh brushed his. “You’re like a celebrity or something…” “Like a god,” Micah stated. “Yeah.” She giggled at the statement and Micah could see her nipples stiffening under the thin T-shirt stretched across her breasts. “Or like some angel of death. It’s the power you have that makes you so attractive.” The laugh that came from Micah this time was one of disbelief over the naiveté so evident in her words.

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“So I’m an angel of death,” Micah noted as he eyed the many scars decorating her neck. “And you’re a blood whore, aren’t you?” The indignant air she struck almost made Micah laugh. So many beautiful women had become viral addicts because of the sexual rush the different strains could give them. “What’s so bad about being a blood whore? It’s not like I’m shooting heroin or anything. I’m already infected, so…” The waitress reached up to toy with one of her nipples in a manner most men would have found seductive. “Besides, you guys need blood and I need to come like only you can make me.” Suddenly, Micah felt the weight of the entire room’s attention shift to the door of the club. His own followed as the young woman finished her claims. “I consider what I do a public service.” Micah wasn’t listening anymore. For one, he didn’t really care what she called her habit. She was just like thousands of other women he’d watched destroy themselves for a “fix” of the virus. But more importantly, Madeline had just walked in. “So what was wrong with you, Micah?” The woman tried in vain to pull his attention back to her. “What kind of illness did you have?” This time Micah blatantly ignored the whore. He hadn’t been ill. Not physically any more than he always was. He’d merely avoided anywhere “she” might have been found. “I told them I begged you to let me go.” His virus detected her scent before her words found his ears. “Her cycle is very soon to come… yummy.” “I said after you realized I couldn’t be infected you took pity on me.” Micah watched her shift her body and then slide into the booth beside him. “I’m sorry…” she started as her eyes unbelievably offered compassion to the woman standing beside them. “Did I interrupt something?” Micah watched her motion and smile to the waitress who tightly returned the

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smile and then retreated, obviously seeing she’d been rejected by Micah in favor of this now somewhat infamous woman. “Micah… this one has to die…” He ignored the voice inside his head. Just like he tried to ignore the pangs of hunger and thirst that suddenly overtook his gut. But the arousing cries of passion coming from another Vamp and his prey were not easily dismissed with this woman so close. “You can have her again, Micah. We both can have her again.” The smell of blood, desire and semen quickly filled the air as another scene of bleeding and fucking began in a distant corner of the room. Micah fought the arousing efforts of the beast inside him as he watched yet another unknown woman lie back on a table and spread her legs for the feeder who needed what she could give him. But when Madeline merely pressed against him and lifted her body to pull her coat from underneath her legs Micah’s dick quickly grew painfully hard. “Was what I told them all right?” He could merely stare at her and the normalcy in her question. The woman had approached him as no other healthy human being did anymore -- save for those who were suicidal or destitute. And even they had reservations about his company. “They’re laughing at you, Micah,” the virus mocked while Micah remained silent. “They did see you as a god until you let this bitch go.” Micah peered around the restaurant at the eyes that battled against wills to watch them. They were looking at him differently now. And not even the scene of sexual depraved decadence and disease in the far corner of the room could draw them completely away from the sight. “It’s no longer respect for you they hold, Micah. She’s taken away even the small amount of social acceptance you had left.” The virus was right. He had been accepted somewhat before now although it was a vulgar form of the word. But it was Madeline they saw now. Not him. It seemed in a world so filled with violence and blood and death the kind and compassionate side

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of her human nature had somehow become the profane. “Her biggest sin is in drawing their attention away from me, Micah.” The heat of the virus’s rage forced a flush to overtake Micah’s entire body. “You know I am a very jealous god.” Micah nodded at the virus’s admission as he inspected the poorly hidden glances toward the woman by his side. Every eye in the room was on her. Studying her. Fascinated by this creature who had somehow managed to escape their leader. It seemed she had intrigued them just as she’d intrigued him. And now they evidently revered her. Micah had revered nothing for as long as his sickness had been alive. “I didn’t want you to be upset with me.” Madeline smiled as she reached for his hand. He watched the fingers he had used to trace so many lifelines into oblivion disappear within her grasp. “You’re not, are you?” Obviously, his followers were not the only ones who had been taken by this woman for Micah could say no evil word to her in response. Still, he could find no explanation for the kindness and compassion he felt deep within his body. His virus had long ago made sure such emotions knew they were no longer welcomed. “No. I’m not mad.” She smiled at him and reached for his glass. “Good.” He watched her take up his drink, the easy flowing of liquid echoing her pulse down her throat. Blood. “You’re not safe with me, Madeline.” She put the glass down but fingered the rim, then touched her fingertips to his lips. “I know.” “So why are you here?” She rounded his bottom lip with her fingers, exploring the top. They smelled of her. And she smelled of blood. Strong. Healthy. Female. “I’m sooooo hungry, Micah…”

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“I don’t know.” He grasped the hand, pulled her forearm to his mouth and then bit hard. Her cry startled those closest to them, but only those hidden in the farthest corners of the room dared enjoy the sight for longer than a moment. Hypnotic eyes forced themselves into her while she fought to regain possession of her limb while his teeth dug into the tender flesh. Skin ran red and her wrist bled to his wishes, giving what it contained as if he had some right to demand it. Micah watched her bleed as the anger and hatred flowed from him, for something that had bought his soul without any compensation for his life. “How much more are you willing to pay for this thing inside me, Madeline?” When he released her, his anger came from the pain and rejection suffered at the hands of those unworthy of even offering themselves to his belly. “He told you not to try and find us.” “I know he did.” Madeline heard his disease speak and winced as she held her wound. Micah saw the tenderness in her eyes that he had long gone without from another human being. And he pitied her hope. “I will hurt you, Madeline. Trust me. This bastard inside me will most definitely kill you if you continue to come around us.” The sounds of yet another’s pleasure drowned out his tone. Micah watched her eyes follow its call. “I thought you would take her.” Micah studied the woman who had caught Madeline’s attention. She was young and very beautiful. Even more so now that she sat astride one of Micah’s fellow carriers, riding the cock buried deep inside her. Micah’s prick tightened when the soon-to-bleed beauty circled upon the man inside her. Fucking him with no more care for the leering eyes around her than the sightless chairs and tables around them. The stench of too much blood and pleasure filled the room as her feeder’s virus realized she could not be infected. “You watch her. Do you crave tasting her?” Madeline asked. “Do you crave

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fucking her, Micah?” “I crave what she can give my disease, Madeline.” The groan of satisfaction came not from the woman but from the feeder at her neck. “He won’t finish her,” Madeline whispered. Micah watched her take in the scene in front of them. Her nipples, now erect underneath the thin silk blouse, reached out for Micah’s mouth and quickly made it water. “I know him. From the clinic. He somehow doesn’t kill even the immune. He only feeds.” “His very birth was a mistake. Just like your own.” “So tell me something, Micah. If he doesn’t kill her,” she turned back to him, ignoring or unaware of the virus’s cutting words, “will you?” Crimson splotches showed on Madeline’s neck and throat. Her blood was rushing up for him, readying itself in what appeared to be excitement. But that would soon turn to fear and regret if Madeline was given what she wanted. Micah reached and traced the peak of a nipple with his thumb. “I’m not hungry tonight.” Her breasts moved in and out with her breathing. His thumb flicked the nub once and then came up to graze her bottom lip. Micah watched her fight the desire to share in the woman’s near release across the room. “You only feed when you’re hungry?” The quick and loud frustrated whimpering of the woman’s never-realized satisfaction drew Madeline’s attention to her peer. Micah reached down and cupped her cunt underneath the table. The warm moisture of her arousal permeated the crotch of her panties and singed the palm of his hand. “What do the rumors say about me, Madeline?” His hand worked its way around her still clothed, but obviously wanting slit. And Madeline’s pussy was hotter and wetter than he’d ever known a woman to be.

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Micah detected her pulse beating even there. Between her legs. A place where he’d been so briefly invited to live. A place where he would die to spend just one night. “They speak of my cruelty, don’t they?” His fingers tugged at the nylon pantyhose serving as his first deterrent to being inside her. “They say I kill for sport and ego, do they not?” The sound of fabric giving to his fingers’ demands whispered for only a moment. Its sound was overshadowed by the sobs of the woman across the room. Micah found the wet swirl of hair around her pussy and parted it with his fingers. “If you were to believe the rumors, Madeline, they paint me as something inhuman.” And at that, his fingers thrust inside her. She exhaled loudly in one single breath and reached for his other hand, then shifted and spread her legs to allow him a deeper penetration underneath the table. “Some say I spread this virus and kill those I can’t infect because I enjoy wielding the power of death and disease, don’t they?” His fingers worked in and out of her pussy while he spoke. Her clit, growing like a tiny penis under the palm of his hand, seemed to throb with the beat of the music around them. The Voyeurs, the most vile of Micah’s followers, were all around them. Watching Micah finger this woman. Watching her become aroused. And waiting for Micah to fuck her. “I want to fuck you like that.” Micah motioned to the woman lying spread eagle on a table. “I want to fuck you right here and right now.” Madeline’s pupils widened and her eyes became black with desire. “That’s it. Make her your whore, Micah,” the virus coaxed. “Make her a whore just like I made you.” Micah felt Madeline’s body move. Her hips slid back and forth, oblivious to the virus’s vulgar opinion of her public display of need. She lifted her pelvis as subtly as possible in order to give him access to her sex. Her frame worked with him merely for the inferior release of a normal human sexual stimulation. “Do you believe the rumors surrounding me, Madeline?”

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Madeline’s attention strayed to the weak and trembling woman who now lay alone and incomplete on the table on the other side of the floor. Frustrated, the woman worked furiously at her own clit before reaching for a nearby beer bottle on the table. She gasped when the woman pushed the bottle into her cunt. Writhing and moaning the woman fucked the dripping slit between her legs with the bottle as the crowd watched. The man who’d left her alive and unsatisfied had disappeared for a moment but returned to watch as she masturbated so openly. At times she used both hands to shove the bottle deep inside her cunt. Her actions were so desperately hungry, and they made Micah’s hunger to be deep inside Madeline’s pussy even worse. Madeline’s pussy was growing even hotter and wetter around his hand as she watched the other woman shamelessly fuck herself for the crowd of some two dozen or so people. “It isn’t the same as a normal sexual climax, is it?” Her understanding was obvious in the tone of her voice. Micah turned to watch Madeline’s expression when the man who’d left the frustrated woman to find her own pleasure dropped to his knees and took the bottle out of her hand and cunt. Slowly, the Vamp dragged his tongue up the center of the empty, weeping pussy before him. Madeline pressed even harder into Micah’s hand, working against it as she watched the bottle slide back inside the young woman’s fully exposed cunt. “I haven’t wanted to fuck any particular woman this badly in years,” Micah growled into Madeline’s ear. “But I want to fuck you, Madeline.” Madeline didn’t speak. But she looked at him, deeply, and then ground both of their hands into her clit before quietly moaning at the new sensation. Encouraged by her reaction, Micah let her entwine their fingers together and glide one of hers with one of his up inside her. Immediately her breathing became faster, more labored as she watched and prepared herself to climax. “What you did to me the other night,” she panted. “What you made me feel…

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what your virus made me need… it’s a pleasure strong enough to overshadow even the fear of death, isn’t it, Micah?” Intimate female muscles spasmed hard around their fingers, at her words and the power they held. It was a reaction Micah had not witnessed in years. The pleasure of a normal, healthy female arousal as a result of visual and physical stimulation. And he wanted nothing more than to bask in it while it lasted. “It’s as strong as my own urge to feed,” he purred into her ear, breathing her scent in deeply. Her body jerked again, threatening to come if only he delved a little deeper. A little harder with his fingers. Micah pressed her clit more firmly. But then, in a moment calling to mind the healthy man he used to be when sex was fun and he could tease a woman to orgasm, he loosened his grip on her pussy and pulled his fingers out of her. “Please don’t stop,” Madeline whimpered, prompting a smile from Micah over her pleading tone. “I want to come, Micah.” “I want you to come too,” Micah hummed. “And I want to put my mouth between your legs and taste you while you do.” Madeline smiled at his words and continued to play with her pussy underneath the table. “I want to lap up every drop of juice that comes from you, Madeline.” Madeline offered her fingers to his mouth. “Is this what you want to taste?” She was delicious. The damp salty taste of her cunt was something of which Micah could never grow tired. “But I can’t do those things to you, Madeline. Not here. Not now,” Micah admitted. “Although I’ve done much worse things right here in front of everyone.” Madeline’s eyes searched his own. “What are you waiting for, Micah? God knows YOU don’t have any dignity left in these people’s eyes.” Completely ignoring the virus and the scene in front of them, Micah smiled

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when Madeline started to masturbate again. Writhing and moaning in time with the sounds behind him, her slightly lewd behavior seemed an offer to forgive his past indiscretions. “Help me, Micah,” she purred into his ear. “Use your fingers to fuck me and make me come.” The nails of one of Madeline’s hands dug into the flesh of Micah’s palm as she continued to play with herself underneath the table with the other, fingering her cunt and slit, trying to achieve her own release. “C’mon, Micah, even I want to watch the bitch come now.” Micah smiled at the very male statement that had come from something he hated so badly, and then let his fingers go back to find the lips of Madeline’s cunt. Gripping her firmly and barely grazing her clit on the way, Micah grinned when she whimpered even louder. “Help me come,” she pleaded as Micah enjoyed an unheard-of moment of bonding with his obviously male plague. “Please help me, Micah.” Now this was a power to be admired, Micah mused to himself as he recalled the waitress’s words. It was a precious kind of power he hadn’t held in years. “Enjoy her, Micah…” Micah watched the woman across the club eagerly take one man’s cock into her mouth as the Vamp between her legs stood and desperately thrust his cock into her. Madeline’s body reacted to the sights before her. And Micah’s body responded to hers. “Go on, Micah. Make her happy…” Pressing his thumb to her clit and circling, Micah finally urged his fingers up inside her again. Firmly. Slowly. Coaxing her that last inch or so -- taking her body’s last defense against her climax. The strength of Madeline’s entire body finally disintegrated. Every muscle and fiber of her female being tightening in anticipation of something so overwhelming it promised to be painful. And then it completely resigned

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itself to nothingness as she cried out softly in pleasure and leaned to bury her face against him. “I will never get tired of watching you do this.” For once, Micah was tempted to grin at the voice of his disease. He was amused by its comments because muscles, warmth and woman finally began to collapse and then rebuild themselves around his fingers as she came. Madeline held on to him as she trembled, bucked and softly mewled into his ear. For several seconds, she very quietly came under his direction while everyone else in the room sat unaware. When she looked back at him, Madeline’s eyes questioned Micah even as she continued to release, examining him even before the spasms of pleasure had slowed to a halt. She did all of this with pupils that dove into unholy shades of black as if just to tell him how much she appreciated what he’d just given her. But Micah’s returned sentiment was even more sincere than her own. “Woman, do you know how long it’s been since I’ve felt like a normal man?” Madeline smiled and then sighed. Letting Micah know she’d heard the question he’d managed even around the virus’s ears. “They say I’m a monster,” he now murmured into her ear and bent to kiss her neck. Her perfume wafted into his nose, causing him to pause and enjoy. “They say I started this plague on purpose. But I did no such thing, Madeline.” Madeline’s skin was still quivering and it puckered into gooseflesh underneath his touch. Micah sensed nerves in her that were now awake and alive as at no other time in a woman’s life. And the joy of pleasing a woman in this way was something Micah had forgotten until now. “I hope you enjoyed her, Micah…” “I am not the cruel and cold-hearted creature they would have you believe.” Micah watched her pupils open wide when he once again took his fingers with her juices into his mouth. “Because she is of no use to me.” “But I do know what cruelty is,” Micah stated more to placate the virus than for

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anything else and then traced a fingertip down her jugular. They quickly memorized the pulse that pounded out “Madeline.” “And we will dispose of her before all is said and done…” “Real cruelty,” Micah stated, “is finding the one thing you know could make you happy for life. And then realizing you can never have it.”

Chapter Three Real cruelty… The statement had been hanging there ever since she’d last seen him. Madeline had turned it over and over in her mind until it had grown dog-eared and ragged. Micah believed real cruelty was being deprived of something he needed in order to be happy. Madeline suspected it was much more than his happiness that was on the line. “Hello, Micah.” On this night, when Madeline approached the corner table and sat down next to Micah, she found an uncommonly somber mood wrapping itself around the man. He didn’t respond to her greeting. Instead, Madeline saw his eyes go across the club to a woman being fucked by one feeder and fed upon by yet another. Her coloring told Madeline she’d been bled almost dry and the cries of her impending climax were weak. But they were still there. “How does she have enough blood left in her to come?” Madeline mused. “She shouldn’t even still be alive.” “You’re the one who shouldn’t be alive, Micah,” the virus growled. “You don’t deserve to be alive after letting this one live.” Madeline’s eyes came back to Micah at the sound of the virus’s voice. “Don’t listen to it, Micah. You are alive. We both are, despite what that bastard wants.” He still didn’t respond. But he did turn and his lips pressed into hers while the sound of the woman’s climax rang throughout the room. Before Madeline could react his tongue darted into and out of her mouth. Warm. Moist. It bathed her own. Tasted her. And then caressed the inside of her mouth one last time before he spoke. “Am I really still alive, Madeline?”

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Madeline turned to watch the woman across the room as she started to limply buck and come around the feeder’s cock that filled her. The other man had evidently succeeded in bleeding her to the point of death, and therefore had given her the climax she needed. “You want to feel that, don’t you, Madeline?” Madeline’s head bobbed quickly. Once. Without her permission. And just as a final whimper came from the woman across the room. Micah’s fingers found the line of her jaw and forced her to face him. “I should never have let the virus taste you.” The tips of his fingers trailed downward. Outlining the side of her neck. Her collarbone. The top of one of her breasts. “I’m not afraid of the virus. And you’re still very much alive, Micah.” Madeline watched his eyes come up as if to argue with hers. But instead of saying anything, Micah kissed the pulse in her neck. “And it doesn’t have to be like this.” She closed her eyes and savored his lips tasting her skin. “You don’t have to feed --” The grunt of a laugh and the way Micah moved his body away from hers told her exactly what he thought about such hopes. The laughter of the virus actually vibrated the wineglasses hanging over the bar. “Replacements,” Micah now drove into her with his eyes. Madeline’s head slowly agreed. “Do you know how strong my strain is? It’s the purest strain that exists, Madeline. And even with the weaker strains, do you know what it takes to wean off of blood?” “Yes.” Firmly. As if she knew. Because she did. “Yes, Micah. I know it can take a year or more --” “When it even works…” the virus interrupted with a grunt. “This bastard inside me is smart, Madeline. It evolves. Learns. It knows that in order to completely dominate the human race it has to kill anyone who is immune to it. Even more, it knows the difference between human and man-made blood. And it

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knows…” “It knows if it accepts man-made blood its host won’t feed. It won’t infect others and help it survive,” Madeline conceded. “Most who try to wean onto replacements never even make it past their first month.” Madeline relaxed her shoulders, then moved to press her leg against his again. “But some make it completely. Some go on to live normal, healthy lives.” The combination of Micah’s laughter and the laughter from the virus echoed throughout the room, caught the patrons by surprise and made them spin as a group to find its source. Madeline glanced around to see the spectators drawn away from the now barely living heap of female satisfaction that lay sprawled on the floor and toward the most brutal of their gods. Micah’s mere mortal eyes immediately ordered that they leave them. And unbelievably, they obeyed. “Less than four percent, Madeline. That’s how many make it.” He reached for her hand and led her fingers underneath the table. Madeline let him wrap them around his covered cock as he spoke. The action -- the very male and human need it conveyed -- made Madeline’s cunt ache. She explored his erection as much as she could while it was still confined, caressing it between her fingers. Micah’s frustration was stronger than she’d ever seen it. It showed clearly in his eyes and in the set of his jaw. But now it was more than sexual frustration. Her words had also upset him. They had spoken of a hope so small that its existence was a lie and he hated her for that. Still, it wasn’t his hunger she saw controlling him tonight. It was something else. Some other need had Micah caught within its grasp. “I want you inside me again…” The words weren’t even out of her mouth before Micah stood and pulled her up beside him. Reaching behind her he tugged at her coat, and when the garment was

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righted, he brought his arm back around her waist. Madeline expected to be taken back to Micah’s apartment. But when Micah led her instead to the back of the club and into the alleyway, she realized she’d underestimated the severity of his need. Too cool for short sleeves. Too warm for a jacket. The bricks behind Madeline were the result of the lukewarm temperature of a season undecided. Micah pressed her against them and lifted her body. He spread her legs and the abrasive brick texture behind her ass only became a consideration after he pushed her skirt up to get it out of his way. There was no leniency from the barrier behind her as Micah’s hard, warm cock pressed almost politely into her. With the wall holding her in place, he slowly stroked in and out, circling and grinding his erection into her. Micah fucked her as if trying to combine their bodies with the building they had just exited. There was no brutality or angst in the way he made love to her. Even with the less than obliging bed behind her back, Madeline suffered no discomfort or pain while Micah’s rigid, needing prick delved as deeply as it could inside her. And this spoke to her more sincerely than anything else he had said. One time, he’d been a wonderful man. And he longed to be that man again. Madeline sensed Micah’s desire while he filled her body over and over with his own and painlessly kissed and sucked at her lips, her throat and her neck with his mouth. When his breath came out to her between their kisses, she could smell the memories of someone who used to harbor hope as she now harbored him. Intensely. Deeply. And with a consuming passion. Each time Micah’s mouth took hers and his tongue found hers, Madeline tasted in him the remnants of a man who’d once cherished being human and warm and tender. He’d always adored women, everything about them, and had enjoyed making love to them simply for the pleasure of seeing them happy and pleased. Mesmerized by the way his eyes bored into hers, even more deeply than his erection ever could, Madeline’s body became acutely aware of the way he tensed and

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slowed his strokes even more. He paused, then plunged, readying himself for his climax. Micah’s frame smothered hers as his hands kneaded, fondled her thighs and her butt more insistently as he drew closer to coming. His chest pressed against her was warm and hard. She detected the buzz of his quickening pulse between them as he ground himself into her. Gripping her ass tightly, Micah forced a gasp from Madeline’s throat when he pressed his cock up into her quickly. Once. He withdrew and thrust hard once again before holding that thrust, using his thighs and pelvis to brace her up against the bricks. Micah brought his hands up to grasp her face between them. In one long, slow draw of emotions and release, Micah’s entire being seemed to come while he pressed his mouth to hers. With his tongue bathing her own and his semen now surging inside her, Madeline could no longer determine where his ailing soul met the health of hers. There seemed to be no line where he and she were not alike. “You’re infected with something even worse than me now, Madeline.” The statement was vague. And barely whispered from wherever the virus had been hiding while it allowed Micah to make love to her. But it was very, very true. “He’s damned you. And I will defeat you now.” Madeline’s cheek brushed Micah’s while the virus spoke. And she tightened her grip on the man in her arms. “The most untreatable of emotional afflictions known to man makes you weak…” Micah was still in the last slow, throbbing seconds of his climax when he pressed his forehead to hers and closed his eyes. “You’re in love with him, Madeline. You stupid, useless whore.” “We’re vampires, Madeline,” he whispered around the virus’s words. “All of us. We kill or infect in order to survive ourselves. If we were really men we would do the world a favor and die.” The very idea of losing Micah to death ripped at Madeline’s heart savagely. But another thought, a memory, was even more brutal as it reached in and ripped at her

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gut. “What’s wrong, Madeline? Is Micah not the first man to prey upon you?” “It doesn’t take a virus to make a man a vampire.” Madeline squeezed her eyes shut tight at the virus’s question. But then smiled at how warm and comforting even Micah’s motionless cock still felt inside her. “You’re the good kind, Micah. You’re like the vampires in fairy tales, the kind of man who uses others because he has no choice.” He took a breath. Just one. And that breath wrapped like a snug, soft scarf around her neck. But when he finally did speak, Micah’s voice was low. Dark. Impossible for her to judge as seductive or sinister with his pheromones and her emotions plugging her ears. “No, the vampires of legends and fairy tales were not like me. They somewhat enjoyed what they were because their stories were of sensuality and sex. Not death and disease. The possibility of their existence brought to mind romance. Not --” “Damnation.” Micah hummed his agreement with her description and bent to nuzzle her neck. “I don’t want anything to do with even the legends or fantasies. Even if I could possess the same harmless allure and romance of my fictional predecessors, even if none of us ever killed, I still wouldn’t want this thirst inside me.” Gently, Madeline’s hands found the back of his head and guided it to rest underneath her chin. She kissed the top of his head while he spoke. “I would still want something completely different than what I have now. I would want a normal life. A home. A family.” “He would want that wretched love of yours, Madeline…” “You should try to wean.” She continued to ignore the virus’s presence. “I know it’s not much in the way of treatments, but…” Her feet hit the brick walk below her. Not roughly, but much less gently than he could have allowed her to touch down. His cock, now limp and still wet from his own pleasure, slipped out from her body, and he tucked it quickly back inside his pants. “Do you really want to know what I think about the minuscule amount of hope

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modern medicine and science have afforded for this disease?” Madeline avoided his eyes and reached to straighten her skirt as somewhere low and deep Micah’s disease started to chuckle. “He’s so stubborn, Madeline,” it said cheerfully. “He knows how helpless and dependent on others those treatments make a man. You’ll never save him because you can’t take away the strongest weapon I have in him.” “The only thing you have left from your old life is your pride. Isn’t it, Micah?” Micah didn’t confirm what she’d said. Not directly. “I will die feeding this disease and most likely spreading it.” Micah took her hand into his and pulled her closer. “And the sooner my death happens, the better it will be for everyone.” Madeline’s heart lurched again. And Micah’s arms tightened around her. “If I were man enough, I would put an end to this myself. But I haven’t been able to do that yet.” “And Micah won’t put an end to it, Madeline. Although many of his kind have. Because they’ve starved my children who lived inside them I’ve had to destroy many of them. But he won’t do it to himself. He can’t.” The entity continued to speak and Madeline’s ribs began to grind against one another when the virus’s grip on her intensified. “Micah is the Head Vamp. That means he exists and will live for one reason and one reason alone… Me.” “I want this son of a bitch to die more than anyone does, Madeline. And believe me, if someone could tell me my weaning stood a chance of working so I could kill this thing, I would do exactly that.” There was a silence then. From both man and the beast inside him. The quiet consideration of a challenge, perhaps. “Just wait,” she said quietly. “Give it some time. They’ll find a way to…” “A way to what? A way to make the cravings stop? To keep my own body from consuming itself from the inside out?” Madeline shrugged. Micah took her hand and led her up the alley toward the street in front of the club.

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“And then what happens, Madeline? What happens after even more people die, or worse, another disease evolves in the search for this one’s cure? Do I get married?” Micah shrugged. “Have children?” She saw him stop beside her. His glare on her was brutal. “Simply forget about what I’ve done to women -- what I’ve done to the entire fucking world -- for the past nine years?” It truly seemed Micah’s guilt over what he had done to the world had long ago defeated every ounce of hope in his eyes. His virus, on the other hand, seemed quite amused. “He hates himself even more than he hates me.” “You didn’t do this on purpose,” Madeline whispered. As if to try and hide their conversation from his disease. “You said so yourself.” “No,” he confirmed. “I didn’t do it on purpose, Madeline.” He wanted to let her hold him. But couldn’t. “But I still did it. “I can’t kill myself, Madeline. It’s stronger than I am. Stronger than we are. It wants to live, so it’s not going to let me die. And I can’t stay alive and get better because of the things I’ve done. I don’t deserve to be rid of this disease. I don’t deserve good health or happiness or a home. And I definitely don’t deserve to be loved…” His voice. Micah’s words. Whispered. And evidently coming from the only place inside him where the virus had no control. “I tasted your blood, Madeline. I know what you’re thinking.” When he pulled her to him again, his eyes became like spears. Sharp and cold as steel, they forced their way inside her. Made her look at what he wanted her to see. “My soul is exactly where it belongs… in hell.” His eyes. There was someone else living there. In those eyes that had just been so warm and loving. It was someone who’d never pleaded with Madeline for forgiveness and so she had never been able to give it. Madeline found herself face-to-face and tightly embraced by a hateful man whose memory the virus had found lurking inside her mind. “What did your uncle do to you, Madeline?”

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Micah’s demon was taunting her. Laughing at her shame. Mocking the grief she’d always felt over something long gone. “Did he destroy you like Micah destroys women for me? Did he take something from you that can never be replaced?” The hiss that punctuated its sentence made Micah’s eyes catch fire. As she stood there and watched, the once sweet curve of his mouth twisted and dissolved into one Madeline remembered. His tongue flickered quickly at her. In and out. His hands became the hard and clawing instruments of pain and destruction that had once pinched bruisingly into her skin. “Did he make you bleed for him, Madeline?” Her mind was a blank slate of terror. There was nothing else in it. Nothing at all as she jerked and struggled to try and tear herself out of his arms. “Madeline?” She knew she had to get away from him. Away from this thing that would destroy her. Whatever it took, she had to get away. Arms tried to flail but were restrained. Held against their will. It was happening all over again. Over and over and over and… “Madeline!” Micah was shaking her quite forcefully when she finally heard him say her name. The motion finally managed to break the virus’s trance and bring Madeline out of the most painful depths of her past. “Madeline?” He said her name softly this time. And pulled her into a tight embrace. In the wake of its torture, Madeline could only let him hold her while she trembled. “It’s too quiet,” she finally said. Very softly. “Where did it go, Micah?” He shook his head and pulled her tighter. “I don’t know. And I don’t much fucking care.” Neither did she, to be honest. For Madeline, it seemed like a much needed

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glimmer of hope had found them as she buried herself into Micah’s arms the same way he had melded into her on that first night. In the quiet, with his demon most likely out somewhere cavorting with her own, Madeline found something she hadn’t even known was lost. She found “him.” Micah. The man. Without the disease. He was there in the way he held her and the way his heartbeat seemed to quickly match her own. But most of all, he was there in the way his soul took this chance to whisper something secretly to her own. “Please, Madeline,” it begged of the hope still living inside Madeline’s heart. “Heal me…”

Chapter Four “Are you sure you don’t need a ride home?” Madeline smiled and waved before turning to make her way down the darkened street. The young man who’d offered her a ride stood fixed in place behind her. “It’s really no trouble, Maddy…” Madeline snorted at the way he’d said her name. Old friends in a matter of moments. He’d been under the mistaken impression that she would fuck him after he got her drunk. “I want to walk, really.” It was a lie. She didn’t care how she got home. She had cared about seeing Micah again though. It was that simple. But she supposed it was a good thing he hadn’t come into the club that night. Madeline was a little too drunk and way too horny to even think rationally if the promise of having him inside her body again presented itself. The man behind her called out to her as she fought to clear her hazy head and made her way down the street toward her apartment. “Maddy, you know it’s not safe out here at this time of night…” He wasn’t just saying this for sex. He was right about the streets in this part of town. Madeline knew this. She knew whose area this was. “I’ll be all right,” she turned and called to him, then rolled her eyes as he trotted toward her. “Really, Ron…” “Ray,” he corrected. Madeline blushed and lowered her eyes. “Ray, I’ll be all right. I’m a nurse at the viral clinic. I know how to deal with them.” Ray put a hand firmly on his hip and stared at her. “The ones you deal with are the ones who want to get better, the ones who are able to get better. They aren’t like the ones who enjoy what they are. Or the ones who are so sick they…” Madeline watched

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him glance around to check for prying eyes and ears as he trailed off. “This is Micah’s neighborhood, you know.” The sound of his name alone made Madeline’s nipples, her cunt and mind come alive. Had Micah been any ordinary man, Madeline could have thoroughly enjoyed the sensation she received when someone else merely mentioned his name. But he wasn’t any ordinary man. “He’s dangerous, Maddy,” Ray pleaded. “And I’ve seen you with him a couple of times.” “Really, Ray,” Madeline scoffed. “I’m a little too old to need a babysitter.” “Then act like it,” he snapped back at her. She watched him run his hand down his leg and then reach for her arm. “Micah does what he does to women in order to survive. And he’s the strongest of all of them because he has the purest strain. You know no woman’s safe with him.” It was true. Micah’s history and his medical records were well known. And Madeline knew no matter what might ever happen between the two of them, having him in her life meant living with the very real possibility of her dying some night when his hunger grew out of control. Regardless how he might someday feel about her, she had to accept the dangers he posed to her life. “Hell, Maddy, you’ve heard the stories,” Ray said. “Some guy you just met in a bar isn’t going to spare you if he’s hungry enough.” Madeline shivered for some reason as Ray continued, “I know you’ve seen these men on the news and in the papers, Madeline. They infect their girlfriends, their own wives, even.” “If they’re lucky and non-immune,” Madeline stressed. “If you’re a nurse, you really should know better,” Ray said softly. “You know how helpless these men become to their cravings when the hunger strikes. And they’ll say anything to a woman to get what they need. Hell, they’ll do anything to get what they need.” Madeline watched his eyes as he spoke. She could see it there. Inside him. Living. Provoking Ray’s pulse to beat more intensely with a purpose other than providing life

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for him through the tiny, thread-thin veins in his neck. The smell of desire and sex increased as wave upon wave of orgiastic pleasure started to writhe in, around and among each other like serpents just underneath his skin. And finally, his eyes dwelled in darkness while the virus worked to put out the light of his soul. The web of caution Madeline drew around herself was heavy with the stench of a well-deserved healthy dose of fear. “How long have you been sick, Ray?” The same self-hatred and guilt she’d seen on the faces of so many newly widowed husbands and lovers suddenly played across his face. It was a guilt stemming from what they were forced to do by the virus living in their bodies. It was more than guilt staring back at her. It was much worse than that. Especially for a man. It was a helplessness. Because they were helpless. Every one of them who had a part of this thing inside them. And it was more than mere will to survive that made them kill. These men were made to serve this disease and they were completely powerless to stop it. For nine years, Micah’s soul had been repeatedly raped by his demon. “I’ve been sick for a year,” Ray whispered. “My ex-girlfriend gave it to me and left me because I was infected with the same strain she carried.” “And so she couldn’t get the orgasmic buzz of the virus from you,” Madeline finished for him. The bricks beside him suddenly became Ray’s focus. He nodded. Madeline then watched him examine the toe of his shoe. His pride was wounded and battered, but not yet broken. So many of them like this. “Ray, come to the clinic tomorrow,” she pleaded as she reached for the arm he had taken away. “You haven’t been sick for that long, it should be easier to wean. The virus hasn’t completely sunk its talons into you.” She watched him silently consider her words. “Does it speak to you? Would you have killed me if I had gone home with you?” “No,” he snapped, shaking his head. “I haven’t killed a single woman.” His voice

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trembled. “I don’t have that kind of strain. Mine is very weak. I only feed.” “And infect.” Madeline watched his eyes respond to her correction. His claim had been made in earnest, but this flirting had been in order to feed from her. Just as Micah fucking her had been most likely. “We use what we can to lure in our lunch,” Ray said in a mock playful voice that sparked too much pity in Madeline to take offense. “The ruse of romantic love is just something we use on women as a tactic to get what we need from them. God forbid one of us ever finds a woman we’re really attracted to. Or love and want to see in the throes of pleasure…” He stopped. Madeline imagined Micah’s eyes when he had walked her home the night they’d made love. “I was glad he wasn’t at the club tonight,” Ray stated, his composure surprisingly calm now. Madeline didn’t tell Ray she agreed. But she did. Micah not being at the club that night had helped as much as it had hurt. While she was disappointed she hadn’t gotten to see him, she had wanted very badly to believe his actions toward her were just a tactic. She wanted to believe he wasn’t actually attracted to her. Didn’t really need her despite what he’d claimed when he was holding her. It was possibly cold of her to want this but it made her life less miserable and frightening that way. Still, the pain of that possibility was relentless. “You’re sport for him, Maddy. Micah’s good. He’s a hunter. And if he knows your background, he knows he’s found a worthy opponent against whom he can test his skills. You had to have considered that.” Madeline smiled, and then nodded. “Sometimes I don’t know what to think. But, I’ve suspected his interest in me was more a result of my skills with Vamps.” She paused and studied Ray’s eyes for a moment. “Well, with my knowledge on the illness you guys have,” she corrected. “I think I only piqued his interest because I was able to deflect his advances when we first met. He couldn’t erase my thoughts as he can with

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most women and that most likely fascinated him.” Ray laughed. “I can’t guess what a woman’s thinking even if I ask and she comes out and tells me,” he stated. “Never mind erasing any thoughts from her mind.” “You will,” Madeline confirmed. “The virus produces pheromones and hormonal scents that will draw women in without them even knowing why they’re attracted to you. That’s not counting the seductive abilities you’ll develop as well.” “Like there’s a little invisible Casanova living inside me.” Ray smiled. Madeline nodded and barely smiled. “So why couldn’t he erase your thoughts? Because if anyone could do it, it would be Micah.” Madeline smiled. “I had to learn a long time ago to detect the vibrations from my patients. I guess I’m also immune to the side effects of the virus. Unless bitten. I picked up some of those very vibrations and scents around Micah and was able to ignore them… mostly. It probably threw him when I didn’t immediately go limp in his arms.” Ray indicated his understanding and reached for her arm. “Well, regardless of your super powers, Maddy, let me take you home.” But Madeline smiled and shook her head. “I need the air.” She gave a quick peck on his cheek and turned to go. “Now I wouldn’t want to disappoint the starving predators lurking out here in the shadows, would I?” Ray didn’t laugh at her bizarre sense of humor. No matter. Madeline was used to not having anyone understand how she could take such morbid and beastly things so lightly. More so with an air of good hearted humor. The predator who’d long ago infected her own soul had given rise to that survival strategy. She chuckled as she rounded the corner out of Ray’s sight and worked her body more snugly into her coat. The wind picked up and Madeline shivered before reaching around herself to try and block out the cold. Suddenly, the wind snapped violently,

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whipping her hair across her face and making her pause. Madeline stumbled when her heel went into a crack in the sidewalk. She was forced to stop in order to pull her shoe free. Just barely, Madeline’s ear caught the last of an unknown number of footsteps behind her. Twisting her heel out of the crack, she used the moment to listen for what she’d just heard. There was a presence behind her. She could sense it there, watching her, but she was too afraid to turn and investigate. Immediately, she regretted not calling a cab. Ray had been adorable and honest with her. But he was also hungry. She began to walk again, straining to hear if the person behind her still followed. When she quickly stopped in mid stride, the same echo and cessation of footsteps sounded again. Madeline spun around to confront the person behind her. Eyes bore into her. She could see nothing but the shadows and darkness, but sensed much, much more. Madeline’s heart raced while the unseen person stayed out of sight despite the fact she was silently confronting them with her stance. Quickly, she ran her eyes across to the other side of the street to see if any help was around. Anyone who might be of assistance if she suddenly needed it. But the street was deserted. She squinted into the darkness where every ounce of her being told her he was standing. “Micah?” His name came out of her mouth before her mind would even consider it might be him. She blinked slowly, forcing her eyes to find whoever was hiding right in front of her. It wasn’t until he stepped out into the glow of the streetlight that she let out a breath of relief. But the tone of his voice when he spoke to her made her draw the same breath back in. “What are you doing out here alone at this time of night?” He’d said the words in a low, sinister tone that immediately made her nervous. The bite of his tone reached for her throat, immediately feeding from her in its own way. Madeline had known why the streets were no longer safe in this part of town.

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Unfortunately, it wasn’t until the very moment she saw Micah coming toward her that she fully appreciated what he was. Micah was most definitely a predator -- a predator even more dangerous than the one who’d preyed upon Maddy during her childhood. Micah was a new cap on the biological food chain due to a mutation of nature which had infected part of the human race. And to make matters worse, none of his colleagues were as skillful or experienced as he was when it came to feeding. Nor as merciless. Madeline stared at the man headed toward her at a steady, masculine gait. He was angry. She could see it in his eyes and step as he approached her. As for whether or not he was hungry, he was still too far away for her to see any of the signs. Madeline stepped away from his approach just in case. “I should have called a cab.” She nodded agreeably and took another quick step away from him as he came close enough for them to touch. She winced when he quickly took her upper arm in his grip. “Do you know what can happen to you out here at this time of night?” he demanded while Madeline squirmed to get out of his grasp, his fingers digging forcefully into her skin as he restrained her. He shook her entire body with a jerk to get her sober and attentive. “Do you?” Tears welled up in her eyes at his action. Micah’s grip was hurting her slightly, but not as badly as the way he was looking at her. It was as if he cared about her. As if he really was worried about her getting hurt. And that made her very angry. Because she knew it probably wasn’t true and even if it was, they could never be together. She jerked, pulling her arm out of his hand. “Let go of me!” Micah reached back for her arm and easily drew her to him. Madeline started up with a hand to shove him away but found that one quickly clutched as well. She struggled with him until he wrapped his arms around her and held her so she couldn’t move. Her breasts were smashed against his chest. His breath hot and moist on her face

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while he drove into her with those eyes. And he assaulted her with more of the mesmerizing power she’d seen in his eyes when he’d first reached for her. “Don’t fucking look at me like you care about me,” Madeline spat at him, then glared angrily, but it didn’t seem to faze him. Whatever it was causing him to see her in such a protective way was too strong for either of them to ignore. “I don’t need you telling me…” She struggled, trying to get out of his arms. “Ordering me to be careful.” He grinned at her attempts to get out of his arms. Attempts that only made him hold her tighter. Madeline’s body grew excited and she scolded herself for feeling anything for this man. His mouth came down on hers. Roughly. His lips firm and hungry as he ground against her. When he broke the skin of her lip with his kiss and then pulled away from her, the grin of superiority on his face was truly obscene. “Well, now it would be ridiculous for me to care about you, wouldn’t it, Madeline?” When she just stared speechless, he smiled. His arms cradled her loosely. His face this close to hers and the strong, sharp line of his jaw with the black stubble that adorned it, made her knees weak with desire. As did the wonderfully intoxicating draw of pheromones her nose found. He pulled her nearer, close enough to let his lips brush hers. His tongue delicately licked the drop of blood he’d forced from her mouth. “Ridiculous, Madeline. But not nearly as ridiculous as you believing anyone else you might meet out here would spare you your life.” Madeline swallowed as she dragged her lips away from him. He was right. And he was angry with her for being stupid and putting herself into a very dangerous situation. A dangerous situation just like she’d found twice in his arms, and now, quite possibly, a third time. She stared at him as he leaned down and took in a long, dramatic breath. A long intrusive smell of her. Madeline waited tensely for his virus to join them. “How much have you had to drink?” She swallowed again and felt her eyes blink very slowly. “Too much,” she

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sighed. His face softened. Quickly. No doubt at her honesty. Micah’s grip on her loosened as well, but he didn’t let go. Madeline felt him turn her and lead her down the street. When he spoke to her again, his voice was still stern, but tempered with an edge so possessive and loving it made Madeline want to scream. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.” Madeline refused to acknowledge what he’d just said. She couldn’t. It would have been emotional suicide for her to do so. She wouldn’t look at him. His arm wrapped around her waist felt as though she’d finally found a part of herself that had been missing for so long. And she hadn’t remembered it belonged to her. His heat against her side seemed like something she would never be able to live without now that she’d experienced it. Madeline had never considered love and cruelty to be such similar creatures until she’d savored the body and heat of this man combined with her own. “Did you have fun tonight?” She was surprised by his casual question. She glanced at him and shrugged. “Not really,” she grunted. Micah laughed a little at her answer, the sound creating such a casual attitude in the air that it begged to be noticed for something people with hope should have. His arm around her tightened. “Are you seeing that guy?” Her heart almost stopped. Micah had been nowhere in the club. Or so she’d thought. Of course, she also had to consider the fact she hadn’t seen him following her either. She shook her head to answer his question. “Just flirting?” She glanced sideways at his newest question and tried not to grin. “Yeah,” she said softly. And then nuzzled her head on his arm. “Were you jealous, Micah?” “Yes.” Madeline’s heart did stop this time. His answer provoked a pleasant rush over being wanted, possessed and protected by him. His bluntness had reeked of male

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attitude that made her want nothing more in her life than to be his. Regardless of who and what he was. Regardless of what he’d done in his past. She smiled, despite the hopeless situation. But then she purposely made her face serious. “You have no right to be jealous. I don’t belong to you.” “I know you don’t.” Micah stopped them and turned her to press her back against the glass of the storefront they were passing by. “But what’s true and what someone wants are rarely the same things, Madeline.” His mouth came down on hers and a gentler kiss held her there, against the cold plate glass window. Madeline smelled the clean, wonderful muskiness of him while he pressed into her mouth and body with his own. He was so warm. So male. His grip on her was so passionately strong and unyielding as he held her that she had to fight to remember who she was dealing with. A proficient seducer of women. One who took exactly what he needed in order to survive. And who left those women either dead or tainted with his disease. When he finally pulled back, she struggled to keep her breath steady when she spoke to him again. “I’ll never belong to you, Micah,” she stated through a throat constricted by pain at her words. Micah shook his head slowly. “No,” he said quietly, “you won’t.” The pain in Micah’s eyes made Madeline have to shift her head to keep from seeing it any longer. She found a spot on his chest to lay her head and closed her eyes. “But I wish I could.” Micah bent his head and kissed her softly. Tenderly. Neither of them spoke another word out loud as he led her safely down the darkened midnight street to her building. Even then, after she was home, as she closed and locked her door Madeline could still sense his presence with her. She could feel the vibrations and pheromones coming from him even from the street below as she turned on the lights in her apartment. When the signs of that presence slowly began to dissipate, Madeline could only assume that Micah had waited on the street below to make sure she was safe. And

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then made his way back into the night. Alone.

- 53 -

Chapter Five She’d been staring at him all night. Micah finally turned her way. Gave her a look that told her he knew exactly what even the boldest of women wouldn’t ask out loud. The attitude in her walk as she approached the table confirmed his communication with her. “Hi.” Micah didn’t smile at her when she spoke to him. He’d never understood these women. They knew what was going to happen to them even before they spoke to him. Micah’s reputation was part rock star, part serial killer. That reputation alone led more women to him than any viral induced scent, vision or force ever could. The woman practically purred at him as she lifted her leg and swung it over to straddle his crotch. “I’ve wanted you for so long,” she hummed to Micah, her lips trailing down his jaw and then back up to his ear. “I thought you would never notice me…” Her fingers dragged down his chest as she slithered underneath the table. The cold shock of the club’s atmosphere hit his cock just seconds before being swallowed completely inside the warmth of her mouth. His entire body stiffened while the woman teased the head of his prick with her tongue and then worked her mouth up and down his shaft. Within minutes, he was hard as steel. But as quickly as she had managed to summon his erection, Micah hated it. He hated her for causing it. But most of all, he despised the fact that it no longer bothered him whatsoever for a woman to suck him off in plain view of a room full of people. Micah had been human at one time. And he had cared about such things as dignity and respect. He was almost sure of that.

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“Do you like fucking my mouth?” He heard her question right before the loud sucking noise that came from her lips made him wince. Her tongue licked his head in one long, slow pulse right before she spoke to him again. “I’ve always wanted you to fuck me, Micah. And to bleed me…” She kept her eyes fixed on him as she lowered her mouth back down to his prick. Her eyes and posture spoke to him as much as her lips could have -- had they not been wrapped around his dick. Every part of her flirted with him. Tried to entice him. It would have been seductive and sexy as hell coming from the right woman in the private setting of a bedroom. A bedroom Micah might have shared with someone he loved. But it was all so mechanical now. Empty. Lonely. Sex meant nothing to him. The virus, though, didn’t care. It didn’t care that Micah found having sex with strangers repulsive. That he often walked away a man violated. The virus saw to it that Micah’s cock got hard when a woman sucked it or stroked it. His body reacted as any normal man’s body during sexual arousal. It made sure he came when the pressure of mouth or pussy became too intense for him to physically stop the action from occurring. And so Micah hated his virus a little more every time he came. “Come in my mouth,” she growled at him as her actions grew more seductive. Very intent on milking him while her mouth worked its way up and down the length of his shaft. Payback before the fact, he considered. “What’s wrong?” she pouted. “Don’t you like what I’m doing? “It’s not that,” Micah stated coldly. Grunting unwillingly at the physical pleasure her mouth on his cock was providing. “I’m just not able to enjoy things like this anymore.” She crinkled her nose. Obviously uninterested in Micah’s problems or his attempts at dissuading her actions. “You’ll like it when I let you come in my mouth.

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Men like to come inside a woman’s mouth. And I’ll swallow every drop of your cum, Micah.” The head of his prick hit the back of her throat as she dove down onto his shaft and took all of him into her throat. Her fingers worked up and down his cock. Her tongue and lips sucked and licked while her hand worked to jack him off inside her mouth. She was good at what she was doing. Very experienced, Micah pondered as his erection disappeared into her mouth and then reappeared at her lips. The scars on her neck and throat spoke of just how many of his kind she had given similar demonstrations. And so most likely this was an immune woman who had toyed with what the virus could offer but who’d saved his bite for last. By choice, Micah assumed. Because like many others, she’d been to the very edge of something she wanted to visit, but had never been with a host who would take her over the top. And everyone knew that no one could take a woman over the top like the Head Vamp… or what he had. The purest and evidently the most powerful virus. If that was true, she was the only one who felt any desire in the situation. Because while she sucked and worked at his erection, Micah did what he had always done during these moments: he removed himself. He tried to ignore his body and the woman fucking it with her mouth and instead focused on the mundane. Micah noticed the cigarette butts and peanut shells underneath the table. Underneath her knees. Her knees were dirty where she had knelt before him. And he wondered how many times tonight she’d performed this same service. The sight made Micah fight the urge to gag just as another urge made his cum spill into her mouth. He slightly flinched at the irritation of his orgasm while he watched her continue to force a throbbing pulse from his penis. She eyed his facial reactions as her lips dragged away from his head and Micah noticed a long string of his cum momentarily trail from her tongue. The woman quickly lapped it up between lips stained an unnatural shade of cranberry and wine. She swallowed every drop of his semen, licking away even the tiny drops still clinging to the head of his prick.

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“How was that?”

Micah found her eyes and searched for the strength or heart to speak to her. Or

to at least smile. It didn’t seem to faze her that he couldn’t manage either. He could, however, give her exactly what she’d wanted when she’d started sucking his cock. And it wasn’t his cum or his company, or even for his dick to be buried deep inside her that she’d been begging for when she’d blown him. “Just like almost every other woman who has approached me since I became what I am,” Micah said bitterly. “You want my sickness. My disease. Don’t you? You only want it for what it can do for you. What it can make you feel… And you’ll do anything to get it.” Micah’s eyes read the story her scars represented as the virus was taking control over him. “The fact that you came to me tells me you want more than you ever wanted from any man, sex, or semen inside you before.” His words didn’t provoke a response from her. Save for one word.

“Yes.”

Her hand was cold and sticky from his cum as Micah took it and pulled her up

from the floor. When he slid out of the booth, he tucked his still hardened prick back into his pants. Micah tried to avoid eye contact with her or with anyone else in the club. For some reason, the thought of Madeline hearing of this tawdry scene made his stomach churn even more violently than it had when he’d climaxed inside this woman’s mouth. The woman’s power over him was already almost as strong as the virus’s.

“But not yet…”

“I no longer feed in public,” he stated rudely as he tugged at her hand. The

woman grabbed his hand in hers and followed him from the table. She never hesitated as Micah led her out the back door of the club and into the alley behind it. Micah didn’t wait for her to steady herself. He didn’t give her time to gather her nerve -- her will -- or time to even consider that she might not want to do this after all.

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His virus was ravenous tonight, greedy for this woman who was immune. On top of the virus’s hunger, the sexual release this woman provided for Micah had further weakened his ability to resist its desires. It allowed for only one thing. Draining her of blood. Once again, against the cold bricks of his ‘lair’ as the Vamp Voyeurs had deemed the club, Micah drove himself into yet another woman. A woman who had come to him asking for something he could give her, offering nothing in return other than another sin for which he would have to pay with his soul. Micah doubted any of these women knew that they took away pieces of him during these transactions. Nor, he suspected, did they care. The illness was simply that strong due to the intensity and depth of what it offered them. Pleasure. And it was a great, inhuman pleasure she would have, Micah decided while he sunk his teeth into her neck and began to suck ruthlessly at her life. He paused and withdrew for a moment, then winced. As he always had at the sound of a woman’s neck popping open between his lips. Just as well, Micah grimaced when the first warm, sweet and salty drop of her blood hit his tongue. “I have never liked the taste,” he stated to her. The woman who would never share his secrets after he was done with her. “No matter how badly I crave it. No matter how much of it I take in order to survive, I’ll never enjoy this. I will never allow myself to take any form of pleasure from what I do in order to survive.” The woman panted and reached for her own cunt as merely a hint of his virus found her mind. “But you must find some enjoyment in --” “Not in the least,” he argued. “Never in this. Or in anything else, if you want to know the truth.” Micah felt one of her hands grab his ass in her impatience for him to continue his feeding. But Micah needed to feed another illness for a moment. Or rather to purge it. And this woman, his current nameless, faceless victim, would receive this from him whether she wanted it or not.

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“It would be unthinkable for me to enjoy it. Enjoyment simply isn’t something I deserve. Not after what I’ve done to so many others.” “But I want this, Micah,” the woman begged. “Can’t you take pleasure from pleasing me?” Micah merely stared at her. Pleasure. The memory of the word and of its old, true meaning ran like fire through his own veins. “The absence of pain. That’s all pleasure is to me now. A never ending plateau I occasionally find when this bastard inside me is satiated and I can temporarily convince myself I’m not really the monster I know I am.” He was being honest. For this time and with this woman who would soon be dead and unable to share his burdens with anyone. But what Micah wouldn’t tell even this woman who couldn’t speak about him later was that the truth in his life was changing. The plateau had already shifted. It had changed the landscape inside his heart. He felt himself tumbling down as he tried to traverse these new, foreign sensations. Micah wished he could tell this woman, or any woman who could never repeat the words, how he hated Madeline for forcing those emotions to rush through him every time he even allowed her face or voice or scent to cross his mind. Fear, yet another old emotion. For the first time in years, he was afraid of something. Losing Madeline. To his own weaknesses. He tried to push the memory of her away. It had been stupid and careless of him to allow old emotions to resurface. The idea of falling in love or holding anything other than indifference for anyone, least of all a woman who could fall prey to him, was ridiculous at best. A far-fetched idea to say the least. Cruel. Every single time it teased his heart. Almost as cruel as what he was about to do to the woman in his arms. Micah spun her body, bending her forward over the stack of crates that had many times served as an obliging partner in feedings such as this. This was how he’d always done it. This was how he’d fed the bastard inside him. They were never facing

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him while he bled them dry. And they were never really “women.” They weren’t even human. They couldn’t be in Micah’s emotionless eyes. “Yes,” the woman said excitedly as Micah pushed her feet farther apart so her ass and cunt were the only parts of her that existed to the man in him. He watched with no expression at all as her hands reached back to eagerly spread herself open. “Fuck me in the ass.” She dipped her fingers into her cunt and began to wet and ready the puckered bud of her asshole. “I want you to fuck me in the ass when you bite into me, Micah.” His dick throbbed at the sight of her finger-fucking herself. And at the promise of ramming his prick into the tightest of her holes. Despite having no emotional desire for this woman or desire for the physical pleasure fucking her would bring him, Micah’s very human male sexual appetite spoke to his prick as he watched her fingers work themselves in and out of her ass. Perhaps this was pleasure now. Or at least all the pleasure Micah would ever be allowed again. His cock getting hard over the nameless, faceless cunts and assholes he fucked. And the release of coming hard and long into the wet, hot tunnels of emotionless female flesh. “Please,” she begged. Her other hand came back and thrust those fingers into her pussy. On her neck, the fresh trickle of blood from the wound he’d already made glistened even in the palest light down the alley. The smell of it -- of her blood -- mixed with the smell of her sex, plus the sight of her pushing her fingers into her cunt and ass made Micah’s cock throb in anticipation of fucking her while he fed. Despite what his mind wanted. “Do you know how many blood whores like you I’ve had? Nothing I say will make you leave, will it?” The woman merely moaned at his questions. Her fingers plundered faster, more determinedly into both of her orifices. The sight made him both nauseous and harder, fuller of self-hatred for what he knew he would do. Micah wasn’t in the mood to fuck

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anyone. He was long tired of the give and take that determined his survival. But his virus was hungry. So it made decisions concerning Micah’s behavior in its own interest. As for his newest victim, the woman offering her ass obviously agreed with Micah’s illness. After dragging her wet fingers out of her cunt, she cocked her eyebrow at him and smiled. “When you think about it, Micah, you’re no more than a whore yourself. You trade sexual pleasure for blood. You fuck and are fucked in order to get what you need from women. I don’t know why you’re complaining,” came a drunken chuckle, “you’re the only party who can enjoy the memories.” “I can enjoy the memories, huh?” Micah questioned as he watched her pinch her clit between her fingernails. “I haven’t felt alive in so long that I don’t think I would recognize a pleasant memory if it crawled right into bed with me,” he stated as he unzipped his fly and took out his engorged cock. The “serial killer” in him stroked it a couple of times in anticipation of fucking the tight, warm hole in front of him. “I also wouldn’t recognize life, or love, or humanity…” Micah stopped speaking, and squeezed his prick even tighter, sliding it between his fingers as he continued to watch the woman in front of him masturbate. Micah had stopped his words because he realized he had felt those things anew. And all because of one woman. And for this reason most of all, he detested Madeline almost as much as he worshipped her. But as for the woman spreading herself open for his cock, Micah suspected he would never have more than a physical desire to screw her. Maybe not even remorse. “Fuck me, Micah,” she purred. “Shove your cock into my ass. And take what you need while you do it.” Take what he needed. No. Not what he needed. What his virus needed. What he needed -- what Micah needed -- was most likely at home in her apartment. Sleeping. And somewhat oblivious to what a despicable and ugly man she’d allowed

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inside her life and body. Micah reached for the woman’s hair. He pushed his cock into the cheeks of her ass and pulled her head back. He let his mouth find her flesh. His teeth sank into the skin of her neck as his dick pressed against the outer rim of her ass. The woman shifted her feet and reached back to pull her ass farther apart, ready for his penetration. She guided just the head of his prick into her cunt to wet it and then removed it, slowly pushing its entire length into her ass. Micah tasted in her blood the birth of her orgasm, and his own long-damned soul as she slid backwards on his cock. The sting of her nails dug into Micah’s hips as she pulled him to her and then pushed him away. Locking the fingers of one hand between the wooden slats in the crates underneath her, she slid her other hand in her pussy while blissfully fucking herself with his prick in her ass. The woman used him, writhing as she grunted noises of both enjoyment and pain while he drank from her. The virus demanded he take her blood, but he fought any other physical urges to fully engage in this activity. He fought it even though the hot, tight ass of the woman enjoying his dick seemed to eagerly swallow and spit him back out. Almost begging him to do his part. But Micah simply couldn’t allow himself to participate in this, not any more than he already was participating. And not with this woman. Not with any woman again. Except for one. With this woman, Micah would simply feed his virus. He would begrudgingly let her fuck him as he did it. But no more than that. Had it been Madeline standing in front of him, Micah suspected he would be helpless to deny her any sin or pleasure, perverse or chaste, anything she wanted. And so he tried to imagine this woman was Madeline. He decided this was Madeline’s blood running down his throat and her ass sliding up and down the length of his cock. Because for now, Micah was caught in some purgatory where he wasn’t strong enough to starve his virus, and yet he wasn’t as cold and unfeeling as he’d once been. He would have to live somewhere in between. And Madeline would be either his salvation or his demise.

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“Fuck me!” she demanded. Micah flinched at her tone as she shoved herself backwards even harder on his cock. He stiffened his stance in order to help her use his cock but offered no other assistance or effort. “Bite me somewhere else,” she urged as she tried to pull her neck away from him. “Bite me harder.” He secured his grip in her flesh with his teeth. The pain of his doing so evidently satisfied whatever level of self-torture she’d been trying to find. His stomach lurched as she fucked herself on his cock. It was sickening to him. Vile. So much so that Micah suddenly considered this one of the most degrading things his virus had done to him. It forced him to be with these women he didn’t love and didn’t want. It forced him to be a whore for the virus and for blood. “Yes!” she squealed as she worked her ass back and forth on his dick. “Harder! Fuck me harder!” But Micah didn’t move from his position. He didn’t fuck her harder although he did consider pulling away from her, letting his virus go hungry for the rest of the night. But Micah couldn’t push away from her. He couldn’t make his cock go soft and stop her from fucking herself and him. The virus was using him, controlling him. This woman was using him and all Micah could do was let them. For now. So Micah closed his eyes and drank from her blood while his virus once again forced him to rape himself inside some strange woman’s hole. “It’s starting,” she whispered to him as she rocked more slowly back on his erection. Her body was throbbing, but her muscles spasmed slightly and not nearly strong enough for her to come. And they were only growing weaker. While his mouth continued to drain her blood, Micah could taste her death growing as quickly as her climax. Possibly even more quickly, he noticed her posture change and felt her body grow limp. The fingers

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that had occupied her cunt fell from their post and the grip on the crate grew slack. Finally, her actions slowed until Micah’s erection merely rested inside her body. Neither of them moving. Neither of them helping to achieve her goal. She was quiet. Her breathing shallow and slow, despite her body’s increased sexual responses. The flow of blood had all but ceased from the jugular Micah had punctured in her neck. The climax his virus could give her would come as they always did, but possibly not soon enough for it to finish before she slipped into unconsciousness from loss of blood. For the first time since he’d gotten sick, Micah began to worry about one of his victims. A worry that this woman might not even live to enjoy the pleasure for which she had bargained her life. He pulled his teeth away from her flesh and spoke to her. “Wake up.” Her eyes opened slightly at his request, but then closed again. Micah tapped her cheek and then grasped her face between his hands. “Wake up!” he demanded. This time, her eyes opened fully and she stared back at him. Micah searched her face for something, anything, that would tell him she wanted him to stop and let her stay alive, regardless of her lack of satisfaction. And regardless of the reputation that had drawn her to him. But it wasn’t her eyes that relayed her wishes to him. It wasn’t the message he had wanted to hear. And it wasn’t his human ears that heard it first. “I want all of it, Micah,” she whispered. “Please.” How many years? How many women? How many lives had Micah destroyed because of this beast that lived inside him? Micah didn’t know. What he did know was he’d once enjoyed watching a woman be pleased. Especially by his own skill and selflessness. But it had been years since he’d even considered such a thing. But since Madeline had entered his life, Micah could remember what pleasure felt like. What a gift it was to receive pleasure by way of pleasing someone else. It

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wasn’t much. Not nearly enough to make him feel human again. But it was a start. He pulled his cock part of the way out of the woman and then thrust it back inside her, working into and out of her ass. Fucking her slowly at first, then thrusting harder and more brutally into her body. He tilted her head with one hand to gain access to her throat, but he let the other drive itself into the warm wet cunt between her legs. Finding her clit with his hand, he pinched it, rolled it between his fingers, prompting both a moan from her and enough renewed strength so she could grip the wooden slats before her to steady herself. Sticky. Warm. Sweet but soured by saltiness. Micah tasted a part of this woman that even his virus didn’t need as he pulled the last ounces of life from her. Emptying her and filling her at the same time. Trading her blood for his illness. He felt its true beginning. Climax and an unnatural death joining hands, falling together into some void that Micah could only view from the outside of such a feeling. His cock from the inside of her ass felt the vaginal muscles working together in what would prove to be their last and yet most intense display of strength and pleasure as her orgasm began. She cried out as the intensity of the climax forced her to dive into a scream. An orgasm so intense it would take the chasm of her death to contain it. So controlling, it locked her hands on the wooden slats so tightly that Micah was quite sure her fingers would have bled had she still possessed enough of the vital fluid to allow it. But she did not. Not anymore. Micah had taken too much of it. As he always did. And so she was left with this. A sexual satisfaction strong enough to destroy even the basic need to live for any longer than the extent of this moment in which her climax existed. “Come, Micah,” she somehow whispered to him. Micah shook his head even though she couldn’t see his response. The unnatural throbbing and pulsations of her cunt massaged his shaft still embedded inside of her ass. Pulsing so strong, they would most likely milk his cock if he stayed inside her until her orgasm was over. “No.” He pulled his still rigid prick from her ass. “I can’t come in you.”

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She didn’t argue with him. Micah knew her silence was most likely the result of simply not having the strength to speak to him. In the very last moments of her life, he watched her body as it continued to buck and contort with her climax. A life that Micah and his sickness had just ended. But in the same concept -- the one that spoke of death -- lay Micah’s only hope for salvation. This hell would end for him someday. One way or another. Micah slipped her body from his arms and lowered it to the ground. Some stranger or the club owner would find it and summon the police for all of their nightly perfunctory head shaking. They would curse Micah’s kind while they photographed her violated corpse but they wouldn’t do anything else. The authorities didn’t even try to apprehend the feeders anymore. There were simply too goddamned many of them, and the general untold truth was that having the men starve in jails and prisons wasn’t something even the most brutal of society had been able to bring themselves to do. But Micah saw the truth differently. He suspected they received their own dose of twisted pleasure from allowing his kind to remain sick but alive. He suspected some of the men actually envied him and his ways. But only so far as their paltry imaginations could take them when they saw his actions as some sort of freedom to consume women at will. Micah had never wanted anything that even resembled cruelty to seep into his thoughts and emotions for women. He adored them. Would never have wanted to destroy or even slightly hurt a member of the female sex. But he’d had no choice but to alter the way he viewed them when they had become his food. And so when he’d been forced to prey upon them, his defense had been to become numb to what he had to do in order to survive. Numb to their pain as well as his own. Another lie that had been told and retold throughout the history of his sentence in hell. He took one last mental snapshot of her body, avoiding her glassy, lifeless eyes, then Micah wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The habitual action suddenly screamed of just how cold and unsympathetic his cravings had forced him to become.

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He started to make his way back into the club. But then another face ran through his mind. Micah turned back to the woman he had just killed. He removed his coat and bent to carefully cover her body. Her face. Her death. As much as he could, Micah shielded her. It was his apology to her. The last bit of dignity he knew he could give her. This whore. This tramp. This beautiful nameless woman. It would have seemed to any passerby to be an action performed to relieve his own guilt. But it did nothing of the sort for him. There was no relief for his guilt. Instead, it served only to satisfy something growing inside him. An entity he knew had to be stopped before it became too unruly and fatally prolific. Micah shifted the coat and picked her up. The memory and soul of another woman -- one who could possibly provide him with the strength to finally end his own life -- seemed to be urging Micah to carry this woman back inside. “You,” Micah whispered down to his victim’s corpse, “are the last one.”

Chapter Six “Now there is one cold son of a bitch who deserves to die a slow, painful death.” Madeline’s head snapped up at the words that had just spilled out from her patient’s mouth. She would never have attributed such an ugly statement to a man as gentle as Hayden. He had been coming to the clinic for well over four years and was like a father figure to the entire staff. In Madeline’s heart, he occupied an even more important spot. “Who are you talking about, Hayden?” “That bastard right there.” Hayden motioned to the other side of the clinic and Madeline’s heart seized itself in mid beat at the sight of Micah walking through the front doors. “Killed my daughter Molly when he first got sick.” Even while she watched him stride across the lobby, Madeline could hardly believe what she was seeing. It was Micah. In the clinic. She blinked and then swallowed as her mind struggled to wrap itself around what was happening right in front of her. Micah -- the man who had infected the entire world with this plague -- had just walked right through the doors of a replacement clinic. And as every single head turned to stare Madeline was just as helpless to her own morbid urge to share in the action. “It’s an insult to see that bastard walk in,” Hayden growled. “Why now? Why so late?” he questioned. “If he wanted to wean why didn’t he grow some balls and do it before he killed so many of our daughters and wives?” Madeline shook her head slowly as she tried to process the sight. Micah had never been in the clinic before. Madeline was absolutely sure. Even before she’d made love to him, for the Head Vamp to even consider weaning would

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have been a newsworthy event and would have spawned weeks and weeks of talk and gossip. “Why do you think he’s here?” Hayden pressed, his hate-filled tone laced with just a hint of curiosity now. “I honestly don’t know,” Madeline said softly. But she did know. She had her suspicions. Or perhaps they were merely hopes she wanted to call suspicions. Regardless, in Madeline’s opinion there were only two possible explanations for his presence in the clinic. Either he had come to see her, or it was exactly what Hayden had assumed. Micah was actually going to try and wean. “Son of a bitch,” Hayden repeated. Madeline attempted to pull her eyes away from the unfamiliar sight that was also devouring everyone else’s attention. Trembling, she turned back to take the older man’s vitals but found herself unable to focus on anything other than how close Micah was and why he might be there. Not a single hour had passed since they’d parted when Micah hadn’t crossed Madeline’s mind. Not a moment when she hadn’t wondered what he was thinking. What he was doing. Most prevalent of all was the never lessening throb of her wanting him inside her. It haunted her. This need she felt for him. Consuming her days and nights like his virus consumed his soul. She wanted him sick. She wanted him healthy. It really hadn’t mattered to her when she considered having him beside her. As long as he was there. The mere possibility that he might actually try to wean was now making more dreams and desires dance inside Madeline’s mind. To even consider seeing him without the burden his virus placed upon him and his life was something that made Madeline’s entire being swell with hope. “That bastard doesn’t deserve to get better.” Hayden’s statement suddenly interrupted Madeline’s thoughts. “He just deserves to die.” His comment was like a dagger to her soul. But Madeline could only absently study the numbers on the blood pressure cuff in front of her and hold her tongue. To

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argue with Hayden would be disrespectful to a very dear friend. But to agree with him would have been disrespectful to her heart. Hayden was quiet until Madeline finished with his vitals but anger seethed even from his silence. She carefully pulled the cuff from the man’s arm and pulled the stethoscope from her ears before secretly aching for the pain her dear friend was obviously in. But of course even her worry was cut short by her desire to concentrate on Micah. Hayden motioned to the now healing wound on her hand and Madeline watched his jaw work itself in a hateful grinding of his teeth. “One of us do that?” “Unfortunately,” Madeline replied as she strained to hear what was being said between Micah and the doctor behind the desk. “I don’t know how you do it,” Hayden declared and crossed his arms. His animosity for a man Madeline wanted still brewed urgently in his body language. “I don’t know how you work with us. And treat us like we’re still human. We’re all sons of bitches if you ask me. We’re predators, Maddy.” Predators. That word. Hearing it come from Hayden sent a chill down her spine despite the warmth she knew existed in the man who’d offered it. And even as she could clearly see that Micah was just a man, she knew Hayden was exactly right. Micah was a predator. But had she wanted to be his prey? She didn’t want to consider what she’d truly wanted from him when he’d bitten into her. So she didn’t. Not yet. Instead, Madeline patted the man’s hand in an attempt to extinguish some of the fire in his eyes and for a moment drew her attention away from Micah. “Mrs. Hayden didn’t seem to think you were a son of a bitch or a predator.” Hayden’s face attempted unsuccessfully to hide the painful emotions aroused at the mention of his wife. For Madeline, seeing the man wean from blood had been only slightly more bearable than watching him learn to live without the woman he’d loved for more than thirty years.

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But this. This was something else. Seeing Hayden bathed in his hatred for a man Madeline wanted to love was far and above the most difficult to bear. “That woman was a saint.” He tried to smile at her affectionately through his anger, but failed. “I see a lot of her in you.” Madeline reached over and patted the man on the back before reaching for a gentle hug. “Then she married the right man.” It was hot. This emotion seeping through Hayden’s shirt and into her own as she held him for a moment. Hot and destructive and like nothing Madeline had ever wanted to know. “I can’t take this,” he stated, quite matter of fact. And Madeline suddenly found her arms and the chair in front of her empty. “What the hell are you doing here?” Madeline watched in horror as Hayden covered the distance between where he had been and the spot in front of the desk where Micah stood. “Excuse me?” Micah’s face was clearly a tapestry of confusion as he faced the older man. “Are you talking to me?” “You’re goddamned right I’m talking to you!” Hayden rumbled. “I want to know what the fuck you’re doing here!” Madeline’s lungs had forgotten how to work. Her skin had grown clammy and cold in a matter of seconds. And as she watched Micah somewhat guiltily meet the older man’s stare she felt her stomach turn over and tie itself into a knot. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business,” she heard Micah say. “And I’m not here to start any trouble.” “Not here to start any trouble?” Hayden closed the distance between them and Madeline flinched when Micah stepped back. “So you’re just an innocent bystander who happened to wander in here, huh? Just a guy minding his own fucking business. Right?” Please don’t do this, Hayden! Madeline silently pleaded with her friend. Please don’t

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make him change his mind! “Yes,” Micah stated very calmly. “I’m just minding my own business, sir.” Madeline nervously worked the stethoscope in her damp palms as she watched Micah slowly nod. Hayden’s head followed the motion. And his mouth curled into a cruel, twisted line of contempt. “Just like my Molly was minding her own business,” came a demonic whisper. “She was simply minding her own business, Micah…” Madeline had to close her eyes for a moment at the loathsome way Hayden had said his name. “But you killed her.” It seemed as though there wasn’t a single sound that could be heard in the entire world. As Madeline and everyone else in the clinic sat dumbfounded in their seats, the overwhelming hum of nothingness, finality and death was the only thing that offered to punctuate Hayden’s claim. Madeline’s heart, her soul, her very life ached trying to bear some of the guilt and pain and self-hatred she saw reflected in Micah’s eyes as Hayden’s surprisingly calm and collected newest words found his brain. “You killed my baby to feed that fucking demon inside you.” And then it happened. So quickly. So unexpected, especially to Madeline. Before anyone could even consider a man with a nature so gentle and caring as the one Hayden possessed might do such a thing, it happened. “I’ll kill you, you son of a whore!” Hayden’s hands had reached without warning and were suddenly wringing the neck of Micah’s shirt. Shaking him. Shaking the both of them in his hatred and pain and grief over Molly. Madeline choked as a sob broke free from her throat at the horrific sight. “Do you hear me, you son of a bitch? I will mother-fucking kill your worthless murdering ass if you ever walk into this clinic again!” It was a father’s pain making Hayden sound so feral and ungodly. A voice

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screaming from a father’s agony over the child he had loved and lost. But it was the virus Madeline heard growl a message of death and hell. And it wasn’t just Micah who emitted it. It was the rage and appetite of the beast living inside them that echoed from every single infected man in the clinic. “You’ll do WHAT, old man?” Madeline’s last meal lurched into her mouth at the odious wrath in the virus’s voice. “You’ll do WHAT?” Courage simply wasn’t the issue in stopping this fight. Not a man in the place would have been strong enough or determined enough to step between these two now and do any good. Except maybe for one. The virus had already wrapped Micah’s hands around the older man’s throat. Hayden’s face was very quickly making its way through the choking stages of red and purple and blue. “You don’t threaten me, you useless piece of shit!” the virus raged. “You don’t fucking tell ME who I will and won’t dispose of!” Hayden’s own hands were struggling to loosen Micah’s grip. Clawing at his fingers and then flailing in spontaneous spasms at his sides as his brain and lungs fought for air. “You don’t dictate to ME how I will and won’t run this world! I will consume whomever I want and neither YOU nor anyone else will do a goddamned thing about it!” He was dying. Hayden, one of the most important men in Madeline’s life, was dying. And he was dying at the hands of someone she somehow knew was the most important man in her life. “Micah!” Evidently the virus was too busy delighting in its prospective kill to hear her. It was Micah who saw her, heard her call. “Micah, make it stop!” she pleaded. “Please don’t let it kill him!” Hayden’s limbs were still. He’d stopped fighting. Stopped trying to find a way to

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draw breath. And yet the virus refused to release the man’s neck. “Micah,” Madeline said more softly, “I care about that man.” It was in no way gentle. Nor was it kind. In fact, the way Hayden’s body was dropped onto the tile floor was rather violent and harsh. But it wasn’t more violent than the way Hayden’s body started to gasp and convulse as his lungs received air. Nor, Madeline suspected when Micah spun and quickly disappeared through the clinic doors, would it be as violent as the destruction and torture the virus would probably inflict upon its host for letting Hayden get away.

Chapter Seven “I told you to stay away from me.” Madeline knew he was talking to her even though he hadn’t faced her. He’d changed tables from where he normally sat. His new position afforded the crowd a better view of his activities and visitors. But, just like the first night she’d seen him, some three dozen or so stares pressed down upon her as she drew near Micah’s new abode. Their combined weight was stifling. “It’s a public place,” she refuted mildly as she slid into the booth beside him. “You don’t own it,” she teased. Madeline breathed him in. She couldn’t help it. His scent was even more powerful than the eyes that followed her every move. It was also stronger than any she’d ever encountered in her work. She knew the moment her senses found his scent that she would have to strain to keep her wits about her. His hand went down around her waist and grabbed her side. “Do you want something to drink?” His lips so close to her ear that Madeline felt his breath on the hairs of her neck. Warm. Alive. Male. The sensation made her shiver. “No.” She smiled and tried to pull away from him. Not out of any disgust over being so close to him, but for the exact opposite reason. His scent was pulsing. Demanding. Speaking to Madeline in a language she hadn’t known she knew how to hear. It conveyed a message she understood all too well. Micah was very hungry tonight. His fingers dug into her side just a little as his thoughts alone spoke to her this time. What’s the matter, Madeline? Micah’s mouth was on her neck when the unspoken words branded themselves into her mind. His lips hadn’t spoken. Yet a voice, a message from the depths of his

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mind had penetrated her more deeply than even his cock had when he’d been inside her. The grip of his fingers finding her clothed sex encouraged her to stiffen in anticipation of his touching her bare skin. Her body shifted involuntarily underneath the table to encourage him to slide her skirt out of the way. Within a sliver of a second, he’d shifted her body to sit around his. “Micah.” She offered a pitiful argument even as her body twisted, scraping her clit delightfully against the bulge in his pants. Slowly she moved, trying not to draw attention to herself, or her suitor, as they sat in one of the most well lit areas of the club. Somehow she knew he wouldn’t put her into this situation unless he were overtaken by need. “What’s wrong, Madeline?” it teased. “Are you horny?” She hated the virus. She hated everything about it. But as Madeline sat astride Micah’s lap being subjected to what its hunger could do, she couldn’t seem to care. It was still Micah’s body. Micah’s cock. And he was still in there, somewhere. And dangerous or not, Madeline wanted to fuck him again. Gingerly, even without her giving them permission to do so, her hands reached down and worked his cock out of his pants and around the panties she wore. The tip simply grazed the lips, making her pussy even wetter in anticipation. Madeline shifted and guided his cock inside her. It was most likely the virus that planted the image Madeline saw as his dick entered her, but it was not an unpleasant image. Micah’s cock was alive. Moving. As if it were a creature all on its own. Temptation and doom. Like a serpent it slithered its way up into her cunt, sliding as deeply as it could to find the innermost parts of her sex. The fact that there were some fifty or more people who could be watching her ride him made it feel as if everyone in the room had penetrated her. Madeline dug her fingers into the seat behind Micah, pushing herself against him, riding a hot rush of embarrassed excitement at what she was not only encouraging to take place, but was also enjoying. “Are you sure you don’t want something to drink?” Micah asked.

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Madeline gasped at the rigid upward thrust inside her, then turned her head to scan the room behind their booth. Watching eyes. Watching her. The Vamp Voyeurs. The thrill seekers of this new world. They were neither infected nor willing to be victims, but craved the dark, ominous lifestyle just the same. Madeline closed her eyes to shut out the sight of the scavengers who would gladly stand by and watch Micah kill her while she came. She closed her eyes despite the fact that the Voyeurs’ participation was crucial to the pleasure she felt for this act. “Not even a glass of wine?” Madeline exhaled, then shook her head again and imagined all those eyes watching her while she took her pleasure from Micah. She was well aware that most of them would soon be jacking off underneath tables and in even darker corners than Micah frequented. Using her excitement as their own. Imagining themselves in either her position or Micah’s. Either fucking or being fucked. Not that it mattered to most of them. They were getting off at someone else’s expense. At someone else’s risk, either way. And they would derive their safe yet obscene pleasures as she willingly allowed herself to be drained of her life. “Are you afraid a glass of wine will lower your defenses against me?” Madeline started to nod, but instead ground her clit against the hair above his prick. Even in her hazy and aroused state, she understood that letting him know her weaknesses wasn’t a smart thing to do. Micah wasn’t rational tonight. He wasn’t himself. His virus controlled him. And it could very easily control her. But still, somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered, Who’s fucking me? She didn’t care. She wanted to care, wanted to open her eyes and ask. But she couldn’t. All she could do was ride the beautiful erection between her legs while Micah drained as much of her blood as he wanted to drink. You’re going to end up getting hurt. His warning hummed into her, rolling like water and velvet through the deepest

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recesses of her mind, but it was lost when his lips reached for her breast. Madeline pushed her body upward, giving him better access to her nipple. She opened her eyes when he took it between his teeth. The Voyeurs had gathered at the best viewing areas of the club. They watched her joyfully ride their god’s cock, their own hungers satiated by the sight of him fucking what should be his next victim. By the time Madeline could be ashamed of wantonly displaying to others the view of what they hoped would be her destruction, Micah’s teeth had already found her other nipple underneath her blouse. He greedily but gently nibbled his way up to her neck, then to her ear, sucking the delicate lobe. And so, no. She didn’t mind at all. “That’s a good girl…” Such a seductive sound of encouragement this voice contained. Madeline could do no wrong in its eyes. As long as she gave it what it wanted. As she continued to press down around his shaft Micah’s heat and his pulse warmed and caressed every part of her skin. Despite the people around them who had no right to see this, there was something else. Something stronger than the perversion of Micah’s own plague. She suspected it was his soul that reached out to her through his fingertips, his lips and at every other point where their bodies touched. “Do you want to die, Madeline?” She heard the question. Her mind knew his words were meant as a warning. His mind fought that which made it sick in order to save her from his own greed. He wanted her to leave. He wanted her safe and alive. He wanted her to pull her body from him and go, so he didn’t have to put an end to something he craved so badly. Although her mouth, her sex and everything in her body that he hadn’t yet touched screamed for her to wait until they’d had their fill of him -- before she put an end to this cursed seduction. “And you hate him for that, don’t you, Madeline?” She nodded. And wove her fingers into the back of his hair to grind herself down

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around his cock. She wanted all of this. All of Micah. All of him. Including this thing that was fucking her in his place. “Do you want me to kill you, Madeline?” Teeth. Blood. Pain. And the depraved onlookers who were somehow managing to put a naughty thrill into a most vile situation. None of them able to subdue the desire he was cocooning around her with his scent, his lips and his presence. He hadn’t even broken her skin. Yet, Madeline knew this time if he did bite her, even here in front of dozens of people both infected and clean, she’d let him take her as far as he would because it was being offered from this man’s body and touch. None of it mattered. Nothing would ever matter again. Nothing but him. Them. It. Madeline couldn’t make herself care. Anything for this man. To have him. Please him. Feed him. The words shamelessly played through her mind before she could stop them. “Madeline?” Her teeth were biting into him now. Into his neck. His shoulder through his shirt. “Madeline?” She was drunk on this thing. Completely intoxicated on whatever it was that owned Micah’s soul. But she finally managed to open her eyes. “That’s not me, sweetheart.” Hands. Mouth. Eyes. A cold emptiness. Everything and everyone deserted her when Micah lifted her off him. The warm, disappointing slide of his cock leaving her made her whimper. She clung to him until he sat her down beside him and stood to leave. Through a drug-like fog she watched him resituate his clothing and erection before rising to walk across the club floor to a woman standing beside another wellknown feeder. A stab of jealousy pierced Madeline’s gut as she watched him. His erection, his hunger for her obvious as he reached for another woman. But the hunger of his virus forced him to take what he needed from someone other than the one who truly wanted

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to give to him. Micah reached for the woman’s hair and pulled her head back, revealing her neck. The man who had been standing by her side stepped away with an angry huff, but no challenge for Micah. The feeder knew better. They all did. No one ever challenged Micah in his right to feed when and from whomever he wanted. The woman smiled when Micah nipped her neck enough to draw blood. The beginning of her viral climax immediately showed itself in the immune woman’s posture. It was a delightful portrait of pain and disease colored with the ostentatious hues of sexual delight, lightening her face as Micah dove into her. Madeline and the others could only watch. The cry that came from the woman’s throat made Madeline’s lonely cunt ache. It should have been her pleasure she was seeing. Her blood he was drinking. Madeline’s sex tightened in anger and need at the sight of some other woman having what she wanted so badly. She fought the urge to go to him and beg to be his next course. Madeline’s hands wandered underneath the table down to her body. The throbbing between her legs begged for Micah’s touch, but her own would have to suffice. The woman in Micah’s arms moaned in rapturous pleasure as he pulled her tightly against his body, forcing his sickness inside of her while taking her blood. Madeline longed to share her pain. Madeline’s hands became his hands. Touching her. Entering her. Giving this stranger the pleasure Madeline somehow knew he wanted to give her if their lives were different. If Micah were a different man. A healthy man. If he hadn’t been the thing he had become through no fault of his own. His virus had aroused her, but it was Micah she’d wanted to fuck. Madeline stroked her clit. Circled it. Ground her fingertips against it and then plunged them inside to try and fill the void he had left. Even brought drops of her excitement to her mouth when absent eyes would allow.

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The woman in his arms got his attention, his disease. The orgasmic effects of the virus. Madeline watched, while she continued to fuck herself with her fingers. Driving them deep inside her, quivering with need, her breathing mirrored Micah’s victim as her own climax started to build. Her body’s preoccupation with its needs and pleasure was so great she didn’t even notice that anyone had sat down next to her. That is, until the second man slid into the booth, blocking her escape between himself and the feeder Micah had just deprived of his meal. The rejected feeder pressed himself up against Madeline’s side. “It doesn’t have to be him pleasing you,” he murmured into her ear. His fingers found and then joined hers inside her pussy. She jerked and pulled away from him, the backward motion forced her neck right into the mouth of the man on her other side. He bit as soon as she was within range. Madeline fought to pry her flesh from the man’s teeth. His bite was brutal and seemed to tighten as she resisted. This was not the same as it had been with Micah inside her. The wafting of their combined scents rushed her senses in an orgy of sexual excitement too intense to be pleasing. Too obscene to be arousing. Madeline’s body and mind revolted against the invasion of so much man -- so much violence and sex all at once. Hands she didn’t want on her grabbed her in places she’d silently begged Micah to touch. Rude, molesting fingers and greedy mouths, taking what they wanted without regard for what she needed. They assaulted her from every direction, it seemed. Her body continued to ready itself both for her taking what she needed, and for her to give to anyone who would satisfy her needs. Fingers she didn’t want inside her still found a way to make her grind against them as the virus from another man began to pulse inside her from the wound he was inflicting upon her. She wanted to cry. Wanted to push them away, but she was helpless to what they were offering her. Her orgasm began to throb as hands and teeth and the smell of blood filled the space around her. Tears stung her eyes just before all contact with the men ceased.

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Madeline hadn’t known how tightly she’d squeezed her eyes shut until she tried to pry them open. When she did, she found Micah had the rejected feeder by the throat. He was promising to end his despicable life if he resisted in the smallest way. Her eyes searched the room just in time to see the man who’d bitten her fleeing from a back entrance. She put her hand up to her neck and winced as she found the open wound. “She’s mine!” The echo of the virus’s voice laced with Micah’s rage jarred the entire club. He shoved the man he held in his grip to the floor. Madeline heard the crack of a bone just before the man scurried painfully to his feet. He grabbed the hand of the woman Micah had left barely alive and practically dragged her with him as he ran out the door. Madeline shuddered as she considered what they would do to the poor woman. The room was silent. The only sound Madeline could find was the terrified heart pounding in her chest. He was watching her. Waiting for her reaction, his vision clear since his thirst had been satiated. He was able and ready to safely finish making love to her now that his hunger was gone. Micah. The man who had killed so many women. The one who could have killed her tonight. She wanted this man. She wanted everything about him. But the fear, the pain and confusion going through her were simply too much to bear at the moment. The hands and mouths of two strange, uninvited men were too fresh in her memory for her to think about pleasure. Even the sublime pleasure she could find with the man she wanted to love. She wanted the man who’d just saved her life more than she ever wanted any man, or anything for that matter. But she also wanted to live. For her to have both, it seemed, was an impossible dream. The female scream of pleasure and death that came from the alley didn’t slow Madeline down as she ran away from the club. As far away as possible from the men who’d just assaulted her. And as far away as possible from Micah.

Chapter Eight Micah was in a filthy mood. Not only had he been forced to almost murder a couple of creeps tonight, but he’d fed in public. In front of dozens of the people he despised, both for their morbid curiosity and for their good health. And he’d fucked Madeline in plain sight of them as well. “Are you all right?” She answered the door after only a few seconds. The concern in Micah’s voice didn’t fade even after he saw her standing there. “Yes,” Madeline answered very quietly. The white terry cloth bathrobe she’d wrapped around herself was huge on her small frame as she stood somewhat blocking the door. Her long chestnut hair was loose and wet around her face, no doubt trying to rid herself of any evidence of the night. The confident, composed lady he’d grown accustomed to seeing had been reduced to this frail and helpless woman/child Micah wanted so badly to take care of. Micah stepped closer to her and watched her instinctively push the door closed a little more to prevent him from touching her. “Madeline, I won’t hurt you.” The back of her hand ran across her nose and Micah watched her bottom lip tremble. Another step toward her and the door closed even more. Micah felt a jab of pain at the sight of her brown eyes watering. “Madeline.” His voice was calm but his eyes pleaded with her. “Sweetheart, I will not hurt you.” “But you might have. You could have.” The sob fighting for release made her words come out ragged. “Just like you would have killed that woman.” “I didn’t kill her, Madeline. I fed from her and left her alive.” Micah watched the door open just a sliver more. He knew he could push his way

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into her apartment if he wanted to. Just as she knew it, too. And it squeezed his heart that she obviously saw something in him that told her he wouldn’t do such a thing to her. “Why didn’t you? You know your virus wanted to.” Micah shrugged and avoided her eyes. “For the same reason I didn’t kill you that night, I suppose.” He shrugged again. “It felt wrong.” “Wrong?” she asked quickly. “It was my understanding that feeding and spreading this virus was the only sense of right and wrong men like you felt anymore.” She regretted her words the minute they came out of her mouth. It was obvious in her posture and in her eyes. Micah watched her bite down on her bottom lip hard enough to stop the quiver. Her throbbing lip swelled dark purple with anger. He flared his nostrils waiting for the scent of blood, but none flowed. That, he was all too aware, was something only his virus would think to do. “It is,” Micah agreed as his hands found his pockets in an attempt to strike a nonaggressive pose in front of her. “Or at least, it was.” “Was?” Micah watched the sliver of light from her apartment grow larger as she unconsciously opened the door a little wider. He almost scolded her for being so trusting of him or any of his kind. “What do you mean ‘was,’ Micah?” The light grew brighter and Micah smiled down at the contrast of her dainty red toenails against the carpet underneath her feet. Something so small. So insignificant. Something he hadn’t enjoyed in years. He absently rubbed his chin and then chuckled without thinking. “What’s so damned funny?” Her tone had smacked of an indignant nature. He’d angered her with what she understood was his mocking her. The notion of how wrong she could be held Micah at bay for several seconds. “Let me in, Madeline.” “No,” she protested, tightening her robe around her. “Madeline,” he soothed, “I couldn’t hurt you if I wanted to. You know that, don’t

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you?” Her fingers worked at the robe as she stood there. Their blood red tips matched her toes and glowed even brighter against the unblemished fabric. Micah felt his hunger grow. “Micah, you’re not coming in.” Madeline trembled as she spoke. Micah watched her gaze trail from his face to his groin. He suspected she didn’t even know she’d done it. His cock twitched at the mere hint of her noticing it. His body warmed to the possibility of being inside her again. Driving into her. Thrusting inside her. Fucking her, as she’d finger-fucked herself while he had fed from another woman in front of her. Making love to her like the man in him needed to do. “You’re still aroused,” Madeline noted and Micah watched stiffened nipples extend. Reaching for him with each breath. “I still want to finish what we started.” He watched her swallow after his request. Hard. Then watched the tips of her nails come away from her robe. “Do you think it would be safe?” Micah felt every inch of her skin against his body even without touching her, scorching him. Heated silk draped across his rotting soul. He basked in the feeling. The smell of this woman in front of him, her expression and the hunger he found in it. And for the first time in years, it was he who wanted to be devoured by something. By someone. Let me in, Madeline… His silent words, not something the virus had said, went out to her at the same time his hand cupped the back of her head. Fingers found the warm, moist result of her shower as he wove them into her hair and pulled her face to his. Lips, so often stained with the lives of women he’d never wanted to touch, found the mouth he’d tasted each

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and every time he’d imagined himself a whole and healthy man. And the predator suddenly found himself a prey.

The End For now…

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Blayne Edwards Blayne Edwards doesn’t care for snakes, the color orange or any book with the letter “Q” in its title. She believes chocolate -- just like sex -- is a gift straight from God and that brains and attitude, not a Stairmaster, are a woman’s pathway to her sexiest, fuckable best. She prefers paper over plastic, homemade to from-the-can and animals over humans (although not in a naughty way *wink*). Blayne will never in her life bother to ask if anyone else likes what music she puts on because 1) she already knows the answer and 2) she really doesn’t fucking care. For the moment, she, the husband and the bitch live in Tennessee.