The next morning, the air in Ashwick felt heavier, as if the gravity had been dialed up overnight.
I had barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the red eyes of the man under the streetlight. They weren't human. They burned with a dull, subterranean light, like lava cooling under a crust of black rock.
"Large drip, black. And a bagel. Don't toast it."
The voice snapped me back to the present. I was standing behind the counter of The Grinder, staring at the steam rising from the dishwasher. My hands were moving on autopilot, clutching a ceramic mug so hard my knuckles were white.
"Right," I muttered, turning to the coffee pot. " untoasted. Coming up."
I poured the coffee. My hand trembled, a minute tremor that sent a ripple through the dark liquid. I set it down on the counter and looked up at the customer.
He was a regular. Mr. Henderson. A tax accountant with a comb-over and a perpetual smell of damp wool and stale peppermint. He looked normal. Boring. Safe.
"You look terrible," he said, not unkindly, as he tapped his credit card on the reader. "Sick?"
"Something like that," I managed, forcing the corners of my mouth up. It felt like stretching old rubber. "Migraine."
"Weather," he nodded sagely, taking his cup. "Pressure system is dropping like a stone. Gonna be a bad one tonight."
He walked away, merging into the morning crowd. I watched him go, feeling a strange, hollow envy. He was going to an office. He would stare at spreadsheets. He would go home to a microwave dinner and maybe a television show about cops. He didn't have monsters watching his window.
I rubbed my temple. The headache wasn't just a throb. It bored into the space behind my left eye. It matched my heartbeat.
Get it together, Victoria.
I turned back to the grinder. The noise of the beans shattering was excruciating. It sounded like bones snapping. I winced, pressing the heel of my hand against my eye socket.
"Excuse me."
The voice was low.
I turned.
Standing at the register was a man I didn't recognize. He was thin, painfully so, with skin the color of old parchment and sunken eyes that darted around the shop like trapped insects. He wore a hooded sweatshirt that had seen better decades, the cuffs frayed and stained.
"Help you?" I asked. My voice sounded underwater.
"Coffee," he rasped. He sniffed. A wet, loud sound. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "Just... coffee."
I keyed it in. "Three fifty."
He fumbled in his pockets, pulling out a handful of crumpled bills and change. His fingers were shaking.
"Just a second," he muttered, counting the pennies.
I leaned against the back counter, waiting. The heat in the shop was suffocating. The espresso machine hissed, the refrigerator hummed, the rain lashed the windows. It was a symphony of noise, and every note hit me like a physical blow.
Then, the pressure in my head broke.
It didn't hurt. It just... popped.
I felt a sudden, warm wetness slide from my nostril, tracking over my lip.
I reached up, touching my face. My fingers came away red.
Bright red.
Not the dark, rusty color of a scraped knee. This was vivid. Crimson. It looked like it was glowing against my pale skin.
And then, the smell hit me.
Usually, blood smelled like iron. Like old pennies. This didn't.
The scent filled the small space behind the counter instantly. It was sweet. It smelled like spun sugar, like flowers blooming in a graveyard, like sunlight caught in a jar. It was powerful enough to make my stomach clamp down and my mouth water in a confusing, primal response.
I grabbed a napkin, pressing it to my nose. "Sorry," I mumbled into the paper. "Just a... nosebleed."
The scratching sound of coins on the counter stopped.
Silence.
I looked up.
The man in the hoodie had gone perfectly still. His head was lowered, staring at the countertop.
"Sir?" I asked, stepping back. A warning bell went off in my lizard brain. The same bell that had rung in the alley last night.
The man inhaled.
It was a long, ragged drag of air, as if he were trying to suck the atmosphere out of the room. His shoulders rose with the breath, and a shudder ripped through his thin frame.
Slowly, he lifted his head.
The sunken, fearful eyes were gone.
His pupils had blown wide, swallowing the iris until his eyes were black pits. The whites were shot through with red veins that pulsed. His mouth hung slightly open, and a string of saliva dripped from his lip.
He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the napkin in my hand.
"That smell," he whispered. His voice had changed. It was deeper, wet, hungry. "What is... that... smell?"
"I'm going to have to ask you to leave," I said. My voice was steady, but my legs felt like water. I reached under the counter, my fingers brushing the panic button Gary had installed years ago.
"It is so sweet," the man murmured. He leaned over the counter. His movement was wrong. Too fluid. "Fucking sweet."
"Get out!" I shouted, slamming my hand on the panic button.
Nothing happened. No alarm. No siren. Just the hum of the fridge.
The man laughed. It was a broken, giggling sound. "No alarms. Not for you. You... you are the feast."
He lunged.
It happened faster than my eyes could process. One second he was on the other side of the counter; the next, he was over it. He didn't vault it like a human. He moved with a blurred, unnatural speed, a streak of gray and hunger.
I scrambled back, tripping over a crate of milk. I hit the floor hard, the breath leaving me in a wheeze.
The man landed on top of me.
He was heavy. He pinned my wrists to the dirty tile floor with hands that felt like steel clamps. The smell of him was overwhelming. It was the smell of a predator that had been starving for a century.
"Please," I gasped, thrashing. "Get off!"
He didn't hear me. He was lost in the scent. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, inhaling deeply, his cold nose pressing against my pulse.
"So sweet," he moaned, his body vibrating against mine. "Queen's wine. Goddess nectar."
He licked the trail of blood on my upper lip.
His tongue was roug. The sensation sent a shock of revulsion through me so potent I thought I would vomit.
"Mine," he snarled, his teeth grazing my skin. "I found it. It's mine."
I screamed. It was a raw, animal sound, torn from the bottom of my lungs. I kicked, kneed, bucked, but it was like fighting a statue.
My vision began to blur. Not from lack of air, but from the blood.
The nosebleed hadn't stopped. It was flowing freely now, pooling in the hollow of my throat, soaking into the collar of my shirt. With every beat of my heart, I felt... lighter.
But it wasn't the lightness of fainting. It was the lightness of being untethered.
The edges of the coffee shop began to dissolve. The fluorescent lights overhead stretched and warped, turning into streaks of blinding white fire. The sound of the man's ragged breathing faded, replaced by a low, thrumming bass note that vibrated in my teeth.
The birthmark on my collarbone ignited.
It burned. God, it burned. It felt like someone had pressed a branding iron against my skin.
The man on top of me froze. He jerked his head back, his black eyes wide with suddenly dawning terror.
"No," he whispered, backing away. "No, no, no. Too bright. Too... much."
He scrambled off me, crab-walking backward until he hit the cabinets. He was clawing at his own throat, choking, as if the very air around me had turned poisonous to him.
"You aren't... food," he wheezed, blood leaking from his own eyes now. "You are... the teeth."
I tried to sit up. I couldn't. My body wasn't mine anymore.
The world went red.
Not the darkness of unconsciousness. This was a vivid, violent crimson. It washed over the coffee shop, drowning the espresso machine, the linoleum, the terrified man huddled in the corner.
The floor beneath me melted. I was falling.
Down. Down through the earth. Down through the bedrock of Ashwick. Down into the dark.
I landed, but not on tile.
The air here was cold and still, smelling of copper—the same smell as my blood, magnified a thousand times.
I stood in a vast, cavernous hall. The ceiling was lost in shadow, held up by pillars of black stone that twisted like petrified muscle.
And in front of me, rising from the floor like a jagged wound, was a throne.
It was carved from a single piece of red crystal. It glowed from within, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic light. Veins of darker crimson ran through it, looking disturbingly organic, as if the chair itself were alive.
I took a step toward it. I didn't want to. My feet moved on their own.
"Welcome home, little vessel."
The voice didn't come from the room. It came from inside my skull. It was a woman's voice. It was smooth and terrifying.
"Who are you?" I tried to scream, but no sound came out.
"I am the hunger," the voice purred. "And you... you are the spoon."
The throne pulsed brighter. A liquid sound echoed in the silence, the sound of a heart beating.
The shockwave knocked me to my knees.
I saw a figure seated on the throne. It was shadowy, indistinct, shifting like smoke. But I saw eyes. Gold eyes. My eyes.
The figure raised a hand, pointing a finger at me.
"Wake up," the voice commanded. "They are coming for you."
"Who?" I gasped, the air leaving my lungs.
"The usurpers. The traitors. The sons who stole my blood." The voice turned jagged, filled with hate. "Let them take you, Victoria. Let them bring you into their house. For every drop they drink... we will take a pound of flesh in return."
The figure on the throne lunged at me.
I threw my hands up to protect my face.
And then the red shattered.