10 Years Without A Meal: A Virus Within Excerpt

Blind ravenous desire consumed me when I woke. Tearing and slashing the air around me, I desperately sought out that steamy crimson liquid that would chill the burning desire within me. That cherished elixir of life sustaining magic wrapped in a tight fleshy wrapper was all I needed to cure my aliment. I needed to feed.

I smelled it coming from all around me. Its sweet bitter tang clung to the air, to my skin. It was here somewhere; it pumped through a lively vein. It called to me. I tried to recall the last time I smelled such an intoxicating aroma but failed.

Two cold hands gripped my shoulders. They tried to stop me from finding what it is I was after. I heard an unexpected growl then a hiss of pain. The sound probably came from me but I couldn’t have said for certain. The blood I knew was near consumed my thoughts. I struggled against the ironclad grip upon my shoulders. I had to break free to get just one small taste.

“Veronica, stop it!” I heard a woman shout over the insistent growls and snaps of a hungry animal in pain. I did not recognize the person that spoke, nor did I recognize whom it was they spoke to. Who was this Veronica, and why did they need her to stop? "Help me stop her."

"I'll try." A man said. A small part of me knew I should have recognized him, but that thought faded fast. It had been an eternity since I last fed on anything other than my own tears and bug gunk.

My hands curled into talons and I lashed at the people that held me against my will. There was a frighten yelp behind me. A whiff of metallic scented air assaulted my nostrils and I knew I struck gold.

I roared. My muscles flexed as I hurled away the person that held me back. Enraged I reared my head toward the scent that overwhelmed every fiber of my being. I lunged toward that sweet nectar.

A woman shrieked as I enveloped her with my hunger. Her face was blurred. It was as if someone had erased part of her, obscured her from the world. All I saw was red. The hot boiling liquid that bubbled from the laceration I caused to her arm called to me. I answered the call as I rode her to the ground and sank my teeth around the flesh wound.

I tore into her, causing more blood to flow. It squirted from the wound and splashed against the back of my throat.

She tasted like cherries dipped in chocolate. No, like a rainbow on a sunny day. No, like sex. She tasted like sex coated in chocolate brownies drizzled with whip cream and strawberries. Chilled on the outside, and yet, still warm from the oven on the inside. And she was all mine.

The power in her blood was not what I expected. There was more of a kick to it. But her heart beat. She breathed. She was alive. For how much longer I couldn’t have guessed. Nor did I care.

As the blood coursed its way through my hollow burning veins the famished hunger that blinded me slowly lifted. I opened my eyes, not realizing I had closed them, and saw my tight grip on this woman’s pale arm. My fingers gripped her tight enough that I broke through her skin. She bled from the wound in my mouth and from under my fingernails. I heard her faintly whisper, repetitively, “Please, please, stop. I can’t…. Please Veronica, please.”

I blinked past the storm that clouded my mind and really saw her. I lied across her waist, pinning her to the ground. Her dingy white t-shirt was soaked in her own blood. Strands of dirty, dark hair clung to her sweaty sweet face and to the dank ground beneath her. My victim’s dazed brown eyes became hooded with death as I drank from her. She pleaded through a weary thin-lipped mouth for me to stop feeding before I killed her. Shit.

I threw myself back. My back slammed against the damp and mildew covered brick wall behind me. The only protection I had from the weathered bricks were dingy rags some one had put me in. My fingers clenched at a thick patch of green moss. I flinched from the shock of feeling something that wasn’t as solid as I was used to touching. Where the hell was I?