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The first time he saw you, he didn’t think much of it. Another pretty face in a backward-ass town they’d leave for the dust as soon as night fell the following day, anyway. He caught it, though, the faintest scent of dead blood that he couldn’t dwell on, because Homer was corralling everyone into a convenience store to see if they had a decent comic book selection.
Of course, they’d happened upon a dry town. Not a deal-breaker, but messing with drunks was always more fun. In lieu of a bar, the convenience store was the gathering place for the town’s residents after dark with its worn, old-timey soda counter and handful of tables and chairs with stuffing coming out of the cushions. He scoffed. Burning the place down would practically be doing them a favor.
“Y’all better be careful out there,” an older man said from behind the checkout.
“Why’s that?” Jesse asked, humoring the clerk.
“People are sayin’ there’s some kinda animal attacks, bodies just mauled like you’d never seen. Wildcat or coyotes…somethin’ like that,” he rambled before nodding in the direction of some of the people sitting at the tables. “Few loonies think a woman did it, claim they saw her runnin’ with blood all over her face, eyes like the devil. Just watch out if you know what’s good for ya.”
“Don’t you worry, mister. We ain’t got nothin’ to worry about,” Severn said with a grin, reaching over to pat the clerk’s shoulder. He gripped it with a strong hand, pulling him over the counter and throwing him onto the floor.
“You believe that, about the woman?” Mae asked quietly when they’d finished burning the place down.
He shook his head. “C’mon Mae, y’know these assholes huff paint for fun. They got nothing better to do than make up bullshit like that.”
The second time he saw you, he didn’t even know it was you. Shock had overtaken him when he came across your hunched over figure in a dark alleyway, the scent of blood sharp and fresh as you fed. You looked up, eyes wide with the slightest hint of fear as he stood in the darkness. You could see him just as clearly as he could see you. Silent save for your labored breathing, you began sprinting toward him, only to push him aside as you passed him by, further into the night.
He approached the body you’d left behind. A woman, probably in her mid-thirties. He couldn’t tell exactly from the number you’d done on her face. Leaning in closer, his lip curled upon realizing the woman’s arm was nearly detached from her shoulder, chest caved in as if you’d cracked it open.
Glancing behind his shoulder, he shook his head. And he thought he was fucked up.
Kicking the body with the tip of his steel-toed boot, it flopped back to its lifeless place on the ground. He wasn’t sure what else he was expecting. Leaning closer, he inhaled. The body was fresh. It’d be a shame to let good blood go to waste just because he scared you off. So he fed, shuddering a bit when he rested his hand in the open cavity in her chest and felt something squishy and still warm beneath him.
Upon further inspection, it was her kidney or liver, though not entirely intact. Severen wasn’t squeamish, but poking around, he found her entrails appeared almost shredded. Desperate, as if you hadn’t fed in weeks. Lack of decorum, maybe. Never learned how to hunt properly and went by base instincts alone. He’d heard rumors of their kind who’d been turned and promptly left to fend for themselves. Most ended up perishing in the daylight without someone to mentor them, show them how to look out for themselves. He supposed some turned out like you. Feral, Jesse had said once. Succumbing to bloodlust like madness.
Less than a week later, he caught your scent, as if he could forget it after that night. If it weren’t for that tell-tale smell of dead blood, he wouldn’t have caught on to you tailing the group. His guard up, unsure of your intentions, he split from everyone else to confront you. Well hidden behind a pharmacy, already in a defensive position when he approached.
Your clothing had seen better days, some of it torn, a result of your victims hopelessly fighting back. Your nails were sharp, as if you’d purposely filed them to do the most damage possible on impact. Smudged eyeliner circled your piercing eyes, though it’d clearly been a long time since you’d reapplied it. Similarly, he couldn’t tell whether your lips were red from lipstick or just bloodstained. No wonder you’d been mistaken for some kind of wild cat woman.
“You followin’ us?” he asked.
You shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean ‘you don’t know’?”
“I just go where I smell blood.”
“Why do you feed like that? Makes things a lot harder on us.”
You narrowed your eyes at him, hands balled into fists at your side. “I don’t have to explain nothing to no one.”
“Look, you do what you want, but leave me and mine out of it.”
“Are you done?” you asked, a deep crease in your forehead as you stared him down.
“Yeah, so get outta here.”
He decided against telling Jesse that he’d confronted you, hoping that his discussion with you would be the end of your paths crossing. You had to have been following them, ending up in the same towns so often couldn’t have been a coincidence. Still, his morbid curiosity wandered with thoughts of what it’d be like to feed as you did. He prided himself on his brutality, his savagery. You gave him motivation to step up his game.
It wasn’t much longer after that, somewhere deep in the heart of Texas, he caught a glimpse of you out of the corner of his eye while he was feeding on a member of a bachelorette party he’d convinced to leave the cowboy bar with him, promising a good time. He growled upon lifting his head from her body, not at all pleased to see you again.
You approached him, and he growled, pushing the body aside as he stood up.
“Girl, what’d I tell you about following us around? Like you’re some dumb fuckin’ puppy.”
“You feed after me. Vulture,” you spat.
He grabbed you by the scruff of your neck, painfully pulling your face close to his as he hissed, low and dangerous, “I know you didn’t just call me that.”
“You take what’s mine and don’t even feed from the best part.”
“Oh? And what exactly am I missing?”
You became quiet, and he was confused at your lack of a retort until you covered his bloodstained mouth with your hand. “Shh…someone’s coming, don’t you smell it?”
Clean and fresh, the faintest scent of men’s cologne and laundry detergent. A set of heavy footsteps, quick and purposeful. In a rush to get somewhere he’d never arrive, no doubt. Severen grinned from behind your hand.
“Now’s our chance,” you whispered.
Thrill rolled down his spine at how quickly your demeanor changed, past grievances set aside at the chance to hunt. He released his grip on you, and you lifted your hand from his face. The excited, ragged breath you let out was all he could hear over the cacophony of noises in the night. You were fucked up.
No pretense, no tactics, you simply grabbed the man from where he stood and shoved him to the ground. Severen observed with an almost academic interest as you tore into the man’s throat with your teeth, straddling him to keep him down.
Bone cracked beneath your feverish grip on the man’s body. You dug your hands deep into the man’s chest and pushed, the overwhelming scent of blood overtaking all else and making his head spin. Standing over you, practically salivating, he found the sight of you mauling this stranger morbidly beautiful.
His eyebrows raised in surprise when you reached into the open cavity and ripped the man’s heart out. The two of you were already covered in blood, but he supposed he never expected to see firsthand how messy humans’ bodies could be if you really took the time to open them up.
“This is what you’re missing,” you said, offering the baseball-sized organ to him.
His hesitation didn’t last long. He grabbed the heart out of your hand, considering how it felt in his. Warm, like when he’d poked around the woman you’d left behind a few weeks earlier, but more firm with the presence of muscle. Unsure of how to approach feeding from it, he bit into the heart as if it were an apple and let the blood flow into his mouth from the puncture he’d made.
He drained the organ of blood, the taste notably better than just sinking his teeth into flesh. Bare skin, he discovered in that moment, left a strange aftertaste in blood, undoubtedly from the perfumes and lotions and bodily fluids that were on it. Maybe you were onto something, feeding straight from the source rather than through a barrier. Admittedly, it was messier, but he wouldn’t have his razor-blade spurs if he were afraid of being messy.
“You’re gonna get me in a lot of trouble,” he said, releasing the heart from his hands, landing haphazardly back in the victim’s exposed ribcage.
“With who?”
An unfamiliar voice startled both of you. “I swear I heard something back there, man.”
“C’mon,” Severen whispered, grabbing your hand.
“Yeah, probably someone getting his dick sucked. Just forget it.”
You shook your head. “We can take them.”
“It’s almost daylight. Just come with me,” he hissed, tugging on your arm.
“You go. If I see you in another town, I’ll come with you, okay?”
Reluctantly, he nodded, releasing your arm and watching as you ran off yet again. After a few weeks, he stopped looking for you, though you drifted in and out of his thoughts often. Months blurred together for him, but at least a year had passed since he’d seen you. Mae had turned Caleb, anyway, and getting him acclimated to their way of life was troublesome enough. You being there would’ve made things all the more difficult.
At least, that’s what he told himself. Channeled his disappointment into being even crueler when he killed, though he could never quite work up the nerve to dig for the heart when he was around the others. Not necessarily too taboo, but rather it reminded him too much of you. Someone he’d spent less than half an hour with. Homer would never let him hear the end of it. Like he was going soft or something.
Before he knew it, they were back in Texas. The state felt endless, but he loved the freedom of the deserts, the small, unsuspecting towns that dotted the highway. They set up camp for a few nights in a motel right off an exit for the only town with more than 5,000 residents for miles.
Setting out on his own, Severen walked past a grocery store when he smelled it. Dead blood. Following the scent, he ended up in a department store. In the vast cosmetics section, he found you applying the tester eyeliner in a mirror. You’d switched out your old clothes, wearing something newer and more fashionable. He wouldn’t have been surprised if you had just swapped outfits in the dressing room.
Engrossed in your makeup application, you didn’t notice him sneaking up on you until you smelled him. Your back tensed and you threw the eyeliner aside. Turning around, you relaxed upon seeing the grinning creature of the night a few feet away from you.
You smiled a bit when you walked over to him. “Hey, it’s you.”
“I was startin’ to think you stood me up, darlin’,” he said, throwing his arm around your shoulders.
“Sorry about that; it’s a long story.”
“How does dinner sound? Give us a chance to catch up.”
“It’s like you read my mind. I’m starving.”