Page 31 of Surface Scratch
“What do you mean you couldn’t control it?” Caleb asked.
“It’s hard to explain. It’s beyond hunger. There is a beast in me that wants to take. To feed, to fuck, to cause pain, and when I lose control, it does what it wants,” Marcus said. He closed his eyes and pursed his lips. “Ophelia knows that. We usually keep blood in the house, but there have been some supply issues, so I burned through my back stock and what we keep down in the club. That’s why she used you. She panicked.”
The realization dawned on him that that was what was in the locked refrigerators. He had been trying to steal glances at the one behind Ophelia’s bar, but nothing was ever labeled and she had been extremely secretive about when she opened it. Half the time she did, he didn’t notice until after she was disappearing to the Members Only area with one of the blank bottles. His eyes widened.
“How many are out there? People like you?” he asked. He clenched his swollen fists, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“About twenty live here that I know of,” Marcus said, then added quickly, “You don’t need to worry too much, the ones that live down here are a quiet bunch. We don’t draw attention to ourselves.”
Caleb nodded, taking in the information one word at a time. Twenty vampires lived in their little city. Twenty people who needed to consume blood to survive. Even one seemed impossible, how could there be so many and no one had ever noticed? “And all of them, they have the same, um, ‘beast?’” he asked. It didn’t seem possible that twenty people living in a relatively small city like theirs could stay out of the public eye if they all had something like that.
Marcus nodded solemnly. “It doesn’t come out unless we want it to, usually. Or, if you don’t have good control over it, it can come out during heightened sensations. Extreme hunger, anger, being aroused—” He cut himself off, his cheeks flushing a bit like he had caught himself saying something he hadn’t intended.
Caleb’s mind wandered back to their encounter in the walk-in fridge. When Marcus had pulled away from him, he’d been shielding his eyes with his hand. In that moment, Caleb had thought he didn’t want to look at him.
“That day in your office, you said you didn’t have as much control over yourself as people thought. Is that what you meant?” Caleb asked. He felt dumb even asking the question. Now, it seemed obvious.
“Yes. I’ve never quite achieved control of that side of myself, so I still have moments like that. People like Vincent can control it much better,” Marcus said.
Caleb felt his throat tighten at the mention of the name. He clenched his swollen hands, remembering the feeling of Vincent licking the open wound on his palm. He wanted to say that there was no way Vincent had control based on the way he’d acted that day, but it wouldn’t be accurate. Vincent had been calm throughout the whole encounter, eerily calm. The thought of what he might be like if he lost control was horrifying.
Something still didn’t make sense to him. “Why were they trying to take me with them? The hunters? Why did they attack?”
“Usually hunters don’t bother coming here because we don’t cause enough trouble for them to show up,” Marcus said, tapping his fingers along the edge of the bed. “Ophelia thinks they’re from a group up north that is particularly ruthless when it comes to killing us. We didn’t do anything that might attract their attention… As far as I know, no vampire has murdered anyone in this city in years.”
Marcus reached over and placed his hand on Caleb’s. He stiffened, glancing up to meet Caleb’s eyes as if to silently ask for permission to keep it there. Caleb didn’t move. He still wasn’t sure what he felt in that moment, but he knew he wanted Marcus to keep talking.
“I don’t know why they wanted to take you with them. If it’s the group I’m thinking of, they don’t usually spare the humans, but things could have changed,” he said. He locked his eyes on Caleb. “I won’t let them do that. I’ll keep you safe from them, even if you don’t want to…”
Even if you don’t want to be with me anymore,Caleb finished the thought for him. As soon as it popped into his head, the ache returned to his chest. And it wasn’t just from where that woman had ground her boot into his sternum. It was a deeper, sharper pain. Even after all… this mess, did he still want to be with Marcus? He knew the answer in his gut, he just couldn’t reconcile what had happened with how he felt.
“I’m sorry, this is a lot. If you want, I can walk you home. It won’t be daylight for a while,” he said.
Every part of him that had even an ounce of common sense was telling him that the right thing to do would be to get as far away from this place as could, but he could practically feel the guilt and sorrow written across Marcus’s face, and it was making his chest hurt. This was the same man who had attacked him and drunk his blood and he’d admitted as much. Any sane person would be running for the hills while simultaneously calling local, state, and federal authorities. But his constant internal monologue was unusually quiet.
All he could think about was how happy he had been since meeting Marcus. He’d been legitimately happy for the first time in years. Hopeful. Smiling so much that his face sometimes ached from the unfamiliar use of those muscles.
No, I’m not running. He was going to stay around the one person that made him feel alive, the one person who made him smile, the one person who made his life suddenly feel like it was worth actually living, despite everything that had happened.
He fucking deserved to be happy.
“I want to see it,” Caleb blurted out. Marcus gave him a confused look and Caleb felt himself begin to flush. “The change… Your eyes and teeth. Can you show me?”
Marcus pulled at his collar, undoing the first button of his dress shirt. “No, Caleb, you don’t want—”
“I do,” Caleb insisted. “I… I want to see what it looks like. Clearly. I want to see you.”
Marcus sighed, shifting his position so he faced Caleb, and grasped both his hands. “Are you sure?” he asked. Caleb nodded. He took in a shaky breath through his nose. “Okay, just remember, I’m still me. I have control right now.”
Caleb nodded again, trying to ignore his quickly rising heart rate. Was he ready to look Marcus in the face when it happened? He had only seen glimpses, and both times he hadn’t been fully sure of what he had seen. Would it change the eerie calm he was feeling in Marcus’s presence and make the panic return?
Get it together, you’ve seen the inside of your own mother’s skull and your brother’s bones poking out of his skin. You can handle this.
Marcus breathed out and rolled his shoulders. He locked his amber eyes onto Caleb’s as continued to hold both of his hands, stroking the backs with his thumbs. Caleb watched as the whites of his eyes appeared to swirl with an inky blackness, like ink dropped in milk, the black color spreading from both corners of his eyes until the only thing that stared back at him was black and amber. The transition was so fast that if he had blinked, he would have missed how the color spread.
He watched Marcus open his mouth, the muscles in his face twitching as if he were fighting the urge to snap it shut. His upper and lower eye teeth had each been replaced by two thinner, longer fangs, ending in impossibly sharp points. Caleb couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to stroke Marcus’s face to make sure he was real.
The first time he’d seen the black take over Marcus’s eyes, he was frightened and thought he was imagining things. But now, looking at him, knowing what he knew, he looked beautiful. Impossibly beautiful. “You’re stunning,” Caleb said. He pulled his hand back when he realized he’d said it aloud and felt his blush spread to his ears.
