Page 15 of From the Shadows
All the righteous anger Shay had built up slid out of him. “You know you can talk to me, right? I’d like to help.”
“Help?” Diego’s eyes gleamed. “You’re the fucking problem! I was fine until you showed up.”
“So what’s wrong with me?” Shay demanded, his fury bubbling up once again. “I’ve done everything I can to make the house nice. I have a crew come in to clean, and I work right alongside them. I don’t ask anyone to do something I’m not willing to do myself! Everyone seems okay with me, except you. What did I do that pissed you off so bad?”
Before he could even register the movement, Diego surged forward, wrapped a hand around his throat, and slammed Shay against the wall. His eyes were dark, and when his lip curled, Shay caught sight of the fangs. Diego was hungry, and now Shay was on the menu.
“Diego,” he croaked out. “Don’t do this. Think of Jeremy.”
It didn’t seem as though it mattered. Diego leaned in close, his mouth perilously close to Shay’s throat. The tip of one of his incisors nicked Shay’s skin, and the warmth of a drop of blood trickled down his neck. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for thebite, but then Diego pushed Shay aside and backed away, his eyes wide.
“I’m sorry!” he rushed out. “Fuck, get out of here.”
Something was tearing him up inside, of this Shay was certain.
“Diego, I?—”
He turned, his face twisted, his fangs ready. “I said, get the fuck out of here! It’s all I can do to not take you now. I hear your blood singing, taunting me.”
Some self-preservation instinct told Shay to run, to hide, but he’d stopped being afraid a long time ago. “Diego, talk to me. What’s going on?”
He shook his head harshly. “I’m starving, okay? I want to drain you so fucking bad, and I don’t know if I can control it anymore! That’s why I can’t be around humans, all right? The blood…. I can hear it rushing through your veins, and I fucking hunger.”
He said can’t, not that he didn’t want to. “You don’t hate humans.”
He peered up at Shay, and the truth revealed itself. Diego was hurting, probably lonely.
“No, I don’t. That’s why I have to stay away. You don’t know how hard it is, starving and seeing a smorgasbord that you can’t touch.”
“You’ve been refusing to eat for hundreds of years? How is that possible?”
So much pain was etched on Diego’s face. “For a while, I drank animal blood, but that never quelled the hunger, and dead animals showing up tended to make people frightened.
“It was in the 1700s. There was a war, but that doesn’t narrow it down. I mean, when isn’t there a war somewhere? I was a foot soldier who knew he preferred the company of men. That wasn’t easy to deal with on the battlefield, so I buried those feelings deep.” He sighed. “You might call it Narnia deep nowadays. Anyway, we stopped in this town for supplies and to have a bit of rest, and I saw this man. I watched as he bent and lifted, carried and stacked. He was lithe and tone, limber beyond belief. He turned and smiled at me, and I knew I’d been caught looking at him. I feared the worst,because male venery—being caught having sex with another man—was punishable by death. He approached me, a smirk on his face, and when he reached me, he leaned in and whispered that his name was Cristobal and that I should meet him in the gardens of his home at the edge of town. He handed me a key and asked me to show up when the moon hung high in the sky. I was shaking with excitement. It had been nearly two years since I’d been touched by anyone other than my own hand, and now I was going to….” He sighed and averted his gaze. “It doesn’t matter what I’d hoped, because that wasn’t the same plan he had. I slipped into the gardens at the time he asked for and sat on a bench to wait for him. It wasn’t long. He smiled, and his teeth gleamed in the light. I knew then what he was. Before I could scream, he was on me, plunging his teeth into my neck. I remembered thinking how could such a small man hold me down while he killed me. I tried to fight back, to at least punch him, but it was useless. I was no match for his strength. When he finished, his mouth was streaked with my blood. He dropped me in the gardens, and then fled into the night. I could feel what little life was left in me draining out of the holes in my throat.”
Shay drew in a sharp breath and held in a few beats. “What happened?”
“They found me the next morning and rushed me to the hospital. They told my commanding officer that I wouldn’t survive the night, but they were wrong. For several days, I lay there on the verge of death, and on the third night as the sun dipped below the horizon, strength suffused me. The problem was, so did a hunger like I’d never known. That night, for the first time in days, I opened my eyes. I was ravenous. A nurse came in, and I fell upon her immediately, tearing out her throat and drinking down the blood. It wasn’t enough. I went to every room and killed anyone I came across. No one could stop me. Anyone foolish enough to try, I killed and drained them dry.”
Diego put his face in his hands and sobbed.
“So many young men who’d been forced to serve the politicians who wanted war. Some of them weren’t even old enough to shave, and I tore them apart. Unlike me, they didn’t survive. By the time Iwas done, the place was a charnel house. I escaped before the police arrived, hid away in a darkened alley, then disappeared into the dense fog.
“You have to understand how horrified I was. This wasn’t war. I wasn’t defending my people. Instead, I’d committed murder. Worse still, I drained them of their lives. I vowed that day to never drink human blood again, and I haven’t.”
He wasn’t certain, but Shay thought he knew what was going on. “You’re starving yourself. That’s why you won’t be around humans.”
Diego nodded. “Right now, all I can think about is taking you and plunging my fangs into your throat. To have that warm, sweet liquid filling my mouth. To watch as the light goes out in your eyes, and my hunger is finally sated once more.”
“It won’t be, you know. You can drain me until I die, and that might make you less hungry for a while, but it would come roaring back and twice as strong. So you’ve done this all through sheer willpower?”
A pained look ghosted over Diego’s face as he clutched his stomach. “You have to leave, Shay. Please. I don’t want to hurt you.”
When he’d accepted the job, Ms. Donnelly had given him reading material so he’d know what kind of people he’d be working with. He didn’t know who was what at the time, but he didn’t come into the house unprepared.
“Vampires are not, by nature, evil. They’re like anyone else in that they’ve got good and bad people among them, just like any group. If you were good when you were turned, you’re good now.”
“Goddamn it! Aren’t you listening to me? I killed ninety-seven people!”
