“Better if you don’t. Less culpability,” I respond.

  “Just be careful,” he says. “I think I heard a bear climbing up the side of the house an hour ago.”

  “Oh yes, I’ll be on point for that. Full bear patrol,” I say as I rush for the stairs.

  Gabe chuckles, but something is missing from the sound. I take the stairs four at a time and scramble back in my room. Rain hasn’t moved.

  I hold out my prize.

  “Strawberries?”

  “Eat them,” I tell him. “Slow. In a sexy way.”

  “Always with the food. You want to fatten me up?”

  I crawl up next to him on the bed. So close. His energy. I fight back my urges, the good ones and the bad ones. I open the plastic container and take one of the strawberries.

  “Open up,” I say and dangle it over his mouth.

  Rain smiles at me and complies. I lay the strawberry on his tongue, and he laughs and takes it from me. Our hands touch, and I snatch mine away. I keep my face relaxed, and he doesn’t notice.

  He takes the strawberry out of his mouth and stares at it intently. “You know, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to take things a little slower,” he says to the strawberry. “How about I make you dinner and you tell me about yourself. I want to hear about your dreams, your quirks, all the funny stories about your childhood. Then maybe after a few glasses of wine I can give you a nice massage, and…”

  “What the hell are you doing?” I interrupt.

  “You said it had to be sexy.”

  “Well, Ms. Strawberry isn’t going to be so impressed when she finds out that all you can make is toast.”

  “I’ll have you know that my toast has gotten rave reviews from multiple friends recovering from massive hangovers,” he says in mock offense. Then he looks at the strawberry. “Oh, you want to play fast and loose, huh? Throw caution to the wind? Alright, let’s speed things up.” He opens his mouth and bites into the tender red flesh.

  I watch enthralled as he chews. The wonder of him eating. If I try, I can reach back into the dim parts of my memory – the human part – and remember strawberries. The burst of sweet flavor, the juice wetting my lips. But it feels almost like a dream. Vapors blown away with a soft breath.

  His long fingers sort through the carton and choose another strawberry. He bites. A drop of juice races down his chin. I put out one finger and swipe it away.

  “How many,” he says.

  “Five.”

  “Okay, that was two.”

  I watch him eat three more strawberries, and it pulls on all those sad little strings in my heart. I will never eat strawberries again. I may never be able to have languid sex with my boyfriend. Eventually he’ll get tired of waiting and he’ll leave.

  “My turn.” Rain wipes his chin with the back of his hand. “I want to give you a massage.”

  I lean back, bracing my weight on my hands and putting a few inches between our bodies. “That’s not a good idea,” I tell him.

  “Really? Is it that hard?” His mouth turns down at the corners.

  “It’s just…” I don’t want him to know how hard it actually is, how much pain he gives me just by feeling so openly; because the things that bring me pain are the things that I also love about him. “It’s better to be safe,” I tell him.

  “Am I being too…too loud?” he asks. I’ve explained the auras to him in a crude way before, and I remember our first mission when I sniped at him for feeling “too loud.” I blow out a short breath, and the words tumble from me.

  “I can see you, right here.” I trace his aura with my finger, just a few inches from his shoulder. “It’s like a cloud of color.”

  He watches me intently.

  “It moves. It jumps when you get excited or when you’re scared. The colors change too. They tell me things.”

  “Like what?” His eyes are wide, staring into mine.

  “Like, you’re really horny right now.” His energy pulses, and I trace all the little bumps down his arm and across his leg.

  “We’ll you’re right about that.” He laughs, and then his face grows more serious. “That really is incredible.”

  I expect to see fear or disgust in his aura, or even pity, but the purple hues don’t waver.

  “You’re crazy,” I whisper to him. “You should run out of this room screaming.”

  His eyebrows wag. “I live for danger.”

  “Well, that’s a damn shame, considering how clumsy you are,” I manage, even though my heart is erupting with glad tidings. How could I have found someone who likes me in spite of my monsterness? I want to do something for him, even if it goes against my better judgment. Carefully I lay out on the bed on my stomach and grip my hands beneath the pillow.

  “Okay, massage away,” I tell him, squeezing my eyes shut to try and block out the intensity of his aura. The song of hunger is loud in my ears.

  “Anytime it becomes not okay, just tell me and I’ll back off,” Rain says. I feel his breath on the back of my neck, the scent of strawberries. His hands come down slowly and grip my shoulders. He squeezes and releases, his thumbs pressing into the sides of my neck. “I’ve been told that my massages are almost as good as my toast,” he murmurs to me.

  My body stiffens as his energy laps against my skin. He is speaking, and I try to listen to his voice, but I can’t hear it above the song. The hunger jars my bones.

  A new energy leaps to the edge of my consciousness. I recognize it. Tarren. But he wasn’t supposed to be home for another day. I focus on his energy, and my ears pick up the growl of his approaching Jeep. I listen as the tires crunch against the gravel in front of his house, and then the engine cuts off. His footsteps are sharp and quick on the porch. The front door swings open.

  Shit. I have to hide Rain.

  Tarren says something to Gabe. I lift my head from the pillow and turn my face just a little to try and pick up their conversation. I am tense, distracted, hollow with hunger.

  Rain mistakes my turned head and pursed lips for an invitation. He leans down to kiss me.

  And it happens.

  The monster breaks her chains.

  In a single moment everything is instinct.

  Everything is need. Energy.

  I twist onto my back, under the human and press my hand into his chest.

  “Hey,” he laughs. Eyes familiar, but not. My whole body hums with the expectation of his energy flowing into me. But nothing comes.

  No! NO! Why? I’m aching for it. Hands covered. Gloves. The damn gloves.

  “Maya?” The voice is soft. Concerned. Lips just above my ear. Scent of strawberries. “You’re face. You look…”

  I grab him around the neck and roll us both off the bed. He lets out a cry as we crash onto the floor. I messily rake the glove off my left hand. Energy, energy, energy. I’m on top of him. He scrambles to get up, but I grip his neck…

  And there.

  Energy. Flowing through me. Velvet smooth.

  The song fades to silence.

  Beauty.

  Somewhere far away he bucks beneath my grip. I’m not letting go, and he isn’t strong enough to break away.

  There is no remorse. No knowledge. Just feeding.

  Just energy.

  Just this precious silence.

  Chapter 8 – Tarren

  “Where is he?” I demand as soon as I walk into the house. Gabe, at his computer in the dining room, turns to me, his expression carefully nonchalant.

  “Who? Waldo? Your guess is as good as mine.”

  I close the front door behind me. “She can’t be alone with him. It’s been overcast for…”

  We both hear the thump above, the short groan.

  “Man, the pipes in old houses, am I right?” Gabe says, because he doesn’t understand.

  But I do.

  I am already on the stairs, taking two at a time. My hand first reaches for the tranq gun in the holster beneath my left arm, but I reject it immediately. If she’s feeding, she’ll be too stimulated. The tranquilizer won’t drop her fast enough. My hand moves to the Glock 32C in my right holster as I hit the top of the stairs. I hesitate, hand hovering just an inch from the gun’s handle. I’ve always known this was a possibility, and I thought I was ready for it. But it’s Maya.

  I make a decision and pull my hand away. I can do this without killing her. It’ll increase the risk, but I need to try.

  “Come on, man,” Gabe says at the bottom of the stairs.

  I throw open the door to Maya’s room and see exactly what I expect. She hunches over Rain on the floor, one hand gripping his neck. Pale filaments of light glow beneath the skin of her left hand, traveling up her wrist and forearm. Her face is slack in the thrall of feeding.

  Rain shudders weakly beneath her grip. Still alive. And she only has a single hand on him. That will slow the draining process.

  I dive into Maya using all my body weight to tear her from Rain. She lets out a loud, terrible shriek, and I know I have severed the connection. We hit the floor together, and while she’s dazed, I roll her beneath me, pinning her arms behind her back. I forced Gabe to practice this move with me over and over again when Maya first came to live with us, and my body intuitively knows the next steps. My hands clamped on Maya’s wrists, my knees on her elbows. I just need to hold her long enough for Gabe to get Rain out of the room, and then he can tranquilize her.

  “Holy donkey balls!” Gabe stutters from the doorway.

  “Get him out!” I tell him.

  A deep, heavy growl comes out of Maya and she bucks below me, powered by the energy she just tore from Rain. She rips her arms out of my grip and bucks again, sending me hard into the wall. The jolt pounds into my back.

  Gabe, in the middle of the room, pauses, his eyes wide ovals of uncertainty.

  “Go!” I tell him, my voice hoarse as I try to recapture my breath.

  He blinks, and his expression sets. He hooks his arms under Rain’s armpits and drags the unconscious man toward the open doorway. Maya is crouched near them, her gaze following. Her muscles tense, ready to pounce.

  I have to stop her.

  I fling open the lids of all the polished metal boxes neatly stacked in my mind and let the memories scream out of me. I watch Grand’s knife teasingly open my flesh. I feel my mother’s featherweight body in my arms as I carry it to the grove. I relive the night I watched Maya almost drain the life out of Gabe. And Tammy. I choke on all the memories of Tammy…

  Maya’s head snaps in my direction, her predator’s gaze drawn to the emotions that must be pulsing like fireworks around me. I reach for my tranq gun, but she is suddenly a whirl of motion, leaping across the room and crushing me harder into the wall. I feel the plaster crack beneath my shoulders as pain rides from the crown of my head down to my heels.

  Her hands. I need to know where her hands are. No, just the left one.

  “Tarren!” Gabe calls.

  I dismiss the pain. Force my vision to focus. I can feel Maya’s sharp, hot breath on my neck. Her left hand lashes out, and I drop to the ground. She’s moving so fast, almost predicting my actions before I make them.

  “Just get him out!” I manage to say again to Gabe, as I spring to my feet. Maya’s face is twisted into a snarl, her eyes livid with ferocity. I make another grab for my tranq gun, but that glowing hand reaches for me again. I time it just right, twist to the left as her hands plunge into the space where my body was.

  I sweep at her ankles, my foot barely missing the edge of the bedframe, but she hops over my leg. I grab her shoulders, press her down and throw a hard knee up toward her abdomen. It lands, but she doesn’t even seem to feel it. She rears up. I duck to the side of the bookshelf, try again for my tranq gun and this time grip it out of the holster. Maya grabs the bookshelf with both hands. Shrieking with rage, she topples it over. The books tumble from their carefully chosen places before the entire oak shelf crashes on top of them. I hear the shatter of glass, and know that my mother’s few pictures, her one indulgence, have been destroyed as well.

  In spite of the dire circumstances and the very real possibility that one of us will not leave this room alive, I feel a deep punch of regret. Those are my mother’s books, the ones she and Dr. Lee would read to us as children.

  Foolish sentiment. I need to focus. Need to somehow be faster, smarter, stronger than a genetically enhanced human enraged with hunger. Maya is moving again, so fleet and deadly. She leaps. I wait as long as I can and then lunge left, bringing the gun up. She’s too fast, changing course and tackling my legs. I hit something hard. The tranq gun bounces from my grip, and the shock of impact rides up my arm in an explosion of pain. I am on the carpet, winking gemstones around me, gasping hard to refill my lungs.

  No, not gemstones. Glass. My eye catches a tiny blue bottle near my nose. The vanity. I crashed through the vanity. I roll. Maya is on top of me, her legs locking around my torso. Her left hand brushes against my shoulder. I jolt at a single spark of contact, before I break the connection. Her right hand is on my other shoulder, fingers digging bruises all the way into the bone. If both her hands were ungloved, I’d be dead. I reach out and clutch a fragile pink glass bottle with ribbed edges. This is the perfume that smells like chamomile. Mom would dab it on her wrists when my father was alive. It reminds me of safety.

  I thrust my arms up between our bodies as Maya leans down over me. The palm of her left hand gapes open and a purplish, vein-covered feeding bulb glows at its center ready to connect to my aura, to feed. I squeeze the perfume bottle. Just as the fingers of her left hand touch the side of my face, the bottle shatters in my hand.

  The rich, heavy scent of chamomile cloaks us instantly. Maya rears back and shakes her head back and forth violently, hands coming up to her face. Danielle was the one who whispered this secret in my ear. Overwhelming the senses can break the frenzy of hunger. She taught me the art of the scented blindfold.

  I dig my elbows into the carpet and slide away from Maya. My right hand burns, but I don’t look at it. I move around the bed and over the fallen bookshelf to the other side of the room, creating distance. Maya follows me with her eyes, but her gaze is confused, disoriented.

  “Maya.” I say her name slowly and clearly. “Deep breath. Just focus on breathing.”

  I watch every part of her, gambling that the perfume is enough. If she comes at me again, I won’t be fast or strong enough to stop her. I reach for my Glock, ignore the sharp pain in my palm as I grip the handle, and pull it out.

  She stares at me. Her body trembles.

  “Maya,” I say her name again, willing her mind to recognize the word, to trigger her back to awareness. I pull in a deep breath of my own, forcing down my emotions. Closing the lids of all those boxes. If I can flatten my emotions, calm my aura, it will help her gain control. Cold, I think, be cold. Feel nothing.

  Gabe rushes to the doorway, a tranq gun in his hand. Maya’s head snaps toward him. I hold up a hand to Gabe and shake my head. Calm, I mouth to him. He nods, and I watch his cheeks puff with a breath.

  “Maya, I need you to focus,” I tell her softly. “Focus on who you are, on controlling the hunger.”

  She looks back at me, and I can see the clouds of desperate hunger parting from her eyes. She moves then, rushing into the corner of the room, pulling her knees up to her face. I wait a moment, and then slip the Glock back into its holster. The weapon is wet with blood.

  Maya looks so small, curled up in the corner, her thin shoulders trembling.

  The danger is past, but the damage is done.

  Chapter 9 – Maya

  My body rages, filled with hunger, with the animal necessity for more, but every breath drags me farther from the edge. The heavy, cloying scent of chamomile disrupts my singular focus. And now the perfectly preserved memories begin to crowd in. Shiny bubbles of pain.

  “Rain.” My voice is hoarse as I clutch my knees to my face in a ferocious grip to hold myself back.

  “Focus on your breathing,” Tarren says. He stands in the doorway, blocking it I realize. Crimson rivulets roll down his hand. His pale eyes are intent on me.

  But I know what I’ve done. I see it in my memories.

  “RAAAAAAIN!” I’ve killed him. I’ve become the monster. And he trusted me. Oh god. Oh god.

  “He’s alive.” This is Gabe’s voice. His face appears behind Tarren’s shoulder. “I have him out here. He’s not so much conscious, but he’s breathing.”

  The relief is so sharp that it steals my breath. Alive. Rain is alive. I can atone. I look up at Tarren, and I try to be brave now. It’s all I have left.

  “Kill me.”

  “Maya, don’t.” This is Gabe.

  “Take Rain to your room,” Tarren tells him. “Stay with him. Lock the door.”

  From me. I am a thing to guard against. “Kill me,” I whisper to Tarren. “I want you to.”

  “Don’t hurt her,” Gabe says.

  “Go.” Tarren’s voice is soft, and the look he gives his brother must be enough, because Gabe nods.

  “He’ll be fine, Maya,” Gabe says.

  “No he won’t,” I whimper. “He won’t be fine. He won’t.”

  My gaze sweeps across the bedroom, over the glitter of glass sprinkled on the carpet from the shattered vanity and the cracked bookshelf lying on the floor. Diana’s disgorged books almost look like dead things, some split open, creamy pages splayed. Near my foot is the picture of Diana holding a chubby, grinning toddler on her lap. Gabe’s curls are blond and delicate, and I can see the beginnings of his face in the soft, cherub folds of his baby mask.

  “Stay here,” Tarren commands. “Focus on your breathing.” He says this as if breathing were some magic formula that will make everything all right. As if it could possibly push away the memory of Rain’s soft laugh when I put my hand on his chest, because he didn’t know, didn’t understand that I was trying to kill him.

  I spring up, stumble to the open window. The tall, old trees are waiting to catch me in their branches when I leap to them. I plunge into the woods, heedless of the rough bark on my hands, the whips of leaves and spiny branches. I find the grove effortlessly, the soil of Dr. Lee’s grave darker than the ground surrounding it. Then I stop, take a deep breath Tarren would approve of…and scream.