The taxi drops me three blocks from the warehouse, and I walk the rest of the way with the cash heavy in my bag. $170,000 in bills that James counted out with careful precision, his hands steady even as concern tightened his expression.
I'd refused. This is mine to finish. My brother's debt. My choice. My power to wield.
The memory of his final words follows me through the empty streets: "Don't do anything you can't live with."
I'd almost laughed. I've already died once. What's left to fear?
The warehouse squats at the edge of the industrial district, all crumbling brick and broken windows, the kind of place that exists in the gaps of the city's attention. A single bare bulb illuminates the entrance, and beneath it stands Vincent—the man who sat in my living room like he owned it.
He doesn't recognize me at first. Just sees a woman alone, and his body language shifts into something predatory. The interest in his dark eyes makes my fangs ache behind my lips.
Then recognition hits.
I watch it happen: the way his posture changes, how his hand moves toward his jacket, the sudden spike in his heartbeat that I can hear from twenty feet away.
"You," he says, and his voice cracks on the single syllable.
I stop ten feet from him, close enough to smell the cigarettes and cheap cologne. "I have your money."
I reach into my bag, and he flinches. The movement is small but devastating. I pull out the banded stacks of cash and hold them loosely, casually, like they mean nothing.
"Eighty-three thousand," I say. "Count it if you want."
His eyes drop to the money, then snap back to my face. He's trying to figure out what's different, what changed.
I should throw it at his feet and leave. Should walk away clean, debt paid, conscience clear.
But watching him struggle isn't enough.
The hunger that's been building since I fed at the hospital rises like a tide. Not for blood—I'm sated. This is different. This is the need to make him understand that he picked the wrong woman to terrorize.
I move.
Vampire speed turns the distance between us into nothing. One moment I'm standing with the money, the next I have him pinned against the warehouse wall, his feet dangling off the ground, the cash scattered forgotten on the concrete. His scream dies in his throat as my hand closes around it.
"You came to my home," I whisper, and my fangs slide free, sharp and inevitable. "You threatened my brother. You thought I was weak."
"Please—" he chokes out, but I don't want his pleading.
I want his fear.
I bite.
The rush of his blood is different from the careful feeding at the hospital—this is violent, claiming, punishing. His body goes rigid with the pleasure-pain of it, the supernatural ecstasy of the vampire bite overwhelming his terror. I feel him trying to fight it, trying to stay afraid, but his biology betrays him. A moan escapes his lips.
I should stop. Should take enough to prove my point and leave him alive, terrified, broken but breathing.
I don't stop until his heart stops.
I drop his body and it crumples at my feet, empty and still. I stand over Vincent's corpse feeling only satisfaction, no guilt, drunk on the power of taking what I wanted without consequence.
Then I hear it.
Movement from inside the warehouse. Footsteps. Voices.
"Vince? The fuck you doing out there?"
The door opens, and two men emerge—Vincent's associates, drawn by the commotion. They see his body, see me, and I watch understanding arrive too slowly to save them. One reaches for a gun. The other starts to run.
They're too slow. Too human. Too fragile.
The hunger that took Vincent spreads through me like wildfire, and everything that follows happens with the terrible clarity of inevitability. I move faster than they can track. The first man dies with my fangs in his throat before his gun clears the holster. The second makes it three steps before I catch him.
The third man never even makes it out of the warehouse—I follow the sound of his racing heartbeat inside and find him reaching for a phone. His last word is a scream that no one will hear.
When the bloodlust finally recedes, I stand alone in the warehouse surrounded by four corpses, my clothes soaked, my hands shaking. The satisfaction is already curdling into something else—not quite guilt, but awareness of what I've done. What I've become.
Four men dead. Not in self-defense. Not in desperate necessity. Because I could. Because I wanted to. Because the power was there and I took it.
I need to hide this. Need to erase the evidence.
My eyes land on the propane heater in the corner, the scattered papers on makeshift desks, the old wooden crates stacked against the walls. The warehouse reeks of chemicals—cleaning solutions, accelerants, substances I can identify by scent alone now. The building is a tinderbox waiting for a spark.
Fire. Fire erases everything.
I work quickly with vampire efficiency, my hands steady despite the trembling inside. I tip over the heater, tear open what smells like gas lines behind the walls, scatter the accelerant from plastic jugs stored in the back. The fumes make even my undead lungs burn.
I gather the scattered cash from outside—$83,000 in blood-stained bills. It was meant to free Alan. Instead, it bought four lives. I tuck it back into my bag with shaking hands.
When I strike the match, the warehouse ignites faster than I expected. The flames race along the accelerant trails, catching on papers and crates, roaring up the walls with hungry speed. I'm outside and across the street before the windows start to explode, watching from the shadows as the building becomes an inferno.
The heat reaches me even from this distance. Orange light paints everything in shades of hell.
The fire department will come. The bodies will be discovered. But burned beyond easy recognition, surrounded by evidence of gang activity and illegal operations, the investigation will point toward criminal rivalry rather than the truth. A deal gone wrong. Territorial dispute. The kind of violence that makes sense in the criminal world.
I walk away from the burning warehouse feeling powerful and terrified in equal measure. The orange glow follows me for blocks, lighting up the night sky, visible even when I turn corners and put distance between myself and what I've done.
I can still smell the smoke in my hair. Still taste Vincent's blood on my tongue. Still feel the weight of the cash in my bag—money that was supposed to pay a debt but instead became evidence of murder.
As I finally turn a corner away from the firelight, my phone buzzes.
A text from James: "Where are you?"