~*~

With a moan, Sayre dropped the body to the floor. He ran the back of his hands against his mouth and smeared the lingering red. His fangs were stained as dark as wine. The city’s night glow was enough to illuminate the room, as was the single lamp’s yellow.

High above the streets, in the high-rise office of one of the assholes he was going to keep an eye on, Sayre stepped over the gasping body to the desk and the wet bar. His blood hands trailed over the crystal decanters, wiggling (and dripping blood onto them) fingers.

“Now, tell me again. Without the bullshit,” he said. Then he plucked a bottle, pulled the stopper with a satisfying pop!

“Fuck y—” the suited man gagged and coughed, both of his hands pressed against his neck. “How dare… I’ll call security.”

Sayre sent a glare, his human eyes gone. “Do it,” he grinned and purred, “I’m starving.” A threatening coil turned the corner of his lips to a truly grotesque, and haunting sight.

The man said nothing. He wiggled to his couch where he managed to sit himself against it, wheezing, but still alive. His hand peeled from his wounds, as if looking at them would make them any better. Instead he found his heart quickened in panic. With nothing else to do, and his phone and intercom long out of reach, the man watched as Sayre poured a drink, then rummaged through the desk. Blood-dripping fingers stained papers.

Sayre didn’t care.

He took a sip, then shifted eyes again to the man. “I’m still waiting, Mr.” —he reached for the name-plate— “Mr. Perrine.”

Mr. Perrine snorted. “I’ll bleed out before—”

“You won’t.”

“Look at me!” Sayre did. “I’ll never live long enough to tell you.”

A little sigh fell out of Sayre. He took another sip, then another, then he knocked back all of the liquor. He remained quiet as he moved around the desk to the man, who as he approached wiggled in fear in his shadow.

“Hey, I’ll—” he started, but he stalled to silence.

Sayre lowered to the balls of his feet. Balanced low, like a cat. He lifted the fine, crystal glass, then with a single squeeze crushed it in his hands. The pieces didn’t fall; they hovered around his fingers. “You’re going to die,” said Sayre flatly. Calmly. “It’s just a matter of whether or not you do it without glass in your eyes.”

Mr. Perrine whimpered and shifted. “You wouldn’t.”

“I’m in your office. I know your blood. Even if I didn’t, even if I didn’t kill you, I could sniff you out from across the continent. You’re known to me now.” Sayre waited a beat. “Tell me.”

“There’s a priest” —Sayre hissed, fangs bare— “and—Hey, I didn’t make the rules! He is who he is. He’s a priest. He runs a soup kitchen! Weird shit happens there. That’s all I know.”

“Name.”

“Of the church?” he asked skeptically, but when Sayre threatened to send the shards into his skull, Mr. Perrine squirmed and added, “The priest! His name is Father Paul. Howard Paul!”

“And?”

“And, what? You want his street address? I don’t know the guy! I—ah, ah! Okay! Okay!”

Sayre pulled the cloud of shards back. “And, anything else?”

“Some bozo goes there every Saturday. Still wears a fucking top hat likes its 1896! Who does that?”

A twist of Sayre’s wrist brought the pieces of the glass back together, reformed, as if it was never broken. There was relief of Mr. Perrine’s face, but it was short-lived. Sayre pressed it against Mr. Perrine’s still bleeding neck, then sat back, leaning himself and his arm into the chair next to him. He bent a knee and lounged.

“That’s it?” Mr. Perrine’s brows furled.

“For now,” Sayre said into the glass of blood. He licked his lip of the runaway drop. “Now,” —he pointed with a finger— “Now, tell me about this enterprise.”

“Property Management.”

“Boring. What else?”

“Finances.”

“Even worse.” Sayre stared at the blood in the glass, then took it back like a shot. “Well, then.”

“Well, then, wh—” Mr. Perrine gasped as Sayre’s fingers tore into his chest and removed his beating heart. He tipped it to the side, pouring what was in the valves into the glass, as if it were a decanter. Then he dropped it to the floor, where it bounced and rolled by Mr. Perrine’s leg.

A waste, he knew, but he had no use for it anymore. Besides, a quick call to some acquaintances, and this body would be devoured by sunrise. He got what he needed, let someone else feast.

Well, almost got what he needed.

Sayre pushed himself to his feet once more, and moved to the desk. He sat in the plush chair and bent, arm reaching under the desk and tapping, tapping, searching, until: click!. A secret drawer popped down. He rolled it out. Old curiosities. A magnifying glass. Old newspaper clippings of run-down warehouses from the Industrial Era—if they were still standing, and a dark leather book. Sayre unwound the cord and flipped.

There’s something that follows me in the dark corners of my mind, he read. There’s a shadowy-presence that I can never name, or seem to see. I keep matches at my bedside, hoping it’s enough to scare it away, but I think it crawls beneath the sheets. I think I fall asleep, and it rests its head upon my chest, lulled by my beating heart. What is this thing? This shadow? This haunting lover?

Sayre flipped more pages. More nights of this journal writer’s horrors. He flipped, until:

The Father could do nothing. I fear not even his holiness can help me. I’ve sought evil for evil. A darkness to devour darkness.

Her shop was quaint. It looked…homely. I tried not to stare at the jars of fingers, and livers, but it was difficult to pull my eyes from the macabre sights. She told me her name, though I suspect it was a lie. I expected everything before me to be fiction, only then, I hoped, I would wake from this nightmare. But I could not. And, she could not. But, I was wrong.

She touched my head, and the world became golden. A gentle thumb against my mind, that swiped away shadow, and darkness, and the creature–For then I knew for certain it was. It jumped from the shadows and tore at us with great fury, but she bottled it like one would pickles. With the lid sealed, and the thing on a shelf, I felt free.

I wasn’t. Not anymore.

I had seen golden sunshine. I had seen the divine within her wicked touch. I was purified by sin, and I found myself wanton and lust-filled. I found myself hungry.

I would never be free again.

But I have found devotion and purpose in my servitude. If she’ll have me.

Sayre turned the page.

Let her rue the day, for I shall find my own curse, my own way to let her know. I will find a way to show her the weight of my power. I will show her. I will show her.

Sayre flipped beyond the pages and pages of ‘I will show her,’ to the last entry:

The shadow has returned. I feel the claws against my ribs as I breathe. As I sleep. If the witch will not have me, let the thing upon my sleeping chest do. Let it have my heart, whatever thing it is now. I do not think it has been mine in a long, long time. I suspect it never will again.

With a sigh, Sayre wrapped the journal and stuffed it into his inner jacket pocket. From another, he pulled a cigarette and used the sitting lighter on Mr. Perrine’s desk to light it. He slumped into the chair and smoked the entire thing, before he finally sat himself up, and stood in front of the dead Mr. Perrine.

A cigarette bounced on his lip as he plucked the business card from his pocket (the one that had been tacked to his fridge door), flicked it with a finger, and a quick: “I have an offering.” Then he pulled the still burning cigarette and smothered it into the card. It burned a hole, and from the fluttering ashes, something formed and chittered. “Feast,” Sayre said, and the black, smokey, chittering mass swarmed over the body.

Sayre left for the door. When he pulled it open, the security guard tilted his head and held out a rag. Sayre wiped his hands clean. “Anything else?” the enthralled guard asked.

“Do you have the statement ready for the police?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Sayre finished and tossed the bloody rag to the mass. It swarmed it. Then he wrapped an arm around the guard’s shoulders and walked down the hallway. “Now, tell me, what sort of music are you listening to?”