Laura Wright - Eternal Hunger

It all made sense now. The desperate hunger, the relentless pain. He was being sent through morpho before his time.

One hundred years before his time.

Mouth wide and fangs curled, he cried out into the sunrise, then collapsed in a heap against the door.

Sara walked down West 11th toward her building, pulling her wool coat closed at the neck to keep out the frigid morning air. Exhaustion licked at her mind and her muscles, making her feel like a huge wimp. Fighting for Gray had become commonplace in her daily life, but last night’s episode had drained her will more than she cared to admit. She liked to think of herself as a hard-ass, someone who pushed herself and those around her until the answers revealed themselves—then on to the next mystery. But witnessing Gray’s potential suicide attempt had her wondering for the first time since med school if she might come out of this a failure, if her plan to go back home to Minnesota, return a well and happy Gray to their ever-hopeful mother, was an utterly bullshit objective.

The flutters of a melancholy heart warned Sara that she was bordering on vulnerability, and she didn’t do vulnerable. Clearly, she needed sleep, a solid five hours to get rid of the weak-little-kitten vibe she was carrying around. Then she could go back to work—rethink and retool.

She made her way down the brownstone steps, pulling out her ring of keys as she went. But at the bottom, she came to an abrupt halt, nearly colliding with something blocking the entryway to her garden apartment. Her heart stuttered, and sudden fear yanked her out of her exhaustion. Huddled against her doorway was a man.

She turned her key chain again and palmed the pepper spray she’d had on there since moving to New York seven years ago. There was probably nothing in it but air now, but, what the hell, he didn’t know that. She flicked the nozzle to the on position with her thumb, then walked cautiously up to him. A thread of fear moved through her and she was glad it was daylight.

The man’s face was turned toward her door, his large frame curled into a ball. As she crept closer, she noted that the triad of smells that normally emanated from the lost souls who found shelter at her door were absent.

She leaned down and touched his shoulder. “Hey, buddy.”

Nothing.

Perfect. This was the last thing she needed today.

She tried again. “Hey, it’s really cold out here. Let me point you toward a shelter. There’s one a couple blocks down.”

He didn’t move.

Fuck. A quick fear implanted itself in her gut, one nurtured from years of living in the city and working in a profession of unpredictability. The man huddled at her door didn’t fit the profile of a homeless guy, and that made him not only strange, but potentially dangerous.

She stared down at him, the cold morning wind blowing strands of her hair against her face. His clothes looked clean and expensive. Shoes, too. Maybe he was someone from her neighborhood, out partying—

HELP ME ...

The unspoken words slammed into Sara’s mind. Caught off guard, she stumbled back, but got only as far as the first step when a sudden, tortured cry erupted from the man, and his dark, closely shaved head dropped back, exposing his face for the first time.

“Oh God. Oh ... oh, shit ...” Heart pounding, she stared at his ruggedly male face. On either cheek, two angry red welts—symbols of some kind—had been singed into his pale skin.

“Who did this to you?” Sara uttered.

He didn’t answer, just lay there, eyes closed, panting, openly suffering, back against the door. He was so huge. The width of his chest had to be twice the size of hers.

She knew it was probably a stupid move, but she was a doctor and her concern trumped her fear. She dropped to her knees beside him and cupped his face. “You need an ambulance.”

The man’s eyes shot open. Sara gasped, “Jesus!” Then she stared as severe, predatory merlot-colored orbs caught and held her gaze. She’d never seen anything so fierce or so beautiful in her life, and she just kept staring, transfixed as his full lips parted, then moved.

He hissed something. Then again.

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

NO AMBULANCE.

Sara’s hands flew to her ears. What the hell? His voice. It was inside her head. How was this happening? Exhaustion? Was it screwing with her mind?

NO POLICE. NO AMBULANCE.

Panicked, Sara released him and shot back to the steps. When she did, shafts of sunlight broke free all around her and flooded the space. Like a snake in search of a mouse, defying all logic and reason, the light slithered about, searching for its prey. She was delusional—had to be. And yet, as she watched, white-hot rays from the sun above them clamped on to the man’s wrists and forearms, searing into his flesh, branding the sensitive skin with the same strange key-like symbols that etched his face.

“Oh my God. Your skin.” She shot forward again, blocking him from the light. “It’s smoking—” Sara dove into her purse, grabbed her cell phone. She flicked it open.

NO! The man reached out, knocking the phone from her hand.

She gasped. “What the hell are you doing?”

IN.

Ignoring him, Sara reached for her cell phone again.

“Please,” he said aloud for the first time, his tone dark and impassioned. “In.”

“No!”

The man grabbed her wrist, his thick, long fingers squeezing lightly. Sara sucked in a breath as the muscles in her neck gave out and her head dropped forward. She felt instantly warm and light-headed. She didn’t know how it was possible, but his fingers . . . on her skin . . . it made her feel—

“Ahhh,” she uttered, electric currents shooting up her arm into her neck, her face. Her mouth started to water and she heard something in her mind again—something unintelligible. And yet she instinctually understood every word. She got to her feet, went to her door, and shoved her key in the lock.

It was incomprehensible, but she knew exactly what she had to do, and once the door was open, she bent down and curled her wrists under the man’s armpits. It was like trying to move a bulldozer, and after several seconds of struggling to pull his enormous frame over the threshold, the man dug his heels into the concrete and helped her. But once inside her apartment, he let out a pained groan and collapsed on the floor, lying against the hardwood, still as a stone.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on here,” she said in a panicked voice, quickly drawing the curtains over the closed blinds, “but you need a doctor, like, yesterday.” She ran to the couch and searched behind the cushions until she found the cordless. She was about to dial 911 when she heard something moving in her kitchen.

She stopped, looked up. “Who’s there?”

There was a moment of utter silence; then a man stepped out from behind the wall that separated the two rooms. “It’s me, Dr. Donohue.”

Wearing a suit that was two sizes too big, the young man stared at Sara with wide brown eyes. He was tall and thin, his straight dark hair almost to his shoulders now. It had been just hours since he called the hospital looking for her, but three months since she’d last seen him, since she’d stopped treating him—three months since he’d snuck into her office and declared his love, offering her the bluebird that lay stiff and lifeless in his hands.

Sara tightened her grip on the phone as she moved to stand in front of the man on the floor in an utterly asinine attempt to protect him. “Tom ...”

“You remember me.” He smiled broadly, looking remarkably like a dimpled serpent. “I didn’t think you would.”

Adopting the motherly tone he’d always responded to, Sara said gently, “Tom, you need to leave now. This is very inappropriate.”