CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Killer Instincts

The month that had come to pass had been as fulfilling as it could’ve been given the time constraints. Her four favourite books had been re-read, Warren had sat and watched only the best bits of all her favourite movies, and he’d been as creative as he could with getting her the foods she still wanted to try. Unfortunately, chocolate would always be off the cards; Karou decided at precisely the moment the dairy-free chocolate he’d managed to obtain had touched her tongue that it was abysmal. Warren had agreed, having tried it too.

They’d promised not to be morbid or talk about it anymore; for the most part, things had carried on as ‘normal’. Karou had arranged a little get-together with her friends, and they’d spent a fun night drinking at the tavern. Though, of course, they didn’t know the occasion’s significance. Warren had had to carry her most of the way home and tuck her into bed. Admittedly she’d gotten a little handsy, but he subdued her patiently until she fell to sleep. The hangover the morning after wasn’t pleasant, but she supposed it might as well have been something she let herself experience, take the rough with the smooth.

Monday night couldn’t have been bleaker; it’d been raining all day, but Karou had decided to make the best of it and sat at Warren’s piano, drawing the view from his bedroom window. Raindrops on the glass, moonlight and the tree’s bold silhouette created a stunning, otherworldly effect. Once she was satisfied that the drawing was complete, she closed her sketchbook, pulled one leg up, and hugged it to her chest. With her chin resting on her knee, she stared at the view a little longer.

The moment Warren exited his office, she heard him and turned about to look at him. The walk he took in a straight line towards her seemed to pass in slow motion; she still thought he was gorgeous, but that night he looked exhausted, and his eyes were black with thirst. It wasn’t until he entered his room, tugging the tie from his neck and unbuttoning his dress shirt to get changed, that he noticed Karou perched at his piano.

“Rough day at the office?” Karou asked.

“Something like that,” Warren noted dryly, peeled his dress shirt off, and tossed it into the laundry.

“I’m sitting right here, y’know?” Karou diverted her eyes when he unfastened his belt to stare at the baby grand - the bare strings were suddenly fascinating.

“I’m just putting pyjamas on; besides, you’re not looking...” Collecting a t-shirt from his drawer, Warren pulled it on along with a pair of lounge pants. Snapping the waistband audibly into place, he stepped over to Karou and lent down into her personal space when he said, “All done. Now, did you want to watch TV?”

“Uhm, not yet.” Karou pressed her index finger down on middle C. The note was crisp, and the way it bounced back off of bedroom walls spoke to the unit’s excellent acoustics. “Is this piano ornamental?”

“It’d be an obnoxiously large ornament if it were, wouldn’t it?”

“It’s just I’ve never heard you play it… You do play, don’t you?”

“I do. I used to play a lot before you arrived.”

“You didn’t need to stop on my account… You see, I was going to ask if you’d play something for me. It’s kinda on my bucket list…” Karou explained. Although she knew little about playing music, she had always loved it.

“Well...” While she remained seated on the piano’s stool, his arms stretched either side of her shoulders so that his chest pressed into the back of her head, and his fingers reached out to the keys with great anticipation. The closeness he’d instigated without hesitation sent a shiver down her spine. “... We tend to spend our evenings watching movies you like instead.” He stated as he played her a short rendition, a comical tune, which admittedly ruined the ‘moment’.

Seeing that he was about to back away, Karou grabbed one of his wrists and turned her head to look up at him. “Oh, c’mon, you can’t just play chopsticks… I want to hear a real song! Something... pretty.”

Warren grunted, “Fine,” though he supposed he didn’t really mind indulging her. “Shuffle over.”

Karou shifted to the end of the bench to allow Warren to sit down next to her, their outer thighs touched, but Warren didn’t flinch. She was pleased that he allowed her to touch him so freely and smiled to herself as she watched him flex his fingers and get comfortable.

“Is there anything you want to hear in particular… Other than something ‘pretty’?”

“Nope, anything you like.”

Warren sat a moment in thought before setting his fingers back onto the keys. The minor key inspired a mood that fit her feelings about her upcoming birthday, but the melody was delicate and pretty, just as she’d requested.

Watching Warren’s fingers manage the keys was entrancing.

Is it possible to be attracted to someone’s hands so much? She thought. She wanted to reach out and touch them, but the song would have ended prematurely. The tune suited that emotion too; it spoke to a feeling of yearning that was sorrowful, heart-wrenching even.

Glancing up at Warren’s face, though he bowed his head as though he were staring at the keys, she saw that his eyes were closed. Clearly, he knew the melody so well that he could play blind. The way his lips and brow moved throughout informed Karou that the music made him feel something, too; he wasn’t as unfeeling as he would’ve liked her to believe. Until the song ended, she stared at his face, admiring him as well as the music he filled her ears with.

When it was over, he set his hands on his lap and opened his eyes to focus on the keyboard before closing the lid with a sense of finality. “Would you like to-”

“What’s it called?” Karou cut him off.

“Marriage D’Amor.” He answered plainly, though he still didn’t meet her eyes, despite being aware Karou was searching for their attention. She had turned to face him and was postured towards him; he knew that much.

“It doesn’t bring ‘marriage’ to mind for me…”

“No, me neither.” He expected she would ask what it made him think of but decided he wouldn’t explain; it just wasn’t the right time to tell her - after all, the piece illustrated his feelings about destroying something beautiful and spoke to the sorrow that would inevitably come with such an act and how ultimately all that came to mind because he planned to execute her before the week was out, was too sentimental to put into words. “Would you like to watch TV now?”

Karou nodded ‘yes’ and followed Warren out of his bedroom. On her way to the lounge, she tossed her sketchbook onto her bed and then curled up in her habitual corner of the couch and turned on the TV; it had all become ritual.

Now that winter was here, Karou wore leggings most nights instead of the sleep shorts she’d worn all summer, but with a particularly snowy night forecast, Warren had turned up the heat in the unit, so it was comfortably cosy. Beneath the blanket she had over her, she shimmied out of the leggings and didn’t mind sitting there in her underwear when she was otherwise covered up.

Warren was pouring himself a drink as she flicked through the channel menu but settled into his adjacent corner as she picked something to watch.

“Do you believe in Heaven, Warren?” Karou asked out of the blue as the movie began.

“Feeling philosophical, are we?” Warren took a sip of his drink before setting it on the coffee table. “These days, I don’t believe in God or The Devil, or Heaven and Hell traditionally speaking, but being born in the Bible belt meant I was raised in a devout Christian household, so I can’t bring myself to settle on there being ‘nothing’. Why’d you ask?”

“My parents were atheists, so I never really thought about what happens after that much...”

“Believe whatever helps you sleep at night. It’s nobody else’s business anyway.”

“Hmm, that makes sense. What helps you sleep at night?”

“A great deal less than what keeps me awake...” He replied dryly; it earned him an eye roll from Karou, which he smirked at. “My feeble attempts to live morally and, if that fails, sedatives.”

Nearly two hours passed silently, save for the film that played. Karou watched it to its conclusion, but Warren had dozed in his seat between drinking scotch and watching Karou. After switching off the television and setting the remote on the coffee table, Karou turned to Warren and announced that she would head to bed.

“Alright, I’m thirsty tonight. I think I’ll feed before bed; you go on ahead.”

“Tomorrow is Tuesday,” Karou stated out of nowhere. Perhaps it didn’t mean much, but considering the plan regarding her fast-approaching birthday, it held great significance.

“I know. Sorry I haven’t talked much tonight; I’m beat. Speaking of Tuesday, though, I’ve got another packed day - a long conference call in the morning and delivery schedules to sort out in the afternoon. I might not make it out of my office early.” Brushing his hand back through his hair, Warren slumped sideways into the corner while looking at her.

“Okay. What about the day after?” Karou was picking at the threads of the blanket draped over her lap. Wednesday was the ‘big day’, and she wondered whether he’d tell her his ‘plans’.

“Your Birthday?” Warren cocked an eyebrow at her; he hadn’t expected her to bring it up due to their conversation a month ago. Honestly, he’d hoped she’d forgotten about the whole thing, but apparently, she hadn’t. “I’m not working on Wednesday. There is something else I have to do that day.”

“Do you… have plans early or late in the day?” Karou asked, dancing around the topic as if they were talking about something perfectly mundane.

“I thought we could just play it by ear,” Warren said vaguely. Sometimes the three feet between them seemed like miles, especially when he wanted to reach out and touch her.

Karou nodded once more before clambering from the couch with the blanket wrapped around her. Just like that, she silently disappeared into her bedroom and got ready for bed.

As mentioned, Warren had taken himself off into his office and fed beforehand; he needed self-control in order to make the request he had in mind. On the way to his bedroom, he peered at Karou through the gap of her door. Karou had acquired a large cardboard box and was in the process of packing her clothes into it. When he realised exactly what she was doing, he pushed the door open some more so that she could see him standing there. As he glanced around her room, he saw that she’d stacked all the books she’d borrowed from numerous places onto her desk and tidied her sketching things into a neat pile. Being so organised was unlike her, but that wasn’t what shocked him - it looked like she planned to move out, but he knew that she was packing for a much more final departure.

“It won’t be long ‘til I turn my lamp out. I won’t keep you up.” Closing the box up, Karou finished, having left herself a day’s worth of clothes folded at the bottom of her bed. As she sat there, she wasn’t wearing what she had been earlier. Instead, she’d put on her favourite pair of pyjamas’. Though they weren’t fit for the season, she wore some lavender sleep shorts and a delicate cotton camisole in white to accompany it.

“Do you want to sleep in my bed tonight?”

Together, they curled up under the sheets much like they had the month before. Tonight though, Warren combed back the hair from her shoulder and pressed himself into her back a little lower so that his lips lingered near the nape of her neck. In the gloomy silence, he breathed her in.

“I didn’t get to do all those things I was going to,” Karou whispered into the dark.

“They can’t have been that important,” Warren whispered back.

“They were to me.”

“You’ve accepted your fate with an admirable amount of grace.”

“I can’t decide if you’re being deliberately calm and indifferent. Are you trying to make it easier for me?”

“You haven’t considered how difficult this past month has been for me, Karou. I’ve never ended someone I didn’t hate before.” Gingerly his fingers clasped onto her hip, spreading over her skin beneath her clothes. His mouth loomed behind her neck, where her dark hair thinned, and though he wasn’t in an adequate biting position, he put his lips on her.

“Warren...” Karou sighed his name and grasped a hold of his wrist. “What’re you doing?”

As Warren’s lips wandered south over her shoulder, his arms held her a little tighter, and he whispered between his kisses. “Did you think you were the only one with a sense of unfinished business?” His hand edged further up her waist despite her trying to disable his movements.

“So, what? You figure you might as well use me before it’s all over?” Karou demanded to know, bitterly. She knew she should have felt repulsed, but in spite of that, she was enjoying the attention he was paying her. Daring to hope that if she played her cards right, she might get a few of the things on her list after all. “You’re... greedy.”

“I’m much worse than greedy. I’m abhorrent.” He muttered, yet still, his teasing continued. Pressed so eagerly into her body, Warren could feel her blood rising to the surface of her skin as she slowly became excited. He was already there; that much was made evident when his hips pressed fervently into her rear.

“When are you going to call this whole thing off, Karou?” Warren didn’t allow Karou to answer this time. Suddenly the hand that had grasped onto her waist clasped about her chin and made her look at him. Their blue eyes met briefly before their lips did.

There came a feeling of relief when he kissed her; she’d patiently waited, anticipating the tension becoming too much, so they could both be swallowed by its implosion. Desperately she clung to him anywhere she could reach, returning the kiss he’d given her urgently.

“Mmm, Karou... How fiercely do I have to threaten your life for you to remain here just as you are?”

“Promise that it'll be like this for the rest of the time I’m here. That you won’t forget I exist when you’re busy. That you’ll let me sleep here, hold and kiss me like this...” Her hand reached back, becoming entangled in his hair to keep his lips on her skin. Enthralled by Warren’s touch and yearning for more as his lips trailed down her neck, she said, “…tell me you’ll bite me again. Hmm, Warren... I want to see your silver eyes again.” Karou couldn’t just lay there anymore, she turned over and kissed him back, but she had more to say and sighed between their lips meeting and her plea. “Could you let me have more of you than kisses and touches...?” With her dainty hand laid over the side of his face, she sought his eyes for his answer.

“You’re asking for things I can’t promise.” He admitted while looking regretfully contrite.

“Then...” Karou swallowed down her disappointment and said, “Tomorrow can be my last birthday. I have nowhere, and no one left to go back to and nothing here worth existing for. It’s all temporary, anyway. Why stretch it out indefinitely?”

“Don’t you think you’re being overdramatic and a little too negative about your situation?”

“Drama and negativity have a nasty habit of following me around.”

Wiggling free of his arms, Karou climbed out of bed. He had no idea where she was going, but she took off across the unit's hardwood as soon as she was through the bedroom door. Warren sprang from the mattress and chased after her. She was at the unit’s front door when he caught up to her. Karou had successfully unlocked the door and was in the process of opening it when Warren’s hand came down hard against the metal slab and pushed it closed with a bang. He was far too strong for her to contend with.

“Where are you going?”

“Just let me go? I swear I won’t tell a soul about this place! I’d never intentionally bring harm to anyone who lives here. They’re good people. They don’t deserve to die in this war, just like the mortals, the innocent ones, out there. Just let me leave this place! Please?” Karou begged.

“You’re in your pyjamas. It’s rained all day, and below thirty out there tonight. You wouldn’t make it even if I let you lose out the gate.”

“So what? You don’t care how long I live out there!”

Warren growled. It was infuriating how certainly she believed he could have cared less about her. Neither could he believe she was willing to gamble her life away on a whim only to get her own way. Your negotiations are completely irrational.

“You don’t actually want to leave; you just want to live here on your terms and not mine. Did you think that I’d suddenly decide I was besotted with you if you threatened to run to your death?” Warren’s demeanour was calm and cold as his words were, but inside he was incensed.

“I don’t pretend to understand you - how could I? You constantly remind me you’ve lived five times longer than I have! That you’re a repulsive monstrosity of a man, and you prove that to me regularly. You are abhorrent, yet I always forgive you. I put all your misgivings aside the second you’re the tiniest bit nice to me.” Backed against the closed door, Karou glared at him as her eyes spilt angry tears. “Fuck, you’re such a good actor, or I’m just a silly naive girl, but all your kisses felt so real.”

Warren’s reflex to ravage her was proving difficult to hold at bay. Over and over again, he found himself lying for the sake of upholding his pretence - one that was becoming more fragile by the minute. It was meant to guard her against the predator he harboured, but when she’d made it clear she didn’t want to be protected and that she wished for all of the scenarios from his sinful daydreams to play out, how was he supposed to maintain the strength and stamina required to keep pretending? Deep down, he wanted to tell her that their kisses had been his only relief from the torment. That her blood had done things to him, he’d had no idea were possible. She was never far from his mind, and his eyes were full of her too. How he kept his hands to himself, he didn’t know. The tension was unbearable. She drove him crazy. But it was all for nothing because it was just lust, he was sure. How could someone as hollow as him genuinely care for someone as kind as Karou? Even if he did, she deserved better than him. Ultimately, what he said was true.

“You were easy to fool... I just want to consume you.”

“Why don’t you stop talking about it and just do it then?” Karou dared without bothering to keep the bitter taint from her words.

The tension was mounting within her, too and even his cruel and aggressive words aroused her. She would come out of this dead or ruined, she was sure. Besides, being so well-read in tragic and evocative romance novels meant that Karou had learned a thing or two from her fictional sisters. Women could always get what they wanted from the male antagonists in one way or another. One of those ways was what she was trying now - she had put on the sweetest-looking nightwear she owned. In late November, she wasn’t wearing thin, almost sheer cotton that flattered the slender angles of her neck and shoulders and shorts that showed as much leg as she dared to, for no reason; it was a lure. Now, she was backed up against her only escape route and in a vulnerable position facing off against the man that meant to pluck her from innocence. Systematically Karou tipped her head to the side inquisitively as was her way. The act incidentally exposed a little more of her neck to him. The thing he’d told himself he couldn’t have; he had been given more than enough permission to take.

The moments that came to pass would alter their lives forever.

Warren’s movements had been too swift for Karou to pick up on every nuance of how she ended up pinned back against the black leather couch. He’d pursued her with speed only a vampire was capable of. Although the initial blow of being planted there was winding, the violence he enacted next was surprisingly gentle. Karou accepted her fate and willingly arched her neck when she felt Warren’s fingers intertwined with her hair as if he were about to tug her head back himself. Unlike before, when he’d loomed over her to feed, he didn’t free her of his weight by elevating himself from her body, no, his chest to her chest, and he held her forearm above her head to completely disarm her.

There was no time for kisses or teasing caresses; he needed to drink her! She’d caught sight of his fangs at her neck. Karou closed her eyes, not out of fear but to immerse herself into the physical realm with complete focus. It was the last time, so she wanted to take in how it would feel in its rawest form. The way Warren growled into her skin as his fangs sunk into the left side of her neck aroused an excited moan from her that he hadn’t expected. With every impulse being followed blindly, his response to her outcry was to grind his hips into her, asserting his dominance further. She managed to keep one hand free and reached to comb her fingers into his hair - not in an attempt to pull him away, and not that she had the strength to keep him there either, but it just seemed necessary to touch him now that she had submitted to him. Karou hadn’t noticed, but her legs had moved to the same conclusion; they’d bound about Warren’s hips like she meant for him to be positioned between them. What it implied didn’t matter because Warren held Karou in a way that couldn’t be confused as platonic, either. Karou imagined this pleasure of being held so possessively by Warren was as sensual as could be. Even though they still had their clothes on, and she would die a virgin, she figured at least she would have this experience.

Karou was right; she was dying, and Warren had no intention of stopping. His ears had tuned in to her heartbeat; it was growing more laboured. Gone was the excited flutter of anticipation. Passed had the steady pace of her relaxation. She was tipping over the edge of a deep slumber, closer and closer towards eternal stillness. The moment her heart would run out of blood to pump was near, and Karou’s limbs had relaxed pliably in his hands. Where she’d once facilitated him by craning her neck, she hadn’t the stamina to do so anymore; her head lulled against Warren’s temple instead. Finally, Karou’s hand fell from his hair.

Reluctantly, he pulled back from her neck and lapped the remnants of her blood from his lips. He slowly opened his eyes, but Karou couldn’t inform him of their silvery glow because hers remained closed this time.

Although he’d fulfilled his bloodthirst, Warren felt no victory at that moment. The fulfilment that came from satisfying his monstrous thirst wasn’t enough to spare him from the immense sadness of the scene before him, just as he’d suspected. Indeed, he felt invigorated as his heart pounded away in his chest, full of life and brimming with fresh blood. The euphoria was short-lived because the energy he buzzed with had been stolen. It dawned on him that he would never have tired of the taste of her, but now she was all used up.

Karou was the winner; she had also gotten exactly what she’d craved - an escape from her old life and Warren as the facilitator of her release. Yes, she’d hunted the hunter and turned predator into prey. Beneath him, she ebbed into her final sleep. There was no chance that she’d wake back up, all he could do was wait for her heart to beat its last and her final breath to escape out into the air.

As his fingers traced over the soft curves and edges of her face, his vision blurred, and he realised his eyes were waterlogged. She’d been so kind, understanding, and so forgiving of his flaws. A beautiful woman, still so full of youth and potential, had prematurely met her demise by his fangs; it was tragic.

This can’t be the end.