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She's always thirsty. She's thirsty even when she's drinking, as if her flesh is so dry that it's absorbed the blood as soon as she swallows each drop. She can hardly remember what it feels like not to be on the verge of disintegration; she knows that it won't take sunlight or a stake to turn her to dust. The next strong wind might do it, or the next shout.
*
The new guy smells clean, but he grips her arms so hard he leaves bruises. She can sense the suppressed violence in him the way you can sense the ozone in the air before a storm, when it feels like each breath you take sears every single cell inside your lungs. Harder, he says, always Harder, and sometimes the hand that strokes her hair crams her face into his arm so hard that her jaws crack and her teeth bang shock-rattle against bone and she can't swallow for the spurt of blood, she gags on it like she does with blow jobs. But this is the advantage of being dead: she doesn't need to breathe and she can choke it down and continue to suck, without squirming in his lap, even when it feels like he's going snap her neck or crush her skull, and eventually the palm shoving her head forward and the erection pressing against her ass will both go limp, as his blood pressure goes down and his strength seeps away.
*
Kill him, the demon whispers in her head, and: I can't, she whispers back, and: Useless, the demon says, only it sounds like her dad. But she can't kill a customer, Whip would stake her in an instant if she messed up one of the humans, and the demon knows it; it just doesn't care. It doesn't care if she dies. There's a demon in my head, Billy had told her, laughing and crazy and yellow-eyed and high, and she'd actually thought that would be the best part, better than being strong, better than not having to be afraid, the part where she'd never have to be alone again.
*
She likes it best when they pretend they're dead. They just lie there limp and helpless with their arms slung out and their heads lolling back, and she can pretend she's a kitten, sniffing at the tender, sweaty place behind their ears or lapping delicately at their inner arms with her rough tongue. Occasionally—and never the first time or even the second, never till they've gotten used to her—she'll pounce on them, a sudden swift shock, their arms jerking in her immobilizing grip, and their necks arching, vibrating with sounds muffled by the bruising pressure of her mouth.
*
Sometimes she likes to go outside. Maybe it's because the nest seems so good to come back to, all smoky and warm and smelling comfortably like other people's fear. She doesn't go into town; all the crowds and the bright lights seem vaguely dangerous. She goes walking through the woods instead. They're empty with winter coming now, all spindly branches and desiccated leaves. It's colder than she ever thought it got in California. Yeah, well, one guy said when she mentioned it, it's warmer during the day, and he never even noticed how she looked at him.
*
I want to go home, she thinks helplessly, but she doesn't even know what she means by it. She used to wish the same thing, curled up in her own bed late at night, listening to the loneliness inside her head. I just want to go home.
*
She said it to Billy once. She didn't dare say it aloud; she had to whisper it into the curve of his neck as they drowsed together in a sweaty tangle, the dark hiding his changed face. I feel like I'm lost. And I don't know where I want to go.
Lost? He just laughed, and for a moment she could pretend that nothing had changed, that the rise and fall of his chest was from living breath, and then he said: Baby, you're already dead.