It tasted the way I’d always assumed the air at Disneyland would taste, back when I’d been a kid and the fact that I was an alien invader didn’t mean I wasn’t allowed to go on vacation. It tasted like ice cream and rainbows and lazy afternoons, like bacon dipped in frosting, like every good thing in the universe. It tasted like stardust, like I was drinking stardust, and before I had time to even register the first swallow, Jeff was there, plucking the emptied husk out of my hand and replacing it with a plump, unopened bag.

“Keep going,” he said.

I obeyed without stopping to think about the humans around us, or what they might think of this scene. I had been given permission to glut myself, and that was exactly what I was going to do.

The second bag of blood tasted faintly different—cotton candy instead of funnel cake, early morning instead of late afternoon. I made a wordless, quizzical sound. Jeff, still standing in front of me, nodded enthusiastically.

“That’s from another donor,” he said. “The first one was from Graham, and this one is from Amanda.”

“Mandy,” said Mandy sharply.

“Whatever,” said Jeff.

I took another long gulp, drinking the essence of the woman who had been my friend and housemate for so many years. She tasted amazing. If all humans tasted this good, we were going to have a real problem convincing the invading armada not to eat them. If that was even possible. Would the humans agree to some sort of mass blood drive in exchange for us not swallowing them whole?

“That should be enough for now.” This time, when Jeff took the empty pouch from my hand, he didn’t replace it. I started to reach for the cooler. He whisked it out of my grasp with a shake of his head.

I glared. “Why did you do that?”

“Because you need to give your system time to adjust,” he said. “Your stomach is still largely modeled on the human digestive system. It isn’t set up to deal with blood. If you drink too much, it will make you sick, and that will be a waste of a limited resource.” He glanced meaningfully at Toni. My blood-filled stomach lurched.

Human blood wouldn’t stay a limited resource if we got hungry enough. There were lots of humans around, at least for the moment. Living humans who were willing to donate their blood, on the other hand …

We could eat all of those in less time than it took to decide we were going to do it.

“Oh, hell.” I dropped my head into my hands. “When did everything get so complicated?”

“When you kickstarted this whole adventure by eating a kid,” said Toni, almost cheerfully. “If you hadn’t done that, things would have stayed real simple.”