Rafe’s mouth is wide open in surprise. His teeth glisten red in stark contrast to the pearly white peeking through. Blood drips down his chin, down his neck. His chest is a sculpted canvas for a messy Jackson Pollock painting of crimson spatter. None of it is his blood. It’s all hers. Oozing out in a wine-red river from a gash in her slender wrist. Rafe’s spoon is on the bedside table, open to a mod with a sharp, now scarlet-tipped, point.

“I didn’t expect you back so soon,” he states, as if I’ve caught him borrowing a book without permission or something equally ordinary. His words sound moist and sticky from the blood coating his teeth. He notices this too and closes his lips. As if in slow motion, I watch the skin around his lips rise and fall into slopes and valleys as he sweeps his tongue around the inside of his mouth. His throat bobs as he swallows. He looks straight at me, as matter-of-fact as ever. “I do apologize. I didn’t want you to see this.”

33

I’m dumbly, numbly trying to process what I’m seeing.

“What—” I don’t even know what to ask. I contemplate just turning around and running as fast as I can.

“Blood doping,” Rafe explains simply, as if it should be obvious to me. His pupils are dilated, and his muscles look pumped and defined, bigger than usual.

The feeling of him biting my neck tickles my memory. I remember thinking he wanted to break through the skin and suck out my soul.

“By consuming her blood, I absorb her blood cells into my bloodstream, which gives me extra energy, stamina, and strength.” He states it all so factually while the woman lies limp in his lap. “The Vanguard family line has enhanced digestive systems that produce protective enzymes that prevent the blood cells from being broken down. Blood consumption is used at times when we need an extra advantage.”

“You drink blood to make you stronger?”

He nods.

“You’re telling me you’re a vampire?”

“The earliest Vanguard experimentation did make the subjects more reliant on blood than we are now, and some even had fangs. They are likely the source of the vampire mythos.”

Consider my mind officially blown.

I look at the girl. “Is she…?” I can’t even say it.

“She’s fine. I didn’t drink that much, and I muddled her.” I see the empty cup on the bedside table. “She’ll wake up, think she fell asleep watching a movie with me, and be on her way, no worse for wear.”