"Um, can you tell me what the hell just happened?" he asked after a few minutes.

"Seriously, I don't have a clue. I had a plan of what I was going to do, but somewhere along the way, something went off track." Utterly puzzled about the way things went, I tried to figure out when and how things had gotten out of hand.

"I thought you were going to kill me!" he stated bluntly—loudly—but strangely devoid of emotion.

"I think you're lucky I didn't." I looked at his face, confused. "When I brought you here, I had no intention on—uh—biting you? Sorry about that," I said with an odd chuckle. "I've never done that before. Are you okay?" I glanced down at his neck, inspecting the wound I'd inflicted, and I ran my finger over the nearly dried blood around it. "Maybe I should clean that up for you?"

"I'm pretty sure I'm okay. A little weak or tired, I guess. It burns, and it's throbbing pretty good, too," he said.

"I'll be right back with something to clean it up. You want anything? A drink?" I had ripped into the guy's throat, but I was offering him up refreshments like that was going to stop him from running to the cops the first chance he got.

"Yeah. A glass of water is fine," he replied as he reached up to rub softly at his neck wound.

"Okay." I forced a smile and left the room.

I headed for the front door, first. Grabbing my keys from their hook, I locked the deadbolt. Then I gathered his clothes from the floor, balling them up under my arm on my way to the kitchen to get a glass of water and stash my keys in one of the many drawers. I didn't want him taking off until I was sure he wasn't going to tell anyone what had happened.

On my way to get cotton balls, alcohol, and such from the bathroom, several questions filled my head. What happened? I wasn't sure. Why did I lose control like that? The only thing I could think was how good he smelled. How did it go from me almost killing him to us ending up in bed? Well, I didn't know that one either, but it was an incredible experience. Who the hell was he? I didn't pay much attention if he'd told me his name, but I'd figured it mattered little since I should've been driving him to his house, passed out, at that point.

There was only one of those questions I could get an answer to. I set the glass on the counter and unrolled his clothes. Grabbing the wallet out of his pants, I opened it. His license stared at me from the middle flap covered by clear plastic. The name printed on it: Marshall Kevin O'Neill. I was content, for the moment, knowing his name, and I replaced his wallet. I quickly folded up his clothes and placed the first aid supplies on top of them before I tucked them under my arm. Fetching the glass from the counter on my way out, I headed back to the room.

"Marshall?" I called when I entered the room and didn't see him on the bed.

I set the glass of water down on the nightstand and rubbed at a weird sensation that had begun to burn on my neck. A groaning from the right side of the bed caught my attention. I walked over to check out the noise and found Marshall lying on the floor. His right hand clutched over the wound on the left side of his neck. His left hand clenched into a tight fist. Agony distorted his face.

"Marshall, are you all right?" I asked him.

He opened his mouth, and the most horrifying scream I'd ever heard erupted from him. It was only at that moment that I noticed—though I wasn't in actual pain—I felt pain. It was there, and I was extremely aware of the intensity of it, but it wasn't my pain. It came from somewhere else, and I couldn't make sense of it.

I set the glass down on the nightstand and hurried to sit on the floor beside him. I began cleaning the wound on his neck and was stunned when I wiped off almost all the dried blood. The wound, I expected to be gruesome and gaping open, had sealed with a shiny, slight-pink scar. In addition, the veins around the scar seemed to be darkening.

So mesmerized by the healed bite, I didn't notice when his screams had died out; the silence eventually caught my attention, and my head jerked up to survey him. He appeared lifeless. Only the rise and fall of his chest and the beating of his heart said he was alive. He was only unconscious. I stayed there by his side, for a long while, before I moved him to the bed, pondering over the many questions my mind had but getting no answers.