Mer must be asleep again, though it felt like she was fully awake. It was the dripping of water and the moldy scent of air that needed some serious ventilation that gave it away. She was in the cave again, though the man was pacing back and forth. The movement had her dizzy, and he paused once he sensed her presence.

"You're back again," the man said, the one whose eyes she was seeing through, and he looked around to the cave more like he was giving her a view than he cares. What she saw meant little compared to the stench in the air. It smelled like death.

"You are curious?" he asked, and Mer wondered just who he was and why she was here. There had to be a reason she was coming to his mind. Damien was his name, and he was a vampire, but she knew little else. It was so hard to remember him when she was conscious, but now it seemed so easy. That was likely no coincidence.

"What am I? Who am I? I can hear the questions in your mind. I feel those questions too but..." The man pauses as his ear picked up on footsteps in the distance. "You should leave tonight. You don't want to be here."

Why should she not be here? What was he hiding? The footsteps ended, a screech like someone had pulled the rustiest lever in the world near deafened her, and then the whole cave shook. A door opened in the wall, and a smell took her senses for a ride as her stomach leaped with anticipation.

It smelled like food.

A man skittered into the cave and fell on his hands, and the door shut behind him with a crashing the had him whimpering as he crawled back. Mer realized, to her horror, as she watched the man wrap and start to mumble a prayer, that it was him who smelled like food. Holy hell...

"Please leave," Damien begged, but his mind warped as his mouth salivated. "I don't have great control of myself, so I can't refrain from eating and wait for you to go. I wish I could."

Damien stood, she stood, drawn by the smell of food, blood, and life. It skittered away, and that excited her, the pumping of blood in its veins urging her to chase. Where did it think it was going? Mer's jaw unhinged and a growl rolled through her throat, his throat.

God, who was she anymore? Their minds were so connected that everything was tangling together. So Hungry. Mer was desperate to open the man's veins, and the imperative screamed in her mind. Devour him! It clawed at her insides until she was in front of her meal and lifting the man by his dirty, short hair. It struggled and squealed so that she had to dig her fingers into his skull and she pushed him up against one of the cave walls. There, now it wouldn't struggle as much.

Her fangs sank into his throat, and warmth flowed down onto her tongue. It was heavy and sweet, like sugared molasses, and she clutched the man harder to her body to bury her fangs in deeper. Sucking on his neck and pulling the blood into her mouth felt so good, easing the pain in her stomach and filling her with a tingling feeling of euphoria as she drank deeper. More of this. Yes, this.

Mer had no idea how long she at the man's throat with how the feeling took her over. All she was aware of was the quick paced pulsing against her tongue as she drank. It slowed and she drank harder, needing more, but it was coming slower and slower. A growl of annoyance escaped her lips as she dropped the empty husk. With the pulsing silenced, it was empty, and she ran her tongue around her lips, desperate to taste the last drops of blood. Only when those too were gone, did her mind return and she realized what she'd done.

A corpse lay at her feet, the man's eyes open in terror even in death, and she'd drained him without a single thought of remorse. The delicious euphoric drink had been a person, and she'd killed him. And it had felt wonderful. Trembling took her body and tears rushed to her eyes, though she didn't know whose they were. Hers, his, a monster's.

No.

No.

No! No! No!

Mer woke screaming again, but this time she was flailing so hard that Rush had to wrap her in the blankets to restrained her. Tears streamed from her eyes, she couldn't stop jerking her eyes around the room erratically, and she had no idea where the gut wrenching horror was coming from. All of her insides felt wrong, like she was corroding from the inside out, and she wanted to rip her skin off.

Why couldn't she remember?

It grew so overwhelming that she screamed again, and instead of keeping her still, Rush shoved her right off the bed onto the floor. The blankets went with her, and she landed in a mouth in of the, so it didn't hurt, but it scared the crap out of her enough that she could see her hands in front of her face finally.

"Meredith! Shut up!" Rush yelled over the edge, and such a juvenile phrase sounded wrong on his lips. Poor guy was losing it as hard as she was.

Wrapped in blankets, it was hard for her to find up and down, but she untied herself enough that she could see up onto the bed. It wasn't any safer up there though. Mer hadn't expected him to be happy to see her, but the level of disgust on his twisted lips struck her. Lying on his back, he stared pointedly as if she were some loathsome burden, and without any blankets, his broad shoulders and muscled chest were bare down to his jeans.

Seeing him half naked reminded her of the last time she'd been awake. For the brief time she'd been conscious, he'd seemed sick of seeing her face, and after that she'd completely refused to sleep with him. A sinking feeling tumbled rocks in the pit of her stomach. How long would he give her the option to say no before he dragged her to him? Would it be like when he had lost it and fed on her? Pure terror and force she couldn't fight against?

"We need to talk, Meredith," Rush said, and she pulled the comforters around her as if they could protect her from him.

There weren't many topics to talk about. Maybe three? One, blowing up his arm. Would he want her shackled permanently now? Surely, he regretted giving her the book on magic. Two, drinking her blood. That had been adequately terrifying and she didn't want to think about it again. Maybe he didn't even care about the way he'd thrown her down and forced his fangs into her neck. That was the normal way they ate anyway, right? Likely, she was just a quick snack.

Three was the worst, and she did not want to think about three. Rush wanted her. Physically, yes, he wanted to pleasure himself using her body, but emotionally whenever he looked at her, it was with loathing or annoyance. Even before she had blown up his arm, he'd been balancing on a pin's head of killing her and allowing her to live. If he forced her to sleep with him, she was not sure she would ever recover from that.

The man was short with her already, especially after she'd hurt him, and he'd already expressed how dangerous he felt she was to touch. If he wanted to "sleep with her" shackled, she would never recover from that. Not to mention how his hands would feel on her skin, the way he could break her with ease, and how they were soaked with the pressure of dark magic.

"Sometimes I try to imagine what you're thinking," Rush said, and she jumped her gaze up to where he was now sitting cross legged on the bed. At least he was calmer than he'd been when he'd yelled at her. "You look terrified, as if I might ravage you, in every sense of the word." That was pretty much it. "Come onto the bed, Meredith. I need to speak with you."

It was a strange place for a conversation, but she wasn't really in a negotiating position.

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