Hoard to Death

“You know, I feel like we have this… incredible connection,” Gary says. He’s leaning across the table to reach for my hand. I settle for the tips of my fingers and feel the desperate, thrumming need in his veins.

And then I wince. The C-word. The beginning of the end; another cycle doomed to repeat when the hunger that curls around my spine barks again. A bald spot at the top of Gary’s head reflects the dying sunlight. I try not to stare at it and continue pushing around the filet I’ve hacked to pieces. When I take him, I know what’ll happen. His obsession with logistics and spreadsheets will seep into my marrow. The little pair of dice that rattle around in his car’s console will collect dust under my bed because I’ll be unable to part with this specific, tragic moment in a sticky diner.

I’m the only predator in the world dying of emotional indigestion.

“Look, Gary,” I say, and his eyes spark with the hopefulness of a lusting man. “I’m not denying that there’s some connection here. But I know that you don’t know what you’re truly feeling. Does your heart stutter inexplicably when you see me? You get a sour feeling in your stomach, too, right?” He nods, confused. “And you chalk it up to excitement. Maybe the thrill of the chase?”

His head nods with so much intent that I fear it will roll right onto the cheap melamine plate. Preferable to the steak, actually.

“Why don’t we get the check and head back to mine?” I slip my leg from beneath the table. Gary’s eyes roam the length of my exposed skin. A wave of slow-moving heat builds at the base of my skull. It’s hard to focus on anything other than the paralyzing ache.

I move my foot side to side, a silver anklet— a gift from a poet in 1924 who had the most magnificent collection of jewels— sizzles against my tendons. It was a stupid thing to wear, but I’d always taken a liking to the ostentatious.

Gary fumbles for his keys with nervous hands and slaps a few twenty-dollar bills onto the table. I follow the man of utility to his damp cardboard box of a car. Most of my marks in the recent decades have been high-octane tragedies; loud, neon-bright, and exhausting to keep. Gary provides a dull sanctuary. His energy drones with a profound, almost spiritual lack of ambition that blankets my frayed nerves.

As he drives, my hands wander to the silk-lined pocket of my purse where a chipped plastic keychain keeps permanent residence. With each pass of my thumb over the grooved surface, I taste Tommy and his peppermint gum. What a prize he’d been— young, lean, impeccably tan, and willing to let me play the carnival games without tickets. Tommy gave me his youth, and I gave him the best summer a kid from central Iowa could have. His leftovers were my favorite to chew on.

The car’s engine rattles on, and Gary fills the space with mundane talk. He draws out his syllables in a way that makes the corners of his mouth quirk. Movement in the center cupholder catches my eye. Gary’s dice. Quicker than a striking cobra, I snatch the pair and shove them into my purse, next to Tommy’s keychain. Gary turns to me, and I offer a wolfish grin, which he thinks is an indicator of what’s to come. I spend the rest of the ride with my hand between his thighs. Just an appetizer.

“Wow,” Gary breathes, stepping over a stack of leather-bound journals from Queen Victoria’s library and a vintage Super Soaker with fading stickers. “You’re… a collector.”

My living room is an amalgamation of all that I am. “I’m a preservationist, Gary. There’s a difference.”

“Call it what you want, but this,” he whistles, “this is impressive.”

I slink my coat off my shoulders, knowing that Gary is watching the grooves of my back twist with the motion.

My keys land with a clink into a bowl older than time. Gary wanders my space, and I let him. It’s not often people survive a lair long enough to explore. Stacks of books and magazines crowd the walls in tasteful piles. Trinkets occupy every shelf. To a mortal, I’m a collector of rare things. To my people, I’m a hoarder. I scoff to myself. I’ve spent centuries refusing to let go of the tangible bits of my history, and what’s the harm in that? Though I have a storage unit upstate that’s dangerously close to bursting. I follow standard protocol—as dictated by the Mother-Hive in the 14th century—to maintain a clean, sustainable ecosystem. But now and then, I can’t stop myself from keeping a souvenir that helps me feel slightly less like a void in a cocktail dress.

I tell Gary I’ll pour wine, a rich vintage from Italy. The mass of his body hits my sofa with a thump as he makes himself comfortable.

I roll my neck and remove the pins, keeping my hair in place so I can touch myself up in the hallway mirror. A reflection of masterful biological engineering stares back at me. My skin is the color of heavy cream, my eyes a shade lighter than pure onyx. Yesterday, their centers were a dark amber. Not long now. A rare smile splits my face in two, and my stomach rumbles.

My fingers stray from my hair to a polished ivory bird statuette perched on the edge of the console table. This was Julian.

Paris, 1968. The air had smelled of tear gas and expensive cigarettes. Julian had been a student at the Sorbonne. He had a voice like gravel and a soul that burned hot; I spotted it from a mile away. When I took him, the feed was so electric that I’d lost my vision for two days from the surge. Protocol dictated I should have left his shell in that cramped attic apartment and moved on to the next revolutionary. Instead, I spent days sitting near his bed while he lay in a cationic stupor, unable to bear the thought of his fire being extinguished forever. But my hunger returned, and I took what I had to.

I pick up the bird whistle now, the beak of it bites into my palm as if to echo a faint chant in French or the specific way Julian moaned my name like it was a prayer to a god he didn’t believe in. Devouring him had given me a nasty limp for three months before his stubbornness settled into my hips. I look back at the mirror and tuck the memory away before the sentimentality of it chokes me to death.

“The wine?” Gary calls from the living room.

Right. The wine. I need to drown out the sound of 1968 with the grey silence of Gary’s mind. I grab the bottle, the red as dark as blood, and return to the living room to sink into the cushions beside Gary.

He’s ripe with unspent passion and the scent of cheap aftershave. I lean over him to set the wine on the coffee table, my other hand finding the back of his neck, my fingers sliding into the thin hair at his nape. My scent, something like lilies and bergamot, sends his senses skyrocketing. I lean in until my lips brush the shell of his ear and inhale.

Over my lifespan, I’ve learned that every human is a tapestry of glowing filaments. Gary’s are flat and sturdy, pulsing with charcoal and deep blue light. Each press of my lips lightens the hues to swirling reds and vibrant oranges. The swell in his lap uncoils my invisible hooks into his spirit, and I extract what comprises him— the memory of his first bike, the exuberance he felt with his big promotion, the specific heat of desire— through his skin. Usually, the process is an overwhelming rush, but with Gary, it rolls in gentle waves.

As our mouths meet, I taste his Tuesday morning commute. I slide into his consciousness, my tongue tasting the salt of his secret, small-scale anxieties. His pulse hammers a memory against my fingers around his neck. I swallow a perfect image of him standing in a warehouse, feeling a fleeting, pathetic sense of pride at a perfectly organized shelf. My skin begins to hum. What little whites are left of my eyes disappear as the onyx bleeds outward. The fog of Gary’s soul dampens my senses, and I release a moan from the pit of me.

Instead of wilting into a husk, Gary surges. A primal, awkward grunt comes from him, and his hands find the strength to clamp onto my waist with surprising vigor.

“Veronica,” he pants. “I’ve never… I’ve never felt like this.”

Before I can recalibrate, Gary hoists me up. I try to order him to stop. I can’t feel my legs. They swing uselessly beneath me. Too much. I took too much, too fast.

“Wait, Gary—“

He begins to stumble toward the bedroom, a clumsy, rowdy pirouette of misguided passion. One hand fumbles at my dress with a clumsy need that blows the vision in my left eye. Too much, but I can’t let go. I sink my teeth into his neck just hard enough to elicit a yelp.

The room sways with Gary’s body. I’m hooked on him, and his arms begin to tremble with effort.˝

“Gary!” I shout again through the haze, but he doesn’t hear me.

He takes a blind, confident step backward, his heel catching on the edge of the damned Super Soaker, and his center of gravity vanishes. The world tilts in a blur of khaki and wine. Our bodies slam into the towering mahogany shelf, splintering the wood with a horrific shriek. The floor meets us as a landslide of my history descends from the sky in a tumbling roar.

Gary rolls onto his side, groaning. I squint, trying to piece together his form with my good eye. A glorious humming travels on a current from my fingertips to my toes. Gary is in one piece and pulling trinkets out from under his back. When his eyes follow the destruction to me, he stops. His pupils blow wide, and his mouth forms a silent, trembling ‘O’.

“What is it?” The words hurt to say. A jagged, wet sound bubbles from my throat with dark, ichorous blood.

Gary shrieks and scrambles back on all fours. His hands are coated in black. “Oh god, Victoria, your—your chest—it’s… there’s so much…”

Then, the cold bite of metal between my ribs registers.

The silver sword of Diego, a 17th-century matador, had been leaning against the wall for ages. Now, driven by the weight of a falling marble bust, the blade punched through my sternum and pinned me to the floorboards. I spit, watching my shimmering life force paint a pile of loose polaroids. Gary tries to pull himself up, but his hand slips and he catches the hilt of the sword, sending a fresh fountain of black blood into my mouth. I can’t scream. My lungs fill with a thousand stolen souls.

My vision is fractured in my right eye. The consecrated metal of the sword reacts with my demonic blood in a violent, corrosive hiss. The scent of my scorched skin fills the loft.

Around me, the hoard closes in. I point to my purse. Gary understands and hands it to me. The entire thing quakes with his nerves. I feel around with numb fingers and grasp the plastic keychain with as much strength as I can muster. Gary’s dice tumble to the floor and land in a puddle of muck. In my open palm, the plastic melts in a pool of my acidic blood.

Everything in the room turns to sludge. Gary wipes off his hands, screaming where burns nibble flesh. I laugh and smile, then motion for him to come closer. He obeys, of course, he does. I grab his wrists and pull until his chest hits the hilt. I leak more. A twisted satisfaction eases my shoulders. Gary’s fear is as delicious as his arousal.

“Closer,” I muster the word.

“Let me go. Victoria, let me go! I’ll call an ambulance!

“Closer.”

He’s straining against my grip now, confused how I have so little blood left yet so much strength. “What are you? Let me go!”

“Closer.”

I wrench his arms, and the blade carves a deeper path through my twisted heart until there is only the merciful, cold silence of a memoryless void.