When he awoke, Julien was shivering.
He came violently to his senses, the world a wash of cold: cold within and cold without. His head lolled back against the toilet seat, his elbow sandwiched between the toilet and the tub. He tried to stand, only to nearly slip when his feet skirted across something slick on the floor. Julien looked down with a grimace; it was blood—that girl's, he thought—mixed with his own saliva. He felt like an unraveled, half-assed version of himself.
He also looked like an unraveled, half-assed version of himself.
As he stood before the mirror, prodding at the discolored skin beneath his bloodshot eyes and trying in vain to fix his lank, sweaty hair, he realized it was still there. After everything, even after everything, he was still so hungry.
Julien strode out of the bathroom, caught off guard by the darkness pressing against his bedroom windows. How long had he been asleep? What had he missed? Was Iman back yet? Was she looking for him?
He reached in his pocket, only to find it empty. He didn't have time for look for his phone; his stomach was tearing itself apart.
Julien jogged down the stairs, jumping over a napping Ringo curled on the bottom step, and threw open the front door. He walked, steps fast, head low. He was barely a block from the townhouse when he smacked right into something frigid and fleshy.
Julien staggered to keep from falling over, squinting at the figure in front of him.
"Fritz?" said Julien, at the same time that Fritz said, "Jules?"
Julien didn't like the look on the other vampire's face: the ends of his mouth tilted downward, something in his black eyes inexplicably sad. Julien didn't like it, mostly because it resembled something like pity.
Fritz gave Julien a brief once-over, then sighed and took him by the sleeve. "We should talk."
Julien dug in his heels. "I don't need to—"
"Julien."
Fritz's hand was a vice around Julien's arm. Julien couldn't have moved, even if he wanted to, even if the quiet understanding in Fritz's eyes hadn't paralyzed him.
Julien exhaled; only then did Fritz let him go. "Where are we going?"
Fritz clicked his teeth, considering. As he gestured for Julien to follow him, the gold rings on his fingers glinted in the moonlight. "You'll see."
They were in a parking lot.
When Julien had agreed to get in Fritz's car (or was dragged into it, more like it), this was not where he had thought the man would take him. He kept waiting, waiting for something spectacular to loom out of the dark, for some massive stadium lights to flick on and show Julien just what he was missing. Yet there was nothing, just an unassuming skyscraper and this empty rectangle of concrete and the engine slowly dying beneath them.
Fritz shoved his keys in the inside pocket of his denim jacket. Julien couldn't remember the last time he had seen his friend in a denim jacket—in denim anything, really. Denim, Fritz had told him once, was the TV dinner of fashion. Easily accessible, no skill requirement, the definition of the phrase giving up.
Just what had Fritz given up on, Julien wondered?
In the dark, Fritz's eyes were luminous, like staring at a cloudy night sky with only the insinuation of stars. "You look like shit."
Julien should have been expecting this. He was not. "Hello to you, too."
"I leave you for a week and I come back to find you looking like a badly reanimated skeleton," Fritz continued with a heavy sigh. He reclined the driver's seat back, kicking his long legs up on the dash. Moonlight blanched his skin: white porcelain against abysmal black hair. He was the most vampire-y vampire Julien had ever lain eyes on, and he'd seen Sera pretty regularly, lately. "Jules, Jules, Jules. You are becoming the bane of my existence."
"Why'd you come back?" Julien spat back. As if he were the bane of Fritz's existence and not the other way around. It sickened him, sickened him enough that annoyance slowly shifted towards anger in the depths of his vacant chest. "I didn't call you. You didn't have to come back here."
Fritz was silent for a moment, his eyes flitting skywards. "For you," he said then. "I was worried about you, Julien."
Julien said nothing, because he had nothing to say. He sank down in his seat, tucking his chin and trying to fight the growing, serpentine hunger in his stomach. He was wasting his time. If he didn't feed soon, he'd go feral, maybe, and yet here he was in a car with Fritz, only silence between them.
Julien reached for the door, only for it to click locked. Fangs popping from his jaws, he turned: "I will rip your car to shreds if you don't—"
"You can't listen to anything she says, Jules."
Anger blurred his vision. Julien surged forward, seizing Fritz by the collar and slamming him against the driver's side door. Though Julien's lip curled, his fangs gleaming and sharp in the off-white moonlight, Fritz only looked back at him squarely, narrow eyes emotionless.
"What the hell are you talking about?" snapped Julien.
Fritz's face was grim. "Sera," he said. An involuntary shudder tore through Julien's frame. "You can't listen to a word she says to you, Julien. You know that, don't you? Look at what she's done to you. It's only going to get worse from here."
Julien gritted his teeth, a rivulet of blood spilling down his chin from where his fangs sliced through his own skin. "Like hell," he seethed. "Like hell you know a thing about Sera and me. You—you have nothing to do with this, Fritz."
Fritz said pleasantly, "I don't?"
The driver's side door fell open. Fritz's pallid hands knotted in Julien's jacket before he flung Julien back, over his head. Julien hit the crumbling asphalt a few feet away, a hot burst of pain shooting through his ribs. He had the uncomfortable thought that, if he were not an undead creature, he would have broken something.
Julien pulled himself up on his knees, his body trembling with craving. Fritz stood in front of him, his arms folded across his slim chest. "We may be friends," he said, picking at his wrinkled collar with obvious disdain, "but I am still much, much older than you. Don't forget how easily I can kick your ass."
Julien grimaced. "Thanks for the reminder."
"Get up, you idiot," said Fritz, holding a hand out to Julien. Julien took it, surprised and dismayed by how much his legs quivered as he got to his feet. "Let me show you something Sera doesn't want you to see."
"In a parking lot?" Julien asked, dubious.
Fritz conked Julien in the back of the head for good measure. "No, dumbass," he said, then pointed at the unassuming skyscraper Julien had noticed earlier. "In the hospital."
His skull still ringing and the aching in his stomach only growing worse, Julien followed Fritz into the hospital like a lost puppy. It was all too much at once: the too-bright lights, the overwhelming coppery-sweet scent of blood, the sound of healthy pulses and dying ones.
Julien didn't have time to cower. Fritz went straight to the elevator, rode to the twelfth floor, got off and made a series of confusing turns as he walked down the bleach-scented, germ-infested hallway. Julien pulled his jacket closer around himself, as if he could catch human diseases anyway. He'd always hated hospitals. It seemed arrogant to him to walk through a place where people's lives were ending when his never would.
Fritz stopped at a door marked Janitor's Closet, trying the knob. When it was locked, he merely cast a brief glance around before yanking it out of place. Julien opened his mouth to protest, but by then, Fritz had already swept him inside.
"Fritz," Julien said.
He ignored him, stooping and rummaging through a storage box.
"Fritz."
Fritz stood, offering Julien a stack of green cloth. Julien took it, realizing it was a janitor's uniform. "Put it on," said Fritz.
Julien raised his eyebrows.
"You're fucking dying of hunger right now and you're going to question me?" Fritz said, his eyes widening, alight with fervent frustration. "Christ."
"I'm not—"
"Don't even try to lie to me. I see it all over you. It's a surprise you haven't devoured every human in this hospital yet."
The worst part was that Julien had been thinking about it ever since they entered the place.
Once he and Fritz were both changed, Fritz nudged the door open into the hallway again. He took another series of confusing turns before he stopped at another door, this one reading Blood Bank.
Julien's stomach flipped, his fangs sliding from their sheaths.
"Not yet," Fritz said, forcing Julien's head down with his hand. Fritz opened the door, and it struck Julien again: that sweet, sweet scent of blood, like everything he wished he didn't need.
The room was cold and dark, the only light provided by the small fixtures above the rows of bagged blood. There was so much of it, dark and rich within the plastic, labeled by name and type. The wanting forced Julien to his knees; electricity ran through his veins, shocking him, drawing a yelp from his throat.
A bag struck the ground in front of him; Julien grabbed it without thought, fangs tearing through the plastic. The electricity drained away again, everything in his body going still. He could breathe again.
"There is a way to feed without hurting people, without hurting animals, even," Fritz said, his voice mere background noise in Julien's head. "That's what Sera doesn't want you to know."
Julien had drained the bag in seconds. Still shaking, he staggered to his feet, mopping blood from his mouth. He reached for another bag, but Fritz stopped him. "Not so fast," he said, his eyebrows risen. "You have to be strategic about this, Jules, or people will notice."
Julien let out a groan, stepping back, however much it hurt him to do so. "I can't," he said. "Fritz, I can't. It's not—it isn't enough."
"Make it enough," Fritz snapped, then exhaled a moment later, as if the events of the night were just now exhausting him. He bent, picking up the empty bag from the floor and slipping it into his pocket. "Look, man. I brought you here because I thought it would help you. Sera may have made you feed from humans again, but this doesn't have to be the end for you. You're going to crave it now, just like you used to. When you do, and when animal blood can't suffice, you come here, okay?"
Julien said nothing. He was staring at the bag in front of him—Colquitt, Jackie, AB+—and wondering how it would feel against his tongue.
Fritz delivered a hearty punch to Julien's shoulder, drawing Julien back to his senses. "You promise me you won't hurt another human. I'm scared, Julien, so you have to promise me."
He was scared? What did he have to be scared of?
Julien met his gaze, waiting until the world had stopped spinning and he could think straight again. Julien didn't like the piteous look Fritz had given him earlier, but he liked this look even less: doubt.
He had the awful feeling that it didn't matter what he said; Fritz would not believe him.
Am I already in too deep?
"I promise," he told Fritz, whose dark eyes watched Julien with just enough sorrow to make Julien tick. "I promise you, Fritz, I won't. I have too many people I'd upset if I did that."
Fritz looked at him for another moment, then nodded. "I'm taking you home," he said. "You're too psyched up right now to function."