🩸Beautiful Blood -- Sadistic Vampire Keeping Human Pets

BONUS: Newby Vampire Losing Control

   Back in Lily's mansion, right after Asher first learns he's been Turned...
   Asher knew Lily always kept her promises. But that didn't make it any easier to go through. He turned his attention to the new way his body felt, such a drastic change from human. His pulse felt strangely distant, yet he could hear the rush of blood in his veins like an ocean storm.
   And the hunger. It held him in a vise-like grip and dried out his throat as longing burned deep in his stomach.
   He wanted blood.
   "I -- no -- I'm not--" Lily had told him the truth of what happened, but he couldn't bring himself to fully believe it. It was surreal, he couldn't possibly be...
   But the word came to him like a flare in the darkness.
   Vampire. Like Lily. Like Augustine. Like Nyx.
   He felt his breaths coming faster, reality crashing in on him. Too much. It was all too much.
   "Hey... calm down, you're going to be okay," Lily's soothing voice said next to him. It wouldn't undue the fact that he wasn't human anymore. Asher pulled his legs to his chest, hyperventilating. Stronger than the panic, stronger than the hunger, was the desire to get the heck out of here.
   Asher wasn't thinking when he sprung off the bed. He wasn't thinking when he charged out of the bedroom, even as Lily shouted after him. He just needed out.
   He sprinted through the mansion, his breathing ragged and rough as he thundered for the front door. Morgan was standing near it, holding a plate of food. She paused mid-bite. Her eyes went wide upon seeing his haggard, panicked appearance. "Is everything--" Morgan cut off as Lily darted into the room.
   "Don't let him leave!" She barked urgently. Morgan instantly dropped her plate with a crash and lunged for Asher without even bothering to question Lily's reasoning.
   Asher yelped and jumped away, surprised that he managed to dodge at all considering how quick Morgan was. Had he always been this fast on his feet?! The energy and adrenaline was surging through his veins, making his head buzz, and he almost tripped and fell to the floor with how hard he'd dodged, his legs sending him a good several feet away, out of Morgan's reach. It didn't feel natural, the way he was moving. He recovered his balance and was out the door in a heartbeat before the werewolf or Lily could stop him.
   Asher was momentarily stunned by the sight of the night sky above him, streaked with stars and city smoke. But the sounds of hurried footsteps behind him snapped him back, and he took off like a bullet before Lily could catch him. He had no idea where he was heading, but all he knew was that he had to get away, away, AWAY from everything. He needed time to think, to process.
   What was he thinking?! A part of him asked. Why run from Lily? She'd only ever helped him before. But the thought was fleeting, fear taking over. He was fast, too fast, and it only seemed to confirm his new identity further, despite how hard he tried to deny it.
   VAMPIRE. I AM A LITERAL VAMPIRE. The words roared deafeningly in Asher's head, drowning out everything else as city buildings blurred past him. The stars were so bright, and the smoke burned in his nose. Had the city always reeked this bad with pollution? Or was it his newfound heightened senses?
   His stomach churned and his head throbbed, but he kept running strong. The memories were still hazy, but he remembered Nyx's smile, the pain of her fangs sliding into him. He remembered the pain, the cold, the fear... And he remembered Lily's unfocused face hovering over him. The jolt of fire blasting from his wrist that he now knew was caused by Lily turning him into one of her kind.
   Asher ran and ran until his lungs hurt before he came skidding to a halt in an alley -- again, forgetting his speed. His momentum carried him right off his feet again the instant they stopped moving, and he ended up crashing into the side of a dumpster with a surprised cry, hard enough to leave a dent.
   As he got back up, dizziness made him sway. The scent of the soil and stone around him was overwhelming. It was like a full-blown assault battering his senses from all sides. No escape. And woven into those scents... was the smell of blood, delicious and taunting.
   "Oh... that... that's..." Asher swallowed hard, checking himself for injury but finding none. The blood wasn't his own.
   The hunger burned in his gut. Holding his stomach, he gasped and stumbled forward, instinctively following the faint smell of blood. He eventually made it out of the alley and into a near-empty city street. Most people had gone home for the night, but there were some stragglers and night-owls still wandering about.
   But the noise, of conversations and businesses and the few cars still driving -- it was everywhere. Asher frantically pressed his hands over his ears, but it did nothing to drown out the tidal wave of sound. Finally he managed to escape the worst of the chaos as he headed for the local park he used to frequent when he was younger. He knew it was always peaceful there, and quiet. He needed quiet. Blood still hung in the air, luring him on.
   The hunger cramped inside him, and he nearly doubled over from the pain. Why did it hurt so much...? He'd been hungry before when he was human if he forgot a meal, but it was not like this. Never like this. This was something else, it felt like he was being shredded from within, the pain tearing him apart inside.
   "Ugghh..." He groaned and staggered heavily, leaning on a light pole for support as another wave of agony rippled through him. He sucked in several deep breaths as he waited for it to pass.
   And then he smelled it -- human blood. Fresh. Delicious. Closer than before. A flicker of movement caught his attention, and his quicksilver eyes snapped over to the other side of the park, watching as a young man swaggered and swayed in his step over to awkwardly plop onto a wooden bench. He held a near-empty bottle of alcohol in one hand, raising his other to touch his head with a wince, where a thin trail of red was dripping down his temple.
   A bar fight. It had to be. Asher knew there was a bar just around the corner, close to the park. The man must have been kicked out after starting a drunken fight, and came here to cool off a bit before calling a taxi.
   "Hngggh..." The man's safety was far from Asher's mind as he smelled his blood, thick and fragrant in the air. His stomach clenched as a deep, rumbling want grew stronger within him.
   "No... I-I won't... I..." Asher started forward without even realizing it. His mouth hung open as he drooled, famished. Starving. He licked his lips even as his mind screamed at him to stop, to realize what he was doing.
   "Wait... I... I..." Asher tried to fight the primal urge, tried to walk away and out of the park before the temptation intensified, but...
   An inhuman growl escaped him as he sped up, the park blurring around him as he closed in on the man. The young man turned his head, brow furrowed with alarm, and then his expression shifted to unbridled terror as he saw him. His scream rattled through Asher's skull.
   "Hrrr..." A low growl escaped Asher, a vicious monster that begged to be sated coming to life in his stomach. He had tunnel vision, zeroed in on something that would end the suffering. Prey.
   Blood was dripping down the man's head from the bar fight, splattering the grass. It smelled better than any food Asher had ever smelled, more alluring than any wine...
   He needed it. More badly than he'd ever needed anything. He NEEDED it.
   Asher grinned in anticipation as he lurched forward to grab the man, while the man drunkenly jumped to his feet and tripped backwards in an effort to escape. The alcohol in his system made his movements clumsy and uncoordinated, and he fell to the ground, staring up into the face of the person standing over him -- that had fangs. The man screamed again, dropping the glass bottle in his hand to shatter on the concrete. Asher lunged down at him like a lethal predator.
   ...Then a hand grabbed his wrist.
   "Asher! Snap out of it!" Asher whirled around and bared his fangs with a growl, eyes wild, hunger tearing him apart. He tried to fight.
   "Asher, what are you doing? Stop!" He distantly registered Lily's voice. It was all too much. He immediately began to weaken, the peak of his hunger devolving into exhaustion.
   "H.... hungry... so... hungry..." Asher's breaths came out in choked gasps of pain as his stomach seized and twisted violently again.
   "It's going to be okay, you just need to calm down. You're out of control."
   But he couldn't answer. Darkness and pain closed in fast, and the last thing he felt was his own body hitting the pavement, and nothing more.