There are certain known facts about vampires. They revile change. They are obsessive-compulsive. They are illogical. They are cursed. They will burst into flames in sunlight.
They are dying.
With less than a hundred vampires left in the world, Yas...
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Touching was one of the first things Yasuko had learned as a vampire. Not the touch of a woman to seduce a man, not the touch of a brush to ink, or of ink to paper. Not the touch of paint to her lips or the tip of a tobacco pipe against her mouth. She'd learned from Naihe, from the Circle—how to diffuse.
"The most important ability for a vampire, is their ability to share."
But she didn't know how to share, without her Circle. She couldn't purge herself of the emotions that plagued her or of the Formula that gripped her throat tight, unwilling to let go. There was so much noise in her head and under her skin, and it had nowhere to go. Like a swarm of bugs, it chewed at her.
She gripped Breeze's hand, her own clammy, her skin paler than ever before. He wasn't her Circle, but he was the closest approximation she could find to someone she knew. And oh, what a poor watery substitute, he made.
"You need to eat something." He stated, uncertain. Without his teasing smile, he was alien to her, and the more she held onto him, the stranger he became. Would the Formula reject him, eventually?
She trembled at the thought.
"Are you cold?"
She nodded, clasping the edges of the blanket Breeze offered with her free hand, pulling it up and over her head like a hood and closing her eyes. She pressed his palm against her nose and smelled him, using the familiarity as a lifeboat. The Formula's pressure eased a little, but the bruises it left behind ached.
