Kiss Me Deadly: Tales of a Paranormal Romance

natural. Organic. Delicious.

It was time.

I closed my eyes, mentally drawing energy into the center of my body. It coiled there, pulsing slowly, cold and sluggish from hunger, but eager to be used. Then that energy gradually stretched into my limbs, mimicking my body structure. I stood and felt this energy-me separate from my physical form—the metaphysical equivalent of dislocating a joint, only it didn’t hurt. It felt satisfying, like stretching first thing in the morning.

The energy-me crossed the room. My footsteps made no sound. My form had no substance. No one would see me, even standing right next to me. I turned to look at the bed, where the physical me still lay, eyes closed, one hand resting on my stomach, breathing steadily.

Privately, I call this part Sleepwalking, because while part of me was up walking around, my physical form seemed to be sleeping. That’s exactly what anyone who saw me lying in bed would think. They’d notice how peaceful I looked, and how innocent.

The irony of that thought gave me a small, secret smile.

My Sleepwalking form enjoyed a freedom my physical body could never experience, but there were some weird limits, most of which I’d discovered through trial and error.

Not like Nash. He was no more human than I was—but his mom and brother were around to teach him stuff and answer questions. I had only instinct, and ignorance on a cosmic scale. Kinda tragic, if you think about it.

So I don’t think about it. I think about the stuff I do know.

Like Sleepwalking physics, I thought, stepping into the dim hallway without opening my door. I could Sleepwalk through doors, climb through closed windows or boarded up holes in walls, and through anything else that might serve as an entrance or exit for my physical body. But I couldn’t fall through floors or walk through solid walls. My Sleepwalking-self slammed into them just like my physical form would have.

It made no sense. But then, very little of my life did.

The hallway was empty and quiet, but I could hear the nightshift tech watching TV in the common room. She would make rounds, checking all the beds and bathrooms, but with any luck, in a nonsecure facility, nights would be pretty low-key.

The room next to mine belonged to a girl named BethAnne. During dinner, my fingers had brushed hers when we’d both reached for a saltshaker, and I’d slid into her fear as easily as sinking into a tub full of hot water.

Sometimes fears exposed secrets, a glimpse of the memories they were based on. Other times, especially in little kids, they were a fleeting terror inspired by a scary movie or a dark closet. But BethAnne’s fear had the gritty feel of real pain—a satisfying meal, as opposed to a quick snack.

I glanced down the empty hall again, then stepped through her door into a room just like mine. BethAnne slept on one side, her knees tucked up to her stomach. I knelt by her bed. Her face was inches from mine, and if I’d had a physical presence, her breath would have stirred my hair.

I ran one finger over her cheek, and that I could feel—warm and soft and bumpy from a mild breakout. I could feel her in my bodiless Sleepwalking form because she was dreaming, and I was pretty sure she could feel me too, though how she’d interpret my touch in her sleep was anyone’s guess.

But she wouldn’t wake up while I was touching her. No one ever had. I was part sedative, part leech, and all bad dream—literally. And I wouldn’t even have known that much, if not for Nash’s mother.

You’re a mara, she’d explained the night he’d brought me to her in tears. One of several breeds of parasitic empath. My generation would call you a Nightmare. You can read people’s fears, and when they sleep, you guide their dreams to cultivate that fear. Then you feed from it.

She was right, though I could never have explained it so well on my own. For years, I’d done what my body wanted—what it needed —with no understanding of what was actually happening. Of what I really was. I’d only known that when people touched me, they saw their worst fears reflected in my eyes, and it scared them. I scared them.

Hell, for all I knew, that’s why I’d been abandoned on a church doorstep when I was no more than two, by the social worker’s best guess. No one knew my birthday or my real name. For all practical purposes, I was born that afternoon, in social services, to the woman who named me after the heroine in a romance novel and the label on a can of her favorite soup.

But she didn’t keep me. No one kept me for more than a few months at a time. I made them uncomfortable. When I was around, fear floated in the air like dust moats in sunlight. Floorboards creaked louder, goose bumps grew fatter, and the dark felt darker than ever before.

Obviously, I don’t make a lot of friends. But when people go to sleep, I know them better than anyone. I see things they wouldn’t show their best friends. Hear things they wouldn’t whisper to their therapists. Sometimes I know things they don’t even know about themselves. Buried memories. Forgotten trauma. The quiet terror slowly rotting away at their souls.

I gave their terror life. I gave it form and purpose, carefully weaving borrowed images to create a dream tapestry, sticky as spider’s silk and a million times stronger. They struggled pointlessly against my carefully braided dream threads while I rode their fear, gorging on it to nourish my own soul until the hunger ebbed—at least for a while.

In their nightmares, I had power, and for those few moments—precious because they were so brief—I felt sated. Full. In the most hedonistic, pleasure-filled sense of the word.

Just thinking about it made my hunger swell, a cold-blooded beast demanding warmth and nourishment. Tonight, BethAnne would be both.

She sighed beneath my caressing finger, and I laid my palm flat on the side of her face, treasuring her warmth. I slid my hand over her jaw and down her throat to her shoulder. Then I pushed.

BethAnne rolled onto her back with a soft grunt. Her forehead furrowed, but her eyes didn’t open. I pulled the covers back and knelt on one side of the mattress. She was helpless, and practically plump with energy she didn’t even need, while I was cold and starving. It’s not wrong, some stubborn voice in my head insisted. It’s survival. She’ll live, and this way, so will you.

I slid my leg over her stomach and straddled her on the bed. Her tee was soft against my thighs, her skin warm through the material, in contrast to the cold hunger chilling me from the inside.

My eyes closed, and I scooted forward until I felt her rib cage beneath me. Her breath hitched, struggling beneath my weight. But I wasn’t heavy enough to truly suffocate her, and I would only take as much energy as I needed.

I leaned forward and touched her face. Warm cheeks, warmer neck. The physical contact I needed to establish a mental connection.

Then the world shifted, and I saw what she saw. I wasn’t truly in her dream, but I was in firm control of it. The wizard behind the curtain of her subconscious.

BethAnne sat on a beach in the sun, sculpting a sandcastle with the handle of a broken plastic fork. She glanced up and smiled at a man in a folding lawn chair, then carefully scraped sand from the side of a turret. The man had no face, and I’d been in enough dreams to interpret that one—BethAnne had never met her father, but her subconscious hoped he was the kind of man who’d set aside an entire day just to watch her on the beach. To be with her.

So peaceful. So hopeful. So ... completely useless to me. Peace and hope are cute. But fear is my medium. It’s the vibrant paint on the canvas of my life, the only color bright enough to mean anything. To truly feel.

With it, I could paint her dream into a nightmare...

I started with something simple. The next time BethAnne turned to look at her blank-faced father, he was gone. So was his chair. I was proud of that little detail; it said that he hadn’t merely left her—he’d never really been there in the first place.

Next, the sand melted beneath her feet, flattening and hardening into featureless gray concrete, gritty against her bare legs.

BethAnne stood, frightened by the abrupt changes. That’s when I dropped the rest of the nightmare around her, as sudden and disjointed as any natural dream.

I dried up the ocean, giddy with power in my dream-state kingdom. Then, when BethAnne whirled again, bars slammed into the ground in front of her, clanging like a prison cell door. Three more bar walls dropped on her other sides, and she was trapped. Caught. Alone.