Eat Me

ChapterSixteen

JustinPOV

I awoke from my slumber to an intruder in my house. The footsteps padded around the kitchen on the floor below, my sensitive hearing coming into full effect.

Someone had made a grave mistake.

Shirtless and only in a pair of jogging bottoms, I grabbed a plain black shirt to throw on as I descended the stairs. The moonlight beamed in through the windows, the only light other than the glow from the bulb in the kitchen.

I steamed in, not hiding my pure, unadulterated rage at whoever was in my home.

"What in the absolute s**t do you think you're f*cking doing?" I roared, facing down my intruder. My fangs extended ready to rip out the throat of my enemy.

His back was to me, the cupboard door slamming shut as he pulled out two glasses and placed them on the counter.

My house.

My f*cking house.

He didn't even bother to fully acknowledge my presence in the doorway, only giving me a quick glance over the shoulder. The two glasses in front of him were filled with whiskey from my liquor cabinet. A bottle I had been given as a gift after a century of being undead was now only half filled.

"Since when do you sleep in?" He asked, grating my last nerve.

"Since when did you get the balls to waltz in here uninvited?"

He scoffed, "Like you'd ever invite me."

When he turned around, both glasses were in his hands. The honey colored liquid sloshed around the ice cubes he had taken from my freezer with his slow, calculated steps toward me. I stormed forward and met him in the middle of the kitchen, snatched one of the glasses from him, and took a long sip. Staring back at me was the last person I wanted to see.

Nathan smiled like he had managed to tame a wild beast and brought his glass to his lips, but I was more beast than man around Nathan, someone I had once considered family. We had both been turned by the same vampire, only I was turned a year before him. We'd spent the first thirty years together as our new selves, learning what it meant to be undead and how to keep ourselves from being discovered by the living.

It was so long ago but my memories were still vivid and clear. Our time together had us moving from country to country, sampling the tastes of the world and f*cking anyone and everyone. We were inseparable.

Were.

Our maker was thirty-three when he was turned after getting into a bar fight when he decided against paying for his w***e.

Thomas was a swindler and a drunk when he was alive. He came from nothing, starting again after he died and reinventing himself as an aristocrat of sorts. No one dared question him, being a five-foot-eight rugby player looking motherfucker who had the means to bury you not only physically, but your reputation too.

One night, I was bare knuckle boxing in a beaten-up warehouse by the river. I was still human at this point, using the only skill I had to make ends meet - fighting. Buried somewhere in the crowds, Thomas was spectating. Unbeknownst to me, he had bet a large amount on me taking out my opponent - a chocolate-skinned hulk of a man with a scarred face, showing just how hard he was to beat.

I didn't have any doubt that I couldn't take him down, my fists had been my weapon of choice from the age of six and they'd had plenty of practice since. The beast I was fighting, however, had a triage of men backing him with more money than I could dream of. That fucker took his time with me, throwing insults that held more punch than his actual fists; his downfall, entirely. Too cocky for his own good.

The crowd went wild when I landed my final punch, knocking two teeth clattering to the blood stained concrete. Not even a second later, he followed suit, landing hard like a tonne of bricks.

Too tired and devoid of sustenance, I wasn't going to wait around for the crowds to disperse before I collected my winnings. And with the whispers of the dangerous looking men on the other side of the room, I knew I needed to haul ass.

Sweat, blood and dirt clung to my hands like a second skin, dirtying up my winnings.

Barefoot, I fled the building before anyone could stop me. At least, that's what I thought. But as I rounded the corner and reached the dirt path to the river, the sound of multiple footsteps thudded on the mud behind me.

A low whistle halted me in my tracks. I had little energy left to run, something I probably should have done. But instead, I turned, trying to size up my assailants. I couldn't take them, not after the fight I had just had. Maybe if it was one or two guys, but I counted five men gazing at me menacingly.

"Can I help you gentlemen with something?" I asked, pushing my hair out my face.

The tallest of the bunch edged a little closer. "You can start by telling us how you pulled that off back there?"

His accent didn't sound like any I had heard before and I barely understood what he was asking.

"You bet on the wrong guy. Next time I'll give you all a heads up before I fight, so you don't make the same mistake twice."

Maybe some of my opponents' cockiness rubbed off on me, maybe I wanted to get whatever was going to happen over with, whatever the reason, it was too late to take it back.

They jumped me, all five guys taking hits one after the other.

My skull cracked. My bones crunched. I was a goner and I knew it.

As I laid there, blood pooling around me, the men slowly stopped their attack to catch their breaths and the urge to close my eyes overtook my need to survive. I allowed the darkness to swallow me.

I awoke an unknown amount of time later. The moon still glowed high in the night sky and the previously savage pains I felt allover were brief, if that. I was certain I'd died and more than likely was in hell.

I forced my body to a sitting position. The scene around me was not remotely what I was expecting. All five of the men who had stolen my life from me, were positioned in a circle around me, not one of them held an ounce of life in them. Throats had been torn out, hearts removed, and I was... elated.

"Oh good, you're awake." I jumped at the sound of the gruff voice in front of me and a short burst of laughter errupted from his mouth. "Sensitive hearing, my friend. You'll get used to it, I promise."

At the time, I wasn't scared of Thomas, my feelings for him were from a place of confusion. I couldn't understand how I had survived my ordeal and how the men who caused it hadn't. If anything, I was grateful. This stranger had saved me and given me a chance at a new life, a life I took by the balls and ran with. A life in which I took what I wanted and didn't have to take s**t from anyone. Thomas was my maker. Our maker. And when he contacted us to say he was being hunted and needed our help, I was broken to watch Nathan turn his back on him.

We went our seperate ways. I boarded a boat bound for France to see Thomas, and Nathan, he disappeared in the night with a young witch he'd met at a brothel the night before. In the following years, we crossed paths briefly. His attempts at trying to reach out were shut down the second he found me.

I lost not only one member of my family, but two.