We labor under so many illusions about ourselves until we're stripped bare. Being infected, being a vampire, it's always you. Maybe it's more you than ever before. You, distilled. You, boiled down like a sauce. But it's you as you always were, deep down inside.

They wore their strange beauty like war paint.

She shrieked and shrieked for her mother, but her mother was already there. Her mother was the monster.

She swallowed his blood, a dark vintage from some forgotten cellar. She felt like Persephone in Hades, pomegranate seeds bursting against her teeth, juice rolling on her tongue, and the more she had, the more she hungered.

Better to leave him with the memory of their being a pair of monsters, wrapped in each other's arms.