It was a little after midnight when a tall, broad shouldered foreigner was ejected from a bar in Tokyo's red light district. It was crawling with expats this time of year - people who didn't speak the language or know the lay of the land - and this man was no exception. He fell through the exit and into the opposing alley, where Aiko finally saw his flushed face and sharp, steely eyes carved from stone. He caught himself on the opposing wall, rolled onto his back, and bent forward, bracing his hands on his knees to catch his breath.
Aiko curled into herself, trembling from behind a castle of precariously stacked bags of garbage in a flimsy kimono. She watched him carefully through a curtain of inky black hair, frozen as he fished a pack of cigarettes from his brown bomber jacket. He had pink, girlish lips, which he barely pressed to the end of the cigarette when he inhaled, and thick, translucent lashes that belonged on angel. Smoke funnelled through the narrow strip of space sandwiched between the two buildings - a bar and a brothel.
The wind picked up and the music playing inside stalled, replaced by a ringing static and the steady thump, thump, thump of his heart. Aiko didn't move, the white sclera of her eyes glimmering like crescent moons in the darkness. Hunger called to her, a starvation that crept from deep within the marrow of her bones. Her willpower was dissolving like parchment dropped in bathwater.
No, the sea.
The static transformed into an ocean roaring in her ears, and Aiko was drowning in the sheer nearness of his living soul. Her entire body lurched, and the current dragged her forward, sucking her from the shadows and spitting her back out against him. The sheer size of him became readily apparent when he turned, military issued dog tags gleaming in the moonlight.
She tried to bury her fangs in the crook of his neck, but he pivoted and his arm shot out like a bolt of lightning. Fingers tightened around her throat before the movement registered, lifting her entire body until her feet were dangling above her wooden shoes. She stifled the impulse to scream as the forgotten cigarette butt burned a trail down her leg before fizzling out on the damp ground. He shoved her against the wall of the brothel, trying to catch her gaze despite the height difference between them.
"I'm Dee," said the stranger, in a voice that reminded her of the underside of a switchblade. "You speak English?"
There was an American base not far away, off the mainland in Okinawa, but she had never met one of the soldiers for herself. When she tried to swallow her skin caught on his thumbnail, digging into her clavicle. Aiko shook her head and tried to snap her jaws shut but Dee held her in place so he could explore her mouth, running a fingertip over one of her sharp teeth. He started speaking but Aiko couldn't hear him over the waves crashing against the cliffside, foaming eagerly along the red shoreline.
"You're a fledgling," said the foreigner. "This is bloodlust."
The words hung heavy in the air, unprocessed. For the first time, Aiko felt the hard handle of a gun digging into her hip. The silver alloy in the barrel was reacting to her preternatural skin, even through the layers of fabric. Her resolve splintered, and she covered her face, trying to hide the fat, wobbly tears slipping down her cheeks.
"I've never - not people," she insisted. "Never people."
Up until now, she'd been feeding exclusively on animals. Hurting a person was never a fantasy she had entertained until tonight. Her chest shuddered and rain began to fall. Dee loosened his grip and lowered her to the ground, staring hard at the teeth marks embedded in her arms. Aiko flinched when he learned forward to touch them.
"You know what time it is?" he asked.
Everyone knew what time it was. The big clock downtown could be heard for miles when it chimed. Besides that, it was pitch black the way it only was after midnight, like the clouds had snaked through the sky and swallowed the moon whole. Dee was clear against darkness, glowing under the scope of Aiko's immortal vision. She could smell the swell of his human heart as it contracted and expanded behind the flimsy barrier of his flesh.
"I'm sorry," Aiko said, struggling with the unfamiliar English around her engorged canines. "After curfew."
There were strict rules about when and where Blood Suckers were allowed, in order to preserve public safety. As far as Aiko knew, she didn't even have a family name in the registry, which meant she didn't have a tag. The caste system was unforgiving to mosquitos who only existed as a drain on society.
The soldier sneered. "Can't have that, can we?"
Dee slipped the top button of his coat through the hole and Aiko's head snapped sideways, mind reeling as she tried to gauge the probability of pulling off an escape this late in the game. Fear gripped her tightly, unyielding, sealing her in place. He opened his coat and dragged her close, the way a child might manhandle a doll. In the end, she was going to be trampled underfoot like the insect she was.
