Available Darkness Season 2

into Duncan’s chest. “You and I are now the same. We are one. And soon, there will be many, many more. It’s pointless to resist. So why put yourself through the pain of denying what must be?”
    “You may have infected me, but I am not a monster.”
    “We’ll see about that,” Jacob smiled, then turned and headed back to the stairs, letting go of the controls of Duncan’s body.
    Duncan was a rag doll falling to the mattress. He ran his hands over his limbs, feeling his true self slowly return to his body, staring as Jacob ascended the stairs. Jacob stepped through the door, then leaned back through the doorway and said, “Oh, that was rude of me to leave without offering you a meal. I’m so sorry. Where are my manners?”
    Someone else stepped through the door, was shoved through the door, by one of the Harbinger soldiers for hire. It was an attractive brown-haired woman — Duncan wasn’t sure of her name — but she was in her mid-20s and until a couple of days ago had been one of his housekeepers.
    She looked down, saw Duncan, then turned back at the top of the stairs where Jacob was closing the door.
    “Bon appétit,” Jacob laughed, closing the door and leaving Duncan to his meal .

    **

    “Are you OK, Mr. Alderman?” the housekeeper asked as she slowly approached him. Her hands were bound behind her. He looked down, past the length of her black dress, and noticed her shoes were missing. He wondered if Jacob’s men had taken them to keep her from trying to leave.
    “I’m fine. Are you OK?” Duncan asked. “Did they hurt you?”
    “No, but they killed Helga and Trina,” she said, her voice cracking with grief. She seemed on the verge of tears, perhaps finally glad to see someone she knew still alive. Little did she realize she’d only been spared to feed to Jacob’s newest vampire. Duncan didn’t have the heart to tell the woman that he had no idea who Trina was, let alone know her name.
    “May I sit?” she asked, stepping toward his mattress, the only place in the dark basement to sit, unless she wanted to sit on any of the dusty crates or boxes filled with stuff he hadn’t seen in years.
    “Yes, but don’t touch me,” he said sharply.
    “OK,” she said, sitting on the corner of Duncan’s bed as he fell back, as far as he could into the corner where the bed and wall met. She looked at him confused, as if she couldn’t understand his repulsion. Or maybe, he figured, she thought he was afraid.
    Her sudden nervousness stirred a hunger inside him. Duncan could see a shimmering orange aura swimming around her. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but the parasite inside him was salivating, and chewing at his insides. Duncan wanted to touch her, to draw her life from inside her, and feed. He wanted it more than a beggar starving for food, or a teenager with a hard-on wanted somewhere to put it.
    Duncan wanted the life from inside her more than the air in his lungs.
    He closed his eyes, and tried to drown his bloodlust.
    She asked, “Who are these people? What are they going to do to us?”
    He wondered why she’d just said people. Had she not seen the monsters?
    “They’re going to kill us,” Duncan said, unsure why, except that he enjoyed the scent of her terror. The colors around her went from orange to red. He closed his eyes to deny the parasite the joy it was getting from stoking the woman’s fear.
    “Kill us?” she asked, suddenly on the verge of tears. “Why?”
    Duncan struggled to keep his eyes closed, knowing he would reach out and grab her the second he saw her. He tried to think of anything other than feeding, disgusted by his irrepressible animal urges. He was a man of tremendous self-discipline. He’d worked for decades to master his every impulse from the foods he ate to the sex he had. Now it was as if some impetuous, psychopathic child had jumped into his driver’s seat and was taking control, eager to run him off the road just to see what would happen.
    No, you don’t have to do this. You aren’t a feeder. You are not a monster.
    He thought again of his words to Jacob:
    You may have infected me, but I am not a monster.
    “We’ll see about that,” Jacob had said with a huge, shit-eating grin.
    Duncan now knew what he meant. Jacob was proving they were one and the same, forcing Duncan to acquiesce to his new parasitic instincts. He could almost feel the pompous fuck laughing upstairs, imagining Duncan’s struggle to control his hunger. It was like