Ka-chunk

The feeling of a single tooth puncturing flesh; the clean ka-chunk as hard, pointed enamel encasing long-dead marrow drives down, driven by some hundred-odd pounds-per-square-inch of pressure as it punctures supple skin. It's hypodermic, cleaner than the ripping and tearing he'd been raised by government propaganda to dread, much cleaner than anything he's ever imagined it to be. It's even easier than biting through the tough plastic of the blood bags; it's swift and piercing and oh god, the blood, it's going to get everywhere but he doesn't mind, he doesn't mind at all. In fact, in fact – oh goddamn it what is he doing? – it's something he can get used to.

Conrad reels, mind fleetingly shifting from the squirming in his mouth, real and concentrated, to the blurred movement and muffled noise surrounding him. Foreign, everything comes to him sluggishly, snagged in the deep-rooted satisfaction that seems to have sprung like an erection to the fore of his mind. He shakes his head slightly and tries to focus, ignoring and yet horrified by the whimpering from the human – the human being – that he's holding in his mouth like some chew toy; the fog lifts from his brain for a moment and he remembers how this happened. Ahimsa caught on to the "recon," just like he said they would. Someone figured out that he was an Undesirable, a vampire no less, and triggered the alarm. He's in the middle of the lion's den that Worth threw him into and now he's bitten some Ahimsa agent and –

With a noise unpleasantly like that of ketchup squeezing out of a torn packet, blood gushes from the neatly punctured jugular into his mouth. Conrad tenses, mouth working to spit it all out, and a greedy little voice, a hedonistic whisper, purrs from some dark corner of his brain in response. It slithers out of the crevice between his oh my god what am I doing this is wrong and I'm going to die, breathes out a puff of smoky what the fuck, and takes hold. He draws the man close, wraps him in an embrace that - is wrong, so wrong - comes naturally, instinct passed from sire to sire back to when fang first met flesh and humans first learned to be afraid of the dark, afraid of the bone-white of sharp teeth and the red eyes that watch in the night. A closed circuit forms as Conrad takes a long pull from the bubbling spring of hemoglobin and, inside it, he can almost feel the glee of shadows watching, laughing with dark, whispery voices and grinning with pairs of fangs – not just the measly one he's got. An entire fucking lineage of them, watching and acting through him and him alone, this very moment. His tongue rasps against the wound, lapping at it, and his eyes close.

Conrad can hear the terrified ticking of the man's heart, the wheeze of his lungs and the pulsing swish as arteries carry more of the precious liquid up and out of the hole in his neck. The agent's own heartbeat is driving the blood into Conrad's mouth.

He's getting close to something, something incredible; tension builds in the vampire's body and he increases the rhythm of his swallowing, actively sucking blood as the man's eyes roll up in his head and his skin pales to match Conrad's. Both of them are making strangled cries, their voices almost mingling as meaningless noise comes from all around. A buzzing is in his ears; Worth and Hanna and everyone else are probably yelling into the earpiece that he's forgotten he's wearing, but it doesn't matter.

"T'fuck are you doin'?! Get t'fuck outta there, Fagula, or I swear t'god I'm gonna – "

Swallow, swallow, swallow.

"Conrad? Conrad, are you there? What's going on – "

Close, close, close.

" – Conrad! What the hell is happening?!"

A gunshot blasts somewhere near him and he doesn't care; it's only after three more tear through the air that he pauses, the thick haze of feeding dissipating as the body clutched close to his jerks. An odd squawking noise comes from the Ahimsa agent and his heart peters out, stopping mid-beat just as his pulse begins to flag. The blood filling Conrad's mouth immediately takes on a bitter, metallic taste and the greedy voice in the back of his head shrieks in rage – gagging, the vampire drops the dead agent and stumbles back. He can smell the gunpowder and notices the steaming hole in the man's chest just before his attention is fixed by the gun aimed right for his face.

Conrad had forgotten that there were other Ahimsa here.

He's damned as it is – nothing's going to take this back, now that he's put his teeth in someone's neck and drank their blood – so he bites the other man too. He just reaches out with unnatural speed, grabs at the black coat hovering in front of him with hands that shouldn't be that jagged, shouldn't be trailing wisps of ozone-smoke like burning copper wire, and pulls the man close. His mouth opens again and he sees the blood of the man's partner drip fleetingly from his fang onto the squirming pale neck below him before ka-chunk, the teeth go in again and warm wetness wells up, hot and tinged with the sugary taste of adrenaline.

It's fantastic.

When it's someone else's fear it's delicious, savory in a sadistic way that Conrad would normally deem below him; he clutches his second victim, meal – technicalities be damned, he's eating here. It's only natural, just like Worth said – and breathes in the smell of gun smoke and human flesh even as he practically inhales the blood surging out of the guy. Although the agent looks the same, acts the same as the one before – as any agent he's ever seen – his blood is radically different than what he was previously drinking. It's sweeter, smooth with cholesterol and whatever chemicals that citizens of Varuna get with their vegetables every day. Not as watery as the other man's – and now that's two, that's two of them and what is he going to do?

The logical part of Conrad's brain – now reduced to nothing more than a murmur amidst the roar of that other voice – squeaks at him to run, run now, run before more people come, before he hurts more people. He has to get to the carpet factory; he has to hide somewhere, because now he's a murderer on top of an Undesirable and that means that he's probably just as wanted as Hanna or Veser. How the hell did this happen?

Whatever information they got from this has to be goddamn important, or he'll kill them all with his bare fucking hands.

When he pulls away from the agent, it's like severing an electrical wire; his teeth and mouth tingle from the effort and Conrad becomes aware of the police surrounding him, of the blaring alarm, of the blood that's dribbled all over his shirt and hands like someone flipped a light switch in his brain. More of that ozone stench wafts into his nose and he whirls, snarling, an Undesirable, as the Ahimsa takes aim.

Oh god, oh god, oh god.

The door is there, half-open and screaming escape, and he heads for it; his legs piston faster than he ever thought possible and he surges forward, his undead heart leaping in his chest, pounding in his chest as his shoulder makes contact with the heavy metal and shoves it aside like it's nothing, nothing at all. The night air is cool on his skin as frantic footsteps and angry yells follow him. Someone screams, the sound registering on scales too high for a human to hear in addition to his normal range of hearing; energy is fizzing off of him, shooting off his skin like electrical sparks as he runs pell-mell for the hulking skeleton of the third gate, eerie shapes of rusted metal cut like black crepe paper against the hazy sky. It reminds him of an art project he was about to finish before this all started – something involving a logo for some company he can't remember. Something from before all of this, when he was stuck in his scheduled life doing mundane things for ordinary people; something totally unlike the horror he's running away from, the horror that he caused.

Oh god. He actually did that back there. He bit those people and –

The moral dilemma washes over him, briny and bitter, and before it can really sink in it's gone, consumed by the fire dancing in his skin. He's a goddamn rocket, a lightning bolt, a bird, a plane, a pinwheel, a monster – and he feels good. Almost good enough to forget that  he's killed one person and left another to die.

What the hell is he going to do now?

"Oy! Confag! Hope yer fucking happy – Hanna's –"

The familiar rage at the doctor's voice swells up and mixes with the sick feeling in his stomach, hot and red like the blood swishing inside him; he rips the communicator from his ear, hissing into it as the smell of burning cables intensifies. The noise instantly stops and Conrad grins, baring his teeth as he clenches the device in one moonlight-pale fist. The plastic casing cracks and unintelligible buzzing comes from the speaker, but he doesn't care, just gives himself up to the pounding of someone else's blood in his ears. Wisps of smoke trail up into the black sky, fading out of sight as overhead, the stars twinkle between layers of smog; the whistling of air against his ears almost drowns out the sounds of the Ahimsa agents chasing him and the gunshots –

Gunshots.

Pain sears through his shoulder like a white-hot iron as the bullet hits, spirals in and lodges itself in his cold flesh and bone. He growls, claws like thin, long razors spread – claws? What – and stained fang bared and the stink of ozone hanging around him. His skin is like melting plastic, warping and curling in on itself as he turns – oh fuck, oh fuck, what is he doing? – and charges, and swipes at something that shrieks and turns to mush beneath his fingers with a sound that he will never forget because it sounds so goddamn wet in the night, so final. The voice of reason is obliterated by the sound of steak-knife fingers against skull and the thing that is Conrad – was Conrad – gibbers as the shadows laugh and close in.

Ka-chunk. The feeling of blood on his hands, like wet, warm gloves – pulsing energy, closer and closer until he can almost taste it once more, he can almost drain it dry, incredible, ecstatic, there. Rage, anger that is cold and blank and ready to lash out at anything. The lust, the need for more-more-more that runs deep, deeper than anything has a right to dig and more ancient than the plague and the walls and the illness of mankind that lingers –

"CONRAD!"