Elena ploughs through the lineup of alcohol scattered across the marble kitchen island. One of the perks of being a vampire? Alcohol hits harder, and it keeps the cravings dull. She and Caroline are doing their part—actually their civic duty, by killing the alcohol before these teens get to it.
Lime jello shots that don’t taste like any real flavor, just green, and burn with Everclear. Jungle juice, which is just cranberry cocktail, orange concentrate, and way too much Everclear. And trash-can punch, spiked with cheap vodka, clear rum, and you guessed it...Everclear.
Not a barrel-aged bourbon or decent whiskey in sight. Teenagers don’t have discerning alcohol taste. They have whatever-they-can-get-their-hands-on taste.
Some rich kid’s parents are off skiing in Vail and left him behind to play house DJ and host a rager.
Elena keeps glancing over her red solo cup at anyone who spills in from the foyer. Caroline notices, steps in, and steadies her with both hands on her shoulders.
“She’s not coming. “Her eyes getting Elena to focus on the moment, “She has to study and told us to have fun.”
The kitchen fills up fast with bodies. Happy ones. Sad ones. Wild and quiet. The ones dragged here by friends, the ones who came to blow off steam. The hot guys. The hotter girls. Her and Caroline, in the middle of it, floating. And it’s a test. Standing there, drinking through the pulses and pheromones, breathing them in. They’re all so beautiful. So unaware.
Caroline is in her ear, wistful, smiling, “It’s our senior year, Elena. We need these memories, before we all go off to college, and.. “
College. Before going over that bridge, she’d been waiting for acceptance letters, anxious to see which schools chose her. They’re probably stacked with the junk mail at her house, Jeremy passing them in the hall. She hadn’t thought about college since. She doesn’t even think about it now as Caroline waxes poetic about them sharing a dorm.
Elena grabs another jello shot and lets it wriggle down her throat, shaking her head. Caroline hands her two more, then laces her fingers into Elena's and pulls her through the hallway toward the living room—now a dance floor, dark, pulsing, and crowded. A jumbo flat screen plays a Tarantino flick on mute, while the surround sound system thumps through every corner of the house, vibrating the walls.
Caroline rolls her shoulders, pulling Elena deeper and deeper into the crowd, until they are the center of the humans, swaying side to side among them.
And it’s that exposure therapy Caroline was talking about.
She can smell everything. Their soap. Their B.O. Their menstrual cycles. Their Dove deodorant. Their sweat. Their arousal. The illnesses already inside them that will kill them someday.
Caroline grabs her hand again and lifts it right under her chin, like they are about to tango. “Fucking dance, Elena,” she yells, so excited her whole mouth is open, molars flashing, the faint hint of her fangs just visible.
Elena snorts, eyes crinkling.
The beat drops. She closes her eyes. She jumps with it, rages with it, lets the music roll through her. Let’s the music help her forget.
Caroline throws her head back and screams, “Yass!”
And the room becomes a blur of lights and limbs, laughter and heat, a swirl of humanity around her. Elena is floating in it. Almost human too.
A scent that the ones closest to her have only described as difficult. Or hard. Or something they don’t think about at all.
All resisting the best way they can.
Elena can’t deal like them.
Bonnie is the reason she has to leave.
Hightailing it as human-like as possible, she doesn’t speed out — too many people, and their phones like appendages, ready and waiting, recording everything. Ready to post it all with some caption like “Scary bitch turns ghost at house party 👀👻.”
The front door is near, and basically open. So many kids are pouring in, and she can’t pinpoint exactly where Bonnie is with all the scents, but she’s close. And she’s close to the door.
“Elena!” Bonnie says, her eyes lit up. She’s happy to see her. Her pulse says she’s thrilled.
Elena folds her arms in the too-short strapless black dress Caroline made her wear as they got dressed at her house, despite it still being below 40 degrees outside. Her fingernails dig into her prickled skin. “HI,” she manages, her throat hoarse and choking out that she was just leaving.
“Yeah, I, um, I’m not feeling well.”
Bonnie, who always dresses appropriately for the weather—jeans hugging her hips, that green sweater making her eyes go full forest fire. Nothing about her hides what she feels. She yanks Elena into the hall closet.
The closet is dark. The light switch is on the outside and Elena is glad. She doesn’t need the light to see her. To hear her anger.
“’I’m done with you avoiding me. You tell me right now what the hell is going on with you, Elena!”
But she is glad Bonnie can’t see her—or she’d see those black lines they all get, crawling from her eyes to her cheeks.
“I haven’t been avoiding you,” she lies, stepping back from Bonnie in the cramped closet, into a pillow of winter coats hanging, bumping the back of her leg into a vacuum cleaner.
Bonnie’s chest rises when she says it. Demanding. The blue and red veins at her caramel throat.
What the fuck is happening to me.
Breathing deep, Elena composes herself enough to put her hand on the handle and say, “Bonnie, I just don’t feel good.”
“I know that I wasn’t the most supportive when Caroline turned, and I feel horrible about that, and I don’t want to make the same mistake with you,” Bonnie says, putting her hand over Elena’s to stop her from leaving.
Elena swallows hard, her gums itching. “You won’t,” she says. Her last human instinct braced to run. Her vampire heart wanting to feed.
Bonnie’s words come out like an offering to Elena’s ears, pliable and warm, as if what she had really asked is what do you want from me?
What she wants is to eat her. Sink her teeth into her breast. Fangs through the wool green sweater and lightly padded bra, down to flesh and blood. Taste the Skittles. Taste the rainbow.
Elena does the only thing she can to stop herself.
She presses toward the door, agitated, and spits, “I can’t do this right now, Bonnie.”
But Bonnie leans in, shifting her weight to block her—determined not to let Elena sidetrack her again. And that small brush of her body against Elena’s—the swell of her chest, the press of her thighs, her warm breath at Elena’s collarbone?
Her mouth presses to Bonnie’s so sudden, so unexpected, that Bonnie startles. A small gasp escapes as she jerks back against the wall.
Elena flushes with hot, instant embarrassment, her breath catching as she starts to stammer an apology, hand half-covering her fangs.
Bonnie’s chest rises and falls, unsteady. “It’s okay,” she says, voice low and husky. “We just…” And all Elena sees is Bonnie in that cheerleader uniform from the Grill—sun on her skin, skirt barely covering her ass—
And she crashes her mouth into Bonnie’s again before she can get out another word. Because Bonnie doesn’t smell like a childhood stuffed animal to her. And she doesn’t think the witch is difficult. And she definitely can’t sit at a bar and deny that she doesn’t think about her.
Elena thinks the others are crazy for doing anything other than kissing Bonnie.
She catches Bonnie’s bottom lip between her teeth, tugging gently—just enough to make her whine. Tasting cherry lip gloss and something underneath. Magic?
And this time, when she leans in—pressing her body into the petite witch, crushing her against the wall—Bonnie kisses her back.
Slowly, she parts her lips, opens her mouth, lets Elena slide her tongue inside. The relinquishing is subtle but complete—her mouth yielding, welcoming, learning the rhythm of Elena’s.
It’s not rushed. But it’s hungry. Like they’ve both been thinking about this for a long, long time.
Her hands slide around Bonnie's waist and she gently pushes her bare thigh between the denim of Bonnie’s jeans, hips rolling without permission.
Bonnie makes a soft sound, making her fangs ache, and heat pool low in her belly, as she has an uncontrollable urge to hold Bonnie down, to mark her. To bite.
Elena reaches for Bonnie’s wrists, lifting them over her head and pinning them there.
Bonnie’s pupils widen, dilate with excitement—and fear.
And it’s the fear that does something to Elena.
Gets drunker on that than on all the alcohol she’s had tonight.
Sucking at Bonnie’s tongue, her breath coming in fast, she wants to drop to her knees and bury her face between Bonnie’s legs because—
The femoral artery. It’s there. Full
She could bite deep right down there and make Bonnie sing with it. Finish them both off.
“Can I take your jeans off?” Elena breathes, breaking the kiss. Her hands are already at Bonnie’s belt, her fingers undoing the buckle.
“What—?” Bonnie starts, dazed, just as the zipper hisses down.
Elena drops to her knees, the tile cold and hard, and she runs her hands over Bonnie’s rounded thighs.
She can't hear Bonnie, she only hears the rush of her blood.
Bonnie’s hands move to Elena’s neck, trying to ground her, to get her to pause for a moment. "Elena?" She says her name again, soft-like, but there’s fear underneath. That quiet anxiety about what Elena might do.
Elena bites down on her own bottom lip, lost in her desire. Her vampire senses map out the artery beneath the skin, vivid and throbbing. She would need to roll down the jeans, and then, she's so in the moment that she just presses her nose between Bonnie’s denim-covered thighs, like she’s marking the spot.
Elena looks up at Bonnie, not because the witch’s voice finally pulled her from the bloodlust, but because Bonnie can’t see her.
Can’t see her eyes, pools of black. Can’t see her fangs, elongated and ready. Can’t see that her friend is a vampire.
And maybe not a friend anymore.
Elena places her hand over the smooth expanse of Bonnie’s quivering belly, then slides it beneath the frilly band of her panties. Her other hand tugs at Bonnie’s jeans.
When her fingers slip between velvety folds—warm and slick—Bonnie moans and loses her footing, hitching lower as Elena caresses her, melting beneath her touch.
And in this breathless disbelief, in the newness of it all—of her body, of her desire—with everything tipping forward—
That’s when Elena buries her mouth against the fleshiest part of Bonnie’s thigh, licking at her skin, right where the vein runs blue and bright — and bites down.
There’s an excruciating prickling at the base of her neck. The start of a million migraines at once. She knows what it is. She’s seen vampires convulse and fall when Bonnie gives them an aneurysm.
Now it’s happening to her.
She palms the sides of her head. “Fuck,” she cries out through the blinding pain, trying to fight through it, to go back to the wounds and fill her mouth with Bonnie’s blood.
The closet door flings open.
And Bonnie instantly releases the vice grip on Elena’s mind, and Elena chokes and coughs, bracing herself against the cold floor.
In the dull light stands the drunkest of bros, grinning in his football jersey and backwards cap, here to save the girls from doing God knows what to each other.
Bonnie yanks up her jeans, buckling her belt and cursing as she ducks under his arm and runs.
Elena gasps for more air, reeling.
“Whoa, what’s going on in her—”
Elena jerks him into the closet with her, slams the door shut.
Her fangs embed so deep into his neck, slicing through his vocal cords — he couldn’t have called for help even if he’d wanted to.
There’s blood everywhere. On her lips. Her hands. In her hair.
She can’t stop eating him. She pulls at his neck, the skin breaking under her mouth. She slurps his hot blood straight in. It gushes. It roils. She swallows.
They drop to the floor, him in her lap. His heart’s still fighting. Eyes wide under her bloody face and curtain bangs. He’s trying to live, clawing at her face. But she’s stronger. So strong. His blood in that moment is everything—building her up, making her something more.
She keeps drinking. Slow. Slower now. He stops clawing. His hands twitch once, then go limp on the tile, right next to the vacuum cleaner and the winter coats.
