Cravings by Laurell K. Hamilton, Eileen Wilks, REBECCA YORK, MaryJanice Davidson Page B

young wish.
    Â 
    W. B. Yeats
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Prologue

    Â« ^ »
    THE stood on the shore of Lake Michigan and looked out at the black water. At
her back, Chicago rocked and reeled; it was Saturday night, and all the colleges
were back in session.
    It wasn't the first shore she'd stood on, nor the first body of water she'd
stared at. It certainly wasn't the first evening she'd spent pacing the beach
after a meal, nor the first big city she'd visited. Always a visitor, never a
resident.
    One thing remained the same, of course: it was dark. Dawn was coming—she
could feel the sun, her enemy, slipping up over the horizon. She would have to
leave soon.
    She hadn't felt anything but artificial light on her face in a long, long
time. And now, of course, if she ever did feel the sun, it would be the last
thing she felt.
    Like that was a bad thing.
    There were nights when it was tempting to stay on the beach, watch the sun
come up, die in fire and light and blazing agony, be done, be over, be still.
    Be dead… for real.
    At her feet, her supper gasped and thrashed and finally passed out. He was
big and dark and strong—
had
been strong—but she'd had no trouble taking
him. His kind went easy. They never thought the rabbit would turn into a fox;
certainly not before their very eyes. And even a fox didn't have teeth as long
and as sharp as hers.
    She preferred to take men. She especially preferred men who bullied women.
Cut him from the herd, take him, and quiet that thirst inside her, that
constant, never-ending, hellish, unbeatable
thirst
.
    Still, it was time to go. Her supper would recover and go home and not
remember a thing. She would find another meal tomorrow. At least she wasn't such
a mindless, insatiable newborn anymore. At least she could remember something
beyond the thirst.
    Yes, time to go.
    But still she lingered, and wept dry tears, and stared out at the water, and
wished she were dead. For real, this time.

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Chapter 1

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    ANDREA sat up and coughed out a lungful of sand. The man crouched beside her
scrambled up and away, as if she had—imagine it!—come to life.
    "Holy shit!" he cried. "I thought you were a corpse!"
    She coughed out more sand, cursing herself. She'd been so moody last night,
instead of finding a decent alley to skulk in or a flophouse to cower in, she'd
just burrowed into the beach sand like a big old worm, and waited for sunset.
    Except this idiot found her before she could rise.
    "Did—" Cough, hack. "—you call—" Hack-hack. "—anybody?"
    "Well, yeah," he said, sounding weirdly apologetic. "I mean, I was running
down the beach here—I've just gotta get down to two-twenty-five, y'know, and lay
off the Cheez E Brats—anyway, I was running and tripped over something, and I
thought it was a piece of driftwood but it was your foot, so I started to unbury
you and then I couldn't find a pulse so I called the cops on my cell phone. You
didn't look, y'know, grody or anything. In fact, for a corpse, you looked pretty
good."
    He's an idiot. Perfect
. She finished coughing. It was amazing—even
if you didn't have to breathe, sand got
everywhere
. Every time she
moved, more of it trickled into her underpants. "How long ago did you call?"
    "Uh… coupla minutes… look, are you sure you're all right? The sun's just
about down, and it's getting kinda chilly, even for June—"
    "The sun set," she said, wiping her mouth with her forearm, then grimacing at
the way the sand stuck to her lips—worse than ChapStick!—"at seven fifty-six
p.m. It's technically dark."
    "Well, uh, okay, but—"
    "So I have time for a snack before the authorities arrive."
    "Okay. Like, um, you want an Orange Julius or something? My treat."
    "I know." She leaned toward him—easy enough, he was hovering over her like
a—heh, heh—grave robber—and grabbed him. He