Prologue

She was born from warm earth, pine needles, and mosquitoes. She didn’t know anything. Lying alone, face-down on the mossy, wriggling ground, she felt a placid sense of helplessness.

Hours passed, a foggy dusk melting into a starless night while she sulked in the dirt. She wanted to go somewhere less creepy-crawly but couldn’t figure out how. Her limbs felt heavy and weak, and besides that she had never walked before.

She tried moving her body, making a feeble attempt at kicking her legs, slightly raising her head, and even managing, with concerted effort, to wriggle herself almost a meter across the forest floor on her elbows before she felt too sick and tired to continue.

A tight, hot headache was forming in her skull, squeezing her mind in a very uncomfortable way. She closed her eyes for a while, hoping for sleep, but it never came.

When she opened them again, her vision was sharper than before. She could see everything. The night seemed illuminated despite the lingering mist and she could see a black snake slithering under a saw palmetto forty meters away, two raccoons disturbing a low oak branch even farther.

She could also hear something. Footsteps. Human steps, she thought. Coming closer. It never even occurred to her to cry out for help.

“Honey?” asked a Frantic Voice, deep-ish and trembling, beaming towards her and vibrating the ground she lied on. She didn’t know the voice. She didn’t know anything.

She felt hunger gripping her organs, thirst drying her mouth and throat. Behind her, the Voice repeated itself, nearer and louder. She didn’t understand what the human was asking her. Honey? It didn’t really matter. She rejoiced as the tall, confused man knelt on the ground beside her and gripped her by the arms, anxiously gazing into her eyes. She examined his dark irises and pink cheeks and relief washed over her.

"Thank god! Everyone’s been so worried!” the human was talking excitedly but she was focused on his scent as he drew her into a comforting embrace. She curled into him happily, taking deep, comforting breaths of his sweet, woody smell, like cloves. Her mouth watered and she felt a warm sense of pleasure from head to toe just thinking about how the human’s blood would taste.

It felt so natural for her to open her lips against his throat, so necessary to sink her teeth into his skin, then artery, and so lifesaving for her to nurse greedily at the warm liquid spurting out, black streaks drying down her chin.