Bloody Kisses by Virginia Nelson, Saranna DeWylde, Rebecca Royce, Alyssa Breck, Ripley Proserpina

He’d been with prostitutes, but he’d always had to pay them extra and it was always from behind. None of them had ever wanted to look at his face or his scars.
    He’d stopped paying for pleasure when he’d stopped trying to be human. He wasn’t like them; he wasn’t like anyone. He could find the same pleasures with his hand. The warm, soft flesh wasn’t worth the price he had to pay—not in coins, or in his dignity. Even a woman who sold her body as a product didn’t want to do business with him.
    That was telling when a hungry mouth and an outstretched hand would withdraw when he passed.
    Fuck, but he was twisted up in all the crap he’d thought he’d let go of so long ago. She brought back so many ugly things.
    But beautiful things, too.
    The arc of the ax as it delivered a swift and deserved death, once upon a dark time, it had been his weapon of choice.
    And the memory of a woman’s body, her sweet lemon scent… Damn, but he loved lemons. He loved them because they were bright and sour. He loved them because in their unvarnished, unprocessed state, they were unpalatable to so many.
    But he loved them.
    He took head after head with his ax as he fought his way back to the outside. He should’ve already worked his way through the staff and inhabitants. Adam knew in his gut there were more people, more subjects, at the installation than what Elizabeth or anyone else was aware of.
    Otherwise, he’d have stayed and cleaned up their mess, but he couldn’t risk exposing Elizabeth.
    They moved through the security gates and out into the open forest. It felt wrong to him to be running away from their only method of escape. Some enterprising undead might have enough muscle memory to remember how to operate the damn thing.
    Some of them were talking, there was awareness in those dead eyes.
    For a second, he’d felt a twinge of remorse at killing them, because for these single moments, he wasn’t alone in the world. There were others like him—not living, not dead, and had once been human.
    If the master directive to protect the bloodline hadn’t been instilled in him, he wasn’t sure if he’d have killed any of them.
    Strange images of a world where he was king played in his mind, but he didn’t stop running, didn’t stop fighting.
    There was something unspoken between them. She didn’t have to verbalize where she wanted him to go. Somehow, he just knew. He pushed as hard as he could and covered the ground so fast, it was like he was flying. Adam never felt the earth touch his feet.
    He didn’t breathe and the twin hearts beating in his chest never changed their steady rhythm. Adam slowed when he saw the edge of a cliff approaching. There was no more ground, only the sea beyond.
    When they stopped, she looked up at him. “Did we make it?”
    He eased her to her feet. “I’m here. At the picture in your mind. Now, where do we go?”
    Elizabeth looked around and for a moment, seemed lost, but he watched as she squared her shoulders and then sank to her knees, digging in the dirt for something.
    “What are you looking for?”
    “The lever. There’s a staircase down to the cave.”
    “That doesn’t seem very bright.” Not that anyone asked him.
    “It can be deactivated once we’re inside.” She pulled a lever and the sharp sound of creaking metal pierced the air. “Look, there.” She pointed toward the edge of the cliff.
    A gleaming metal staircase had emerged. From where, he wasn’t sure. It seemed as if it had materialized from nowhere.
    “I remembered. Oh, thank god.”
    “Again, I don’t think god had anything to do with it.”
    “You know what I meant.”
    “Did I? It’s a thing you humans say when things are good. Or some random chance works out for you because you needed it to. But you don’t say it when the bad things happen. Like when your mother died from her brain tumor. There was no thanking god, for surely, if there is one, that is his realm too, as are all things. Or so