When I bite into her neck, I can feel her cold, dead blood run over my tongue. I want to spit it out, but I remember what the guys said. I swallow it instead, and a few minutes later, I feel the strength they promised. It's like coffee. It takes terrible, but it comes with an excited, shaky, charged feeling that runs through my blood like it did the first time I had coffee, when the guys laughed at me when I freaked out after drinking a full cup. But they were nice, too, and Callan took me for a run in the woods to help get the energy out.
Now, the way to get energy out is to kill. Mama taught me that you should only kill to survive. In the swamp, that meant killing something to eat. Even when we killed one of the poisonous snakes that would slither under the walls, we always ate it. Out here, it's no different. I kill so that I can live, and if I eat a little of the kill, it's all the more justified.