Chapter 50: King of Kings

“You’re almost done,” Emilia said coming up behind Tommy. He’d been working on the portrait of the Old Ones that Emilia had requested.

“This feels the same,” he said. Acclimating to his new senses had been easy enough. Reading books and graphic novels about vampires and what it is like to transform, he anticipated having trouble, like he’d remember what it was to be human too much. The reality had been much different.

“Does it?” she asked, wrapping her arms around his chest, splaying her palms out flat. She pressed her cheek to his back.

“The things I see and experience are so different, but the act of painting, it is the same,” he explained. He grabbed a damp cloth and started wiping off the brushes.

Emilia’s body pressed against his filled his bones and veins with a kind of electrical pulse that was almost similar to having a heartbeat, though the organ remained dormant in his chest.