The blood was warm. Not hot, just warm. Warm and sticky. Still fresh, but not recent.

She lapped it up. It wasn’t milk, water, or anything she’d ever drank before. It was history, not hers and not her mother’s, but further back than that.

They’d eaten mice before, there was that. Not many, but it happened. This was different. A bolder, richer flavor. A flavor not many cats had gotten to taste. The big ones maybe, but they were different from her, distant figures. And even they were shot for that now. Humans were a rarity, a delicacy.

Of course, it wasn’t really her kill. She hadn’t managed it by herself, and she knew the rules. She cried into the night, howling that echoed for miles around. And they came, through swinging doors and opened windows, to taste the sweet and sticky blood. The blood was followed by the skin, the fat and the muscle of the unfortunate human. The bones were too thick, so they left them behind.

A serial killer, the papers said. Carved the flesh from her bones, clean as could be.