Chapter 19: Verchiel - Never-Ending Question, Part 4

It was hunger that woke him the next evening, though he saw Kateesha already up and wearing a new dress. She helped him stand with a smile. "Are you ready?"

He nodded and they headed outside into the night. A handful of stars glittered overhead and the familiar buildings sat quiet, their windows glowing with candlelight. It was early evening; the moon had yet to make an appearance.

A woman walked down the street, her eyes on the ground, a basket clutched in her hands. The wind picked up and Verchiel could smell her scent on the air; smell the blood in her veins. The warmth. The life.

He was so hungry.

He knocked her to the ground before Kateesha could stop him. The woman struggled, but her limbs were frail, and her skin was easy to bite through. Her hot blood gushed into his mouth and he gulped it again and again. Kateesha pulled at him, shook him, shouted, but it was as if she was on the other side of window glass; ineffectual and unimportant.

Finally, she ripped him loose and he fell back on his knees. He wiped the crimson liquid from his mouth and chin. Like last night, he was soaked in red, soaked in the dead woman's life. His eyes strayed to her face, frozen in terror, mouth gaping, crooked teeth biting at the air. The pool of blood spreading under her made him his stomach rumble and he licked his fingers.

"What did I tell you?" Kateesha complained as she pulled him to his feet. "Half the townspeople saw that!"

Verchiel looked up and down the quiet street. "I don't see anyone."

"That's because they're hiding. This is the moment when they're terrified; weak, helpless, too afraid to strike back. If you give them time to recover they start to think, start to bluster, and soon one finds themselves chased by a mob of furious mortals. I thought I had left that world behind." She broke off. Her voice dropped, as though she was talking to herself. "But I was alone then. I'm not now. Perhaps it would be different. Perhaps" Her eyes flashed and she paced in a circle. "I haven't seen him in action. I don't know what he can dohe is newweak perhapsbut insatiable. I saw him; saw his blood lust, saw his attack. If that was unleashed, unrestrained, what could he be then? What could we be?"

She spun back, as if suddenly remembering he was there. "We must leave, or else strike while the iron is hot. The choice is yours."

He looked from one building to the next, saw the trembling silhouettes of the villagers, and felt a soft buzzing of fear. Was it theirs, or his own? Until his memories returned, this was the only place he knew the only buildings and streets he recognized. This was as much home to him as any place could ever be. The thought of leaving it for something vast and unknownhe wasn't sure what it filled him with. Was he the sort of man who would want to stay and cling to the familiar, or the kind who craved adventure?

"Do you want to stay?" Kateesha stepped close and ran her fingers under his chin. "We can. We only need to kill everyone who saw you." A devilish smile curved across her lips. "Shall we?"

Verchiel hung back uncertainly as she burst through the nearest door. Screams poured into the night, drawing him inside, after her. The household was in disarray; furniture overturned and dishes broken. Kateesha pinned a man to the wall, her hips moving against him as she drank from the bleeding wound on his throat. A woman huddled in the corner, holding tightly to a child, begging in a language Verchiel didn't understand.

The scent of blood filled his nose and, for a moment, he was lost to it. The screams of the woman pierced through the blood haze. He looked down to see the limp child in his arms, its throat torn open.

"She's smaller than you, you must protect her."

He dropped the body and moved back with enough force to knock over a stack of pots. A memory had been there; something before Kateesha and the blood, but it was gone, replaced by the sobbing shrieks as the woman hugged her dead child to her. One of her arms was broken had he done that? Had he ripped away the babe with such force, so much desperation for their blood?

Kateesha was suddenly at his side, her dress soaked in crimson. With a snarl she grabbed the mortal woman and snapped her neck. She tossed the body to the floor where it laid face down, her dead child out of reach.

Kateesha's eyes swept over the room, to a low doorway. She sniffed. "The others have left, through the back, and gone next door. As if that will save them. Come, we shall feast on them." When he didn't respond, she met his eyes and frowned. He felt her touch his thoughts, heard that whisper in his head again.

"She's smaller than you, you must protect her."

Kateesha scoffed and turned away. "It was a shadow of a memory, of a life before, nothing more. You are above that now; above the mortals' rules and morality. Did not her blood taste the same as the woman on the street? The same as the priest or the girl you took last night? They are all the same, no difference between man, woman, or child, between king and peasant. Death and blood are the great equalizers. Now, come. We must strike while fear lives in their hearts."

He followed her outside to the next house. An old woman tried to shelter the family, but Kateesha tore through her throat with a hand and tossed the body aside, leaving the blood to pour onto the rough floor. Verchiel eyed the pool. The smell was deep, beckoning, yet he resisted and followed Kateesha through a doorway to a second room. A man lunged at them, but Kateesha took him out quickly, ripping his arm from his socket. She laughed as she swung it, splattering bits of gore while his helpless family screamed.

She brandished the arm like a stick, pointing to the teenage girl. "Take her, before her screaming gives me a headache."

Verchiel obeyed, ripping the girl away from her mother. He looked past her dark hair and slanting eyes, to the pulse at her neck. His resolve of moments before crumbled, and he bit into her without thought. The screams faded into the bliss of the blood, but returned.

He blinked to see Kateesha discarding the girl's body. Heaped on the floor were the rest of the family. Only the father was alive, his body convulsing, the socket where his arm had been still bleeding.

"We don't have time to drain them, sweetling. Kill them and move on, before they get brave."

He nodded mutely, then followed her to the next building. The killing went much as it had before. Their resistance was minimal, and they died, pleading and sobbing, no weapons, no fight.

Then they reached the inn. There, the owner had gathered both his courage and a length of wood. He caught Verchiel off guard and knocked him off his feet. With his second swing, he aimed for Kateesha, but the vampiress was more prepared. She ripped the make-shift club from his hands and flung him across the room.

"You want to play?" she asked and laughed. She tossed the wood from hand to hand as she advanced on him.

The man stood slowly, wiping blood from his face with an angry fist. He shouted foreign words at her; the same language the mother had used. Verchiel pulled himself up, muscles tense, ready to defend Kateesha if he needed to. Before he could reach her, the man's brains were splattered on the wall.

She tasted a finger full of the gore, then tossed the club aside. "Didn't he have a wife?"

"I don't know."

"Of course not. You don't remember getting the room. It's no matter, we'll sniff her out."

Kateesha moved to the small corridor and inhaled deeply. Verchiel watched as her breasts rose and fell with each long breath. Her eyes lit with success. She motioned him to silence and crept to the wine cellar they'd sheltered in. The woman crouched between the casks, where they had hidden from the sun. Tears slipped from her almond eyes, and she rattled off pleas that sounded like nonsense.

Kateesha grabbed her by her slender throat and hoisted her up into the air. The woman choked and pried at the hand that held her, legs kicking. Kateesha rattled something back to her in her own language, then tossed her toward Verchiel. "This one is yours, sweetling."

The woman landed at his feet, her hands at her throat as she gagged on spit and terror. He stood motionless as she caught her breath and raised herself up on one arm. She rattled off strange words and, though he didn't understand them, he somehow knew their meaning. She begged for her life, for the life of her unborn child, for her husband upstairs.

It was too late for him but

Kateesha took a step toward Verchiel. "Go on. Take her. She's yours."

He crouched next to the mortal woman and held her eyes. He could feel the terror that coursed through her; taste it as though it was his own. Since he'd woken to see Kateesha's bloody face over him, he'd tried to determine what kind of man he'd been before. Had he been the kind who would do something like this?

Kateesha's words finally made sense. It didn't matter what kind of man he had been. What mattered was what he was now, and the man he was now had no interest in murdering a woman and her child even if she was lesser than he was to guarantee he could remain in a village that wasn't even his home.

He stood and wiped his messy hands on his shirt. "You asked if I wanted to stay here or go somewhere else, and I've decided. There's nothing here. Let's see the world."

Kateesha cocked an incredulous eyebrow. "You've changed your mind?"

"Of course." He grinned and held out his hand to her. "What do you say? Shall we leave this village and find somewhere new and exciting?"

She studied him, then shrugged. "As you wish, my pale angel. Come, let us see the world. I'm interested to discover what you will become." She walked up the stairs, tossing back, "But first, let us change and fetch my bags."

Verchiel glanced at the terrified woman, still huddled on the floor. He gave her a wave, as if it was some sort of apology, then turned for the stairs, hurrying to follow his beautiful master. Just as eager as she was to see what would become of him.

What kind of man I'll turn out to be.