Chapter 48 - The Ghost Who Is a Man part 3

This is what truly happened:

"Brulde... lives?" I gaped at the old man in disbelief.

Ludd nodded. "Yes, your mate lives! But what of the others? What of my nephew Strom? Kort-lenthe does not know, and Brulde is very weak and will not speak of what happened. When he is questioned, he wails and tears at his clothing. He says only that you were killed. That a demon came out of the trees and devoured you. What of the others? Do you know their fates?"

"My father is dead," I said. "Tavet, Bukhult, the three brothers... all of them are dead."

"And my sister's son? What of Strom?"

"Dead, I'm afraid. Strom and Hyde both. We were terribly defeated."

Ludd's shoulders sagged, and he began to rub his hands together as if he were washing them. "And the devil-man?" he asked, his eyes shimmering. "The fiend who attacked us these past two nights?"

I glared at him.

"He is dead, too. I was the monster's doom."

Of course, the news I'd brought was bad. Terrible. But the monster was dead, and Ludd was excited about that. "This is good news!" he said, still wringing his hands. "I am sorry for your loss, and of course my sister will be heartbroken, but the monster is dead? You're certain of that?"

"Yes," I said, picturing that ball of bloody pulp. That was all that was left of his head when I had finished with it. Hair and pulp. "I am quite certain."

He was normally such a pessimistic man that it was slightly jarring to see an expression of relief spread across his features. It was like seeing a fish nesting in a tree. "But this is good," he breathed. "We will sleep better knowing the fiend is dead. We should raise the camp and tell everyone you have returned. We must tell them the news! We were all so worried this evening, thinking the devil-ghost would return tonight. We had nearly decided to follow the Fat Hands, to abandon the valley and flee south with them."

"There's no need to flee now. The Foul Ones are dead. I ran my knife through the heart of one and relieved his master of his head."

He stared at me eagerly as I spoke. I could tell he was torn. He wanted to press me for details, but he also wanted me to return to the village with him so that he could share my tale with everyone. He licked his lips, nodding rapidly. "Come, let us rouse the others. There's no need to tell your story twice tonight. I'm sure you're hungry and exhausted."

Yes, I was hungry, but not for anything he might expect. In fact, I was staring at him just as avidly, and if he wasn't so rattled by my return, if he wasn't so eager to bask in a little of my reflected glory, the conquering hero, he might have taken note of the way I was eyeing him. He might have noticed the way my nostrils were flaring, the way the muscles in my hands twitched as I fought the urge to seize him, to seize him and draw his throat to my mouth.

"Come! I'll help you walk back," he said, grasping me by the upper arm.

The heat of his flesh startled me. His touch was as hot as a baking stone. I peered down at his hand, and though it was an old man's hand, wrinkled and speckled with liver spots, it was also hot and plump and alive. And still he did not notice the inhuman pallor of my body, or its icy chill! He did not notice how strangely smooth and hard my flesh was, like living stone.

I allowed him to pull me along.

As we walked the path through the fringe of the woods, Ludd continued to question me. He wanted to know how I had killed the devil-ghost. He hadn't accompanied us when we searched for the missing Fat Hands, but there was much speculation among the tribe afterwards, a lot of talk about its inhuman speed and strength, and those tales had only gotten wilder with each retelling.

I struggled to answer his questions in a way that would not betray my transformation. I did not wish to alarm him unnecessarily. I knew that I would have to reveal what had happened to me eventually, but I meant to do it publicly. I thought perhaps it would be easier for everyone to accept me if I told them all at once, allowed them to question me and examine me together, maybe even demonstrate my new powers to them. I thought perhaps it would be less frightening for them that way. My strange new abilities could really be a boon for our community. I was only beginning to imagine the good I could do for my people.

Yet I found myself distracted, my answers halting and incomprehensible. In truth, I was in the grip of a sudden hunger for my escort's blood. It consumed my thoughts. A terrible predatory coldness had seized my mind, and I was not looking at him as a man, my father's cousin, a living breathing person, but as an object, a vessel, for the nourishment I needed so badly.

He smelled so delicious!

It is difficult to explain how mortals smell to vampires as you do not share our enhanced senses—we have no common frame of reference-- so I can only say that he smelled juicy and plump and alive. Even the sour smell of his unwashed flesh, the bitter odor of his fear sweat, drying now upon his skin, was alluring to me.

I was staring at him in the darkness as he pulled me along the path toward camp, staring at his neck, where I could sense those two plump arteries pulsating just below the surface of his skin, the jugular and carotid. I realized I was salivating and a part of my mind shrank back in dismay, cried out a warning to turn around, run away, before I completely lost control.

My stomach cramped, gurgling audibly. Every fiber of my being clamored for sustenance. But I was determined to return to my people, to rejoin my family. It did not even occur to me that I might not be able to do so.

Ludd was talking, retelling Kort-Lenthe's account of our battle with the Foul Ones, but his words flowed around me like nature-sound, as meaningless as the twittering of a bird or the babbling of a brook. I could see him quite clearly in the darkness. My preternatural sight. Even the dim moonlight filtering through the tree limbs shed enough illumination for my eyes to see as clearly as if it were day.

I'm not sure if it was my uncharacteristic behavior that aroused his sense of danger or if it was something more substantial—the chill of my flesh beneath his hand, perhaps-- but my escort spun suddenly around, and the eerie gleam of my eyes shot him through with terror. His jaw dropped open and he released his grip on my upper arm.

All men share an instinct. We know when other living creatures are looking at us, especially when those creatures wish to do us harm. We know when we are being sized up. But his alarm came too late to save him.

He raised his hands in a warding off gesture, stumbling back from me. "Gon!" he stammered. "What are you--?"

With a snarl, I leapt upon him. My strength drove him to the ground and I opened his neck with my fangs. One quick slash was all it took and his juices were released. As he struggled against me, his bony old man's body writhing beneath mine, I wrapped my lips around the wound in his neck and drew out a mouthful of hot, salty, nourishing blood. I gulped it down ravenously, beyond thought, my eyes rolled back in my head like the eyes of a feeding shark, and I sucked out another mouthful of blood, and another. He beat at me helplessly, whining like a child, clawing at my skin with his nails. He even tried to gouge my eyes, but all of his struggling was for naught. I drained his body of its life's blood. I did it swiftly and without mercy. Without conscious thought, really. I was insatiable, a starving beast, an instrument with a single purpose: drink! I growled and slurped, biting him again and again in my bloodlust, tearing his flesh open so that I could draw out larger draughts at once.

I do not know when he died for I did not return to my senses until he was lying quite still and lifeless beneath me. I returned as if waking from a dream and found myself sucking greedily upon his cold and tattered neck. There was no more blood left in him, but I continued to suck, like a tick upon a dead dog, like some fat and mindless leech.

I jumped to my feet with a cry of disgust and then just stood there looking down at him, feeling the heat of his blood inside my body. I could feel it in my belly, a ball of molten lava. I could feel it worming its way into my extremities, nourishing my mutated cells. I could feel his blood on my lips and cheeks, crackling as it dried. And then, in a panic of shame and remorse, I cast out with my senses to see if anyone had witnessed my crime.

The village was just over the hill, near enough that I could sense every living person within its borders. No cries of alarm had been raised. No dogs barked. No one seemed disturbed in the least. Relief washed through me, and then I looked at Ludd and nearly cried aloud again.

"Oh, Gon, what have you done?" I moaned.

I had killed him, that is what I had done! Killed and fed upon one of my own people!

The killing would have been bad enough, but I had eaten him as well, which was as much a taboo in my culture as it is for you modern folk. Vampirism is, after all, just another form of cannibalism. I had ingested his blood to nourish my own body. It was no different, ethically, than eating his flesh. I was no better than the monsters that had preyed upon the Fat Hands! I, Gon, had become that which I found most foul!

So I did what any murderer does. I hid the body. I hefted him over my shoulder and flew with it into the treetops. You might say I fled the scene of the crime.

I buried him far away, in a dark and foreboding place, a place I knew my kinsmen would not think to look for him. The foul marsh where I interred my victim was a suitable location to conceal my evil handiwork, I thought. Grim, wet, full of cold crawling things. If only I could bury my guilt so easily! But that, I knew, was an impossibility. Even as I tore into the earth with my powerful demon-hands, I knew I could never atone for this transgression.

First Pendra. Now Ludd.

For Pendra I could forgive myself. The Hunger had seduced me before I truly understood what it was, what I had become, and besides, she was already dying. Drinking her blood had been as much a mercy for her as it was for me. But Ludd… I had, of my own free will, placed his life in danger. I had known that I might not be able to control the Hunger, that it might get away from me, but I had taken that risk in the hope of rejoining my people, and my father's cousin had paid the ultimate price for it. He was alive and healthy when I crossed his path. It was no mercy killing, no act of ignorance. I had gambled with his life and lost it.

I could not be trusted to control my new appetite. I was a danger to any living creature that came near me. I decided, kneeling there beside the freshly turned earth of Ludd's anonymous grave, that I would keep myself at a distance from the People, that I would stay as far away as possible from my family, until I had learned to master my hunger. I would not-- I could not-- gamble with any more lives!

So even though I had survived, even though I had vanquished the fiend who transformed me into a demon, I had still lost everything I cherished in my life.

My family, my people... and my soul.