Chapter 74 - Tundra, 23,000 Years Ago, Earth Spirit Man part 4

A human being, on average, carries a little over five liters of blood in his body. Rabbits, of course, have quite a bit less. Korg's sacrifice only whetted my appetite, but there was enough nourishment in those three or four mouthfuls to rouse the living hunger inside me.

The Mammoth Hunters broke camp and moved on. As I watched them vanish behind a low hill, leaving me to my fate on the icy tundra, I could feel the blood of the two hares threading through my torso. The blood spread out from my belly in a web of heat and pain, repairing the destruction those dreamless ages in the glacier had wreaked on my body.

The dark hungry thing that dwells inside my kind is terribly efficient at metabolizing every drop of blood at its disposal. Even blood on the surface of the skin can be absorbed, if a vampire is starved enough. As I laid there in a stupor of pleasure and pain, I felt my cracked lips heal, the fissures sealing shut as the thing inside me knit the tissue back together. The places where the blood had dripped on my neck and face and torso turned white as all the tiny pores in my flesh sucked the nourishment in.

The hot threads meandered across my chest, into my shoulder, then on down my right arm. Pain followed quickly after as the Strix worked to set my skin and bones in order. There was not enough blood to heal me completely, but there was enough to loosen the grip between my flesh and the stones beneath it.

With a convulsive snarl, I tore my arm free of the stones, leaving a layer of flesh behind. My limb was still twisted and broken, with dry bones jutting out, but I could wave it around a bit, and with a grimace of pain, I set my deformed fingers to work, scratching at the bark of the tree that was growing up through the center of me.

I have no idea how long I lay insensate in that remote spot, my body crushed and fused to stone, before the smell of blood aroused me. A year? A decade? A hundred years? Long enough for moss and lichen to spread across my desiccated flesh. Long enough for a tree to sprout up through my ribs.

The only true stroke of luck was that the men who found me believed me to be some kind of earthbound demi-god, and offered a blood sacrifice to me in exchange for a successful hunt.

Good luck for me… not so much for them.

I worried at that tree all through the afternoon. I could smell the humans moving further and further away as I clawed off pieces of bark. My fingers were stiff and flat and wouldn't bend very well. Bits of brittle flesh sloughed from the bones as I scrabbled at the wood. I snapped off the branches in frustration. The hunters were getting away!

I wanted their blood, not just the blood of the animals they'd snared for their dinner. I was weak, my body mangled beyond all recognition, but I pressed my crushed fingers to their task. I gave them no respite. I was ravenous. I couldn't let those hot, juicy humans escape!

As the sun descended toward the featureless horizon and the air grew ever colder, I finally managed to claw deeply enough into the heartwood of the spindly trunk to snap off the top of the tree and throw it aside. There was still a spike of jagged wood poking up through me, but I knew I would be able to push myself off it if I could free my other arm.

I began to wriggle my body back and forth until at last, beneath the purpling sky, my shoulders tore free of the stones. I snarled at the pain, jerking my torso forward again and again. Each time a little more of my flesh came off. Each time, I managed to free myself a little bit more.

I let myself rest for a while after that. To be honest, it was more of a swoon. The heat of the hares' blood had long since faded. My body was no longer repairing itself at such a frantic pace. I was exhausted and dizzy. I let my head fall back, panting. My breath made no steam in the air, as I was as cold as the stone beneath me, as cold as the permafrost in that desolate tundra.

One by one, stars began to wink in the bruised heavens above me. I remember lying there, watching them slowly appear. Those distant, blinking points of light stirred something dormant in my brain. Memories trembled at the edge of my consciousness. I could feel them there. Touch them, almost. I groped for them mentally, thinking them important for some mysterious reason… but I was still too damaged. My memories were like the smooth nub of something buried deep in the ground, and I couldn't get a grip on them. I couldn't haul them up from the frozen earth of my mind.

The Mammoth Hunters had moved beyond the range of my senses, but I knew I could still track them if I freed myself soon.

Presently, I became aware of a new source of blood. I smelled dog fur and heard the almost imperceptible beating of a distant living heart. I had begun to twist and push myself away from the stones again, but when I noticed the new blood smell, I stilled myself and probed the darkness with my potent vampire senses.

A wolf was approaching, drawn by the smell of the hares' blood the Mammoth Hunters had splattered on the ground around me.

I made myself as motionless as the stones beneath me. I could feel my blood hunger yammering inside me. Patience! I chastised it.

The wolf trotted out of the dark. I watched through narrowed eyes as it ambled toward me. It paused, scenting the wind, then came onwards. It was a thin, gray wolf, hardly bigger than a camp dog, its ribs showing through its mangy fur, an old bitch, exiled from her pack, perhaps. She was sick, dying. I could smell the resignation of death in her breath, in the stench of her flesh and organs. 

And she could smell the blood of the hares. I heard her stomach gurgle.

But she paused again. She sensed danger.

I watched as her fear and her hunger made war. She sniffed the air. I heard her whine, low in her throat, then hunger won out over her natural wariness and she trotted forward, dipping her nose to snort at the dried blood splattered on the ground around me.

I struck.

My twisted arm shot out, faster than any striking snake, and I sank my fingers into her furry neck. The bitch leapt with a yelp, but I was far too fast. Before the animal could turn her head and snap at me with her yellow, rotting teeth, I had slashed her neck open with my fangs. I crushed her to me and drank greedily. The she-wolf's blood gushed down my throat. Her heat filled me.

Almost instantly, my flesh and bones began to knit together again. I heard a crackling sound, like dry sticks being snapped over a knee. I felt the bones in my face shift with the sound. One of the bones in my forearm drew back into the muscle, and the skin healed over.

More… I needed more!

The old wolf died, and I squeezed her body savagely to push more blood through her veins.

When I could not suck another drop from the ragged tears in the she-wolf's neck, I threw the carcass away from me. Grinning and licking my lips, I heaved my body forward and tore the rest of my fused flesh from the stones. I clawed the frozen blanket of earth from my lap to free my pelvis and upper legs. Finally free, I heaved my body onto its side, twisting myself off the wooden stake that I'd been skewered on.

I laughed then in the starlight.

Free!

My left arm was still broken and twisted around behind me, and my legs were unrecognizable, crippled and useless-- one foot was hanging by a single cord of muscle-- but I was free!

Employing my only functional arm, I began to drag myself across the frozen ground. My breath steamed now with the blood of the wolf, but it would grow cold again soon enough. My body continued to heal as I crawled like a monster across the ground, a twisted, white, crab-like thing. Fangs gleaming, eyes flashing like lamps in the dark, I crawled.

I crawled after the Mammoth Hunters, inhuman, no memory of the past and no thought of the future, just one thing in my mind: the blood-thirst, and how I might slake it.