Chapter 136 - Ilio part 3

I found him in a stand of conifers just to the north of our camp, sobbing quietly.

I knew what he had done even before I saw him. I could smell the blood on the seesawing wind. Mortal blood, rich and fresh. The aroma was so strong it stopped me in my tracks, and I had to wrestle down my own hunger before I could continue.

"Ilio?" I called out gently.

His weeping wrenched at my heart. Such remorse! Such self-loathing! Despite all his training, his ambition to master the bloodthirst, he had chanced upon a mortal and surrendered to temptation.

"I'm so sorry, Father," he sobbed, crouching in the shadows. "I didn't mean to do it."

The pines creaked as the wind tossed them to and fro. The drumming of the thunder was louder now, the storm closer. I crept into the deeper shadows of the grove, moving silently over the blanket of pine needles, and found the boy squatting beside the body of a mortal man. Ilio had wrapped his arms around himself and was rocking back and forth. His cheeks were stained red with bloody tears. His lips and chin were smeared with blood, too. There was blood on his hands. Blood on his clothing. My stomach gurgled at the sight.

I glanced at the mortal the boy had killed. Even in the starless dark, I had no trouble identifying the man. It was one of the Neirie who had turned back to battle the Oombai-- one of the Tanti men who'd stared at me so worshipfully that day. An ill-fated fellow, he had survived the skirmish with the Oombai only to run afoul of my son.

He was a pitiful sight, his eyes staring fixedly, glazed and slightly crossed, tongue protruding from slack lips. The sad, confused expression of all dead creatures.

I saw that Ilio had broken his body. Shards of bone protruded from his twisted left arm. His left leg had too many joints. He had suffered terrible violence at the boy's hands. I wondered: had he startled the lad, or had my son done this to him out of savagery?

"Tell me what happened," I said. I kept my voice neutral, neither condemning nor condoning.

Ilio snuffled. He was reluctant to answer.

"Ilio…?" I pressed him.

"I was tracking a deer," the boy confessed. "I guess the mortal was doing the same. I didn't even know he was there. He was crawling through the grass on his belly."

"You didn't smell him?" I asked.

Ilio shook his head. "The wind was blowing the other direction."

"What happened then?"

"I was making a game of it. I wanted to see how close I could come before the deer sensed that I was there. Then all of a sudden this mortal stood up out of the grass! He was just a few strides ahead of me, but his back was turned. He didn't see me. He nocked an arrow, took aim at the deer. I was so close I could have reached out and tapped him on the shoulder. I was going to leave him, but then the wind changed direction and the smell of him washed over me..." Ilio groaned as if the memory was causing him physical pain. "I couldn't stop myself. I leapt onto his back, tore his neck open with my fangs. He fell beneath me, screaming. I wanted to stop myself, but I couldn't. His blood tasted so good, and I was so hungry--!"

"All right, Son," I said. "That's enough."

"I can feel him inside me," he said quietly. "I don't mean his blood. I mean his mind. I can feel his thoughts inside my head. His memories."

A rash of goosebumps shivered up my spine. "What do you mean?"

"He's in here, inside my skull," he said, and then he shrieked, grabbing coils of his hair and tearing them from his scalp. I froze for a moment, shocked by his outburst, and then I rushed forward and took ahold of his wrists.

"Stop it, Ilio!" I shouted. "What are you doing? Get ahold of yourself!"

"He's in my mind!" Ilio exclaimed, struggling, and then he collapsed against me.

"Tell me what you see," I said to the boy, pulling him to my chest.

"He had a son," Ilio murmured. "His son was my age when the Oombai took them."

Ilio looked up at me, the whites of his eyes very bright in the dark.

"I can hear his thoughts inside my own. He keeps saying a word. He says it over and over. Gart. Gart... I think it's the name of his son."

"What else do you see?"

"He was teaching the boy to hunt. The Oombai came across them in the middle of the forest. He knew who the Oombai were. He knew why they had come into his people's lands. He surrendered to them without a fight. Gart was his only son. He didn't want them to injure his son. He told the boy to surrender, to give himself up peacefully, but the boy wouldn't submit to them. He fought them. He fought them so fiercely! No, Gart! Put down your weapon! There are too many of them!"

The timber of Ilio's voice had changed. It sounded deeper, more man-like. I could feel him shaking in my arms, but there was nothing I could do to ease him. I did not, in truth, know exactly what was happening to him. I never experienced visions when I fed, and up until that point, neither had the boy. Probably because we mostly fed on animals. It never happens with animal blood. I know now that some blood drinkers see visions when they feed. It is a rare gift, but it was one I did not share with the lad, so I did not know how to comfort him, and to be honest, I was a little afraid he'd gone insane.

"Oh, Thest, they beat him so badly!" Ilio sobbed. "They took great pleasure in it. They beat him until he was unconscious. His father tried to carry him to the village of the ground scratchers, but the boy died the next day. He died in his father's arms. The Oombai made him put the boy down when they saw that he was dead. They wouldn't let him bury his son. They just left him. Left him behind for the scavengers."

I could see the boy's hair sprouting where he'd torn his locks from his scalp. It was strange watching the hair wriggle from his skin, seeing it wind down, serpent-like, across his brow. I hugged him tight to my chest. "Oh, Ilio," I sighed.

"His son!" he said in a grating voice. "He loved his son so much! How can a man live with such pain, Thest? It would drive me insane!"

"It is hard," I confessed. "It is always hard when you lose someone you love. But it is something we all must learn to do. Especially creatures like you and I, who live so much longer than mortal men."

"I do not think that I will be able to bear it!" he hissed.

"You will have to, Ilio," I replied. "You may soon have a child of your own to look after!"