Chapter 267 - Blood Gods in Exile part 12

Though I had Zenzele's memories of such occurrences in my mind, it is not the same as witnessing it yourself. Shared memories are like snatches of dreams, nebulous and retreating if not focused on with great concentration. The reality was much more horrifying.

Stine screamed so loudly that I thought his throat would rupture. He thrashed on the earth, his body contorting violently. I went to aid him, but Zenzele grabbed my upper arm, shaking her head urgently at me, her eyes flashing a warning.

"You should not go near to him," she said. "It is dangerous for blood drinkers when the ebu potashu is devouring an initiate. The blood within you may be stirred to consume you as well. I have seen it happen."

Yes, I saw it in my Shared memories. A chain reaction of auto-cannibalism, first the initiate, then the one who had made him, and the vampire standing beside him, and the one beside him. I saw how they writhed, the flesh withering to their bones, eyes falling into their sockets, the living blood consuming its hosts until all that left was dust and bones, and tendrils of black smoke curling up from the remains.

"Who is that?" Hammon demanded, blinded by his own agonies. "Who cries out so terribly?"

We did not answer him. We could only stand at a distance and watch as the living blood drained the nomad called Stine of all his vitality, as his mortal body shivered to a husk, as his flesh peeled from his bones like birch bark and then fell to ash upon his bedding with startling rapidity. Tendrils of the black organism wriggled among the bones like quivering leeches, and then they too sizzled and fell to granules, lifting away from the remains on the next errant breeze to blow across them.

The first casualty in my war against the God King.

"Oh…! Oh, Mother," Eris said wonderingly.

He had arisen while we were watching Stine's death throes.

The hermaphrodite stood looking down at his hands, his flesh white as dolomite in the light of the gibbous moon. His hair had come free and flowed black and shining across his chest. The two-natured being was exquisitely transformed, his flesh almost luminescent, his eyes glittering. He smiled, exposing a pair of fine, narrow, wickedly curved eyeteeth.

"I feel so strong," he breathed.

The hermaphrodite had been made an Eternal.