During the day, the sun was too strong for me. It hurt my eyes and burnt my skin. Moonlight was better.
I wiped the fresh blood—not mine—from my hands and licked my wet lips, savouring every drop as my body regained energy.
When this ordeal had started, I’d hated drinking blood. The mere idea had horrified me. Now I wasn’t simply used to doing it. I enjoyed it.
My conscience had lost its battle against the irresistible urge to feed. The fact I didn’t feel any remorse worried me, but I wasn’t deluded. Even the worry was fading, and the last trace of my humanity would soon disappear.
The song of the crickets suddenly became sad, and a breeze made the lower branches of the tree sway in a mournful dance—rest in peace, soul of Alexander Hart, they seemed to chant.
Darius climbed the short, steep path that led from the houses below to the tree and dropped himself next to me. “It’s done.”
I opened my satchel and handed him a piece of lard we’d stolen at the farmers’ market. He wolfed it down in a moment. Despite the large quantity of rich food he devoured each day, he remained frail with gaunt cheeks.
Riley’s thugs had beaten him up badly, and he was still shaken. In the past few days, he’d eaten well, spending all our money, and that had helped him regain his magic, which he’d lost due to his poor diet.
“She won’t remember anything, right?” I asked.
“Not you, your fangs, or how much she enjoyed the bite.” He picked an oat biscuit.
“But she’ll live, won’t she?”
A lump formed in my throat at the possibility of having taken too much. Not that I didn’t want to. A dark part of me would enjoy draining a person to death.
As absurd as it sounded, becoming a bloodthirsty monster had made me care more about people. Being strong and powerful made me careful towards those people who couldn’t protect themselves from me. But the more I drank, the more I got used to it, and the more people became food.
Darius paused munching. “I’m not sure. She was breathing, and her pulse was steady, but only you know how much you’ve drunk.”
“Damn.” I raked a hand through my hair, feeling my strong, thick fingers. “You stopped me in time. I’m sure.”
“And I’m sure one day you won’t need me to stop you drinking or to remove your presence from the minds of your victims. You’ll be able to do it yourself.”
Victims. “Will she develop a fever, as it happened to me?”
“No, she won’t.” He attacked a slice of bread.
“I can’t believe you’re a bloody wizard.”
“I prefer mage if you don’t mind. Wizard sounds like lizard.”
“You didn’t need me to steal.”
He snatched another piece of lard. “I needed you. My magic was extremely low. Even now it’s not at its fullest. And no one wants to be alone. You were the only person who had ever shown me compassion.”
The rich taste of blood lingered on my tongue, calming the constant thirst.
Thanks to the endless thirst, I’d drunk from many people in a matter of days, but Irene’s blood… Hell, her blood was the best thing I’d ever tasted in my life. It’d triggered my transformationand made me stronger, while other people’s blood didn’t quench my hunger for more than a few hours and wasn’t nearly as satisfying as her blood.
Just a few hours ago, I’d stood under her window just to be close to her. The call of her blood had been irresistible, and it’d taken all my strength not to jump through her window and drink from her.
When I’d bitten her, wild and overwhelmed by the thirst, I could have killed her. The thought of hurting her had been so repulsive that I’d managed to stop. But if she’d been a stranger, I would have sucked her dry.
“Where are we? Why are we here?”
He finished eating a biscuit and brushed the crumbs off his shirt. “We’re on the outskirts of Spitalfields. The village over there is Crowsbury, and we came here because there are people like you.”
“You mean…” I swallowed. “Vampires.”
The word was new to me, but Darius had told me that vampires had been mythical creatures for centuries. Knowing my condition had a name didn’t change how I felt about it.
