Page 39 of We Were Eternal Once

I resume my feeding, my hand pressed to his mouth to stifle his continued moans. They grow softer the more I take, his strength failing. But I must keep him alive, because this was only part of my test. I let him drop to the ground, frowning at the hardness between his legs.

Is this why you taught me to coerce humans? So they would not have this unsavory reaction?

I remember little about my time before you made me, and I remember how it felt when you fed on me. The ecstasy was unlike anything I’d ever known. Was it because of our connection, or is that the way it is with all humans?

Does our venom excite and paralyze? Or is this man an outlier?

“You will have no memory of this.”

He rises hours later and stumbles from the shadows to his home. I return every day for a week. His pallid skin warms as the week goes on, his blood restored. He’s one of several other test humans, each with the same reaction. Men and women both rendered immobile and lost in lust as I fed. All lived, none turned.

After a week, I am satisfied with my test and return to coercing my prey. The eroticism behind feeding is reserved for you. Every writhe of my prey during that week made my skin crawl and my stomach turn. I was never unfaithful, but the wrongness of it unsettled me.

I write my experiment and results and file it away in my journal.

We sit on our bench during the full moon as Shimon and Menodotus argue over some battle of men. Shimon was turned during a siege of his homeland and left to discover his new body without help or guidance.

“It is a battle worth celebrating,” Menodotus tells Shimon. Shimon waves his hands and makes a noise much like spitting. “Knowing? Yes, that we may avoid such atrocities in the future. Celebrating? Death?”

“Come now, we all cater to death,” Menodotus says, opening his arms wide. “Especially as we live now.”

“We do not live,” Shimon says. “And I’ve never killed.”

Menodotus’s eyes bulge from his head. “Yes, you have. We all have, it is what it means to be lamia.” They all use that word, no matter their culture or heritage. It is the agreed upon word, I suppose, though I hate it.

“I have not,” Shimon is resolute. “It is against my faith to take another life, so I will not. I have not. So I can say we should not celebrate as we remember these battles. Instead, we should learn why they occurred, so we can prevent them.”

“We?” Theon scoffs. “You speak as though any of us has the authority. What will you do, learned scholar? Speak in the forum about the wars from before?”

Bastianos and Zahra laugh, a rare show of camaraderie amongst the two divisions within the group. While there are many small things the group disagrees on, there is one topic that is ever salient.

Humans. Specifically, if we should feed on them. Theon, Bastianos and Shimon are the most vocal in their opposition of hunting humans. They instead take from animals. It is not an ideal meal, so they require more than if they took from humans. Zahra likes to remind them that if they steal food from humans, the humans will starve, and they will kill them in another way. Just because the blood is not on their hands does not mean they are innocent.

They instead cut her off before she brings it up.

This rift surfaces time and time again as they debate. It is a topic you’ve grown bored of, like many of their squabbles. They are circular, the same thought voiced with fifty different words. The corner of your lip twitches, curling back to expose your long canines. I share your disgust, though I hide mine behind wide, imploring eyes. No one asks my opinion and it is just as well, my silence means I do not let on how little I know about you.

“Tell us, Aletheia, what was the world like before humans recorded it?” Essemteu asks. Despite your lively debate in our garden, he speaks only to guide conversation when it becomes too heated.

All eyes turn to you, some curious, some wary.

“Humans have always recorded their history,” you say.

“Yes, but before the paintings on the cave walls or the etched stone,” Essemteu presses.

“How old do you think I am?” Aletheia asks. “How long do you imagine our kind has walked?”

“As long as humans,” Zahra reasons.

“A predator to control their numbers,” Ardashir adds.

Maat’s feather. Balance. They are obsessed with it, this idea that we exist as an opposite to the humans, versus the others who think we stand alongside them.

“Before papyrus there was stone, before stone there were cave drawings, but there are traditions that precede this and continue even now,” you say. No one answers your riddle. Perhaps they don’t understand it is a question.

“Spoken word,” I say. “Songs,” I add. My ears ring with the faraway sounds of worship in my temple, a crescendo of sound that has me shaking my head to clear it.

“Of course,” Essemteu says, leaning back on his bench. He thrums his jaw in thought. “They would not be written. In such a way they could live forever, but also destroyed more easily. A story only lives as long as the teller does. Is this why stories of the Elders are so rare?”