Page 94 of We Were Eternal Once

Zora’s death.

You and that woman in our sitting room.

The pain and sorrow and betrayal in the blood that fed the soil I’d buried myself in.

The emotions overwhelm me and my body racks with a sob. I need to return to the earth. I need to find some other way to end it, because time has done little to dull the edges of my anguish.

When I open my eyes again, the other person is still there. No—a body. The flesh on their face has rotted, outlining the pits where their eyes should be. A mouse nibbles at what’s left of their nose. The mouse doesn’t acknowledge me. I wonder if he’s taken some bites of me as I slept.

I push myself upright, ignoring the way my head pulses again. I have to pause once I’m upright, my chin resting against my chest. When I open my eyes again, the pain has subsided into a dull ache.

The room is filled with bodies.

I count twenty, all in various stages of decay. The smell hits me a moment later. It should be worse, but my senses are blunt. My vision isn’t sharp in the darkness of the room, I can’t hear anything.

I crawl to the nearest body and flip it onto its back. There are two puncture wounds in the leathery skin of its neck.

That explains why I’m alive. How I managed to catch and drain this many humans in my condition is a mystery. When I starved and burned in that box as a newly made vampyr, it took many humans to restore me. You told me all about starvation, how once you reach a certain point, the hunger is too much and you lose your mind.

Is that what this was?

Did a poor human dig me up, and I ate them and everyone else? Or did I smell them and pull myself free and feast?

Perhaps my memory will return.

I am so hungry. I push to my feet and clutch the wall at my back for support, taking shaky steps around the periphery of the room.

The room is crowded with bodies. I have to step over them to move about the room, nearly tripping in the process. At the far end is a door. I open it and there is another room. Against the wall are…

I swallow every last drop of the two humans I find in that room. I barely remember doing it. One moment they were there, the next I was upon them, my teeth in their neck, their lifeless body beneath me.

I push away, chest heaving as I swallow and swallow and swallow. My parched throat screams in anguish, my stomach aches with the fullness of it.

It’s not enough.

I want to cry. I need more. I have to have more.

I stumble to my feet and lumber through the room. I find another door, moving from room to room in search of more humans. I find only bodies, or trash, or items I don’t recognize or understand. I blink without understanding at the box covered in glass in one room, at the box on the wall, at the paintings on the walls. I reach out to the painting and take it off the wall. It’s in a strange style, depicting two humans in a most realistic fashion. I leave a smear of blood over the surface, which I greedily lick off. The painting is covered in glass.

I suck my fingers clean and move about the rooms once more.

There are thirty bodies in total. They wear strange clothes I don’t recognize. That isn’t unusual, I’ve been buried for a very, very long time. Clothing evolves rapidly through the decades. I find a woman my size and strip her clothing from her. I look down at myself—I am naked and covered in blood and dried dirt.

I cannot hunt looking like this.

I move through the home, looking for linens to clean myself with. I find a room with a large tub and pause, blinking at it. It is a small version of the baths from Rome and Greece so many centuries ago. It was what I missed most about those times, being able to submerge into the warm waters and truly clean oneself. The French favored wiping down with towels and using perfumes. You and I both thought it unsanitary, and tried to bathe as often as we could without arousing suspicion.

I stumble as I approach it, pressing and turning things until water empties from the wall into the tub. It is freezing but I don’t care. I scrub myself until my skin is raw. It takes hours to get the knots from my hair. I consider cutting it off, but other than religious leaders, I’d never seen a woman without hair.

I don’t need anyone to look too closely at me.

I dry myself with the rough fabric near the tub and look into the mirror in the bathing chamber. My face is sunken and hollow and paler than ever. My cheekbones are so sharp I worry they’ll cut through my skin. I trace the broken blood vessels under my eyes, pull free the dried skin of my lips.

It would have to do.

I put on the woman’s dress, socks, and shoes. They fit strangely, falling much higher than I would have thought proper. The shoes are practical, at least.

The night air is cool against my fevered skin. The hunger grows again, gnawing at my stomach. My vision blurs and tilts, threatening me with collapse just outside the home. It was in the middle of a field—a farm? I see no animals. The fields around it spread in every direction, fanning far and wide.