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“Who the hell is this guy?” I run after him.
Without turning to look at me, Lucien says, “Nix is my brother.”
5
Lucien
ENGLAND, 1521
Blood drips from my chin onto my collar. I wipe it away with trembling fingers, still unused to the heightened sensations assaulting my body – the copper taste flooding my mouth, the sound of my victim’s heartbeat slowing down, the scent of fear in the cold night air.
“You’re still making a mess,” Nix observes, stepping over the body of the merchant we caught travelling alone on the forest road. Not a drop of blood stains Nix’s clothing.
Unlike me, he feeds cleanly.
“I can’t help it,” I admit, looking down at the dead human.
It has been two weeks since my turning, and guilt still scratches the back of my throat when I finish feeding – a remnant of my humanity that refuses to die. “When I’m feeding, it’s like I’m drowning. I can’t slow down and I can’t turn the feelings down.”
It makes me think of Elizabeth, which in turn makes me angrier and thirstier. I have asked Nix how I stop thinking about her, but he had no family when he was turned. And no wife who he drained dry. So, he cannot help me except to suggest we keep hunting.
“Then let yourself drown.” A low, waxy voice comes from the shadows.
Both Nix and I turn as our maker emerges from between the ancient oak trees. Dressed entirely in black, with silver hair falling past his shoulders, Darius moves with the grace of a creature that has walked the earth for centuries.
“You resist your nature, Lucien,” Darius says. “Your brother has embraced what he is. Why can’t you?”
Nix grins, revealing fangs still stained with blood. “Lucien is just cautious. His turning was difficult for him. He will learn.”
“Cautious?” Darius raises an eyebrow. “Or weak?”
Something hardens inside me. “I’m not weak.”
“Prove it,” Darius challenges, gesturing toward a distant pinprick of light through the trees. “There’s a cottage half a mile from here. A man, his wife, her sister, and two farmhands. I want you both to feed again.”
Nix’s eyes widen with excitement, but I hesitate. “We’ve just fed.”
“And there lies your first lesson,” Darius says, circling us like a predator. “Hunger is not merely about sustenance. It’s about power. About revelling in what you are.” He stops before me, his eyes boring into mine. “You do not hunt because you’re hungry. You hunt because you can.”
Nix claps me on the back. “Come, brother. I’ll race you there.” Without waiting for a response, he vanishes into the trees, moving with the supernatural speed he’s been using for decades and I’ve only possessed for fourteen days.
I look at Darius, who merely steeples his fingers and fixes his eyes on mine. “Learn from your brother. Do not make me regret choosing you as his equal.”
His words echo in my mind as I give chase, the forest blurring around me. The speed is intoxicating – the ground barely registers beneath my feet, the wind whips past my face.
I catch up to Nix at the edge of a small clearing. The cottage stands in its centre, smoke curling from the chimney, a single candle burning in the window. We crouch in the undergrowth, watching.
“How shall we do this?” Nix whispers, his voice laced with anticipation. “You lead.”
I study the cottage. “The door’s barred. We could break in through the roof.”
“Too slow,” Nix replies. Then with a wicked smile: “Watch this.”
Before I can stop him, Nix is at the cottage door, pounding on it with the urgency of a man in distress. “Help! Please, my brother is injured in the woods!”
I tense as I hear movement from inside the cottage. The bar across the door makes a scraping sound. It opens a crack, and a bearded face peers out.
“Where—” the man begins, but Nix has already seized him, dragging him outside with a hand clamped over his mouth.
