Chương 12: Lessons in Hunger

Leaving the witch's mansion behind filled me with a restless energy I hadn't felt since awakening. I preferred to blame the battle rather than the fact that I had just dragged two humans away from death and bound their futures to mine. Calling them kin still felt strange. I decided not to examine that too closely. The witch had been the first genuine challenge I had faced since awakening.

She hadn't been a roadside thug, a pack of oversized mutts, or another rat-faced idiot armed with a pistol and undeserved confidence. The witch had been a genuine problem, revolting though she was, and overcoming her had changed the way I understood my magic. My raw power had not increased, but that had never been the issue. I already possessed enough destructive force to make most obstacles explode, collapse, or regret existing. What had improved inside that chamber was my control. Control was far more valuable.

Power without control was merely a tantrum with a body count. Besides, I suspected raw strength would come naturally with time. Since awakening, I had felt power gathering deep within me, growing with every passing hour as though time itself nourished my blood, refined my body, and filled me with something increasingly dangerous. The longer I remained alive, the stronger I would become. It was a pleasant thought, which probably meant it was also a dangerous one. Adrian and Celeste had changed as well.

Becoming my kin had sharpened everything that already existed within them. Adrian had always relied on physical reinforcement, using magic to enhance his swordsmanship, durability, speed, and strength. Becoming my kin had sharpened every one of those qualities until he moved like a weapon that had learned to breathe, or a power tank, as my half-remembered first life would have called him. Celeste was different. Her magic had expanded without becoming wild or careless.

Fire, wind, ice, lightning, barriers, and sensing had all grown cleaner beneath her control. Each element responded with greater ease, as though my blood had stripped away whatever resistance once existed between her and the magic. She had already been a talented mage. Now she was a talented mage wrapped in something primordial. Together, they were an extremely useful pair. They had inherited other changes as well.

Their bodies were stronger, their senses sharper, and their wounds healed with an efficiency neither had possessed before. Then there was the thirst. That particular inheritance mattered more than the others. We were returning to Graymere to collect payment for a job well done when I heard a sound I was always prepared to follow. A scream echoed from somewhere deeper along the northern trade path. My smile appeared before I consciously decided to make it. Adrian noticed, and so did Celeste.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Side work." Then I ran without much thought. The world blurred around me as trees snapped past and the road vanished beneath my feet. The scream had come from farther north, and I followed it with the certainty of someone answering a bell rung specifically for her. Adrian and Celeste caught up several seconds later. Celeste stumbled to a stop beside me with wide eyes and flushed cheeks.

"That speed is incredible," she breathed.

"I never imagined I could move like that." Adrian looked at her with a small smile.

"You handled it well." She smiled back.

"You nearly hit a tree."

"I avoided the tree."

"After arguing with it."

"It was poorly placed." I stared at them.

"Are you finished flirting with the forest?" Celeste cleared her throat while Adrian's expression settled back into professional calm. I turned my attention toward the road below. A large carriage had been forced to stop beside a bend. Several guards lay dead around it, their blood soaking into the dirt. The driver remained alive, though someone had dragged him from his seat and forced him to his knees beside the rear of the carriage. A reinforced metal safe had been built into the wagon's frame behind him.

Ten men surrounded the driver. Their mismatched weapons, ugly laughter, and general stench of undeserved confidence identified them as common thugs. Swords, axes, cudgels, knives, and a single crossbow made up their impressive arsenal. One held a blade against the driver's throat.

"Open it," the thug snarled, "or we open you." The driver trembled so violently that I could hear his teeth clicking together, and the sight made the opportunity feel almost too perfect as I glanced toward Adrian and Celeste.

"As I said, side work." Celeste's brows drew together.

"You mean saving him?"

"Saving, charging, collecting, and occasionally damaging property if the rescued party becomes unreasonable." This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Adrian gave me a measured look.

"That sounds less like rescue work and more like extortion with heroic timing."

"Your point?" He wisely chose not to answer. I folded my arms and nodded toward the men below.

"Go kill them." Celeste blinked.

"Excuse me?"

"Kill them." Adrian's gaze had already sharpened. His body leaned forward slightly, the posture reminding me of a hunting hound hearing the horn. Celeste looked less certain.

"With magic?" she asked.

"No." Adrian turned his attention toward me. I smiled.

"No weapons and no magic. Use your fangs." Celeste's hand drifted toward her throat. Adrian's jaw tightened with restraint rather than refusal, his new instincts sitting far closer to the surface than Celeste's. Hunger moved behind his eyes as he listened to the heartbeats below and tasted blood on the air, ready to pounce while she continued pretending she felt nothing.

"How else will you learn?" I asked.

"You need to understand what you have become." Celeste swallowed.

"And what exactly have we become?"

"Predators." The word "settled" between us. Adrian did not flinch. Celeste did. I sighed.

"Ignoring the thirst will not make it disappear. It will worsen until it digs beneath your skin, claws through your thoughts, and eventually drives you toward the nearest living throat. When that happens, you will no longer be choosing your prey. You will become little more than a starving animal without manners or memory." Her gaze shifted toward the thugs.

"They are still human."

"So were the men who murdered those guards."

"That doesn't make this easy."

"I never promised easy. I said it was necessary." Adrian stepped forward.

"She is right." Celeste looked at him. He reached toward her hand, and then stopped before making contact. His fingers trembled faintly, not from fear but from hunger.

"I can feel it," he admitted.

"Waiting will not make it go away." Celeste studied him for several moments before nodding.

"Fine," she whispered.

"But I reserve the right to hate this."

"Reserve whatever you like. Just don't starve beside perfectly available prey." The driver screamed as one of the thugs struck him across the face. I clicked my tongue.

"Enough stalling. Go." Adrian moved first. He vanished down the slope with speed far beyond anything he had possessed before. It still fell short of mine, but the first thug never had a chance to turn before Adrian appeared behind him. Adrian seized the man by the back of his neck, dragged him away from the driver, and buried his fangs in his throat. The thug's scream broke apart halfway through. Celeste froze beside me. I glanced toward her.

"He appears to understand the assignment." She shot me a glare. Another thug shouted and swung an axe toward Adrian's back. Celeste moved. There was no magic or elegance in the attack, only panic sharpened into speed. She crossed the distance, caught the man's wrist, and twisted. A bone snapped, and then the axe struck the dirt. The man screamed directly into her face. Celeste stared at him as her new fangs slipped into view, horror flashing across her face when she realized how badly she wanted him.

The thug tried to wrench himself free, but hunger overcame hesitation. She seized him, drove her fangs into his throat, and swallowed his scream in a wet, broken gurgle. I smiled.

"There we are." Adrian released his first victim, who collapsed into a lifeless heap upon the road. Blood stained his mouth, but his expression remained controlled, focused, and extremely dangerous.

"Celeste," he called, his voice low.

"Breathe." She remained locked against the man's throat, both hands clamped around his shoulders.

"I don't need to breathe," she replied against his skin, her voice muffled and irritated.

"Then pretend. You always do it when annoyed." Even while feeding, Celeste managed to glare at him, which was impressive in its own deeply irritating way. By then, the remaining thugs had finally realized the situation had turned against them. One bolted for the road, but I sent a spark of violet ruin into the dirt ahead of him, and the ground exploded beneath his next step, hurling him backward with a scream.

"Leaving so early?" I called.

"How rude." Three men attacked Adrian at once. He moved as though he had been born for his new body. One fist crushed into a throat, his knee shattered ribs, and his bare hand caught a knife before the blade reached his chest. The blade opened Adrian's palm, but the cut sealed before the thug could celebrate. Adrian studied the unmarked skin, lifted his gaze, and smiled slowly enough to drain the color from the man's face before seizing him and drinking with brutal efficiency. Celeste was far less graceful.

She released her first victim too quickly, coughing as she wiped her mouth with the back of one hand. Her eyes remained wide, horrified, and feverishly bright.

"I tasted his fear," she said.

"Yes… Blood is rude that way." Another man charged her with a cudgel. She avoided the strike, but instead of biting him, she shoved him backward and looked annoyed with herself. I cupped my hands around my mouth.

"Celeste! Using your naturally sharp teeth is not cheating!" She snapped her head toward me.

"That isn't my concern!"

"Then what is?"

"It feels personal!"

"You're drinking someone's life from his neck. Of course it feels personal!" I exclaimed. Adrian slammed another thug against the side of the carriage and glanced toward us.

"She has a point."

"Do not encourage her," Celeste snapped. The thug with the cudgel recovered and swung again. She ducked beneath the weapon, and then hesitated. I groaned.

"Bite him, not the moral dilemma." That finally broke through her resistance. Celeste caught the man by his coat, wrenched him downward, and drove her fangs into his throat with enough force to buckle his knees. Adrian looked almost proud of her, which nearly made me gag, just as the final two thugs dropped their weapons.

"No," one gasped.

"Please… have mercy." I looked toward Adrian and Celeste.

"Excellent, another lesson." Celeste lifted her head with blood glistening across her lips.

"What lesson?"

"Predators beg too once their teeth stop working." The two men trembled while the driver sobbed behind the carriage. Adrian stepped toward them, then stopped and looked at me, not for permission, but for judgment. I descended the slope at an unhurried pace, my boots grinding over gravel and blood-darkened dirt as the surrendered men watched me approach like the devil had stepped from the woods wearing violet eyes.

"Did you offer mercy to the guards?" I asked. Neither answered, I glanced toward the bodies scattered around the carriage.

"No. I didn't think so." Celeste's expression tightened. Adrian's remained unchanged.

"Finish it," I commanded. They decided to get into this line of work, so eventually it would catch up with them. Adrian obeyed without hesitation, while Celeste needed only a single heartbeat before following him. When it was over, silence settled across the road, broken only by the driver's trembling breaths and the uneven rhythm of hers. Adrian calmly wiped the blood from his mouth with a cloth taken from one of the dead men.

Celeste remained fixed on the body at her feet, as though she expected guilt to rise from it and strike her down. It did not. When you became what I was, something fundamental changed. Whatever instinct once recoiled from taking a life had been stripped away, leaving no invisible barrier between thought and action. Killing did not become pleasurable or meaningless, but it became possible in a way it had never been before. Do it often enough, and even that distinction would fade.

Death would become another ordinary occurrence, no more remarkable than hunger, rain, or a body cooling beside the road. That was what Celeste had felt and what frightened her most. I stepped beside her.

"Well?" She swallowed.

"I feel better."

"And?" Celeste closed her eyes.

"I also feel worse."

"Good..." Her eyes opened immediately.

"Good?"

"It means you haven't become mindless." Adrian joined her, standing close without touching until she leaned toward him on her own. He looked at me.

"Was this a test?"

"Training."

"That was not an answer."

"It was the answer you received." Celeste released a weak laugh despite herself. I looked upon both of them, bloodstained and changed, standing among the corpses of men who had mistaken robbing a carriage for the worst decision they would make that morning. An unexpected flicker of pride stirred inside me. I disliked it immediately.

Watching them reminded me of young birds being pushed from a nest, except these birds had fangs, the nest sat atop a cliff, and the comparison was beginning to collapse under its own weight. A low laugh slipped from my lips. Celeste narrowed her eyes.

"Why are you laughing?"

"No reason."

"That never means there is no reason."

"It means I have decided not to share it." Adrian looked toward the trembling driver.

"What happens now?"

"Now," I replied, turning toward the man kneeling beside the safe, "we discuss payment." The driver's face lost what little color it had left. At least some parts of my work remained comfortably familiar.