Arc 5: Chapter 19: Fear, and Hunger

Arc 5: Chapter 19: Fear, and Hunger

After seeing to Emma and Hendry, I found another room in the same hall as theirs on the second floor. Fully furnished and clean, I noted a distinct lack of brass pipes. They seemed to be in some rooms, but not others.

Catrin had said very little, her normal gregariousness giving way to a pensive distance. I’d kept my silence about the encounter with Laertes when we’d checked on the younger members of our quartet. Hendry told me he’d keep guard over Emma, who seemed irritated by the whole thing but hadn’t had the energy to argue much.

Though I was loath to leave myself defenseless for even a moment, I decided to wash myself and clean my gear. Phantasmal muck still coated my axe, armor, and cloak, and I took an hour or so to scrub all of it off. Most of it faded into nonexistence as I did, but even still the sight of aura lingering in a physical state reminded me where I was. I used the washroom for my own body, tense and anxious of ambush the whole time.

The Count’s manse had running water, probably pumped up from the same source as the moat. I normally wouldn’t trust any water in the Wend, but it gave off no alarm bells to either my physical or spiritual senses.

I’d just finished folding my cloak and hauberk on the foot of the bed when that lonely quiet was finally disturbed. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and a subtle warning from my powers. I’d leaned my axe against the bedpost after shaving its handle down. Instinctively, I reached for it.

“It’s me,” a quiet voice said.

I’d lit some candles in the room, leaving deep shadows in several spots. Catrin stepped out of one of them, adjusting her hair before folding her arms. Her gestures didn’t have their usual energy. She seemed subdued and uncomfortable.

“I’d have just knocked,” she said with a half-hearted smile. “But I didn’t really want to be in the hallways alone. This place…”

She shook her head. “I don’t like it here. So we’re stuck until morning?”

I nodded, moving around to the foot of the bed to sit against the frame. “Yes.”

“And then?” She asked, still keeping a distance as though ready to leap back into the darkness she’d emerged from at any moment.

“I tell the Count what I want,” I said. “And he tells me what it’s going to cost me. Probably with some more power games and verbal sparring, which I will endure.”

“Heh.” Catrin’s smile seemed more genuine then. “You mentioned Karog. I was kind of out of it upstairs. Give me the whole thing?”

I told her about the entire encounter with the Count. By the time I’d finished, Catrin was shaking her head with an exasperated frown.

“Karog… ever since he tried to kill you at the inn last winter, he’s been an enigma. I can’t tell if he’s on our side or if he’ll end up ripping all our heads off.”

“Our side?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow. “I’m a knight of the realms. You’re a… hm.”

“Damsel of darkness?” Catrin asked, as though trying the phrase out.

I grimaced. Catrin batted my reaction away with a lazy wave of her sharp nails.

I studied her a moment, searching for the right words. Despite the attempts at banter, I knew she wasn’t well. I’d seen her in the grip of meloncholy before, especially when it came to her history and nature. Laertes had picked at a festering wound.

I noticed some details as I considered how to address it, or whether I should address it. She’d brushed the ringlets out of her hair, leaving it in a lazy messy of curls. It hid the slight points in her ears, but did little for the thinness of her cheeks, or the shadows under her eyes, especially since she’d wiped all the makeup off. I realized the powder hadn’t been meant to make her look fairer, in the habit of some nobles and women in Catrin’s profession. Without it, her pale skin had a very slight tinge of gray, with visible veins beneath. She looked pallid.

She looked like an hours old corpse. Still pretty, but faded. Her hair had almost no red in it now, just an ashy brown, and her eyes were dark and listless.

“Go ahead and say it,” Catrin said. She hadn’t missed my staring. “I look awful.”

Rather than jumping into a denial, I took in more details. She still wore the chiton from the inn. It only had one strap, so it fell off the left shoulder, with a sash running across the line of that gap to hug her left bicep. The dress was white, the sash red, and a very thin belt — little more than a cord — wrapped twice around her waist.

She’d hung Shivers from that belt in a leather sheath decorated with little green tassels, making the fell armament seem almost cute. That was very her, and it made me smile inside.

I wanted to make a quip, redirect the conversation, find some way to comfort her. But I knew that wouldn’t help her.

“When was the last time you fed?” I asked quietly.

She glanced at me, then away. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m worried about you.”

Catrin stepped over to the room’s wardrobe and leaned her back against it. She didn’t sigh or fidget much, or do any of the subtle, thoughtless things people tend to do when they’re thinking, talking, or just idling. When she did, it had a deliberate quality. Even her breaths looked thought out, and she seemed to forget every few minutes, lapsing into an uncanny stillness.

I didn’t push her. Minutes passed before she spoke again.

“The last time was with you,” she finally admitted.

I took that in, doing the math. She’d refused to drink my blood when we’d lain together the night of the Culling, which meant it had been the time before that.

“Cat, that was nearly two weeks ago.”

She shrugged. “Was it? I wasn’t keeping track of the days.”

“Why?” I asked. “Is it… because of me? Because of us?”

Catrin blinked, and this time it didn’t seem deliberate. “What? Wait, when Eilidh talked to you earlier, was that what she said?”

I nodded. “She thought I’d made you stop.”

Catrin’s expression softened. “No, Al. It’s not because of you. Well… maybe there’s a bit of that.”

“I never wanted you to hurt yourself over us,” I said, feeling miserable. “Over me.”

“It’s not what you think,” Catrin insisted in a regretful voice. “Yeah, I stopped taking as much from my customers because… well…”

She hedged. “It’s embarrassing.”

When I tilted my head at her, she hastily explained.

“It made it better. With you.” Catrin laughed quietly. “It sounds lame, but I’m used to getting people off, Alken. With you, you’re interested in me enjoying it. I get men who do that sometimes, but it’s mostly an ego trip on their part. For you it’s…”

She searched for words a moment. “More honest, I guess?”

“I’m not sure I understand,” I admitted, feeling a bit uncomfortable with the topic but not wanting her to clam up again.

“I was fasting because being hungrier, having more bloodlust, it made our times together more exciting.” Catrin’s smile had an apologetic tint. “It made me angrier, more impatient, but I never felt like that threatened you, so it felt safe. It was fun waiting for that satisfaction, I guess.”

I nodded. “I think I can understand that. Like having a feast after a week of tourney.”

“Sure,” Catrin said. “Though, if I’d really feasted you’d be dead.”

I shrugged. “But that’s not why you’ve been starving yourself. This seems different.” I studied her corpse-like complexion.

Catrin’s mood turned dour again, and she tucked her hands under her arms. “It’s hard to explain.”

I nodded, keeping my own arms loose and open. “I’m willing to hear it, if you want to talk.”

She was quiet so long, I wasn’t sure she would. When she did speak, her voice was nearly a whisper.

“Do you remember what that doctor, Olliard, said about me?”

It took me a while to sift through my memories. That event was over a year past. “He said…” I frowned, remembering his words. “He said half dead like you, dhampirs, can become true vampires.”

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Had that been what the Count was referring to, with all his talk of grave flowers and buds?

You can feel the vestiges of your mortality dying within you, Laertes had said. Something cold coiled around my heart at the memory of those words.

“I’ve been having bad dreams,” Catrin said after several minutes of silence. “I’ve had them before, but they’ve been especially bad lately.”

“Dreams?” I asked, thinking of my own haunted sleep.

Catrin nodded. “Do you…” She licked her lips. “Do you know what it’s like to be dead, Alken? Can you imagine it?”

I shook my head slowly. “I’ve thought about what happens after a lot.”

“I know what it’s like,” Catrin said as she narrowed her eyes to near slits. “To be still and stiff, like stone. But you’re not like stone. You turn soft, and you rot. Things get into you, eating you, until you’re hollowed out.”

Her eyes slid to the curtained window. As she continued to speak, her voice took on a distant quality.

“But you don’t go anywhere. No heaven, no hell, no playing tricks as a ghost. You’re still in that reeking thing. Because you’re not actually in it. It’s not some vessel or container for what you really are.”

Catrin seemed to fold in on herself. “It’s you. That’s all there is of you. And you’re still aware. You still feel all of it, even while the maggots are crawling around in your ribs and the flies are—”

She stopped, choking. I realized she was crying.

I didn’t know if she still wanted me not to touch her, but I couldn’t just leave her like that. I stepped forward, pulling her away from the wardrobe and holding her close. I could hear her sobbing into my chest.

“Don’t listen to what Laertes said,” I told her firmly. “He is evil.”

A laugh broke through Catrin’s sobs. “He didn’t have to say anything. Don’t you get it, Alken?”

I didn’t. I wasn’t certain I wanted to, but I would not be a coward here. She had been there for me once, when I’d sunk into a terrible place.

“I know,” Catrin said in a fierce voice. “I remember being in my grave, and that wasn’t the last time I rotted.”

She looked up into my eyes. Hers were a dark red, no shine or gleam in them. Vampire eyes, bloodshot and hungry.

“I don’t have a soul, Alken. No aura. I don’t get an afterlife. This is it. I am undead. I will live in death from now until something destroys me. And yet…”

To my surprise, she lowered her head to kiss my chest. “I love living. I want to have warm blood in me all the time. I want to drink, and laugh, and fuck. I want to feel joy and hate. I want and I love to be wanted. But I’m a monster.”

I stroked her hair. “You’re not a monster.”

“I have been!” She hissed. “This whole world won’t let me forget it. Even you…”

She looked up into my eyes, squinting. “I can’t even look at your face without it hurting. I can feel that hallowed fire in you baring its fangs at me. I hate it… and it makes me hate you sometimes. Sleeping with you feels like touching myself in front of a pulpit, daring those fucking angels and their golden queen to do something about it.”

It took me a moment to find words. “I… didn’t realize you felt that way.”

“It’s ugly,” she breathed. “God, I know it’s ugly, but it’s true. Half my attraction to you is just hunger and frustration.”

I held her tighter. “Only half.”

She let her forehead fall against my chest, the motion more one of defeat than anything.

“What happens if this keeps up?” I asked her, speaking into her mussed hair.

I felt her calm, though it seemed to take effort. When she spoke again, her voice had less of a tremor. “I become more dead. Another week, a month at most, and I’ll start to decay. I’ve never gone much longer than that. Didn’t have the self control.”

“And if you start feeding again?”

Catrin sighed against my chest. “Things go back to how they were. And, eventually… I don’t know. But I know I won’t stay the same. Laertes was right, I think. Whatever change is going to happen to me, it’ll happen soon.”

Her voice tightened. “I’m scared, Alken. Being like this, I can handle it. I can handle being the little monster. What if whatever ends up blooming like that bastard said isn’t really me? What if everything I am is just the dregs of that girl my parents buried?”

Her eyes tilted up to look at my face. “I don’t want to be like him. The Count, I mean. He’s so hollow. And… I feel like he’s been calling me a long time, Al. I’d never met him, barely knew the name, but when the Keeper asked me to bring you here I felt so scared. Like one of my nightmares had suddenly come to life.”

I cupped the back of her neck with my hand and rested my forehead against hers. “Monsters like Laertes aren’t born that way, Cat. He chose to be that, or was made into it.”

“What if I become like him?” Her voice sounded desperate.

“I’m no priest,” I told her. “I don’t know much about souls other than how to shape mine into a weapon. If you really are soulless, then…”

Her face fell, but I kept talking.

“Then I don’t care. I’ll treat you the same. This.”

I held her face with both hands, avoiding meeting her eyes directly, wary of hurting her in this moment. I stared at the bridge of her nose instead, her lips.

“This is the Cat I care about. I don’t care if there’s some glowing spark inside or not. God in Heaven, if I could be hollow I would. My soul has done nothing but burn me.”

“You don’t mean that,” she said softly, brushing my chin. As she did, an odd look came over her. Her eyes, such a dark red they were nearly black, seemed to swell. I felt a shudder of danger, part animal instinct. Her sharp nails, very much like claws, lingered on my skin.

“I need it,” Catrin said with something like a whine in her voice. “I feel so tired, Alken. I wanted to be strong, but—”

“You’re hurting yourself,” I told her. “Over something neither of us really understand. We will figure it out, but you can’t keep doing this.”

Something cracked in her expression. “It’s really alright?”

I set my jaw. “Just… leave me enough to stand. Can you do that?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Can you stop me if I go too far?”

I didn’t want to hurt her, and might need to if I had to stop this by force.

You’ll hurt her worse if she ends up killing you because you didn’t have the guts to be firm, I told myself.

“I’ll stop you,” I promised.

She hesitated a moment longer, torn with indecision.

“I’ve trusted you,” I reminded her. “Trust me, now.”

I saw her self control fracture. Perhaps that was cruel of me, but I would not let her kill herself over this fear. Was she a monster? Perhaps. But hardly a worse one than me. I still remembered what she’d told me that night of the festival.

I love you, Alken. I’m here for you.

I had spilled plenty of blood in my life. I could give some of my own to help someone I loved.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

We sat together on the bed. Catrin’s eyes were distant, unfocused. I brushed her hair back from one pointed ear and spoke in a gentle voice.

“Where do you want to do it?”

She licked her lips, the motion one of nervousness rather than anticipation. Her tongue looked oddly gray. Perhaps the dim lighting, but I wasn’t sure. Her hands reached out, cool fingers feeling at my wrist, my arm, my chest. Like a blind woman trying to memorize my features, she touched my neck and shoulders, traced the contours of my jaw. She did it all without looking at me.

Finally, her hand drifted back down to my left arm, sharp nails lingering above the elbow.

“Here,” she said. “Can it be here?”

The first place she’d taken from me. I smiled. “Sure.”

I had her lay down across my lap, so her body stretched across the side of the bed. Her white dress made the posture seem elegant, like a lady reclining for an artist’s brush.

I took a deep breath, flexing my fingers several times. I wanted to keep my heart calm.

“You don’t have to do this,” Catrin told me quietly. “I’d have caved at the inn before much longer.”

“Do you want it to be someone else?” I asked her.

Her face went steely. “No. I want your thoughts in my veins.”

I offered my arm. She took it, pulled the crook of my elbow close to her mouth, and inhaled deeply.

I tensed when she bit down. There was no numbness to it, no unnatural pleasure. It hurt, and kept hurting, but I made myself relax. Catrin remained gentle for some time, taking small gulps while her teeth applied only so much pressure as they needed to.

After a while, however, I felt her tongue pressing against the wounds with more force. She grew impatient, taking from me faster. When her jaws tightened, threatening to tear a more grievous wound than I felt strictly necessary, I muttered a warning. “Careful.”

She grunted, a frustrated sound, and dug her nails into my flesh as though wary of me pulling her prize away. I grit my teeth while she started to writhe along the side of the bed, the thin silk of her dress rustling as her legs slid together beneath the material. Her bare shoulder made slow, small circles as her whole body moved in time with her swallows.

I closed my eyes and waited, measuring my own heartbeat while she tasted its pulse.

Unexpectedly, Catrin pulled away on her own well before I would have made her stop. Free of her lips, a line of my blood ran down my forearm. But she didn’t look any better. Her red eyes blazed with unsatisfied hunger as she lifted herself into a seated position next to me.

“It’s not enough,” she growled in a furious voice.

“You can take more,” I said in confusion.

Her hand reached out to grasp me by the back of my head, and not gently. “That’s not what I mean.”

She pulled my face to hers in a fierce kiss. She tasted of my own blood. A life of violence had made me used to that taste, and I relaxed into the kiss at first. That is, until a bright flash of pain erupted in my lower lip.

I jerked back, taken off guard, but she followed me with aggressive fervor. I felt her tongue digging into my mouth, her teeth tugging at my cut lip, threatening to worsen the wound.

Frustrated, I grabbed her by the hair and dragged her away. She barely seemed to register it, her eyes wide and unblinking as they bore into mine with an almost mad lust.

“I want you inside me.”

I was breathing hard, pain throbbing through my lip with every beat of my heart. Catrin barely breathed at all. There was no flush on her cheeks, no pulse through her skin. She was still, focused. It unsettled me.

It did more than unsettle me.

Setting my jaw, I tugged at the cord belting her waist until it came free, then tossed it and her dagger to the floor. She undid the laces on my shirt with quick, practiced motions. Our movements gained haste, both of us impatient.

How had this happened? I’d meant to just let her feed on me, help her get some self control back. But then she’d kissed me, and…

To hell with it.

Such a strange damsel you have chosen to guard.

Vermin and maggots have had their way with her.

I needed to drown the Count’s voice out.

“You hear him too?” Catrin asked in a breathless voice. One of us, perhaps both of us, had gotten her dress hitched up. She straddled me, ready.

She had my blood in her now, and my thoughts. No point lying.

“I don’t care about him,” I growled.

Something fierce flashed in Catrin’s eyes. “Prove it.”

Her grip tightened. I thrust once to the sound of her sharp inhale. Our hands found each other, the fingers locking together as we moved at a fast increasing pace.

“You’re a bad knight,” Catrin told me, pressing her lips to my jaw. I felt her fangs brush against the bone, threatening to slice the skin.

“I know,” I grunted, heated and breathless.

“Good knights don’t do this sort of thing,” she hissed. “They don’t like this sort of thing.”

She’d smeared my blood across her lips, giving it a color that’d been absent before. Her skin was cold against mine, her eyes never blinking as they remained locked on my face. The light must have stung her, but it only seemed to enhance her focus.

I remembered her comment about pulpits. For some insane reason, it excited me.

Catrin snipped her teeth together barely a finger’s width from my lips. “You’re starting to get it.”

I glared at her. “Are you going to do it or not?”

In answer, Catrin pushed me onto my back. She poised there for a short while, her motions sinuous in their rhythm. Her fingers glided up my stomach, my chest, my neck. They were cool and dry, the sharp nails threatening to cut. A bead of sweat made its way down my brow as I waited, anticipating what came next.

She brushed the scars on my face, her touch lingering on them. When she spoke, her voice held an icy calm.

“I’ll make you forget about that bitch.”

Then she ripped my shirt open, leaned down, and sank her teeth into my chest.