“I am not jesting.” Sorin motioned to the latched basket. “I cannot explain this fully, but I…I have a gift, the old man told me. I can ‘manipulate,’ he said.”
And so can I, Benedikte thought, seeing before him a revealed brother, a soul worth clinging to. Joy speared through him, stronger than hunger, thicker than the blood with which he replenished his body.
“How is that?” the vampire whispered. “How do you…manipulate?”
Sorin spilled the information as easily as wine from the bottle. “I do not know. I…I lay a hand on the creature—small creatures, only small—and I think of what I would like them to be.” The human flushed. “It does not always succeed.”
“Have you performed your talents on a human?”
The young man’s gaze went dark, as if the mere notion frightened him. Benedikte knew that Sorin had mused about this possibility, yet had never attempted it.
“This is the reason you hide in the woods,” the vampire said softly. “Because of your great magic.”
Sorin drank again, a trail of wine trickling from the corner of his mouth as he pulled the bottle away. “My family disavowed me. There were whispers among the servants, then fear in my mother’s eyes. I had no choice but to deny the accusations, yet they cast me out. They…abhorred me.”
The fire snapped as Benedikte calculated the distance between him and the ruthless flames.
“Family,” he said, breaking eye contact and staring into the heat. He required the mind grasp no more. “I have not seen my family in…”
Yes, it had to be at least two centuries now. He had no concept of the year nor his whereabouts, but at least he knew this much. He had given life to no progeny and this agonized him most of all. His line was dead. Once, in an attempt to redeem himself and to quell the growing isolation, Benedikte had forced an exchange between himself and a Venetian noblewoman whose countenance recalled his bride, Tereza. She had screamed for hours afterward, and he had been compelled to silence her forever. He had never returned to his own pious wife; he had already become a creature she would have seen as an abomination, and he had ached too much for all the appetites his blood oath awakened to leave them behind for her sake.
Not that he could end it all. Once, and only once, he had tried and failed, even at the risk of the soul he no longer possessed.
After the death of Tereza, in search of a comforting balm, he had turned to blood, imbibing it, reveling in it until the liquid lost heat in his mouth. It was the only method that soothed the agony of knowing she had aged without him and passed into peace, just as their only son, dead out of the womb, had done.
Benedikte was truly alone. Or, at least, he had been.
Once more, he locked gazes with Sorin, a man who understood the anguish of being cast out just as well as he.
“I, too, have not seen my family in years,” the vampire said quietly. “I have traveled extensively, and I have been…remiss in visiting, I am afraid.”
The mention of travel lit Sorin’s eyes and, as the fire burned on, the two began to talk of travel: the splendor, the dangers. They chuckled together, comfortable, slipping down from their seats to the ground.
Soon, Sorin’s bottle was near empty. At a tale Benedikte told of a madman he had dined with in the town of Targoviste, the young man sprawled over the dirt in a fit of laughter, his coat now gaping to clearly show the long pistol.
Shaking his head while the gaiety trailed off, the sorcerer closed his eyes, sighed, and leaned back to rest his head on the wood. At the sight of his exposed neck, Benedikte’s veins thundered, a violent hunger cutting through him. He so desired a companion. He so wished to know this human’s secrets and to, perhaps, be animated by his touch and fulfilled by whatever magic he wielded.
All I want once more is to feel, the vampire thought. Did this man have the talent to alter his matter, just as he did with small animals? Could he imagine Benedikte with a soul again and make it possible?
Nimbly, Benedikte inched closer to the resting sorcerer. He settled by Sorin’s side, breathing him in, his body exploding with thrusts of a shared heartbeat. He sniffed upward, traveling the path of a vein. The scent of young skin whipped his mind, his yearnings, into a frenzy.
“I am thirsty now,” he whispered.
Eyes still closed, Sorin reached for the bottle, then flopped it toward his companion. “Then drink.”
So invited, Benedikte roared to a change, body scrambling into a powerful mist, fangs springing from his gums as he pounded forward in a blur. When he pierced a vein, the sorcerer jerked awake, mouth opening, body convulsing as the vampire sucked in deep gratitude.
Do not fear the years I will give you, Benedikte thought, feeling his words infusing themselves into Sorin’s head as his mouth and throat flooded with blood. So much blood, never enough, never, never…
Then it happened.