Darkness enveloped me, tomb-black. It wasn’t the familiar darkness of a starry night on sentry duty, the kind where your eyes adjust and pick out the shapes of trees, the glinting light on a rifle barrel. No, this was heavy, suffocating blackness that pressed down and smothered me. I drifted in this oubliette dream, untethered from my mortal coil, somewhere between life and death.

  Memories came unbidden, cutting and cruel, a shrapnel blast tearing through my mind. Micah’s face, pale and terrified, mouth open in a silent scream. That horrible sound, the sickening crunch of bone and spray of blood. Julien’s eyes, cold and dead as polished stones, whispering promises of vengeance. The searing pain, a white-hot brand pressed into my neck. Then that taste, impossibly sweet, vital, and strong, a forbidden vintage pressed to my lips. It felt so wrong. Utterly wrong.

  That thought lingered. That wrongness stirred something. A flicker of defiance. I needed to act, to move, to survive. My senses returned, not gently, but in a rushing burst. Awareness assaulted me. First, the cool slickness of the mud, caked against my cheek, partially filling my nose and mouth. I tasted damp rot. Then my hands, clenched into fists, buried in the muck. Rain still fell, a rhythm gentler than the earlier downpour, rinsing the grit from my face.

  I tried to rise. My arm trembled, my back spasmed, dropping me back in the mud with a wet slap. Pain flared everywhere. A bone-deep ache where Julien had slammed me against the wall, a throbbing fire in my throat where his grip had dug into my flesh, a dull pounding behind my eyes. I tried to relax my body and steady myself for another attempt, but the moment I stopped focusing on the agonizing pain, I was overwhelmed by my senses.

  My head swam, pummeled by a flood of sensations I couldn’t parse. The taste in my mouth was so much more than rotting plant matter: ash, dirt, that heinous sweetness from Julien’s veins. The taste of ash triggered the smell. The smoky stench of burnt timber crashed into me, choking and gagging.

  I jerked my head to look at the pyre that had been my brother’s cabin, our home. The blackened skeleton rose from a pile of ash and rubble in the predawn gloom. Charred timbers clawed at the sky; soot-covered fingers reaching from the grave. It still stood, at least partially, a testament to Micah’s insistence on using thick timbers and the soaking storm. That was perhaps the only reason I wasn’t a pile of ash myself.

  Rain dripped in fat drops from the redwood boughs that swayed high above; each drop was a hammer striking an anvil, sharp and distinct. The breeze through the limbs howled between the hammer strikes.

  I couldn’t lie there any longer. I pushed myself to my knees, spitting grit. By habit, I wiped my muddy hands on my ruined trousers, a pointless gesture. The rain rinsed the soot from the air, clearing the way for other smells: damp earth, wet pine needles, the faint iron tang of blood, and something else. Beneath the cloying scent of burnt wood, the sickly smell of meat left too long in the sun. Rot and decay had just set in.

  Grief tried to surface, a cold grip on my heart. Micah. But it felt distant somehow. Muffled, filtered through a wall in a neighboring room. Something else was rising in me, a creeping poison or an infection, pushing aside the clamor of my overwhelmed senses.

  A hollowness gripped me. It radiated from my chest. No, deeper. From a heart that had stopped beating yet still screamed to be filled. A fathomless void where my lifeblood had been, replaced with desperate, clawing starvation. The Thirst. It would not, could not, be ignored.

  It blazed hot, eclipsing everything else. The aches, bruises, the crushing weight of loss, the lingering shock, all faded to a dull roar beside this singular primal force demanding satisfaction. Drink. The command wasn’t a thought but an imperative whispered in my skull, insistent as artillery thunder.

  Driven by a force I didn’t comprehend, I pushed myself to my feet. My body screamed in protest, muscles spasming, joints grinding. The ground lurched sideways, the world spinning, tilting. Stars bloomed behind my eyes, and the phantom grip seized my throat again. The Thirst was a relentless taskmaster, driving me forward.

  “Water,” I croaked, the sound alien, rough as dry leather. My tongue felt swollen and useless. I spat again. Grit and dust. I stumbled toward the scorched rain barrel near the ruined barn, putting one foot in front of the other, marching through hell.

  I leaned over the barrel, the wood still warm despite the rain. The water was shockingly cool. I splashed it on my face, but it did nothing to clear my spinning head. I dipped my head and drank deeply, gulping it down. It felt wonderfully cool, rinsing the tastes from my mouth, but it did nothing for the need within me. Useless.

  The hollowness didn’t relent. The Thirst came back hard, insulted. It clawed at me, a frantic, desperate edge to its silent howl. I tried to clamp down on the panic, to summon the Cold Iron discipline, but the Thirst shattered my fragile focus.

  Then a thought came unbidden, ancient, predatory; a beast circling my mind. Blood, the voice whispered, a dark echo of my own. Not water, fool. Hot, living blood.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  It was the Instinct, more than a thought, a presence. A hostile parasite coiling at the base of my skull, driving me to kill. The thing whispered with my own voice and growled with my throat. It didn't suggest; it commanded. And part of me wanted to obey.

  The revulsion was immediate. But a cold, soldierly part of my mind recognized the logic. The Instinct was monstrous, yes. It was also trying to keep me alive.

  "The enemy of my enemy…" I rasped. I wasn't certain which of us had spoken.

  I staggered away from the barrel, angry at the futility. The senses rushed back; every sound a hammer, every smell a blade. I couldn't hold focus. Dizzy, nauseous, hollow.

  Aimless but driven to move, to do something, I stumbled back toward the blackened skeleton of the cabin. What now? Where could I go? What could I…

  My eyes caught on the shape slumped by the path. Micah. Still, unmoving, covered in mud.

  My gut clenched, cold and heavy as lead. A riptide of grief threatened to pull me under. His face lingered in my mind, not the terrified mask of his final moments, but the bright, hopeful face of the boy I’d left behind. So full of hope. Not this. Not broken in the mud; discarded refuse. This was my fault. I should have protected him. Should have fought harder.

  Irrelevant now. Survive. Feed. The Instinct snarled, shoving the unwanted grief aside. Its gaze lingered on the body, considering it.

  Revulsion choked me. I stumbled away, recoiling from the monstrous thought, from the horrific thing inside me that could even consider it. No. Never. Never that.

  The hollowness remained, an endless ache. The unyielding starvation clawed, frantic, desperate. Panic gripped me, pushing me forward. What had Julien done to me? What was I? Just craving and impulse? I needed blood more than anything. More than air, more than reason, more than honor.

  My head snapped east, not a conscious thought but a primal reaction; the Instinct guiding me. A scent on the wind? No, something dangerous. A feeling. A change was coming. Peering through the towering silhouettes of the redwoods, it emerged. A deep, bruised purple stain on the horizon, bleeding upward into a pale, sickly pink. Dawn.

  Primordial fear gripped me, colder and darker than anything I’d felt on any battlefield. My mind screamed. Danger. Death comes. Hide now.

  I needed shelter. The root cellar was the only option. I could hide there. Refuge in darkness. The Instinct hissed.

  I turned, scrambling back toward the wreckage of the cabin, urgency lending vigor to my battered body. I had to get underground. Had to solve this problem, slake this all-consuming need.

  Halfway across the yard, through a gap in the canopy, the first golden ray of dawn sliced through the gloom. The beauty of dawn peering through the forest had been one of my favorite things about living in the West. Nowhere I’d been could match the way the trees filtered the light into a dazzling display.

  The shaft of light struck my outstretched hand, a white-hot brand. Pain. Immediate and absolute. Agony beyond comprehension. Not the clean burn of a fire or the tearing agony of a gunshot. This was a dissolving agony as if the light were pure lye, eating away my flesh, annihilating me fiber by fiber. The sunlight catalyzed with the corrupt Vitae in my veins, unmaking the unnatural.

  A scream tore from me, raw, inhuman, unrecognizable as my own. The Instinct and I screamed in unison, an unearthly cry that echoed off the trees. I snatched my hand back, staggered. Smoke curled from the blackened ruin of my fingers. Skin blistered and burst, sloughed away in greasy grey tatters, revealing wet red muscle and bone beneath.

  The sun. Poison. Forbidden. Anathema. This unholy curse of sunlight.

  I fell backward, scrambling away, shielding my face like a green recruit facing artillery fire for the first time. Another ray touched my boot and found a tiny tear in the leather. Smoke billowed out. The flesh beneath erupted in that same consuming, unmaking fire.

  The curse was absolute, unrelenting, fatal. My terror wasn’t rational anymore. It collapsed into pure, shrieking panic, wanting only to flee. Survive, it urged.

  I launched myself through the ragged remains of the windowpane, oblivious to the screams tearing from my throat. The sickening, sweet stench of my own cooked flesh filled the air, but none of that mattered.

  The cellar door lay across the room, built into the floor. I had to get there. The sun climbed, inching higher, pressing down, a physical weight even through my thick duster. Smoke poured from the coat. My shoulders scorched.

  The boards that were once the cellar door were scorched and flimsy. I dove headfirst through them, tumbling down the short flight of earthen steps, not caring how I landed. The hard-packed floor didn’t give, but I was beyond caring about mundane injuries. I scrambled frantically, found the deepest, darkest corner of the small room. Shrank away from the pale, mocking rectangle of growing light at the entrance.

  I huddled there, shaking, trembling, cradling the ruined, smoking remains of my hand against my chest. It reminded me of the way Julien had pulled me close when I was dying, but I banished the thought. The smell of burned meat and scorched leather filled the confined space.

  I lay curled on the floor, trying to reckon with the warring pains within me. My body was a ruin, but even that agony couldn’t silence the relentless, gnawing ache deep within. The Thirst never rested. It demanded. How could I reckon with these impossible forces?

  Trapped, burned, half-mad with hunger, I stared at my ruined hand. I wasn’t Silas Hatcher anymore. I wasn’t the Captain who rode with Sherman. I wasn’t the man who came west seeking peace. That man died along with his brother.

  I wasn’t even a man. I was a monster, a creature of the night. Utterly, devastatingly alone.