Bloodchild Page 2

  He kept running past the edge of the woods. The trees, overgrown bushes, and the lack of light did not even begin to slow him down. He could see every low-hanging branch, could react with more agility than ever when his footing became insecure, and he could have run like that for the rest of the night, until the edge of Foh’Ran itself, maybe all the way to the Elven territory, if Aedan had not called out his name, not even bothering to raise his voice.

  “Bradan. Wait.”

  Bradan slowed down, then stopped. When he looked back, Aedan was a few yards behind him.

  “You never told me,” Bradan said with a grin, and at Aedan’s puzzled expression, finished his thought. “You never said how much fun this was.”

  Shaking his head, Aedan smiled ever so faintly.

  “On your first night, maybe. You’ll get used to it soon enough. It won’t be long before you stop noticing. Are you ready to hunt now?”

  Part of Bradan wanted to keep running, but the hunger inside him reawakened. Aedan had quelled it earlier by offering Bradan blood from his wrist, but it was back already, a presence within him that grew stronger with each passing moment and demanded that he find blood.

  “Is this anywhere close to where you fought that welfgar?” he asked, looking around, searching for movement in the underbrush. “We could hunt one of those and share it.”

  Aedan’s bark of laughter startled him, and Bradan’s eyes returned to him.

  “Not even awake for a full hour,” Aedan said, “and already you want to hunt a welfgar? How about you start with something that won’t tear you to shreds? There are rabbits nearby. Can you smell them?”

  Protests rose to Bradan’s lips. For one thing, he wasn’t a novice when it came to fighting. He’d never fought an animal as big and dangerous as a welfgar with his bare hands, sure, but the challenge of it would be as exhilarating as running had been. And then, there was the fact that a rabbit, or any other small animal, hardly seemed like it would satisfy his hunger. He’d need at least a dozen…

  His train of thought ended when his nose found a new scent. Can you smell them, Aedan had asked, and yes, Bradan could. He could also hear them, tiny shuffling sounds along with several fast, rhythmic beats. Heartbeats. His mind turned blank but for one idea: there was blood nearby. He needed to find it.

  Very slowly, he turned his head, trying to orient himself toward the sounds, aware that Aedan’s entire attention was focused on him. Bradan had questions for him, about what had happened with Rhuinn and about what it meant that Bradan was now a vampire. They were all important questions, and the answers might change a lot. At that moment, however, blood seemed more important than anything.

  More important even than Vivien, and that was a rather uncomfortable thought. Bradan tried to push it back to a corner of his mind where he wouldn’t have to examine it too closely.

  At the moment he localized the source of the tiny heartbeats, he heard something else. His head snapped to his right, and he could see that Aedan had heard it too.

  “What is it?” Bradan asked, as quietly as he could.

  “Ceash,” Aedan whispered back. He unsheathed one of the knives he carried and held it out to Bradan, hilt first. “Take left. I’ll take right.”

  Aedan started to move as soon as Bradan took the knife. His careful steps didn’t make a sound. Bradan tried his best to emulate him, but to his own ears every small twig breaking under his feet and every dried leaf crumbling to dust sounded as loud as thunder. The ceash, however, did not seem to be alarmed. The sounds of mastication continued; it was eating.

  A minute or two of tracking brought Bradan closer to the lake. He could feel it in the air, the humidity higher now, and small plops of water that might have been fishes jumping to the surface to catch insects. Finally, he could see the ceash.

  It was a tall male, its antlers long but with few branches as of yet; it was still young. It was tearing a long strip of bark from a tree, but suddenly its ears twitched and it turned its head, directly away from Bradan.

  Bradan could hear what had attracted the ceash’s attention: deliberately noisy steps. Aedan was trying to scare it off so that it’d flee away from him and right toward Bradan.

  It worked.

  The ceash leaped and started running, only a little to Bradan’s left. Without thinking, Bradan focused his will and tried to mold it in a long hunting spear. The shock of finding the Quickening out of his reach startled him so much that he allowed the ceash to pass by him.

  He’d channeled for more than half his life; realizing he couldn’t channel anymore slammed into him the reality of his situation even better than taking blood from Aedan’s wrist had.

  Cursing under his breath, he tightened his hold on the knife Aedan had given him and ran after the frightened ceash. Something coursed through him, elemental and raw: the thrill of the hunt, or the need for blood, or maybe both. It sharpened every one of his senses, until he could have sworn he could smell the ceash’s fear. It didn’t take him long to catch up with it. He lashed out at the animal’s back leg with the knife, wounding it though not mortally. A few more strides and he was level with the ceash.

  Abruptly, the ceash stopped running and turned toward Bradan, lowering its head to present him with its antlers. The second it started charging, a flash of silver flew through the night, catching the ceash in the neck. It fell with a braying cry, its thrashing slowly abating.

  As Aedan approached, Bradan’s head snapped toward him. He glared.

  “Why did you do that? I thought this was my hunt.”

  “Your hunt?” Aedan snorted. “An antler through the chest won’t kill you, but it won’t be pleasant, either. And you know Dame Vivien would blame me for it.”

  The fact that Aedan was right changed nothing. Bradan still felt irritated, and he was about to say so when the scent of blood filled his mind, erasing everything else. He turned to the ceash. Before he knew what he was doing, he was stepping toward it and falling to his knees right beside its neck, where blood was flowing past Aedan’s knife, staining the light brown coat of the animal dark red.

  “Don’t drink from the cut,” Aedan said in a low voice. “Extend your fangs and bite.”

  Bradan had already been leaning down to that blood, his head lighter with the thick, entrancing scent permeating the air. He barely understood Aedan’s words, let alone the reason behind them.

  “Why?” he asked, and was surprised when the word came out as a growl.

  “Because the sooner you learn to control your fangs, the better. For this, you can’t follow your instincts, or you’ll find that they extend at the smallest provocation whether you want them to or not. Now. Make a conscious effort to extend them.”

  Frowning at Aedan, Bradan shook his head. With blood so close, so enticing, it was hard to think—hard to understand Aedan’s directions.

  “I don’t know how,” he said.

  “Yes, you do.” Aedan knelt next to him. “Your body does. You only need to teach it to do what you want, not what it thinks is best. Close your eyes. Try to clear your head. Then focus on your fangs extending. It’s not all that different from focusing your emotions to channel.”

  The hunger tearing at Bradan’s insides caused his entire body to shake. It also urged him to disregard everything Aedan was saying and drink to take his fill of blood.

  Something else, however, kept him still and silenced the growl that tried to push up his throat. Aedan’s voice sounded oddly compelling. It reverberated inside Bradan, the words gaining strength until Bradan found himself closing his eyes and doing what Aedan had said.

  One second, he was sure he wouldn’t know how to extend his fangs but tried anyway; the next, his mouth felt different, and he pricked his own lips before he knew what had happened. When he opened his eyes, Aedan was giving him a faint smile.

  “It’ll get easier,” he said. “You’ll practice in a while. But first… You can feed.”

  Permission was all Bradan had been waiting for. He pl
unged for the ceash’s jugular, his mouth open wide, already salivating. His fangs sank in with the smallest amount of pressure, and at last blood erupted into his mouth, filling it, his mind, and his entire body with warmth, comfort, and strength.

  “Don’t drain it dry,” Aedan murmured, his hand resting on Bradan’s shoulder again. “The hunger will urge you to do it, but resist it. This time you have to make the conscious effort to stop. That’s the only way you’ll learn to control the hunger rather than let it control you.”

  The words made sense. Bradan realized that much. More than that, some raw part of him wanted nothing more than to obey, make Aedan proud, show him how good Bradan could be. Neither thing, however, made it any easier to listen and do what Aedan said. Nor was it near enough to control the all-consuming hunger that blazed through Bradan like a fire.

  “Try,” Aedan said urgently as Bradan continued to pull deep, messy mouthfuls of blood from the ceash. “I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to try, brother.”

  But Bradan was trying. His hands were clenched on the flesh of the ceash, and he tried with every ounce of strength of will he possessed to push himself away.

  He couldn’t, not until he’d drunk every last drop of blood the animal had to offer. Even then, even when he raised his mouth from that still warm neck, he only wanted more. He was a hunter. He was hungry. Surely it was normal for him to hunt again, tear into tender skin until blood and life bubbled forward to his lips, warming him from the inside out.

  The realization that it was a human neck he was thinking of sinking his fangs into—Vivien’s neck—was like a bucket of icy water drenching him to his very soul. His fangs retracted of their own accord. He turned wide eyes to Aedan.

  “How… How do I stop? You have to teach me. I can’t…”

  His throat tightened, and he couldn’t say another word. Aedan sighed.

  “I know,” he murmured. “I’m trying to teach you, but it all depends on you. It’s going to take time.”

  Time? Bradan mouthed the word. Since all this had started, time was the one thing they’d never had enough of, and while he had yet to hear what had happened with Rhuinn, he doubted it was any different now.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Changes

  Under the light of the moon, each ripple on the lake seemed magnified. Aedan’s emotions felt the same way.

  Sitting with his back to the slim trunk of a small tree, he watched Bradan by the side of the lake. He’d cleaned the blood off his face and neck, and was now washing his shirt.

  Blood stains wouldn’t show on the black fabric. Bradan had said so when Aedan had told him to wash off the blood. What Bradan didn’t understand yet was that it wasn’t about stains. The issue was the smell.

  After so many years, the scent of blood did not bother Aedan anymore, but he did remember his first days—his first years—as a vampire. Blood back then, whether the scent or sight, had always drawn out his fangs, made the hunger within him roar louder, and made it harder to resist his impulse to hunt and feed.

  It would take time for Bradan to learn to control the hunger and himself. The trouble was, they did not have time.

  Bradan rinsed his shirt one last time, then wrung it out and came back toward Aedan, barefoot, bare-chested, his pants rolled up almost to his knees. He looked different, and it had nothing to do with his appearance. It was all in the way he moved.

  That morning, he’d been human. Strong, agile, and graceful: a fierce fighter, but nonetheless human. Now, he was a predator, and he moved like it, each step secure, his body coiled as though ready to attack at any moment. Aedan wasn’t sure whether Bradan realized it yet, or even understood the depths of how he’d changed.

  For that matter, even knowing what he’d done, Aedan still had a hard time wrapping his mind around it. He watched the silver pendant on Bradan’s chest, absently touching his own through his shirt. After years of being twins yet different, they were back to being the same. That had never been part of their plan.

  “It doesn’t feel cold,” Bradan said, sitting down next to Aedan. “The water, I mean. Why doesn’t it feel cold?”

  With a shake of his head, Aedan pushed away the grim thoughts echoing through his mind.

  “Why should it?” He plucked a blade of grass and twirled it between his fingers. “Water only feels cold to a warm body. I’ve told you before when you warmed washing water for me that it wasn’t necessary.”

  He didn’t ask whether Bradan understood now; he knew he did.

  “I’ll never do that again,” Bradan murmured as if to himself.

  When Aedan gave him a questioning look, he shrugged.

  “Warm up water. Or channel. When we were hunting, I tried… I mean, I know I can’t channel anymore, but I just didn’t think. It felt so weird not to find the Quickening when I reached for it.”

  Aedan dropped his gaze to the blade of grass he held, only to realize he’d shredded it.

  Bradan had lost the Quickening, yes; Aedan had taken it from him. And even if the alternative had been death, Aedan knew from personal experience that the loss was shattering. They’d still been children when they had learned to grasp the Quickening and channel. It had become as normal, as instinctive as breathing. Aedan remembered it well.

  “It took me years,” he said, his voice even quieter than Bradan’s. “Years before I stopped trying to channel without thinking about it. It’s hard. But eventually, it gets easier.”

  He didn’t add that, even when he’d stopped trying to channel, he’d still felt the loss as acutely as ever. Bradan wasn’t even a day old; there was no reason to trouble him with what would happen in the next decades. The next few weeks would already be complicated enough.

  “How’s the hunger?” he asked, raising his gaze to meet Bradan’s again. Bradan’s eyes were still silver; they wouldn’t go back to blue for more than seconds at a time for months, maybe even more. Not until Bradan learned to control his hunger.

  “Never mind that,” Bradan said gruffly. “Tell me—”

  “I asked you a question,” Aedan cut in, his voice mild but bearing no contradiction. “I’ll be asking it a lot in the next months. And you will answer your—answer me when I do.”

  Answer your Maker, was what he’d been about to say. How many times had Ciara asked him the same thing in the two or three years after she’d turned him? It had taken that long before she trusted him around humans.

  Bradan’s eyes widened slightly before he inclined his head.

  “It’s better,” he said, “but it’s still there. I drained one ceash fully, and most of a second one. Is that… is that normal? It seems like a lot of blood. You don’t eat that much, do you?”

  Without thinking, Aedan looked to the side, where he’d dropped the body of the second ceash after carrying it out of the woods. Bradan had killed that one on his own, and they’d fed from it together. It was a fine animal, too fine to let its meat go to waste. They’d take it back to the castle for Doril to cook. It was smaller than the first one, but both combined had held far more blood than a human body.

  The issue wasn’t how much blood Bradan had drunk tonight. He could drain three more ceashes and still feel pangs of hunger. What his body needed, what it craved, was human blood.

  The one thing Aedan had to forbid to him.

  Thinking back about his own awakening, about Ciara explaining all this, Aedan considered using the same words to explain to Bradan, but he couldn’t make himself. Aedan had chosen this life for himself. He’d thought he knew what he was agreeing to. He’d been wrong, but at least the choice had been his to make. Bradan had not had any such choice.

  “You’re right, I don’t eat much,” he said instead. “But I used to. You’re going to be hungry just about all the time. Drinking from animals will help, but it won’t feel like it’s enough, not for a long time. So, when it gets to be too much, whenever it dulls your mind because you can’t think of anything else…” He drew up the sleeve of his shirt, much like he
had done earlier that night. “I want you to come to me. And tell me. Don’t wait for me to ask. Do you understand?”

  Bradan’s gaze was fixated on the bite marks visible on Aedan’s wrist. They were healed already, and would disappear within a day at most, but at the moment they were still very obvious on Aedan’s pale skin. After a few seconds, Bradan shook his head and looked away; it was clear that doing so cost him.

  “I can’t bite you every time I’m hungry,” he protested, his words rough. “Wouldn’t that weaken you? If I’m not at the top of my form, you should be. For our dame.”

  When Aedan let out a snort, Bradan’s eyes flew back to him, his brow already set in a deep frown.

  “So, what you want to do,” Aedan tried to sound teasing, but his voice came out too cold for that, “is guard her while you’re so hungry all you can think about is her blood. Oh, yes, that sounds like a wonderful idea.”

  “I’d never hurt…”

  Bradan’s voice and outrage tapered off when Aedan brought his wrist to his mouth and ran one fang where his skin was the thinnest. No more than a trace of blood beaded to the surface of his skin, but Bradan’s nostrils flared and, probably unconsciously, he started to lean forward.

  “You’d never want to hurt her,” Aedan murmured. “I never wanted to hurt anyone, either. But my first year as a vampire, I bit three humans. Came close to attacking nine more.”

  And without his Maker to stop him every time, he might have killed all of them without ever meaning to.

  Blinking several times, Bradan tore his gaze from Aedan’s wrist to look at his face instead.

  “Why… why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  Aedan shrugged, but his discomfort clung to him.