I woke up in the middle of the night to the creak of a door opening. The moon's reflection wavered on the lake and made everything pale. Edward was leaving the house and walking toward the water.
I watched him from behind the house. He reached the water's edge and stood there as the waves lapped against his feet. He held one arm out and prepared to cut it with a knife.
I sprinted toward him and grabbed the arm holding the knife. Edward didn't try to resist. I wasn't even sure he could.
"What are you doing?" I growled.
"My blood will spread through the lake, and the people here will ingest it over time. Slowly they'll become like you."
"People like me want to kill and eat you. You're a fool to make more of them."
"No. I would be making more like the ones from my home. They'll change into the way we used to be. You must have seen it before."
"I don't want more of them. A lot of good people lost their minds and were eaten to stop that."
"And they did stop it. No matter what I do I've already lost. It's spiteful, but there's nothing else I can do. So how about a deal?"
I pulled him away from the water. We sat down together under the ashes of my tree. Ordinarily I wouldn't have listened, but the gnawing in my stomach made it hard to think.
"You don't want to lose your mind, and I want to recreate my people. If you follow me I will let you eat one in ten. You'll keep your sanity until I can create a new world on earth. You'll have a place there where everyone will be like you."
I imagined it. I'd no longer be the outsider. I could live with my family again, and go back to being the butcher or whatever else I wanted. Annalisa could come out of her manor. Jon could meet with his son and find some kind of forgiveness. We'd rebuild into something new instead of imitating the past.
"It would never work," I said. "We'd devolve to eating each other so we wouldn't go mad."
For the first time since I'd met him Edward became angry. He stood up and balled his fists.
"It's not madness. You only call it that because you've never understood. For us conflict is language. Death is not the end but becoming part of another whole. When I am eaten I will have given my strength to a worthier being. There is no greater honor."
I released his arm. My claws had drawn blood but Edward didn't seem bothered. He stood the way a man would: not cowering in the slightest, even in my shadow.
"I'll give you an answer tomorrow," I said slowly. "If you try this again I'll put an end to it."
He smiled at me. My doubt was his certainty. Just putting the idea of a new life in front of me was enough for him to believe that he'd won. At that moment I felt like he might have.
Edward went back to the house. The blood from his arm dripped onto the grass. I looked down at the blood on my fingertips. It had the rocky smell from my visions. Before I could second guess myself I licked my fingers clean. The clouds in my head cleared just a little.
The next morning we went through our routine again. I followed behind Edward as he carried out his errands. The townspeople gave me dirty looks and whispered when my back was turned. It felt worse than it had the day before considering what I knew about Edward.
When the last fish was sold we began to head back to Edward's house. As we rounded the corner of a house we saw a small mob gathered.
A weaver named Ellie stepped forward. "Edward, come here. Step away from it."
Edward looked at me for a moment then moved to join the crowd. I was left standing alone.
"We've put up with you because you haven't hurt anyone, but that's changed now."
"I haven't hurt anyone, what are you talking about?" I asked.
"We've all seen the marks on Edward's arms, don't try to deny it."
Through the mass of bodies I could see Edward smirking at me.
I shook my head. "You don't understand. I'm more like you than he is."
A few of the townspeople laughed.
"You don't know a thing about us. Do you even know how to fish? Or the man who founded this village?"
"That isn't what makes me a person," I said. "I'm trying to save everyone, and he's trying to destroy you."
"Lies from a desperate monster. There's no place for you here so get out."
The cry for me to leave was taken up by the rest of them. I considered just walking away. They'd all turn and I could hunt them down one by one. Or one of them would be strong enough to kill and eat me. When I compared it to standing across from a mob of people I was trying to save, being eaten seemed preferable.
I turned and walked in the opposite direction. They jeered at me while my back was turned. Just that sound was more awful than my fight with the beetle or Annalisa had been.
I spent the next few hours on the other side of the lake. I stared at it as the sun's reflection moved from one side to the other. I smelled someone approaching, but didn't move as Edward sat down beside me.
"The demon you first ate was named Cervus. Back home he was a celebrated hunter. I knew him by reputation, but had never actually met him. I'd like to know why you first decided to eat him."
"It had been drilled into my head that eating demons was the right thing to do."
"Humans often know the right thing but act against it. Why would you carry out an act that you barely understood?"
I really sat there and thought about it. Looking back, eating Cervus was the defining bad moment of my life. Everything after that moment had been awful. Worse than that, it had all been preventable.
"I wanted to be more than just the butcher," I murmured to myself. "I cooked your friend because I thought eating him like an animal was beneath me."
Edward stood up. "You can't be both. You decided to be like us, so you might as well act like it."
