The Last Heretic

THE MONSTER'S LAMENT

He wiped his watery eyes with the back of his scaly hands as he sat on the floor of the little house, leaning against the creaky wall. A beam of sunlight snuck in through the hole in the front door left behind by Marcob's shotgun. The warm rays left a spotlight on the dusty rug in the hallway. A trail of warm, dark blood ran out of Ivan's forearm onto the hardwood floor. The shotgun wound was still fresh. It refused to heal any further on its own. The old man lay motionless on the floor in front of him. Ivan couldn't hear a pulse.

Dead.

The lizard sighed and reached over the old man's eyes, closing them, "I am sorry, Mr. Ruyen."

He glanced down the hallway and glanced at the hole in the door, "As soon as sun is down, I bury you next to wife."

He sat up and kneeled next to the old man's body, his fangs quivering as he stared at the corpse in front of him. He put his hand on Marcob's shoulder and bowed his head, muttering prayers to his gods. Prayers of good tidings to the man's soul in the afterlife. Prayers of thanks for the gods guiding him to this man and his information...mostly unharmed.

Prayers of repentance.

The man's neck ripped like the hardback cover of a book. The lizard's fangs tore deep into the flesh like knives as he crunched through the meat and muscle. Marcob's blood spurted out of the hole in his neck as Ivan thrashed away at the corpse for every drop he could get. The tendons in the body's neck snapped as the tears of shredding flesh echoed in the still and otherwise silent house. Streaks and splatters of scarlet splashed against the walls. The weak and frail old man's lifeless body writhed from the ferocity of the lizard's appetite. A puddle of red grew beneath the corpse's head. He pulled his face out of the mess of mangled flesh and slammed himself back against the wall gasping for breath. A vase rocked and fell off a shelf above him, shattering into a million pieces on the hardwood floor. Marcob's blood trailed down the lizard's face and onto the shirt under his leather jacket as he panted. The red drink soaked into his worn shirt. The scabbed hole in his arm slowly healed as fresh, leathery skin started to grow over the wound, sealing the shotgun's damage in a matter of seconds. The wound stopped bleeding. He watched as new scales began to form from beneath the skin. They crawled out from deep within the flesh of his arm as his cells regenerated right before his eyes.

Years of feeding on the blood of the living - and he still felt remorse. It was different than hunting some animal in the woods. The blood of animals was weaker. Diluted, he thought of it. That...and he had just been talking to this meal moments before. The old man had lived a full life before he got there: traveled, published, married. Loved, dreamt...cherished.

Lived.

The man had lived an entire library's worth of experiences rife with emotion and feeling. Happiness and anger, joy and fear, love and hate - he could taste such a life in the blood. Ivan wondered for a moment if the heart attack would've taken this poor man from this world if they hadn't met, but he pushed that thought away. There was no use imagining such things.

He looked over the hole shredded through his jacket sleeve. It would need some patching. He had some strips of scrap leather in a patch kit back at the inn along with his gun and travel bag. The lizard grumbled at his lack of planning regarding bringing such supplies this morning. He slowly stood up, the energy and life slowly returning to his starved and wounded body as the old man's rich and rejuvenating blood surged through his veins. No time for rest. Time to keep going. Time to follow the next lead.

Marcob's bedroom was dusty but simplistic. The bed was unmade. Papers and closed books covered the desk in their dusty mess. The dresser was adorned in woman's jewelry that was even dustier than the books. The lizard walked over to the desk and skimmed over the titles of the old tomes. Textbooks, entire volumes of the history of Efra - the country that predated Muilur - and a book on Rukkin anatomy. He spotted a familiar name printed on a book of Vorsun history and smiled.