Eternal Hunger

Untitled Part 1

                                                                        CHAPTER ONE

London, 1860

"You're the angel of death," the woman on the bed whispered.

The lass was young, no more than twenty, and deathly ill. Her red hair was soaked with sweat and matted to the coarse hospital sheets. He could see the fever burning in her eyes.

St. Dymphna's Charity Hospital. It was where beggars, whores, and London's impoverished came to die, away from the delicate eyes of society. It was also an ideal feeding ground.

"No. I'm not. I give you my word," Malcolm MacRoyce whispered as he took her wrist in his hand. It wasn't the first time a feverish patient had mistaken him for a demon. The assessment wasn't too far off.

"Then who?" she whispered.

He didn't answer. No point in further delay. He felt the stirring of another patient behind him. He had to be quick. He gently covered her mouth with his hand while he brought her wrist to his own mouth and bit.

She gasped, the sound muffled against his palm. The flow of her blood past his lips was slow and erratic. Weak. He grimaced at the unwholesome taste and steadily drew more of her into himself, seeking to remove the disease thriving in her blood.

The girl's breath misted against his palm. Her gasp of fear had turned into something quite different. Her body went limp, and she sighed with pleasure.

The memory rushed over him before he could check himself: Another girl, ages ago. Blond hair instead of red covering the pillow. Her unusual eyes stared up at him as she moaned softly into the darkness while he lay above her.

He shut his eyes against the memory and drew deep on the wound, shuddering at the taste of poison. By drinking the blood of the sick and replacing their diseased blood with his own, he could often cure them. Once he'd realized this, he'd felt obligated to make this the only way he fed. It was the one consolation in an eternity of punishment. The only way he could feed without the guilt.

But drinking the blood of the sick was not without consequences. He was slowly poisoning himself. Perhaps the world's slowest form of suicide.

He released the woman's wrist and covered the wound with his hand to staunch the bleeding. He then savagely bit into his own wrist and brought it to the girl's mouth.

"What?" she gasped.

"Medicine."

A drop of his blood touched her lips, and she tasted him, too feverish to realize what she was doing. After a moment, she began to take greedily, small gasps of pleasure escaping her in between her suckling.

"Enough." He pulled his wrist away after a moment. She moaned with disappointment but was too weak to resist. He dared not risk any more: too much would mean a curse rather than a cure.

And he would never curse another to his fate.

She lay back on the cot with her eyes closed, her breath steadying and her fever beginning to break. Malcolm stood, a little unsteady. Her diseased blood was already affecting him.