The Hunt

Chapter 32

Alesco:

I hear the dart before I see it. My eyes are firmly on my father's face. He is my father, yet he isn't. I hear the pounding of his heart, smell his fear, his face is red from exertion. He is nothing like he was as a vampire and yet he is distinctly him. It is confusing, yet I feel a gladness that I am with him again, that I know he is safe and alive. The darkness lifts from me again, like a rising cloud.

A look crosses my father's face, terror or dread or shock. At the same time, I hear the master's voice fill my head. "No!"

I glance to the side too late. I hear the wooshing noise of the feathered dart and glimpse it rushing through the air just before I feel the sharp jab of its needle strike my chest, sinking into the flesh. For a moment I am disoriented, confused. What just happened? I glance down at the feather sticking out, shaking slightly from the impact and I lift my hand to pull it free. My hand does not respond, does not lift. Instead, it hangs limply at my side.

I feel burning now, moving out from my chest, spreading quickly through my body. It's a burning pain like fire in my veins. A hot and furious poison, reaching for every corner of my body. I fall backwards as the agony consumes me, driving all other thoughts from my mind, all other concerns, all other impulses.

I hit the ground and my body starts to thrash and twitch, writhing. I feel the burning heat fighting my natural cold. The fire colliding with the ice, backwards and forwards in battle, vying for control.

The heat is flowing through my veins like blood, as though I am alive. I feel it reach my heart and feel the long-dead muscle straining against it, rejecting it, as though driven to stay frozen and still. I feel other battles and other changes all over, every corner of my body being transformed, yet resisting the transformation. It is pain beyond anything I have felt or imagined.

It rages on, a war within. I do not know how much time has passed. But now thoughts are returning. Ideas. I remember father  is here, and Wynn and Darren and Mother. The image of my human mother, as I saw her in the mirror of the master, flashes through my mind. I feel the heat lessen, feel it merging with the coldness, tentatively at first as though my body and the poison of the dart are treating for peace, looking for concilliation. Warmth is born. The burning has ended. I feel the cold and I feel the heat, all over. My heart gives a single thump and something courses through me, moving like a stream.

Another thump and the stream continues. I concentrate, the pain ebbing, dissipating, leaving me with each heart beat. Something feels strange. I know the dart should make me human. Look at my father. My heart is moving and my veins are flowing, but it doesn't feel complete.

I move my tongue, licking where my fangs should be. I feel the sharp, pointed teeth, right where they were. What is happening?

I open my eyes. My heart gives another thump. It is beating, but not enough, not like the other humans. My vision is clear. I concentrate my hearing and I hear hearts and breath and mutterings. My senses are as strong as ever they were, or more.

"How can it be, Alesco? You are unchanged!" I recognise my father's voice, he's crouching next to me, looking at me with sweat on his brow and a worried expression on his face.

"She has changed. Hear her heart!" The master says.

"Yet she remains unchanged. Look at her, her yellow eyes and pale skin." My father answers him.

Something has changed. I am different. I feel the warmth flowing through my veins, feel the occasional thump of my heart. Yet my fangs are as they were, I feel like me. I am me. Though the  darkness that had been clouding me is lifted, I am as I was before we came.