Deadly Assessments

by Drew Hayes

  “Why?” I pulled myself up from the ground, brushing the leaves and dirt from my clothes. “In your metaphor, what’s wrong with being the person who just doesn’t drink? I agree that avoiding this feeling is important, but staying fed seems like the safest way to keep that from ever being an issue.”

  Something old and dangerous flashed in Deborah’s eyes as she watched me, something that made me involuntarily take a step back. “You are . . . so young. So accustomed to this world of yours. Hospitals and blood banks and the Agency, all there to provide for your needs. This country, where parahumans have rights and options like delivered blood, isn’t even three hundred years old. Do you understand, can you fathom, how long that is to someone with my perspective? It’s nothing, Fred. Nothing. Barely an afternoon. You think those systems will provide for you indefinitely because you lack the wisdom of experience. The world changes, countries fall, and we persist. You cannot count on conveniences or alliances to provide for you. You can only count on yourself. Someday, sooner or later, you will have to deal with the Hunger. Better now, when you have a teacher to guide you and no humans for miles, than in the middle of a crowded city, watching the veins throb in the necks of every passerby.”

  The shiver that went down my spine had nothing to do with the chill of the night air or the lingering pain in my body. Ordinarily, I could have brushed her words aside, but tonight, I could see the images she described—the veins and necks in particular, filled with hot, potent blood. I almost gasped at the vision, so badly did part of me want to make it real. Whether she was wrong or whether she was right about what the future held, I couldn’t deny that what Deborah had described was possible. Not aging meant that I had to take a long-term view of things, and with the life I led, there was a very real chance I could end up like this, hurt and lacking blood . . . only, in normal circumstances, the people nearby wouldn’t be older vampires I couldn’t hold a candle to: they would be my friends.

  Or worse, normal humans.

  If this need, this Hunger, was part of me, then understanding it might save someone’s life further down the line, someone whose sole sin would have been trusting a vampire.

  “Maybe you’re right. No, you’re definitely right, at least about being able to control myself when the need for blood is so great. But I don’t want to . . . I won’t hurt humans to feed myself. Buying blood is one thing, killing is another.”

  “I’m not asking you to kill anyone,” Deborah informed me. “In fact, I’m not asking you to do anything. The lesson has already begun. From here on, the path you choose is up to you. I’m around to answer questions, offer information, and keep watch to see how you fare. How you pass the test is entirely in your hands.”

  “And what is my test, exactly? Aside from injuring me, you’ve given little indication as to what I should do.”

  From her pocket, Deborah produced a small watch and threw it over to me. I snatched it from the air and looked it over. So far as I could tell, it was just a regular timepiece. Still, I slipped it onto my wrist, just to be safe.

  “The test is simple, Fred. It’s the test all vampires have been handed since the first of us was created: survive. You’re stuck in the wilderness, severely under-nourished, and there’s approximately six hours left until sunrise. All you have to do is not die.”

  3.

  Daunting a task as that proposal seemed given our current circumstances, I was no stranger to overwhelming work. The trick was to break it into manageable chunks, handling things one step at a time. Keep perspective; don’t let yourself get bowled over. Those were the platitudes that ran through my mind as I tried to retain a cool head.

  My first task had to be food. The cravings hitting me were too intense to ignore, and each one was a little harder to push away than the one that came before. Remaining in this condition risked compromising my sense of reason. That was an asset I couldn’t afford to lack in such a situation, especially when there was a real chance I might have to find shelter to wait out the sun. Hungry Fred might not be smart enough to stay in the shade through an entire day.

  The obvious answer would have been my flask, but that was gone with the rest of my backpack—Deborah had made sure to strip me of my gear before she’d knocked me out of the car, evidence yet again of her ability to think more steps ahead than I cared to consider. I might be able to climb back to it eventually, though it was likely she’d not allow me to drink. Her opinions on self-reliance and lack of tools for this lesson had been made abundantly clear. Even if that weren’t the case, I was looking at a long, steep climb that would offer no chances to eat nor anywhere to shelter from the sun. If I was at full strength, I might have been fast and sure enough, but going for the car now was an all-or-nothing move. I disliked such options; there were usually smarter ways to tackle a problem.

  Rustling noises hit my ears, a reminder that Deborah and I were hardly alone in the forest. Expanding my senses didn’t take effort; in fact, it was the opposite. Keeping my selective attention focused was the harder option. I let the information flow into me. Sounds, smells, sights of shadowy figures bounding through the brush. The more I listened, the more alive the woods became. Amidst the flora were a few sizable bodies, bodies large enough to have big, strong hearts pumping plenty of blood. Only . . . I didn’t know if I should eat those. I wanted to—the sound of pumping blood drew a fresh scream from my stomach—but moving without thought would just make my troubles worse.

  “You said you were here to offer guidance, answer questions. Does that mean I can ask you anything?” If Deborah really was here to teach, it would be idiocy not to lean on her for knowledge.

  “I can offer information, just not solutions,” she replied. “For example, if you wanted to know whether vampires can cross running water, I would say yes, but I wouldn’t tell you how to get over a river.”

  “Got it.” The arrangement was limited, yet better than I’d dared hope for. I had plenty of vampire questions, not all of them related to our immediate situation. Those could come later; right now, my priority was food. “Can vampires drink animal blood? I mean, obviously we can do it, we’re physically stronger, but will doing so—”

  “I’m not a djinn, Fred. I’m not going to screw you on the subtext. Your question came through loud and clear.”

  Deborah was at my side in seconds, standing with me, seeing and hearing the exact same things I did. “To answer your question, yes, we can eat animals. However, there are reasons that we don’t, as a rule. Taste, for one. Whatever it is about our bodies that makes human and parahuman blood taste so good, the same power does not extend across the animal kingdom. It’s tolerable, better than it should be, but by no means can one compare it to the real thing. That’s just flavor, though. The bigger problem is nutrition.”

  Something moved in the trees ahead, something big. Maybe a wolf. Maybe a deer. It was impossible to say from so far off. The growl of Hunger that rose in my throat, on the other hand, was unmistakable. I couldn’t imagine staying like this for an entire day. Then I remembered that the Turva clan used to punish Lillian by making her go for weeks without blood, and I gained a whole new understanding of just how cruel those bastards were.

  “Think of animals like donuts, and humans like oranges. You can have either one for breakfast, but one is far more nutritious than the other. That said, you can subsist off donuts, if you eat enough of them.”

  “Got it. Conservation of effort. Draining animals gets you less results and less enjoyment than drinking from humans. So it’s not something a vampire would do in an ideal situation, but in a pinch . . .”

  I wasn’t looking, but I could hear her neck move as she nodded. “In a pinch, we are like humans. We eat what we must to survive.”

  Nearby, a squirrel ran up a branch. My hands started to reach out on instinct, but I stayed them. Conservation of effort. Getting that squirrel would require climbing and chasing, only to pay out with a relatively small amount of blood. If the nutrients were lacking, I’d hav
e to make up for it in volume, which meant exerting myself for only the prey that would provide more energy than they cost me. Deborah’s hit to the tree had demonstrated my problem well: the more power I used, the more the Hunger grew. It was a delicate balancing act of quenching my thirst without losing control.

  My eyes closed; vision wasn’t important right now. I needed to hear. Something with footsteps, heavy enough to register over an unseen distance. Something with enough body mass to work up a good funk, the kind my nose could sense. Tracking was a skill I’d barely had any practice with, yet to my surprise, it seemed to come naturally. This low on blood, I was closer to my vampire mind than I’d ever been before, a razor thin margin of discipline the only thing keeping us separate. But that part of me, the piece that had invaded along with the fangs and pale skin, knew exactly how to hunt. This wasn’t like back in the city, in my first and only attempt to be a proper vampire. I wasn’t conflicted, or scared, or uncertain about what I’d become. I was Hungry.

  Dimly, in the part of my brain that had been tamped down by the Hunger, I realized that if not for my blood contact at the hospital, I would have reached this point long before now. It would have happened while I was in the city, surrounded by people. The cravings would have set in until I was overwhelmed by them, and it was easy to imagine what would have happened next. Maybe that was how most vampires learned to eat. Maybe that was why they grew so cavalier about killing.

  I was running before I’d even registered I’d found a target. My instincts were already slipping beyond my control, like a bike beginning to wobble before a crash. Still, I kept moving, my feet willing themselves along the ground at a near blur. I had no idea where I was going, or what direction I was even heading in. I just knew was that something with a strong heartbeat was in front of me, and I needed to find it.

  All at once, I came to a stop. There, in a small clearing, stood an old wolf chewing on the remains of a small animal I could no longer identify. For a fleeting moment, fear gripped my heart; what if it was a therian? Even if we knew one another, in a situation like this, things might escalate to violence without warning. The wolf turned to me, his eyes burning, but simple. Just a wolf, then, no flicker of intelligence beneath the beastly facade. His thin form and visible ribs were also signs of normality; no therian would end up so starved in a forest full of prey. The bigger problem, however, was that he’d seen me, and I no doubt looked far more appetizing than the worn morsel in his muzzle.

  I’d never killed anything before, outside of a stray bug or spider that made it into my home. It wasn’t an issue in my everyday life, and I certainly didn’t seek out such action. However, I had eaten plenty of meat in both my life and after, so it wasn’t as though I hadn’t subsisted on the lives of others. The difference was that, this time, there was no middleman. If I wanted to fill my belly, I would have to be the one who did the deed.

  In truth, I might have turned away in that moment, used the last of my willpower to back out of the clearing, except I knew the wolf would follow. I wasn’t the only predator in these woods. He was clearly hungry, too, so hungry he was likely suppressing the instincts that should be alerting him to the danger of what I was. My shape might be human, but the wolf would know that I was more than that. Animals were attuned to danger; they hadn’t dulled their instincts the way humanity had.

  Regardless of what the wolf must have sensed, it bared its teeth and advanced, ready to bet its life on the fight rather than languish in hunger. With a flurry of movement, the wolf bounded toward me.

  Forgive me, dear reader, but I’m afraid I have little to offer in the way of details from our skirmish. The principle issue is that I was not fully in my right mind at the time, and when I think back to that moment, all I see are flashes of images—none of which are the sort of pictures I would describe in details to others.

  The end result was that I won, obviously. When I snapped back to my senses, I was crouched over the wolf, my fangs pressed into its neck, slowly draining away its life force. A voice was calling to me. A familiar one, one I recognized, one I knew it was dangerous not to heed.

  “—enough. Fred, I said that’s enough. I can’t pull you off the wolf; that defeats the purpose. You have to do this. You have to stop yourself.”

  Blinking, I looked up from the wolf’s still panting body to find Deborah standing a few feet away, speaking in a calm, measured voice. Surprise, perhaps shock, danced in her eyes as she saw me react, saw me pull away from the animal still within my grasp. “I’m sorry,” I replied, “were you saying something? I seem to have . . . lost focus.”

  “I was telling you to stop drinking.” She watched me carefully, then tapped on the side of her neck. “Lick the wolf’s wound; use your tongue and lots of saliva. When we feed, our bodies go wild. Part of that is the amplification of our regenerative abilities. Seal that wound with your spit, and there won’t be a trace of it within the hour. This is how vampires feed without killing. This is how we’ve subsisted among the humans for so long.”

  My mouth didn’t want to lick. It wanted to bite, to drink, to keep going until the wolf was an empty husk. Instead, I did as I was told, carefully licking the wound, working hard to ignore the taste of fur. No wonder animals were considered a last-ditch effort. As I rose, I noticed that one of the wolf’s legs was broken. Our scuffle hadn’t been a gentle one, it seemed. “What about the leg? Can I heal that?”

  “Unlikely. An older vampire might be capable of healing it with saliva, assuming they’d just had an excellent helping of blood, but that’s a lot more than a pair of fang wounds. You can kill it, if you’d like. The point isn’t to save the wolf’s life; I needed to teach you about pulling back midway through a feeding. Marshalling your thirst is among the most important fundamentals a vampire must master.”

  Laying on torn-up grass, the wolf panted in pain. It hadn’t been in great shape before, and losing unknown pints of blood to me certainly hadn’t helped matters. He would have killed me, had our roles been reversed. I knew that instinctually, and I couldn’t blame him for it. If Deborah hadn’t arrived, there was a very good chance I’d have killed him, too. It was the way of the nature, of animals: one had to kill if they wanted to eat.

  Regardless of what that part of my brain wanted me to think, however, I was not an animal. I was a person. A parahuman, yes, but that still came from the root word of “human.” The wolf would have killed me, but that didn’t excuse me from the burden of trying to be better than a wild beast.

  Crouching down, I looked him square in the eyes. “Don’t bite me. I’m not sure I can control how I’ll react yet.” With no idea if the creature understood, I reached down and cradled it in my arms.

  “What are you doing?” Deborah seemed uncertain of my action, watching me warily as I lifted the wolf from the ground.

  “Taking him with us. I’m sure someone in Richard’s employ knows enough to help mend a malnourished wolf with a broken leg. Unless you’re going to tell me that’s against the rules?”

  “There are no rules, Fred. There are only guidelines established by the powerful. If you’re strong enough, you can ignore them. The only rules, the only limits, are what we can accomplish.” She stepped over to us, gently running a hand along the wolf’s fur. “I’m glad you’ve chosen to haul a wounded animal around with us, though. It provides an objective example of the very reason I decided to provide this lesson: you overestimate yourself, and you act as though you have more power than you do.”

  A gurgle rose from my stomach before I could ask for clarification. The Hunger was weaker this time, more manageable, but still there. I wasn’t full yet. I had hunting left to do, and I was going to try to accomplish this feat with a wounded source of blood in my arms.

  “That, in my view, is your fundamental problem,” Deborah continued. “You are kinder than you have the strength to be.”

  4.

  I wrapped the wolf’s leg with torn denim from the left ankle of my jeans, more to suppress the s
cent of blood than out of any illusion that it would help. My stomach already ached for more, despite how much it felt like I’d drunk. Deborah was right: animal blood didn’t satisfy the same way the human stuff did. With all the damage she’d inflicted, I might need to drain a moose to feel fully recovered. That could come later, though. Wrapping the leg would weaken the scent of wolf’s blood, allowing me to find new sources, ones I could drink from without injuring, hopefully.

  As I worked, Deborah did a quick turn of the area. Maybe it was to see where she would hide if the sun came up before we finished; maybe it was to leave me alone with my thoughts. I was beginning to see the futility in trying to understand her methods. Sooner or later, she’d explain them if she so chose. This wasn’t a mystery; it was an education she’d imparted before. Countless, unknowable times before, in fact.

  Deborah reappeared just as I finished up the wrappings. “Don’t name the wolf.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “You’re the sort who would name the creature in this situation. Don’t. If you kill it, that will only make you feel worse.”

  It was a fair point to raise, albeit not one I wanted to hear in the moment. “You think this is silly, don’t you? I’ve gotten a good sense of how most vampires view things like kindness and mercy.”

  “They think kindness is weakness.” To my surprise, there was a touch of sadness in Deborah’s tone as she stepped to my side, using a careful hand to pet the wolf’s flank. “Forgive them someday, if you can. They are still so new to this world, so very raw. They will learn, in time. Those that survive, anyway. And no, Fred, I don’t agree with those views. In my opinion, kindness is, in fact, the very opposite of weakness. Kindness is a display of strength.”