986 BC was the year that I discovered the true meaning of immortality. It was not the afterlife that my Pharaoh believed in but a dark gift given to those deemed worthy by the creature murdering them.
I was worthy, though I did not know the man who killed me and then granted me my afterlife.
I was left to discover my terrible power alone.
“Brother? Is that you?”
Hyperion pushed the rickety door closed and leaned heavily against it, causing the old wooden beams to strain under his weight. He sighed and swallowed. His mouth was drier than the desert outside and no matter what he drank, nothing quenched his thirst. It only made him feel sick.
“It is I,” he said and wearily moved to a low stool beside the cooking pot. He stared at the bubbling contents. The sight of it turned his stomach.
His eyes automatically moved to his sister when she entered. His tongue traced his lips, wetting them as best it could, and his stomach growled with hunger. He could hear everything, the wind outside, the rush of her blood and her heart as it pounded hard but steady against her chest, and the soft swish of her muslin dress. He could smell her sweet fragrance and the slight salty tang of sweat that laced it. He could smell her blood.
He stood sharply when she went to sit near him and moved to the other side of the room.
He shouldn't have come back.
Clenching his fists, he frowned when sharp pain ran up his arms. He uncurled his hands to see a row of half moon shaped puncture marks in his palms and then stared at his fingernails. His eyes widened in horror at the sight of the pointed, elongated claws they had become. Just what was it that the man had done to him?
“You are hurt,” Ineru said behind him and he froze when she placed her hand on his shoulder.
The sound of her heartbeat filled his ears.
His chest heaved with the desire to kill her.
His eyes closed at the heady sensation of pleasure it promised.
She brushed her fingers over the wound on his throat and he moved away from her, throwing her hand off him and growling.
“What kind of sorcery is this?” he whispered to himself when the bones of his face shifted. He raised his fingers up, feeling the sharp points of his teeth. What had he become? Was he one of them now?
The man had almost killed him and only then had he been offered salvation. He had taken it, all too eager to live, but in the process something inside him had died. His fingers clenched his chest and he listened to the eerie silence inside of him.
He'd died.
He realised that now.
The man that had been so desperate to live had sold his soul and now he was doomed to an eternity of life. But not life. No. He was walking death. The intense hunger inside of him told him that. It clouded his mind with the memory of how blood had tasted on his lips, on his tongue, and whispered to him how sweet it would be to feed, to take the life of someone to further his own, to live off their death. It was a primal need, something impossible to ignore. It was ravenous. It was intoxicating. It was demanding a kill and he was sickeningly happy to cooperate.
He wanted it.
He wanted to taste the blood again, wanted the feeling of it spreading through him and breathing life into his tired body.
He wanted the pleasure it brought, feelings he'd only ever felt during sex, and had never thought possible from anything else.
Placing some distance between himself and his sister, he struggled for control and won.
“It was not a plague that killed our mother,” he said and heard Ineru gasp. He resisted his desire to face her, knowing that the demon he had become was still visible. He could feel his teeth scraping against his tongue as he spoke. He remembered how sharp the man's had felt, how painful they'd been in his neck. But the pain had quickly disappeared, chased away by the shadow of death that had filled him and the cold dread of what was coming. He hadn't hesitated in that moment. He'd taken everything the man had offered with him, not even stopping to ask what the consequences were.
“But it must be…such devastation.”
“It is death that comes for them. Not the merciful kind that takes us in our sleep, but the violent kind. It is a creature of the underworld that feeds on the blood of the living to sustain it in eternity.”
He looked down at his hand and saw his fingernails had returned to normal. Raising his hand, he felt his teeth and found they were blunt again.
He turned to face Ineru, unable to miss the fear in her eyes when he did so.
“How is it you know all of this?” She frowned at him, her beautiful countenance marred by it, and suddenly he realised that eternity without her was a life of torture and pain.
How could he go on without her?
He couldn't leave her alone in the world. She wouldn't make it without him. She needed him now more than she had ever done.
She would understand if he told her.
She was the reason he'd wanted to live after all. She was the reason he had chosen to receive the dark gift he had been offered.
