However did he get here, to this country? he wondered. Sometimes he could remember and sometimes he could not.
And why was he seeking out this particular place—a narrow building that he kept seeing in his mind?
You know what I want of you.
“No, I don’t,” he said aloud, “and there’s no telling I’ll do it.”
“Oh, yes, you will,” came the answer very distinctly right inside his brain. “If you do not do what I wish I will punish you.”
He laughed. “You think you can?”
Other blood drinkers had been threatening to punish him ever since he could remember.
Long ago on the flank of Mount Fuji, an ancient blood drinker had said to him, “This is my land!” Well, guess what happened to him? He laughed when he thought of it.
But long before that, he’d been laughing at threats from those around him—those blood drinker priests of her temple, always threatening to punish him if he didn’t do her will. He had marveled at the timidity of the blood gods who submitted to her inane rules. And when he’d brought his fledglings right into the temple to drink her blood, those cowardly priests had backed off, not daring to challenge him.
The last time he’d brought that pretty girl, that Greek girl, Eudoxia, and told her to drink from the Mother. Those priests had been in a rage.
And what about the Mother? She’d been nothing more than a statue full of the Blood by that time. So much for stories of divinity and high calling and reasons to suffer and sacrifice and obey.
Even if he went way back, as far as he could recall, to the very first time he’d been in her presence, brought there by the elder to drink from her and become a blood god, he’d thought it was foolishness, lies. He’d been sly enough to do what they told him. Ah, that blood had felt so good. And what had life been for him before that, backbreaking labor, hunger, his father’s constant bullying. All right, I’ll die and be reborn. And then I’ll smash in your faces with my new godly fists! He knew a blood god was infinitely stronger than a human being. You want to give me that power? I’ll bend the knee. But you’ll regret it, my sanctimonious friends.
“Drink,” said the being talking in his head. “Now. Choose one of the victims the world offers you.”
“You don’t have to tell me how to do it, you fool,” he said, spitting the words into the rain. He’d stopped and they were staring at him and then he did this feint he had perfected, falling down on his knees, then rising, head bowed, as he staggered into a deep but small shop in a narrow building, where only one serving girl waited for a customer, and came towards him with arms out, asking if he were ill.
It was so simple to force her into the storage room behind the little emporium and hold her tight in one arm as he sank his fangs into her neck. She shuddered and shivered like a bird in his grasp, words strangled in her throat. The blood was sweet with innocence, with deep convictions of harmony amongst all the creatures of the planet, with some exalted sense that this encounter now which clouded her mind and ultimately paralyzed her must have meaning. Else how could such a thing happen to her?
She lay on the floor at his feet.
He was reflecting on the quality of the blood. So rich, so healthy, so filled with exotic flavors, so different from blood in the time he’d been made. Ah, these robust and powerful modern humans, what a world of food and drink they enjoyed. The blood was sharpening his vision as it always did, and calming something in him for which he had no name.
He snapped off the electric lights in the storage room and waited. Within seconds a pair of customers had come into the shop, a big gawky boy and a pale emaciated European girl.
“Back here,” he said, beckoning to them, smiling at them, focusing his precious power right on their eyes, glancing from one to the other. “Come.”
This was his favorite way to do it, with a tender throat in each hand, taking one and then the other, suckling, lapping, sloshing the hot salty blood around in his mouth, then going at it again, and then the first victim again, letting both weaken at the same gentle speed until he was satisfied. He could drink no more. Three deaths now had passed through him in wrenching spasms. He was hot and tired and he felt like he could see through walls as well as walk through them. He was full.
He took the boy’s shirt, white and fresh and clean, and he put that on. The dungarees were all right too. And the leather belt fit. The shoes were big and soft and laced up, and they felt loose to him, but it was better than being stared at, better than having to fight with some little gang of mortals and then flee them, though it was easy enough to do.
Now with the young European woman’s hairbrush he cleaned all the dust and soil from his brown hair. And with her dress, he wiped off his face and hands. It made him sad to look at them dead, the three of them, his victims, and he had to admit it always did.
“What sentimental nonsense,” said the being talking inside him.
“You shut up, what do you know!” he said aloud.
He walked through the brightly lighted store and back out into the throng in the streets. The lighted towers rose on either side of him; the lights were so beautiful to him, so magical, climbing higher and higher into the sky—strips of blue and red and yellow and orange, and all that artful lettering. He liked their lettering, the Japanese. It made him think of the writing of the old times when people had carefully painted their words on papyrus and on walls.
Why did he turn off the beautiful thoroughfare? Why did he leave behind the crowds?
There it was, the little hotel he’d been seeking. That’s where they hid from the world, the pesky young ones, the foolish and blundering blood drinker riffraff.
Ah, yes, and you will burn them now, burn them all. Burn the building. You have the power to do it. The power is inside you here with me.
Was that really what he wanted to do?
“Do as I have told you to do,” said the angry voice now in words.
“What do I care about all those blood drinkers hiding in there?” he said aloud. Weren’t they simply lost and lonely and dragging themselves through eternity just as he was? Burn them? Why?
“The power,” said the being. “You have the power. Look at the building. Let the heat collect in your mind, focus it, then send it forth.”
It had been so long since he’d attempted something like that. It was tempting to see if he could do it.
And suddenly he was doing it. Yes. He felt the heat, felt it as if his own head would explode. He saw the façade of the little hotel waver, heard it crackle, and saw the flames erupting everywhere.