Page 13 of Dark Embrace

It had burned the strangertoash.

He would be wary ofthesun.

Then it was night once more, cool soothing night and he was hungry, a strange hunger that could not be satisfied by food. In fact, the pickled fish and cheese and bread he tried to consume made him sick. And still, the hunger persisted, gnawing at him. It was not merely a growl or a twist in his belly. The hunger consumed him, lacing every breath, every movement of his limbs. He felt hollow, anxious, his skin too tight, his bones aching andempty.

He set fire to his childhood home, burning the bodies of his family, his heart heavy. The smell of smoke, the heat of the flames, they were as they had always been and yet they were new and foreign. Everything was different. Everything was familiar but not, as if he had never before smelled fire, never before watched tongues of fire dance and writhe. The fire burned down to ash and as he sensed the coming dawn clawing at his skin, he wrapped himself in furs and tunneled under the ash to wait outthesun.

He walked that night. In the morning, he felt dawn’s approach, felt it on his skin and in his soul, an itch that grew into a burning sting that grew into a blazing pain. And that with only the first hint dusting the horizon. That day he hid in a farmhouse with the bodies of the dead. It was everywhere, the plague. It killed all those ittouched.

He found food and, ravenous, he again stuffed salted fish into his mouth, chewed, swallowed. The taste was vile. The fish refused to remain in his belly. And he thought of the stranger hunched over his mother’s throat, of the sounds of slurping and guzzling. Andheknew.

This all-consuming, mindless hunger would not be slaked by fish or meat or bread. He huddled in the house as the sunlight reached across the floor toward him, and he thought of walking to greet it as thestrangerhad.

He thought it, but he did notdoit.

He walked on, hiding from the sun each day, knowing that he must find a way to feed, horrified by what he knew he must do in order tosurvive.

On the fifth night, he could barely walk, so consuming was his hunger. It clawed at his insides and made his thoughts veer from reason. He was near mindless, dragging one foot before the next, searching, searching. And then a scent carried on the wind, the scent of ambrosia, so rich and delicious he almost wept. He followed the smell, dizzy with hunger until he came upon a man huddled beneath layers of warm fur, a small fire burningbeforehim.

The man glanced up as Kjell stepped from the trees toward the flames. He looked weary and spent, and there was blood on his temple and on his cheek. Kjell stared at the blood, lured in a way he had never been before, not by food or drink or even a woman. This was something elseentirely.

“Come no closer,” the man said. “I am sick. It is plague.” He turned his head and coughed until blood stained the ground. Kjell trembled where he stood, fighting a vicious battle within himself. “I will likely be dead by morning,” the man continued. “Stay back unless you wish the same foryourself.”

Kjell swallowed. He would kill this man in a moment. He would take his blood and his life. He should at least know his first victim’s name. Beastly hunger roaring inside him, and he forced himself to fight against it, to ask, “What isyourname?”

The man frowned and said, “Thayne. KillianThayne.”

And then Kjell was upon him, tearing open his throat with his teeth, drinking his fill, taking the life of Killian Thayne, hating himself for it even as he licked at every last drop, the taste more wondrous than anything he had ever known, and he acknowledged that he would do it again and again, that he would feed, that hewouldlive.

He was not the boy he had been. He was reborn that night as the life of his preyslippedaway.

Days later, when he reached the harbor, he boarded a ship to England under the name of the first man whose life he had stolen. He was Kjell no longer; he was KillianThayne.

6

Sarah rolledto her side in her tiny bed, neither asleep nor awake, but somewhere in between. The room was cold. She lay beneath her sheets, two thin blankets, and her cloak, which she had spread over top for extra warmth. Her lids fluttered open. She had dreamed of sunshine and a picnic with her father, but she saw onlydarknessnow.

Restless, she rolled again, tired, so tired. A hand, warm and gentle, settled on her brow and stroked her hair back fromherface.

“Sleep,” a man’s voice said. “Sleep now, Sarah. Dream sweetdreams.”

A man’s voice, here in her room. A man’s hand on her brow. That couldn’t be right. She knew that voice.Itwas…

Sleep reached for her and pulledherdeep.

Early the following morning,Sarah made her way along the corridor of King’s College, shadows and moonlight creeping across the floor in an alternating pattern of light and dark stripes. Her steps quick and sure, she went directly to the surgical ward, anxious to check on Mr. Scully. He had clung to life throughout the previous day, crying out, moaning, growing increasingly ill. He had been feverish and lost in a world of his own making. Each time Sarah had looked in on him he had not recognized her, mistaking her for hisdeadwife.

Now, she wondered if he had lived through thenight.

She paused in the doorway of the ward, her gaze sliding to Mr. Scully’s bed. There came a rushing sound, like wings beating, or a cloak flapping in the wind. She took a single step forward, then froze and made astartledgasp.

Outlined on the far wall was a looming shadow in the shape of a man, his height and breadth exaggerated andmagnified.

A shadow with nosource.

Shewas the only upright person in the ward. Everyone else lay supine on their beds. There was no man to cast such a shadow. Her blood chilled and her gaze skittered about the room to make certain she was notmistaken.

When she looked once more at the wall, the shadow was gone,disappeared.