something a man couldn't do on his own; the temptation to bite such a thing in half and spit it out as it disgorged must be overwhelming - not to mention a complete waste of time and effort! For only leave a segment of the creature inside the host body, an entire new worm would grow from it! Then again, the tapeworms Radu had seen were slender, many-sectioned creatures; they could be bitten in half!
But ... he knew that his parasite was different. He knew it without knowing how he knew. He felt it: a malign intelligence of sorts, a sentience other than the basic, natural, instinctive hunting and breeding knowledge of beasts of the wild, or the higher spiritual or morality-guided intelligence of men. This thing would use the guile of the fox, the ferocity of the hunting wolf, and his superior knowledge and intelligence for its own! Except ... there would be nothing spiritual or moral about it. And nothing remotely human.
These were thoughts that entered Radu's mind in his first waking moments, but he could hardly suspect that they were not his thoughts entirely, or that their source was not entirely his mind. But such was the case: by virtue of its metamorphic make-up, the leech's mutant DNA was already bringing about the most drastic changes in his own, and doing it in such a way as to link itself with his mind, his blood and bones, his very being. The thing would be him, and even though he would continue to believe himself master of his own destiny, he would be it.
Cold, it would kill off whatjwas human in him while intensifying what was cold and inhuman. Devious, it would so dilute what little was left of human love and compassion as to* remove these things entirely, while accentuating those baser emotions it could use to its own advantage ... such as lust, greed, and hatred. Tenacious, it would cling to life - to Radu's life - even as it moulded itself to his internal organs and spine. And there'd be no getting rid of it, neither by primitive medicine nor any method of man's devising. For Radu was the higher life-form it had searched for since its development from a spore to a leech in the body of the fox, and it was with him now for as long as he lived.
Ever ravenous, it would lust after the very source of life, the red-pulsing river of life, which flows through the arteries of men and beasts. Except a man has only so much life, only so much blood; so that in order to survive, Radu too must consume or be consumed. It was the burgeoning curse of the vampire, new to Sunside/Starside even as Shaitan the Unborn was new, so that as yet Radu knew neither of them. But he would, he would ...
Day finally dawned, and Radu was ill. He carried Singer out of the cave, dropped her into a crack in the rocks, filled it with stones.
Under normal circumstances the effort would be scarcely worth mentioning; now . . . it felt like a day's work. He knew he should hunt, for good red meat to fuel him through whatever was to come, but the sun had a furnace heat he'd never felt before, which raised angry red weals on his skin and crisped the hair of his forearms to small coiled cinders. Even with his back to the sun he could scarcely see to find a target! Plainly he was ill. But he knew he had a Thing in him, so it was hardly surprising. And the very thought of that Thing made him feel more ill yet.
He found water, a small waterfall with a pool, laved his scorched and rapidly roughening body and filled a skin, took up his clothes in a bundle and headed back to his cave. On the way he saw a rabbit nibbling the grass in the shade of a tree, and even in his condition couldn't miss such an easy target. Back in the cave he found himself ravenously hungry and ate raw red flesh.
This wasn't the first time Radu had had it red; now and then when it rained and the grass he used for tinder was damp, he might find it impossible to get a fire going. Then he would simply skin his catch, cut himself a good hindquarter joint and fill his belly. And of course Singer had been there to dispose of