blood of the wild but for that... of his own kind? Or those who had been his kind, at least. And down there in the western forests, that was Zirescu territory.
He paused for a moment in the mouth of the cave to sniff at his excrement. His, yes, but it was black. The black of the digested blood of the rabbit. And perhaps the digested essence of something else? What of the leech-thing? Was this it, liquefied and turned to black shit by his juices? Radu thought not. But then why couldn't he feel it inside him, a Thing as big as that? He frowned and gave a shrug. What had been had been. What was become was become. And what would be ... would be.
But up in the mountains his grey brothers were aprowl and howling, and Radu threw back his head and howled with them. It felt good, as good as the night against his flanks! And pausing beside the pool to go down on all fours and sip, and seeing his face reflected in moonlight, Radu scarcely wondered at the fact that his eyes were triangular and gleamed feral yellow, or that his long-toothed smile was the smile of a wolf. For in the silver light of the moon al was made clear to him, and he remembered his dreams of vengeance and knew that it was time. Except he would go among men as a man, so that they would know who he was and why he had returned ...
In his descent into Sunside, Radu was quick and surefooted as a wolf, but a wolf with al the agility and climbing skils of a man.
Head first, with his chest and belly close to the earth, he dug in the heels of his hands to brake himself, sliding and skittering where the way was treacherous.
Upright but bent forward, he loped where the going was level and easy. Whenever he found his way barred by cliffs, he reverted to human skills and clambered like a man, and at al times he stuck to the shadows as much as possible. For his eyes were suited to the night; he saw as clearly as in daylight. Or beter, for he was Wamphyri! But as yet he wouldn't have recognized the word, or known that it described his condition, even if he'd heard it shouted.
In the first quarter of the night Radu was down into the foothills. Now the night was dark, lit only by starshine, for the orbit of the hurtling moon had taken her beyond the rim of the world. Which was just as wel; her gravity no longer enraptured Radu's mind, and he was more himself... or he would be, if not for his symbiont. And in fact his leech was a true symbiont, for it gave as wel as took. Now, if Radu were wounded, the vampire would heal him. Now his strength was that of eight or nine men - even ten, if need be. Now he was near-indefatigable, not to mention near-immortal! For barring accidents or an atack of the utmost ferocity, or a disease such as leprosy which even his leech could not cope with, he would not die.
Not that Radu knew any of this; these were wonders he was yet to discover, mysteries as yet unfathomed - or irredeemable depths as yet unplumbed. Al he knew was that he felt... wel, fiter, faster, and fiercer than ever before, and that his body burned with an inner fire; also that he was a force to be reckoned with greater than he'd ever been, but not nearly as great as he would be. But mainly he knew that he had the ability to right several great wrongs.
Revenge, aye, against the Zirescus and the Ferenczys!
And this would be what he gave to his leech; this was his part of the unspoken, unspeakable, unbreakable pact: that what he apparently did for himself, he in fact did for the vampire. Radu knew how to kill, and now must learn how to enjoy it. His life had been governed by fear and hatred; now his own hatred, enhanced tenfold by his vampire, would be an instrument with which to inspire fear. His human passions, hitherto suppressed, contained within the dam of his humanity, could now spill over in an inhuman orgy of emotion and violence beyond the range of common men. He could feel it in his blood. Wamphyri!
And the weirdest thing of al was this: that not even