Chapter Text
Stormclouds blotted out the harsh sun of the plains. This late in the season, merely rain would be a small mercy. The wind bit colder, harsher, crueller. The darkened sun turned the endless seas of grass a cold blue. Monroe shivered in his overcoat. It might’ve been wool, but the clothes beneath were thin. Snow could spell something terrible for the horses — both Indian and American. The conflict had begun long before him and he expected to long outlast him, but there was always the hope that it could end in a fortnight.
It was always the sargent’s promise.
Home for Christmas… for Easter… for the summer… for the harvest… for the new year.
And, now for Christmas again.
The once-imposing structures of sandstone glinted gold in the summer sun, but had already begun to crack along their foundations. From the east walls of the fort, young homesteads sprouted in the distance. New lots had opened up, a promise that their war would continue so long as the Indians had a west to flee.
Monroe turned on his heel and continued his patrol along the battlements. He pinched feeling back into his nose, fingers nearly numb in their thin gloves.
It would be rotten to spend another year on the prairies. On his men went on about mothers, pretty girls, little brothers and sisters, the fields, the livestock, the professions and shops. Every new worry lay heavy on Monroe’s shoulders. He had written enough letters of condolences, but there would be more for Christmas.
Monroe reached the far end of the battlements, where the colonel took to spending his evenings. Roger Helms — “Colonel” or “sir” unless they felt like getting written up. New recruits would be told terrible stories, about how each hair in his wiry beard was another Indian he killed, every gray hair from some smart alec recruit. And he had plenty of grays to spare.
Monroe clicked his heels and snapped to attention.
The colonel barely glanced up from his book. “Are you going to do that every time you pass by, captain?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” barked Monroe, too loudly in the still dusky air. He whirled back to continue his patrol.
“Stay a minute, eh?” The colonel folded the page and set his book under the stool. “Have a cigarette.” He offered a battered paper packet.
Monroe took one and lit it on the glowing brazier. The smoke warmed him from the inside out. “Thank you kindly, sir.”
“We’ll have good victories come spring,” said the colonel with a satisfied sigh. “Indian horses will be weak from a lean winter. Our cavalry’ll overrun them.”
Spring.
“Does that mean you’ll be putting me on a horse yet?”
The colonel considered it. “D’you want it, Matthew?” he asked in a way that made it quite clear to Monroe that he could get it if he asked for it.
Monroe tapped the ashes from his cigarette. Best not push too hard. The colonel had a son at home, about Monroe’s age, and hadn’t seen him in years now. “Put me where you need me, sir. Heard word from back home?”
The captain smoked his own cigarette for some time, his eyes trained on the stones beneath their feet. Too long. Too quiet.
“I’m sorry,” said Monroe softly.
The colonel grimaced. “My wife gave birth, but he died a few days later.” He took another drag and as he breathed out, his shoulders sagged. “Took my wife with him.”
“You’ll see them again. In Paradise.”
The colonel’s beard twitched in what might’ve been a crooked smile. “You can’t be believing that anymore than me, but I appreciate the kind thoughts.”
Monroe lowered the weight of his musket from his shoulder and crouched low. “No, I don’t believe that none either,” he admitted. “But I do know that my parents, dead they may be, live on with their words and deeds. My mother sits on my shoulder, reminding me to mind my manners, tend to the garden. I knew my father best from stories but he inspired me to enlist, to fight for the Union like he done. Your wife’ll live on, so long as you let her.”
The colonel returned his gentle stare. Monroe didn’t have the heart to break the comfort of lies. His mother had been a drunk filled with grief who scarcely remembered she had a son, let alone told stories of her dead husband who dragged them into California as he chased gold.
“Thank you, Matt,” the colonel said heavily. “You’re a good boy.” His eyes shone like marbles, reflecting the stars of snow and sky, but his face hardened behind his beard suddenly. The moment was gone.
Monroe took his rifle back and allowed the colonel his privacy. He gave another salute and turned back.
“Captain Monroe,” the colonel called. He lowered his voice. “There’ll be an attack tomorrow. Your boys are in it. I’ve put you on the western flank, but you’ll want to stay back. The lieutenants have a—” He swallowed his unsaid words.
It was more than he should’ve and Monroe took the gift as it came.
The first snow began to fall. One flake at a time, then a gentle flutter, filling the air with cold stars that melted as they landed on the wild grass.
Monroe glanced upwards. “I’ll remember that, sir.”
Monroe faded in and out of consciousness, plagued by nightmares just out of reach. Colours and sensations swirled malevolently, pounding to the rhythm of his heart — his shoulder. Voices.
His world narrowed to a icy wet pinprick and his eyes shot open.
“Told you he’s not dead.”
“That’s enough, private.”
“Oy, Stewart, go tell the colonel that Monroe ain’t dead.”
Monroe shivered, his face slick. Wet. Cold. He struggled to sit up, but a terrible wave of pain stole his vision and he collapsed again.
His memories flickered back into place. The frosted grass early morning, just after breakfast, storming the camp, the fogged breaths of horses, the Indians returning gunfire. Arrows and bullets turned in a blizzard.
“Get some rest, captain,” said a strange voice. A medic.
Monroe struggled to sit. The sickroom, in the basement of the fort. A cot. Injured filled the others. Moaned or slept. Smelled of blood and tincture. The battle had ended hours ago.
“The company,” he said hoarsely. “Wood.”
Henry Wood lay his hand on Monroe’s leg. Square-jawed, clear-eyed, his brothers had bought a lot in Georgia and they missed him for the last three harvests. “How you doing, sir?”
“The boys — the battle — hang on, did you throw water on me?” Monroe wiped his face in confusion.
The medic threw Wood a dark look, though the boy didn’t have the grace to look ashamed. He was markedly pale, his eyes too wide and white. His grip was iron, as if Death might still reconsider.
“They told me and Stewart to see how you were doing. Hard to do when you don’t wanna wake up.”
“I’m — fine. The company—”
“We’re all fine. Even Robinson.”
Monroe sighed. Pain lanced his chest again. “What happened to me?”
“Took a flying tomahawk,” said Wood with a shaky smile. “Never seen a thing like it. Bullseye! We got the bastard, though.”
Monroe flexed his left hand, fingers, elbow. All felt intact. On the table next to him, along with a cup of water, was a wicked-looking weapon. Iron axehead on a carved wooden shaft. His blood, crusted dark and sticky.
He called to get the medic’s attention again. “How long until I’m back up?”
The medic pulled a fresh syringe from a packed leather case and attached a strange liquid. “We’ll see, sir,” he said. “Private, it’s time for you to return to your barracks.”
Wood looked to Monroe, who waved him off.
“I’ll be back in a few nights. Don’t worry.”
The medic injected Monroe’s right arm and he felt the familiar flood of morphine. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d been laid up. Once, a broken leg. Another time, a sickness through the camp on the march between forts. Still, there was always the fear.
“I’ll be fine, right?” asked Monroe as the drug began to take effect.
There was no answer before he succumbed.
By the end of the next night, Monroe found the courage to look at his wounds as the medic applied fresh dressing. Not as bad as he feared. The tomahawk had sunk below his collarbone, just above the armpit. Thankfully, it felt far worse than it looked. He felt like a puppet who had his strings cut. Every motion of his left shoulder was utter agony, and while he could stand, the medic confined him to bed until he was past the danger of infection.
Monroe spent most of his time trying to convince the medic to let him drink. At least he would be as capable as anyone else in the fort.
His company came down, in twos and threes, bringing others’ well wishes and their own stories. When Stewart inevitably lost their poker games, he stole cards to practice tricks. The boys would be able to drink, growing rowdy until the medic shoed them away. It never lasted long enough. The colonel visited once, but something haunted lingered in his eyes. Monroe spent his days smoking his ration and struggling to eat. And, losing hopelessly at cards.
A gnarled knot in his stomach resisted food. He had no taste for anything, not even when the frustrated medic took his cigarettes away. Monroe lay back in the increasingly silent and chilled sickroom, alone with his thoughts. Fear festered in him. A private fear, one he dared not share. Not with his men. Not with the colonel. It was his to bare alone.
Monroe refused the morphine on the tenth night and took up a bottle of white liquor instead. He chased his fear with drink. In the end, he was only his mother’s son. Of late, his bandages had been stiff, thick with fluids. The smell that had lingered on the edge of his mind intensified as the medic peeled back the final layers. It was a smell he knew well.
The flesh of the wound burned hot. A tight swollen redness threatened to pull the stitches free. Monroe didn’t look at the wound. He had eyes only for the medic. He knew that blank distant look, too, of weighing life in calloused hands, of wondering how things had ended up here.
With practiced speed, the medic retrieved his leather kit and cut the stitches out.
“How’s it look, doctor?” asked Monroe. His head swayed gratefully with the white liquor.
The medic’s lips twitched. “I’m not a doctor, captain. Just a soldier. I’m just—”
“I’m sure you’re doing your best,” said Monroe mildly.
As the last stitch snipped away, the edges of the wound parted. Within, along with the dark crimson of dried blood and the parch of white bone, was an unmistakable bulging and streaked red veins.
“Good thing I’m right-handed, huh, doctor.” Monroe drank again. “Stewart could use some more left gloves.”
A sweat broke out along the medic’s hairline. “I can’t. The infection’s following the veins into the chest. Even if I took the arm, it would keep spreading.”
Monroe came to the end of his bottle. “That’s a damn shame, then, isn’t it?”
A sharp burning pain made him cry out as the medic cleaned the infected wound with a terrible-smelling liquid, bandaging it tight enough to make him lose consciousness briefly.
“I’ll bring your company down,” said the medic anxiously. “Don’t tell anyone I did.”
Unable to drink, dreading what he would think if he dared put words together in his mind, Monroe wiped his tears clean. All these damned years. People broke rules for him — favours to spare lives, buy time. Didn’t matter so much anymore.
It was Wood again. Wood, Stewart, and Cruz.
Stewart, squirrelly and a skinny sixteen, and Cruz, all black hair and Mexican features, sat at the edge of the bed. Stewart played with a deck of cards in his lap.
“So, the colonel’s going to have us follow the Indians west,” said Cruz. “A new fort is getting built, somewhere in the mountains.”
“Colonel’s not making decisions,” said Monroe wearily. “He does what he’s told, like we all do.”
Stewart fanned the cards out. “Pick one, captain.”
“What’s gonna happen, sir?” asked Cruz. “West, west, and west, but one day, the Indians will run out of west.”
Once, Monroe would’ve come up with a retort or comfort, even if it was a lie. The problem sat so far outside their control it didn’t bear thinking of. He didn’t care. The conflict started long before him. It would long outlast him. He had always known that. He put the bottle to his lips again, but found it empty.
“Pick a card.”
Cruz rolled his eyes. “Do it, sir. Just shut him up.”
Monroe drew one. Ace of hearts.
Stewart lit up. “Thank you, sir, now put it back.” He went on his routine of erratic shuffling.
“How’re the rest of the men doing?” asked Monroe.
Cruz looked at him strangely. “Good as ever. Looking forward to having you back.”
“You ain’t coming back, though, are you, sir?” asked Wood. He had stood off in the corner and now that Monroe turned to him, he saw the drawn skin, dark bags under rheumy eyes. His hand drifted to Monroe’s shoulder again, in that way the others delicately ignored.
Cruz cursed in Spanish. “Captain will be back soon. Don’t discourage him.”
Monroe caught Cruz’s eye and shook his head. The small motion struck Cruz silent.
“Is this your card?” Stewart triumphantly held up the seven of clubs.
Wood picked Stewart up and dropped him off on the floor like a child, sitting on the cot in his stead.
Monroe smiled. “Yeah, boy, that’s my card. You’re getting better at this.”
Stewart beamed, but the smile warbled. He wasn’t nearly as big a fool as he played. “Thank you, sir. For—For everything.”
“Come on, now, I’m not dead yet.” Monroe fended off a hug. “I’m not. I might beat back the infection. Medic hasn’t been saying yet.”
Shoes on the stairs startled them all. The three stood at attention before Monroe realised it was the colonel. He stood, still in full uniform, as prim and stern as he must’ve been at breakfast.
“Gentlemen.”
“Colonel, sir,” said Wood respectfully.
“A word alone with the captain, if you please.”
Exchanging uneasy looks, the boys left him and the colonel alone. Monroe sat up and tried to appear less drunk. He raised his hand to salute, but the shift in his shoulders brought a pain that sobered him faster than he thought.
“At ease, son,” the colonel said briskly. “Medic Williamson was telling me about your… situation. A supply train is running back to California tomorrow. You could be on it, if you would rather be home.”
“You’re… sending me away?”
That haunted hollowness returned to the colonel. “By all rights, I should put you to duty and hurry matters up, but I’d rather you be comfortable when it happens. A quiet honourable discharge, no one needs to know. There’s nothing more we can do for you in the fort, son.”
Monroe knew how blood poisoning deaths went. He would sweat and chill, spend days plagued by nightmares, turn into a trembling wreck before eventually expiring in fear. He couldn’t let his men tend to him. Not at the end. He would rather be alone.
He felt the senseless tears return to his eyes as he nodded, short and curt. “Take care of my men, please.”
“Of course. Anything else?”
“Tell them…” What? Had Monroe anymore to drink, he might’ve been as dreadfully sappy as to leave a parting message of love. “Tell them that I’m proud of them.”
The colonel placed a cold hand on Monroe’s face, turning it to face him. Suddenly his years and frightful sternness were no more. “I want you to know, Matthew,” he whispered, “that you’re a good man. It’s been an honour to serve with you and I would’ve been proud to call you my son.”
Even as the colonel shed tears, Monroe felt his dry. The words came to his ears bland. While the colonel might miss his captain, his soldier, his son-at-the-fort, and all the roles Monroe played, he wouldn’t miss Monroe. Not honestly. He would miss his tool.
Monroe turned his eyes away, ashamed.
Eventually, the colonel took his hand from Monroe and stood, leaving him alone. Just as he had wanted.
Monroe left without fanfare. He hadn’t told any of his boys he was leaving. Not even Wood. They would expect him to hang on, propping up their fearless leader, their older brother, their captain, even as he deteriorated.
Monroe had no intention of deteriorating.
With a single light suitcase, he rode the supply wagons back to the train station. Every jolt and sway of the wagon turned him green. It was a miracle the return trip to San Francisco didn’t kill him outright.
He knew the cobbles of the harbour town well, had half lived on them in his youth. At every corner, more people. Mostly men, rough-lookers down from the mountains. Apartments over shops, cheap one-room apartments for working men. Horse-drawn wagons cluttered every inch of free winding road.
Monroe picked his way through the streets at a hobble. Broadway. Osgood. A narrow alley packed tightly with red brick buildings, every window grated over with iron bars like a prison. Girls and crooks filled the one-way road, hissing their offers as he passed. He climbed the stairs. Every step rung in his shoulder a terrible burning pain. He sweated — from exertion, he told himself. Three flights of stairs was no laughing matter.
Apartment 38. He produced a worn brass key from his pocket, surprised it still fit, and opened the door. He dropped his suitcase and let the silence greet him. Fifteen years. It was as he had left it, a new orphan at twelve. Light drifted through half-shut drapes. Blanket folded on the chair. The apartment belonged to dust and cobwebs. Near all of it felt grey, the life of it all bleached out by the years, like a mausoleum, a crypt.
Welcome home.
The fridge was barren of food, but his mother’s drink was where he had left it. He uncorked one of the dusty bottles of brown liquor. It burned and took away the sharpness of the pain.
The shadows in the room lengthened and darkened. Quite suddenly, he found himself holding an empty bottle in the darkness. The bottle slipped from his hand to join its fellows on the floor with a gentle clink. Laughter echoed past the muffled windows.
Monroe’s stomach twisted, empty but without hunger.
Ignoring it, he stripped best he could one-handed and crawled into bed. It was past the time to care about old bandages. Tomorrow was a new day. Solitude was his only mercy. In his last days, he could enjoy his time then — drink, those new restaurants, girls maybe.
Breath rattled through his lungs. The bed he crawled into had been the one he shared with his mother. She lived in every wall. The frizzy haired drunk with red eyes who didn’t speak for weeks at a time unless it was to scream, the cold hand taking his forehead’s temperature, melodies and songs half remembered as a boy before his father went up in the hills. He was burning up. Sweating the fever out. More than sweat trickled down his cheeks before sleep found him.
Monroe did not visit downtown tomorrow, or the next day, or even next week. He purged every piece of his mother from the apartment. It revolted him. Her knitting with needles still stuck in the balls of yarn, her clothes in the wardrobe, her chipped teacup. Every momento filled him with rage. Scraps of memory shattered across the floor.
Panting, vision blurred, Monroe cried as much from the pain in his shoulder as from anger. Damn that woman. Had she still lived, he might not be here dying now.
The image of her corpse, nesting in the corner amongst her empty bottles like a bird, made him hurl his own half-empty bottle. It shattered. Alcohol seeped like blood. As a boy, Monroe had screamed so loud he woke half the building. Some man had brought a doctor up, who in turn called a mortician to clean away the body.
But, now, the room was empty. No one would scream to find his body, not for days or for weeks.
There was a knock on the door.
Monroe jumped, then flushed. Some neighbour had heard him. He opened the door and blinked twice.
A most peculiar man stood outside. He held himself remarkably still and strong, every inch of him etched in stone. He wore a three-piece so black it seemed to eat the light, a bowler hat, and a neatly trimmed and curled moustache. He wasn’t much any taller or older than Monroe but for some impossible reason, Monroe flinched as he met the stranger’s eye.
“I’ll try to keep it down,” said Monroe curtly.
The strange man raised an eyebrow. “I’m not here to berate you, Mr Monroe, I’m here to make you an offer.”
“There’s nothing you can offer me.” He moved to shut the door.
The stranger caught the door with a gloved hand and a surprising strength. “Do you want to die, Mr Monroe? I believe you still have much to offer this world.”
Monroe licked his lips. He didn’t know what, but some deep part of his mind told him something was wrong. “Who are you?”
“Alastair Fowler.”
“What’s your offer, Fowler?” he asked with a snarl. “Some miracle cure and all it’ll cost me is my other arm?”
Fowler’s lips quirked in what might’ve been a flash of a smile. “Must we speak on the step like ingrates?”
Monroe let the door swing open. “Whatever.” He searched for another bottle and, finding one, settled at the small kitchen table. Fowler closed the door and sat opposite. It was those shoes, Monroe decided. So shiny he could’ve shaved in them. “Want a drink? I don’t got much,” he said, taking a swig.
“I’m perfectly alright, Mr Monroe,” said Fowler stiffly.
“What’re you here for, then? I don’t exactly have all the time in the world.”
“It’s a fine thing that as a matter of fact, I do,” said Fowler with a slow smile.
“What do—”
The bottle slipped from his hand. With a clink, it rolled away.
Hidden along the twin lines of perfectly smooth, white teeth in the smile Alastair Fowler showed were two protruding fangs. Like a cat’s, sharp and needle-like, poking into his lower lip.
“What do you know of the vampire, Mr Monroe?” asked Fowler.
Monroe sobered faster than he ever had. “I know I just met one,” he said weakly. “What…”
“Silence,” commanded Fowler, and Monroe felt his tongue leaden. “I belong to a secret society of Cainites, the inheritors of the legacy of immortality and power. I have chosen to bring you into this world where we guide humanity in the shadows. Consider this your second chance to… make something of yourself.” Fowler threw a distasteful sneer at the ruins of the apartment.
“Give me a break,” snapped Monroe.
A hand lashed out before he could blink. Clawed fingers gripped his left shoulder, tearing through the bandages with a powerful strength. His grip was cold, not like a human with cold hands, but like a creature that gave off cold instead of heat. Monroe let out a shrill cry.
“You will not talk to me like that again, Mr Monroe,” warned Fowler in a low voice. “I am an Eighth Generation Cainite of the Clan of Kings and your only chance to survive this week.”
Something had shifted in Fowler’s face. The eyes burned darkly and sunk into their sockets, the lips curled in an animalistic snarl, and the fangs thickened from delicate cat-like points to the canines of a wolf. Nothing in his face suggested at humanity.
With horror, Monroe watched as Fowler withdrew his hand and, inspecting the blood tinged nails, gave them a thoughtful lick.
Monroe panted, still seeing spots. He nodded fearfully. “Alright, I think I got the message, even if I didn’t get half those words. I suppose there’s a presentation I can attend. Sir.”
Fowler tilted his head, as though considering whether he was worth the bother of eating. “I am of Clan Ventrue, one of the thirteen great clans of the night, and ours is the honour of the knights of old Europe, the noblesse oblige of royalty, the pride of the ancient Roman Empire.”
Monroe reconsidered the bottle, even as the words ached in his chest. “Are you sure you got the right guy?”
“Mr Matthew Monroe, Captain of the Seventeenth Company, Third Battalion,” said Fowler, “but it’s not for your military experience that I credit you with the Embrace. Rather, it is how you arrived there. A boy of twenty-two, how many colonels would’ve given you command? Five years, now, with dignity. You are a liar, but graceful with it. You’re clever, with a mind for strategy and a heart for command. Mr Monroe, you would make a fine Ventrue and it is my honour to save you from death’s door and bring you into the eternal brotherhood.”
Monroe set the bottle down. He was dreaming. A very realistic fever dream. “Alright. I’m in. How would you do it?”
“First, you must ready yourself for your next life,” said Fowler pleasantly. “Every night for the rest of eternity, you will look as you do right now. Cut your hair, shave that miserable beard, and trim your nails. I will return at dusk tomorrow night.”
Monroe frowned at his nails as Fowler left as quickly as he had come. To think, it was his ability to lie to command that made a vampire take note. Such a stupid notion. He found a new bottle. Soon, it was all a bad dream. Even so, before Monroe retired with the rest of the bottle, he made sure to trim his nails and shave.
Monroe spent much of the next day sober, pacing across the floor so long he expected to plunge into the apartment beneath any moment. At last, in the late afternoon sun, he struggled himself into a shower and clean clothes and found a barber down the road.
All logic said that Fowler was just a tonic salesman, if a bit eccentric and pushy. Drink and fever had invented the rest. But Monroe remembered the strength as he gripped him, the inhuman anger in his eyes. Perhaps Fowler wouldn’t even come tonight.
Satisfied with the haircut, Monroe tipped the barber with what coins he had scrouged up in the apartment, and braved the chill San Francisco wind. Ravenous, he picked up a pair of hot dogs from a vendor and ate them on his way back. The sun was setting fast.
He tossed the balled up hot dog foil in a distant corner of the apartment. If Fowler was right and could heal him, then he could clean up when he was feeling better. If Fowler was wrong, then this whole mess would be someone else’s problem.
Monroe fingered one of his last bottles thoughtfully. The sun disappeared over the horizon and plunged the streets into darkness. He didn’t have to wait long.
Knock. A short, smart rap on the door.
“Come in,” shouted Monroe.
Fowler stood there, in the same three-piece suit and hat he had worn the previous night. He wrinkled his nose as though he smelled something foul. To his credit, he well might’ve.
“Look at that. You are real,” drawled Monroe with a terse smile. “What’ll you have me do?”
Fowler removed his hat and brushed off a few flakes of snow from it. “There’s nothing at all you can do, Mr Monroe, aside from die. Don’t worry. We won’t wait for that wound to kill you.” He produced a pistol from beneath his coat and snarled in a way no human ever could.
Monroe leapt to his feet and raised his hands. His shoulder screamed. “Whoa, whoa, listen here. Whatever game you’re playing — whatever you want, you can take it. Just leave me to die in peace.”
Fowler advanced on him. “I was about to Embrace you in the traditional manner. Such deaths from the Kiss are exquisite, but you need to learn a lesson and learn it well.”
Monroe struggled to hold himself together. His heart pounded in his throat. Never in the military had he ever been so frightened. “What?”
“You will show your superiors the proper obeisance.”
Bang.
Monroe stumbled back and clutched his stomach. The pain in his gut muted his shoulder for the moment. At once, his hands were full of blood. Every breath poured more blood out of him, warm, wet, sticky. He collapsed back into the chair.
When he opened his eyes again, Fowler stood over him, the rage gone for the moment. “How does it feel?” he asked mildly.
“It hurts, you bastard,” said Monroe through gritted teeth.
Bang .
The bullet struck his left hand, shattering the bones, and he choked on his scream.
“I would far rather punish you once you’ve obtained a more durable form,” said Fowler, “but needs must, I suppose. If you do not survive the Embrace, I must let you know you brought it upon yourself.”
Monroe breathed as shallowly as he dared. A burning acid itched the back of his throat. Iron trickled up into his mouth. He had minutes. Every beat of his heart pulsed in a rhythm of pain through him.
Fowler pulled a chair next to him and, with a firm hand, turned Monroe to face him. His face was utterly expressionless, as though the display gave him neither joy nor pain to inflict. “Life as a kindred,” he said, “is to know a life filled with pain. This will not be the greatest pain you know in your decades and centuries to come. Every Ventrue has their place in the clan and Camarilla and knows it. You will come to know yours, too. The roads we walk are never easy.”
Monroe licked his lips. Copper bloomed on his tongue. “I need to die first, right, sir?”
Fowler nodded. “And then I will awaken you.”
Monroe shut his eyes and gave into it. He let his other hand fall from his stomach as life spilled freely. The pain echoed in his shoulder, his shattered hand, his stomach, but he could endure. It was a quicker death certainly than letting the infection drive him mad. He had had a drink, a hot dog — two, even.
It wasn’t the worst of last days.
His awareness faded slowly, until.
Silence. The nothingness that can only be recognised once left, much like a deep sleep. Comforting blackness. Quiet. Warmth.
Before he could see again, his eyes opened, his mouth swallowed. Swallowed more. His hands curled into claws, grasping for whatever provided the drink. A monstrous growl echoed from his belly and sight returned. Hunger. Hunger.
Fowler had a strong grip on him, one hand digging into his hair, the other muffling his mouth with his wrist. Yet the drink kept flowing. It answered his desperate hunger, tickling it, never satisfying. It was heavenly, a pleasure that made him ache for more.
And then, it was gone. Fowler stepped back, every muscle tensed, and Monroe whimpered. He groaned and wrapped an arm around his stomach. But that wasn’t where the Hunger was. It pounded in his head, his heart, his very bones. Never, not even as a boy had he ever been so hungry.
He wanted… meat. A roast, rare and bright red in the middle, seeping blood when cut. The meaty juices pooling on the plate, to mix into mashed potatoes. He would drink them plain, that salty, heavy — Not even rare, raw, just warmed through, hot and vital—
“What did you do to me?”
“Welcome to your new life, childe,” said Fowler with something approaching fondness. He sat down next to him again, but didn’t wear his coat or jacket. His sleeves had been rolled up. Monroe hadn’t realised how pale Fowler was, but the bright red on his wrist was stark like blood on snow.
Blood.
As soon as he identified it, the Hunger crowed, roared like a living thing, like another mind, another voice in his head.
Feed. Feed. Feed.
Monroe panted. His lungs filled with air, exhaling it, but didn’t seem to absorb it.
“I — this sounds crazy, mister, but—”
“It’s alright, childe,” said Fowler. “Come, you can drink.”
Monroe knocked over his chair in his haste. He moved fast, too fast, and ended up on the floor, crawling in his desperation. He put his lips to Fowler’s bloody wrist and drank. A hand stroked his hair, drawing him closer. Monroe couldn’t help but moan at the pleasure, the satisfaction of sating the hunger.