His clawed fingers shot forward, tearing through the flesh of the man’s back. Taras wrapped his fingers around his victim’s spine and yanked backward. The bones popped free of their moorings and ripped through his skin. Blood sprayed everywhere, and some of the droplets landed on Taras’ face. The smell drove him forward while the man screamed, then fell silent. By the time he hit the ground he was dead. Taras, meanwhile, had moved on to the next man.
The second bandit had just started to turn around when Taras plunged his claws into the man’s throat, twisting his hand and rending skin and tendons. He wrapped his fingers around the man’s Adam’s apple and pulled it free. The flesh ripped apart, sending more blood into the air. The man gurgled, and then he fell to the ground to lie in a growing pool of blood. His right hand clutched his throat, while his left hand still fingered his belt.
Next was Hio, who moved a bit faster than his two comrades. He reached for the sword at his belt and had it halfway out of its sheath by the time Taras grabbed hold of his head. The Bachiyr placed one hand on either side of Hio’s head and began to squeeze. Hio screamed and let go of his sword, grabbing Taras’ wrists and trying to pull them apart. But the human bandit was no match for the Bachiyr’s strength, and soon his eyes rolled up into his head and his arms fell limp at his sides.
The sound Hio’s head made as the sides caved in reminded Taras of breaking a clay pot filled with moist bread dough. First came a sharp crack, then a liquid plop as his hands tore through the soft material beneath.
The smell of blood hung in the air like a red mist. Taras inhaled great clouds of it, sending his hyper-developed senses into a frenzy. He pulled his hands from Hio’s shattered skull and turned to find Grummit standing over Mary with his sword hanging over her neck. The bandit was still naked from the waist down, and his erection pointed toward the sky as he poked the sword into the soft flesh of her throat.
“Whatever you are,” Grummit said, his voice wavering, “don’t take another step forward or I’ll cut off her head.”
Mary stared at Taras’ hands, her fear worse now than when Grummit had been about to rape her. Her heart thumped madly in her chest, buzzing like a hummingbird. Could she truly be more afraid of Taras than Grummit? A thin trickle of blood leaked from a cut on her neck, caused by the point of the bandit’s sword, but Taras barely noticed. His attention was focused on the look of fear in Mary’s eyes.
Why would Mary be afraid of him?
In his confusion, the vision faded, and he saw the truth. The woman on the ground was not Mary, and never had been. Mary was dead, killed by Theron. This woman was a stranger. She meant nothing to him. He should just walk away now while he had the chance.
But he didn’t.
Perhaps it was the smell of blood combined with his hunger, or maybe it was the thought of what Mary would think of him if he left the helpless woman to die, or it could have been the words of a dead Jewish rabbi, but something kept him rooted to the spot.
There is always a choice.
Taras took a step forward.
“Stop,” Grummit commanded.
Taras shook his head. “You are already dead, Grummit,” he said. “Release the woman and I will kill you quick. Kill her and I will make your death very slow. Choose.”
Grummit looked from Taras to the woman, then to the bodies of his three fallen comrades, killed in less time than it takes to blink. His sword arm wavered. For a moment Taras thought he would run, but then he looked back to Taras and screamed. He pulled his sword away from the woman’s neck and charged.
Grummit was a brute; vile and mean, but he was little more than a strong farmer with a sword. Taras had spent years training in the Roman Legion and had the added benefit of his enhanced reflexes and strength. As the bandit charged him, his heavy sword held over his head in a clumsy overhand chop, Taras ducked down and twisted to the side, jabbing out with his right hand and raking his claws across Grummit’s belly. They tore four long gashes into the man’s tender flesh, and several slimy ropes of intestine spilled out to hang, dripping, from Grummit’s abdomen. The bandit screamed in pain and tried to come around with his sword, but his angle was off and Taras swatted the blade away with his left hand.
The blood! It rolled down Taras’ arm from the gaping wound in Grummit’s gut. The scent of it pulled at his mind, tearing into it like an angry badger. His strength flagged as his sudden surge of speed took its toll, and Taras felt himself sinking back into weakness. Next to him, Grummit fell to the clearing floor, sobbing and grabbing as much of his innards as he could and trying to hold them inside.
Taras looked toward the woman, who now lay still. Her heartbeat had slowed to normal, as had her breathing, leaving him to guess that she had fainted. A thin trickle of blood ran down her neck.
Grummit had done that to her.
Taras stepped over to where the man lay in the dirt and leaves. He looked down at the writhing, squirming figure and felt no pity. The man deserved to die. Taras had meted out his death sentence already; the wound in his belly surely would kill him unless some opportunistic predator smelled the blood and did it first.
A predator like Taras.
At last, he had his answer.
He reached down and grabbed Grummit by the shoulder, then hauled him to his feet. Grummit swatted weakly at him, but the man’s strength had left him, and the blow rolled off Taras’ shoulder as if it were a child’s. Taras spun the man around and embraced him from behind, plunging his teeth into the exposed throat.
The blood poured into his mouth, and Taras sighed as he swallowed mouthful after mouthful. He had been as a man wandering through the desert, his skin ablaze with the sun’s heat and his body dry as ancient bones. Now he had found an oasis, and he drank until he could not drink any more.
Strength surged through his body like lightning, feeding his muscles and his foggy mind. Until then, he hadn’t realized just how weak he had become. But as power vibrated through his body, humming with energy and vitality, his senses exploded.
The scent of the clearing poured into his nostrils like a great waterfalclass="underline" the green of the tree leaves and the brown of the earthen floor. The sweat of the woman’s body, and the sour odor of urine from one of his victims. Even the smell of Grummit’s steel, tainted with old blood, found its way into his nose.
A cacophony of noise surrounded him. Birds fluttering their wings, snakes slithering across the ground, mice bounding through the brush, and many more. He heard every blade of grass that bent to the wind, every leaf that fluttered to the ground, and every insect that buzzed through the trees. He heard them all so well he could almost see them with his ears.
As the blood poured into him, the woods around him seemed to explode into light and detail. A squirrel chattered in a tree on one side of the clearing, and Taras saw it so clearly he could have counted the hairs of its tail. On the other side, a bat fluttered through the trees, and Taras saw the gnats that it chased. The moonlight bathed the whole area in a soft, surreal glow, and no shadow was too deep for his eyes to penetrate..
This was the feeling he’d had in Jerusalem after Mary’s death. This was the euphoric sensation that caused him to run down and kill dozens of people that night. Taras was more than just a predator, he was the predator. The top hunter in a world filled with prey.
He couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to.
He drank from Grummit until the man stopped moving, then he cast about for another victim. Not far away, the bandit Taras had stabbed through the neck writhed feebly on the ground. Without Taras’ interference the man would die soon enough, but he wasn’t dead yet. Taras leapt on him, placing his mouth over a font of spurting blood, and clamped his lips tight over the wound. In less than a minute, he had drunk a second person dry.