“ ‘Get away from him,’ she hissed, and I’d never heard her like that before. Her eyes were narrow and threatening, her face contorted in anger and pain.
“He left me there and stalked over to her as I struggled to get to my knees. As he reached her, she lifted her hand high. Something gleamed there, but I couldn’t see what. I tried to get to my feet. And then she brought it down on the creature, driving it deeply into his neck. He screamed and bolted away from her, red eyes wide with surprise. He burst from the room and crashed through one of the French doors.
“Anna collapsed. I rushed to her side and cradled her head…” Noah’s voice cracked painfully. “I could see how bad… how bad she was hurt. I took off my cravat and pressed it tightly to the wound. ‘The metal,’ she started to say, and then she choked. Blood bubbled on her lips.” He bit the corner of his mouth. “I remember she said, ‘Oh, Noah, I wanted to marry you…’
“And then she was gone. Her eyes just went vacant. I clutched her to my chest and kissed her lips and hands, her blood in my mouth. I begged to have her back, begged God, the earth, begged time itself, but still she lay there, lifeless, pale, and limp.”
Noah broke into tears, and this time Madeline did get up and put her arms around him. She held him tightly while he cried. He wrapped his arms around her. “It was so long ago, but the pain is still so fresh that the very thought of it breaks me down.” He continued to cry, and Madeline brought him closer.
After a while, Noah said from her shoulder, “It was the blood.”
Madeline’s brow wrinkled. “What?” Gently she pushed him up so she could see his face. His expression was dire, his eyes cheerless and empty.
“The blood,” he said again. “When I kissed her hand, I tasted blood. What I didn’t realize was that it was his blood-the creature’s blood. When she stabbed him, it spilled down her hand, and I had ingested it.”
“What happened?”
“At first nothing. Full of grief and obsessed with revenge, I wandered the underbelly of Vienna, trying to find someone who knew of the creature. I had one drive: to find the thing and destroy it. Polite society, save one person, ostracized me. That one person was one of Gregor’s frequent visitors to the house: Ffyllon. He knew of the creature and its weakness, a certain type of metal. It was this friend who had given Anna the metal, in the shape of a letter opener, and told her of the creature. He wasn’t specific, but at the time I got the impression he’d been following the creature for some time. He said Anna had laughed at him when he offered the letter opener for protection, but she had taken it in appreciation of his good story about a roaming, voracious creature.
“A few days later I found Ffyllon’s body, murdered by the creature. His journal was on him, and I read it. He had followed the thing to Vienna, worried that it intended to kill a musician named Anna. In his journal, he wonders if the drinks he had the night Anna was murdered were drugged. With the hunter passed out, the creature had open access to his target.”
“Did you still have the letter opener?”
“No. When she stabbed him with it, it must have stayed embedded in him when he ran off that night. Everything happened so fast-” He exhaled shakily.
“Did this friend help you find another weapon?”
Noah shook his head. “No. He disappeared right after that and was killed before he could help me further. I vowed to take up his quest, but spiraled ever downward. Eventually I found a piece of the special metal, though, and had a knife made out of it.”
Madeline considered for a minute, then said, “Is it the same knife that’s in your pack?”
Noah raised his eyebrows. “Going through my things?”
“I needed to look at the map.”
“Ah. Yes, it’s the same knife.”
Madeline resisted the urge to tell him she’d felt how old and important it was when she’d touched it.
“I thought once I had the knife, I’d just find him and kill him. But it was far more complicated than that. I don’t think he has an inherent human form. He can look like anyone he’s eaten. Anyone at all. I realized that the hard way when a stranger attacked me in an alley in Cardiff. The creature had taken on another appearance, but I didn’t realize it until then. He’d been stalking me not only because I was a witness, but because he had been unable to eat Anna, and he wanted revenge. I slashed him with the knife, but only shallowly. He flew into a rage, twisting and screaming. He tore out of the alley and into the streets.
“For a long time after that I didn’t know where he’d gone. He covers his trail well. But little clues, like accounts of people with exceptional talent gone missing or murdered gave me his whereabouts.
“And so I’ve been hunting him. Across four continents, for over two hundred years, it’s all I’ve done.”
He sighed and put his head back in his hands.
Madeline just stared at him, not knowing what to say. Finally she asked, “But how are you still alive?”
Noah stayed silent for several moments, then he looked up at her, his eyes tired and bloodshot.
“The blood,” he said. “Over time I noticed… changes. I was able to see in the dark. I rarely needed to eat. I was more energetic and started noticing that I was aging quite well. Then I realized it was a little too well. Fifty years went by. On those rare occasions when I returned home, I saw that my friends had gotten wrinkles and grown stiff, and I still looked the same. Then they started to die of old age. And I still looked twenty-four. Later, when I was very emotional, when feeling anger or”-he looked at her-“passion, I began to change physically. The more time goes by, the more I change, the more abilities I gain.” Noah fell silent.
“What abilities?” The tremble returned within her.
“The power to heal quickly. To see in the dark. To not need much sleep. To change small parts of my appearance, like growing claws. I’m not nearly as powerful as the creature, but I’ve been learning as I go.” He paused. “The usual things won’t kill me anymore. I found that out through accidents that have happened over the years. I was hit by a train once. And while it didn’t kill me, it took me weeks to heal completely. Still, mere weeks after having my body pulverized isn’t bad.
“I began to get completely absorbed with it. I didn’t have to fear death anymore and became obsessed with that fact. I even tried to kill myself in a few different ways, just to see if it would work. It never did. But I’ve longed to die a few times over these last centuries. I just didn’t want the responsibility anymore. I just couldn’t keep on hunting him fruitlessly, year after year.”
They sat together for several long moments.
“What is he?” Madeline asked at last.
Noah shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s either completely nonhuman, a creature all his own, or he’s a man like me-a man who was attacked by the same kind of creature, a long, long time ago.”
“Why long ago?”
“Because what you’ve seen me do-the claws, the eyes-has taken me two hundred years to develop. At first I couldn’t even do that. I’d try to grow claws, and instead freakish things would happen. Sometimes I wouldn’t be able to undo them for a while. Like once I grew fingernails in my leg, and another time a finger sprouted out of my stomach. It was excruciating learning how to control the power, and I still know next to nothing. I think if I’d gotten a larger dose of his blood, I might have more power and be able to control it better, like him. He can shape-shift, adopt the features of other people, change his flesh to metal. If he was ever a man, he was so thousands of years ago.” He paused. “But there’s something else that makes me think he’s nonhuman.”