章 42: Plea
Cain's consciousness returned in fits and bursts, nothing he was able to make sense of, necessarily. He heard voices, and assumed it was the two thralls he was meant to be escorting back to the Solveig fortress. There were harsh whispers, as if they were arguing about what to do with him. One of them had the foolish idea of checking for a pulse (vampire pulses were far slower than human ones, and barely a step above a corpse's. The blood that was circulated came from feeding on humans, and that didn't need to move especially quickly, just so long as it did eventually reach all the extremities). Another had a slightly better thought, and took the time to roll him over to inspect his wounds. This motion unfortunately involved placing greater pressure on the deep cut in his ribs, and the white-hot pain set him senseless once more.
The second time he regained consciousness, there was still a lot of frantic whispering going on over his head, and he felt nimble fingers poking at his face, while another set was prodding at the slash over his ribs. It hurt, but not as bad as rolling on top of the injury had. He felt cold air on his chest, and thought that maybe the thralls had removed his shirt and coat to get a better look at the injury. He saw a glint, and for a moment he tried to escape, before realizing it was just a needle. The damage was done, though, and his full-body flinch sent him reeling back once more into unconvsiousness.
When he awoke again, he could feel the sharp pain of a needle piercing his flesh, raggedly sewing up the edges of his injury. He tried to blink his eyes open, but couldn't quite find the energy for it, and wasn't entirely sure he wanted to see a thrall carefully stitching his sides up, anyway. He was just beginning to wonder what had happened with the other thrall when he heard the sound of a dagger being drawn from a sheath. Despite how stupid it was to think it, he had a moment where he wondered if the thrall had decided to kill him, for some reason. Not that he had any way to defend himself even if it were the case. But why would they kill him after sewing up the wound in his side? It didn't make much sense. The one bright point in all this was the knowledge that Crowe had been unable to get to these thralls before they'd been sent to Thomas, and thus they couldn't have been involved in this trap. So he could still trust them to at least have the good of the Solveigs in mind. Even so, that left the question of what the thralls were doing with the dagger unanswered. Cain had no strength in him to try and ask, and as the needle kept stabbing at his side, he could feel the darkness creeping in again from all sides, ready to take him back into its cold and deathlike embrace.
Before it could, though, Cain felt the warm splatter of blood, dribbling over his lips and trickling into his mouth. It smelled faintly of frost and cold, which was not exactly what a vampire liked tasting in their blood. But it was blood - fresh blood, at that. Cain realized, faintly, that the thrall who wasn't currently sewing him up must have used one of the bandits' blessed daggers to give themselves a cut deep enough to feed him their blood. Typically, Cain would have protested. But he had no strength with which to do so, at the moment. He didn't want a thrall beholden to him. But he also didn't want to die. So, he supposed, it was something he could deal with later, when he wasn't busy fading in and out of consciousness.
Except, as before, the blood did nothing. Worse, Cain felt his stomach cramp and twist as the thrall massaged his throat, trying to get him to swallow. He knew, instinctively, that this was a terrible idea. Most vampires would have been guzzling the blood down by now, but Cain couldn't even bring himself to swallow.
Eventually, though, the throat massage worked, and the warm blood trickled slowly down his throat, eventually reaching his stomach. At this point, the mild upset of his stomach became violent cramps, and Cain groaned, curling up and turning on his side at the force of them, facing away from the thrall who had been making careful sutures in his side. The injury along his ribs had only been halfway closed, and he could feel some of the work tearing apart again. His body shook like he was suffering from the worst sort of fever, and he gasped for air, trying to fight back the nausea. It was worse than when he ate human food, and he could already sense that he was fighting a losing battle with his body. Just when he thought it couldn't possibly get worse, he felt the blood in his stomach – the old, congealed stuff he hadn't been able to drink properly – lurch, together with the fresh blood.
Pressing his forehead to the ground and gasping shallowly, Cain felt the corners of his mouth salivating, though he wasn't hungry, just sick. Another violent cramp clutched his stomach and he groaned, and then vomited the blood up from his stomach. It was a violent expelling, making him shake even harder with each wave of nausea. His whole body bowed nearly in half, curling around the agonizing pain of his stomach.
This was so much worse than how he felt after eating human food, and an utterly terrifying response to something as crucial to a vampire's survival as blood. In the aftermath of the purging of what felt like every inch of his insides, Cain could feel the way the careful stitches had pulled apart, allowing him to once more bleed freely from the wound in his side. Coughing out the last flecks of blood that remained in his mouth, he rolled once more onto his back, clutching his ribcage. High above, the moon stared down at him, seemingly indifferent to his plight.
With very little air in his lungs and no words to describe what he needed, Cain gazed up at the goddess, and begged. "Please," he gasped, his voice so soft and thready that he wasn't even sure the word had passed his lips. "Please."
He could hear the thralls fussing over him again, felt delicate fingers plucking at the needle that was still attached to the thread half-embedded in his flesh. He heard the other thrall, the one who had tried to feed him blood, apologizing profusely. He felt a bit bad about that - had he been any other vampire, in any other situation, that would have worked. It was because his blood hunger was inverting (and there was nothing else it could be, at this point. He'd vomited up blood; he would probably begin craving his own blood before long) that the attempt to heal him by feeding him fresh blood hadn't worked.
One of the thralls was trying to ask him something, but Cain knew there was no point in speaking to them at this point. He was going to die here, or at the very least exsanguinate (he wasn't sure if that was one of the ways to kill a vampire or not, but he was fairly certain it would be uncomfortable, if nothing else), and nothing the thralls could do at this point would make an ounce of difference.
But Brinn… Brinn had already favored him once, on behalf of her beloved little pup. Maybe she would spare him again. She'd already ruined him, by allowing her power to taint his blood-hunger, making it impossible for him to feed like a normal vampire. The least she could do was fix the problem she'd created. If not for him, then for her wolf, surely!
"Please," Cain rasped again, clinging to consciousness by a thread more frayed than the one tying his wound together. "Help." His eyes fluttered shut, and he could no longer see the face of the moon whose help he sought.
One of the thralls was still speaking to him, when he felt the burn begin in his chest. It wasn't like the cold burning of the frosty daggers that had blackened his palms, but it wasn't hot like the sun, either. It was like a cool, steady glow that built up within. It didn't sear the way divine magic usually did, but he could smell the divinity of it. With all his effort, he managed to peel his eyes back open, and he saw an unearthly glow rising from his chest, spreading gradually outward, almost like a mist made of light. It was silvery and soft, but it still burned as it moved. As it traveled over his chest, though, Cain watched in amazement as the smaller cuts and scrapes he'd suffered during the fight were erased by the soft light. Brinn was not traditionally a goddess of healing, or a goddess of passing time, so he wasn't sure exactly how the wounds were being removed, but there was no doubt as to their disappearance. He wasn't about to question a good turn, though, so he just watched as the light spread farther, eventually reaching his half-sutured injury. The wound, thread, and needle vanished together, as if they'd never been there at all.
As the light continued to spread, though, the sensation of divinity grew more intense, beginning to ache. Even if Cain's blood had somehow been purified, it was clear that the flesh remained cursed. Brinn's power was not lingering long enough to burn him the way the cold daggers had, but it was still as painful as being passed through flames, no matter how gentle the light appeared to his watering eyes.
Finally, the light faded, and Cain felt strangely revitalized, despite the fact that he'd actually ended the encounter with less blood in his stomach than he'd had at the start. Groaning, he sat up, surprised to see that his hands had also been healed of the divine frostbite, leaving them whole and hale once more.
The two thralls were staring at him as if they'd seen a ghost. Or perhaps an angel.
"Mister Einhardt," one of the thralls said. "What was that?"
"I think the moon likes me," Cain answered. Or rather, likes someone who needs me, he corrected himself, though not aloud. Certain things were important to be discreet about.
"I should say so," the other thrall commented, sounding dazed. "Sorry about the blood."
"Don't be," Cain said. "It was a good idea."
"Oh," the thrall said, bashfully hiding their face behind a poorly-bandaged hand. "Thank you."
Cain waved aside her thanks, and turned around, looking for his shirt. "Where are my clothes?" he asked. He couldn't exactly make the rest of the journey shirtless.
"Oh," the first thrall sounded embarrassed. "We had to cut them off. Your shirt was ruined by your blood."
Cain sighed, mostly internally. "And my coat?" he asked.
"Oh, well, we cut both of them off," said the second thrall.
Cain glanced at the bandits appraisingly. One of them had a rather nice travelling cloak, and he'd been killed with a dagger to the forehead, leaving his clothes relatively untarnished. He pulled himself to his feet, surprised by how much better he felt. Part of it was the healed injuries, of course. But he had a suspicion that part of it was also due to the fact that he felt no hunger. Which was less than ideal news. How much longer until he started to crave his own blood? His body would no longer tolerate another's blood, so there couldn't be much time left.
Hopefully there would be enough time to get himself and the thralls back to the castle. He could deal with the rest of this mess after that.
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