章節 50: Revelation
Cain was well down the hall before his rational mind overtook his urgent need to grab Damien and run like hell. The werewolf in his arms was even more frail than he'd been when Cain had left the castle, and he had barely-healed cuts and bruises littering every inch of bared skin on him. He could tell from the way the young man had moved when the two of them had walked out of Crowe's special room that he had other injuries concealed beneath his clothing, too, though Cain wouldn't know the extent of them until he had a moment to look Damien over. Now, though, he was struggling to decide what to do next. He was still running, but where was he running to? Was he taking Damien to the thrall residences, or should he take him somewhere else?
Cain recalled then that Johann had played some part in Crowe's abduction of the young man, and he decided that he couldn't trust any of the thralls (except, possibly, Grace, though he wouldn't count on that just yet) around Damien for the foreseeable future. Decision made, he turned down the next hall, and proceeded deeper into the vampire wing, eventually reaching his own room and fumbling with the door before finally flinging it open and stumbling inside.
Once he was in, he slammed the door shut, took four long strides and carefully laid the werewolf out on his bed before returning to the door and deadbolting it. Then, he looked around the room, wondering if he had anything else to ward the door. Seeing nothing immediate, he pulled the silver dagger he carried with him from his boot, and laid it (still in its sheath, of course) on the dressing table that stood between the bed and the door.
That done, he turned to the candle, and realized that the only lights were outside the room. He fumbled in his stolen traveler's coat, and eventually withdrew some flint and tinder. He picked up one of the wash basins, blessedly empty, and arranged the tinder inside it, striking the flintstone until he got some sparks to catch. Once a little blaze was dancing, he dipped the candle into the fire, and it lit only a few seconds before the tinder burned itself out. Careful not to extinguish the candle, Cain lit one of the lamps in the room. He rarely lit them himself, since vampires could see even in the dark. But he felt fairly certain that Damien would want to be able to see when he awoke, so he made sure there was at least a little bit of light to be had.
Then, he turned to the boy and began inspecting his wounds. He was a little bit grateful for his blessed blood at the moment, because the boy was a mess. While cold, dried blood held very little appeal to a vampire, there were enough cuts and scrapes over his body that Cain felt certain there was a high likelihood of one tearing open and beginning to bleed freely once more. With his blood hunger mysteriously absent, though, that shouldn't be a concern.
Cain didn't have a mirror at his dressing table (it would be pointless), and he'd used the wash basin to start a fire, so his only recourse was to use the water directly from the pitcher. He thought that shouldn't be too much of a problem. Even if some of the blood from the cuts dissolved in the water, it shouldn't be potent enough to attract another vampire, and hopefully he would be able to get Damien patched up without making him bleed much more than he already had.
The one concern he had at the moment was the ticking clock looming over both of them - the full moon was coming, and Cain certainly didn't want to be trapped in a room with a werewolf when that time came. But he couldn't exactly leave the poor soul in such a sorry state with something as brutal as a total body transformation looming in the near future, either. Sighing, he picked up a clean washcloth and dipped it in the water pitcher, wringing out most of the liquid before moving back to the bedside, folding the washcloth into a small square and gently dabbing at the young man's battered face. It looked like Crowe had broken his nose at some point, and Cain hoped that it would heal all right. It was a little crooked, but not terribly so. Maybe he should re-break it and hope it healed right this time. Werewolves' accelerated healing could be a bit of a negative, in cases like this. A lot of the injuries that could have been set right, had they been inflicted on a human, were already well on their way towards healing due to Damien's more magically-inclined ancestry.
As Cain dabbed the washcloth against the werewolf's face, he was pleased to see none of the cuts or scrapes there seemed inclined to start bleeding again. He was just easing the washcloth down from the face to the underside of Damien's jaw when the young man's eyes flew open.
"Don't," he rasped, and tried to scramble back like he'd been burned. "Don't touch me," he said, back up against the headboard, eyes wide and panicked.
Cain lifted his hands, showing the mildly dirtied washcloth to the werewolf. "Apologies," he said, because even if he might have taken offense in another situation, he understood that Damien had been through quite a lot the past few days, and anyone might feel leery of being touched after such an ordeal. "I was trying to get you cleaned up."
Damien stared at him, his look of panic giving way to suspicion. "You were touching my throat," he countered, lifting a hand to cover the side of his neck, as if he needed a barrier between it and Cain.
"It's as bloodied and battered as your face," Cain replied. "That's all."
"You don't get to touch that," Damien said, as if he hadn't heard Cain's explanation at all. "Especially you."
Another day, Cain would remember to feel a bit insulted that apparently he rated worse than Crowe on a scale of 'who gets to touch Damien's throat'. But he honestly didn't care that much, he'd merely been trying to help get the young man cleaned up. If Damien didn't want to be touched, Cain could work with that. "Do you want to clean yourself up?" He asked, turning and grabbing the pitcher of water, showing it to the young werewolf before explaining, "I don't have a bath in here, but a bit of water and a cloth should be better than nothing, at least."
Staring with naked distrust in his eyes, Damien scooted forward on the bed, gingerly reaching out for the washcloth. His arm was shaking, though Cain couldn't tell if it was with fear, pain, exhaustion, or something else altogether. He didn't think Damien would be able to hold the pitcher of water in his current state, so he took one step towards the bed, then another, then perched on the very edge of it, holding the water towards the werewolf, who stared at him, unblinking, for several long seconds before he carefully dunked the washcloth into the water. He didn't take his eyes off Cain for a moment; not when he dipped the cloth, nor when he wrung it out.
He lifted the cloth back to his neck, pressing it lightly in the place where Cain knew Crowe must have been feeding, given the distinct bruising and numerous puncture wounds. He hoped they didn't get infected - a vampire could ensure their dark magic kept the wounds from becoming a problem, but Crowe wasn't one to expend any extra energy to help the thralls he fed from recover. It was entirely possible he hadn't bothered to clean the wounds, much less heal them.
As Damien peeled the washcloth away from his throat, he hissed in what was clearly pain. At first, Cain wasn't sure what had happened. Then, the smell hit him.
Rich. Savoury. Thick. Heady.
Cain felt himself begin to salivate, felt his fangs ache in his mouth. His stomach clenched, but it wasn't the same sort of twisting pain that he'd felt from drinking the kitchen blood, or the blood of the woman he'd journeyed alongside, or the scarlet splatter of a crazed thrall who wanted nothing more than to be fed from. No, this was an empty, aching need that desired to be filled. A hunger that he hadn't realized had become foreign to him until it came at once roaring back to the forefront of his psyche.
"Oh," Cain said, a bit numbly, then turned to look at Damien, who was holding the washcloth in his hand, a stricken look on his face.
A pea-sized stain of warm scarlet bloomed in the center of the cloth. From there, Cain's eyes traced indelibly upwards from Damien's trembling hand to where it had been resting mere moments before. He spotted a tiny bead of blood, trailing its way down Damien's throat, its origin clearly that of a bite that wasn't quite as healed as the rest of the marks Crowe had left behind.
He wanted - no, needed - that blood. The hunger roared in his chest like a chimera, pounded in his ears like a heartbeat (or perhaps that was the werewolf's heartbeat he was hearing as his senses instantly alerted to the presence of prey–).
"Oh no," Cain said, more forcefully, and then with the last remainder of his good sense, he threw himself off the side of the bed, hitting the floor in a graceless tangle of limbs. He heard the wet slap of a washcloth, and thought that Damien had realized the problem, and had covered his wound to try and staunch the bleeding.
It was too little, too late. Cain could feel his mouth filling with saliva, almost drooling like a rabid animal in his frenzied need to drink. He clawed his way across the room but couldn't bear to leave, the smell of blood an anguish and a delight he couldn't bear to part from, even as his rational mind screamed at him to leave before he was no longer able to do so.
On the bed, he heard Damien curling up, tucking his limbs under and around himself, muttering "No, no, no, no, no."
Cain would have repeated the mantra, but he was too busy trying to think. Damien was in no condition to share blood, and Cain was in no condition to control himself. He didn't understand what was happening; hadn't his blood been blessed? He couldn't feed, so why would he suddenly start craving blood, after no other bloods had given him even the slightest pause? Was this the final cruelty of the blessed blood, when he started to crave the very blood he wasn't allowed to have? Would he begin to hunger for blood, only for it to rip itself violently back out of him again? He groaned at the thought, and tossed his eyes around, looking for a solution, anything.
His eyes landed on the dagger. The one he used to attack other vampires.
Scrambling, he reached up and grabbed the dagger, still sheathed, and tossed it to the bed. "Here," he said, "use this."
Damien looked up at him, eyes wide, one hand still pinning the washcloth to the side of his neck. "What?"
"If I get too close," Cain said, "use it. I – I'm not in control right now."
Damien picked up the dagger, and started to slide it from its sheath, only to hiss and shove it hurriedly back into the leather case. "That's silver!" he protested.
"It'll stop me," Cain said. Though given his current unpredictable vampiric nature, he wasn't entirely sure. It would probably work, though. And arming Damien seemed like the best solution at the moment.
"It will?" the werewolf asked, eyeing Cain thoughtfully.
Cain remembered, belatedly, that he'd killed the young werewolf's first family. Ah well. If he died here at least he wouldn't suffer a slow death by blessed blood. He leaned against the dressing table, willing the hunger he felt to abate. But it wasn't going away. It was getting worse. He was drooling, now, he could feel the wetness in the corners of his mouth. Disgusting.
The werewolf shifted his weight. It sounded like he was settling back down.
The smell of blood was back, thicker and stronger than before. Damn. Damien must have ripped open a few more of his cuts and scrapes with the mad scramble of panic. Cain shut his eyes, clenched his fists, and held his breath. He didn't need to breathe.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
"Why is your heartbeat so damn loud?" Cain complained, before he could stop himself.
"Because unlike some of us here, I'm actually alive," Damien retorted. "Shut up and stay back, monster."
Cain didn't sigh, if only because he was trying to avoid emptying his lungs. It seemed easier to save the breath he was holding in, rather than refuse to inhale once he'd breathed everything out. It felt slightly easier, even though he knew logically that he did not need breath for anything but normal speaking.
A moment later, he heard the sound of the washcloth being dunked in the water, and rivulets being wrung out of a dirty cloth. He held his breath so he wouldn't smell the blood when Damien inevitably ripped off a few more scabs. If he could just hold his breath and pretend to not exist, maybe the blood hunger wouldn't turn to insanity. Maybe he would escape this cruel fate. Maybe…
But then again, when was he ever so lucky?
Time eked by with maddening slowness. Damien continued using the washcloth to sponge-bathe himself, and Cain didn't breathe. He had never held his breath this long, and it made him feel even less human than he already did. It was his only option, though, and so endured as best he could.
Then, after an agonizing eternity of quiet splashes and soft scrubbing sounds, Damien hissed, a sharp exhalation of pain. "Cain," he said, his voice high and quavering. "We have a problem."
Cain, eyes still closed, expended a bit more of the precious air in his lungs. "What is it?"
"My throat won't stop bleeding." Damien sounded a bit like he was on the verge of tears. "Everything else has healed over. But not…"
Cain considered the problem for a moment, and found a solution almost immediately. "It's likely Crowe's magic." He probably wanted the wounds to keep bleeding as long as possible, Cain thought, a bit disgusted by the pointless cruelty of feeding like that.
"Is there a way to stop it?" Damien asked. "It's been bleeding a long time, and it's not showing any signs of stopping."
Cain could see the blood in his mind's eye, even though he tried to make himself not think about it. His mouth, which had gone almost back to normal once he could no longer smell blood, started to salivate again. Scowling, Cain considered the problem for a moment, and could think of only one possible solution. He had barely any air left with which to answer, so he did his best to stay concise. "I could use my magic." He doubted that the werewolf would allow such a thing, though, since it would involve touching Damien's throat.
"What would that look like?" Damien asked slowly.
Cain was a bit surprised the young man hadn't refused outright. "I would use my saliva," he said. He was running preciously short of air, now. He had maybe one sentence left before he'd need to inhale to speak again.
"Just saliva?" Damien asked. "Do you need to put your mouth on it, or could you… I don't know, spit on the cloth?"
Cain wasn't entirely sure, but he felt fairly certain at least some manner of physical contact would be required. "I could use my fingers," he suggested. He wasn't sure if that would be enough, but it was worth a try.
Damien was quiet for several long seconds. Finally, in a quiet voice, he said, "Okay. Use your fingers, then."
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