Staring down at the lifeless homeless girl, Jem ran his hands through his hair and groaned. He could feel her blood coursing through him, taking the edge off his Rabbia Sanguigna.
“If only it would last,” he thought to himself as he tucked her stinking nylon sleeping bag round her corpse. With a click, the flame of his lighter danced in the dark. He touched it to the sleeping bag then transported himself away before the flames caught.
A few minutes later, he touched down in the courtyard outside the beach hut, just as dawn was breaking.
The girl had been the seventh person he’d taken in the past four weeks.
“Jeremiah.”
“Mother.”
“Walk with me before you go inside,” instructed Meryn, her tone leaving no room for him to decline.
Together they walked in silence along the narrow coastal path, the full Hunter’s Moon lighting their way until they reached the bridge. Stepping off the path and into the shadows cast by the stand of trees, Meryn indicated that he should follow.
“Where have you been?” she asked him directly.
“Hunting,” he replied evasively.
“Don’t even try to lie, Jeremiah,” she began, her voice echoing with concern. “I can smell human blood on you…and not for the first time lately.”
An uneasy silence descended upon them before Jem said quietly, “Mother, I think I need your help, I can’t control the thirst.”
“Drinking from that human with Trine started this, didn’t it?”
Jem nodded.
“How many?”
“The girl tonight was the seventh,” he confessed, bowing his head in shame. “I’ve taken care to cover my tracks.”
“Seventh!” echoed Meryn. “This has to stop!”
“Don’t you think I don’t know that, mother!” he snapped. “My Rabbia Sanguigna is raging out of control, and I don’t know how to calm it down. Nothing works.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she asked, her tone considerably softer.
“You were busy with Trine and Luna. I thought it would pass. I thought I could control it.”
“But you can’t,” she finished for him.
“I’m terrified I hurt Luna.”
His mother looked at him in horror.
“The very first time, all those years ago when I was partially transformed, I almost bit my son one morning. I stopped myself. Bit the cat instead,” he explained. A single tear slid down his cheek.
“You won’t harm your daughter,” assured Meryn warmly. “It’s not vampire blood you are craving.”
“Help me,” he whispered.
“I will,” promised his mother, reaching out for his hand. “How did Anna quench it the first time?”
Letting out a long sigh, Jem said, “That was a long time ago.”
Reaching into his pocket for the well-worn pouch of crystals that he always carried, he added, “I know it involved some of these.”
Taking the pouch from him, Meryn loosened the strings and tipped the stones out into the palm of her hand. Her keen eyesight detected which stones had been shaved in the past. “Opal, Moonstone and Turquoise. It’s a start. What else?”
“Blood,” replied Jem, thinking back. “And bark from a tree…an oak tree, I think.”
“I’m familiar with the potion,” said Meryn calmly. “I can prepare it for you but it’s a short-term remedy.”
“Can you do something more permanent?”
“Perhaps,” she mused. “But not here.”
“We need to go back to Stefan’s castle, don’t we?”
Meryn nodded, “But not yet. Luna is too young to travel, and Trine still isn’t strong enough. They both need more time before its safe.”
“When?”
“We’ll wait until the Snow Moon,” advised Meryn.
Jem nodded knowing in his heart that there was no other choice.
In the cold darkness of her cell, Anna allowed a single tear of regret to slide down her cheek. She could feel her runner’s pain, his anguish at the blood rage he was suffering from; she could feel her own blood rage rising and for the first time felt lost. Unable to hunt for herself she had no way to quench her own thirst…. or did she?
Coral McCallum 