An End in Ice Read online

  And on that score, I was hopeful. I had heard the bishop speak of sunset, and heard my friend's nervous chatter on that same point. If I could but stay alive, and out of their clutches, until then, I felt, instinctively, that I would be safe.

  Oddly, the monster did not worry me. Part of me, I think, longed to meet him again, to have a second chance to destroy him. It was pride, of course, that made me think that I would be better prepared to meet him this time. But there was something else as well. I was fleeing my home, and everything I had ever known. My brother was dead and burnt, in the manner that they disposed of heretics and monsters. My father thought that I had become the very thing that had killed Pavel. My village hunted me as they would chase down a rabid dog. I had, it seemed, nothing to live for; so a chance to avenge my brother was a welcome thought at that moment.

  But it would not come. I ran, and ran, until it seemed my veins ran with liquid fire. I had felt exhaustion before, I had worked until I stumbled blindly into my bed at night, numb to the world with weariness. But this was unlike that. My muscles did not ache, I was not short of breath, there was no stitch of pain in my side, and no compression of my chest. Rather, it felt as if the very veins in my body were shriveling and parching. It was, I imagined, because of all the blood I had lost to the monster's greedy appetite. But knowing that did not lessen the pain of it.

  At length, the agony grew so great that I could run no longer. I stood, trembling, against a tree trunk. I could hear, at first distant, and then growing nearer, the voices of my pursuers. I could not move. My body shook, convulsed almost. I thought I would die before even they reached me.

  That, too, proved untrue, both because I did not die, and because they did not reach me. At length, whether driven by some instinct for survival that overcame my pain, or fear of fire that outmatched exhaustion, I pushed on. My pursuers were close, now. I could see them when I turned, and they saw me as well.

  Their shouts were loud in my ears, and I could not drown them out. They did, however, serve a useful purpose: and that was to give haste to my feet. I ran, and ran, and ran. Every once in awhile, when my pace would slacken, or when I broke into some bit of clearing, an arrow would whiz by my head, too close for comfort, and I would find the energy, somehow, to go on.

  To this day, I do not know how I was able to make it out of those woods alive that night. Every vein in my body burned, until it felt like they were being torn from out of me, and movement made it worse. The more I ran, the more it hurt. But I could not stop. To stop would have been to die an enemy of my people, a Thing, a beast to be hunted and destroyed.

  Where some determination kept me running, though, I did slow. My pursuers were closer now. The arrows came with more regularity. I was fortunate, in that we were in a thick part of the forest, so the flight of such deadly projectiles was hampered. Still, cold sweat coated my back, and fear gripped at me. At this rate, I would be dead soon.

  Then I heard it. The twang of a bowstring being loosed, the quiet whistle of an arrow as it flew toward me. I could hear it cutting through the air so perfectly behind me that I knew, in that instant, that it would hit its mark in a moment.

  So I leaped. I don't know why. It was not a conscious decision, but an instinctual move, as I jettisoned off the ground into the air. I remember, clearly, thinking at the time that I would not be able to go high enough, or that I should return to the earth before the arrow passed by. But I did not return to earth. At least, not then.

  I noticed first that my vision had changed. The light, the last lingering bits of it visible after sunset, was odd to me, and things were not so clear. I thought that I must have been hit, that the arrow must have found its mark, and this change was Death's embrace. Then I noticed that I was rising in the air, higher and higher, until I was amongst the upper branches of the pines around me.

  Fear gripped at my heart, and I gazed downward. I was convinced, in that moment, that I was dead, that the arrow had struck me and, before I knew what had happened, killed me. This ascendancy was my soul going to perdition. Another thought crowded that one out: surely, perdition was in the opposite direction.

  By now, my eyes had reached the earth, and to my greater surprise I did not see my lifeless body gazing up at me with dead eyes. I did not see my body at all. I saw only the forest, the pack my mother had made for me, and the men of my village. And they saw me as well – that much was clear from the direction of their raised weapons and the occasional projectile that flew in my general direction.

  Needless to say, this realization spawned more questions in my mind than it answered. If I was not below, and not dead, then what was I doing in the air? How was it possible? My mind was pretty well in the throes of terror at this point, and I glanced about for some answer. What I saw did little to alleviate my fears.

  In place of hands and arms, in place of my body, was now the repulsive, the hideous, form of a furry, winged creature. I could not, at first, tell what creature, but understanding, when it came, brought less relief than uncertainty had. I had become a bat.

  My initial horror at this revelation was cut short by the increasing accuracy of the arrows that were aimed at me. Whatever my feelings about this turn of events, I would first have to fly – fly! – to safety before further contemplations.

  Luckily for me, flying was not a task that required concentration. I felt, now that I was aware of them, my long, spindly finger-like appendages as they moved; but I did not have to think about moving them, any more than as a man I had to force myself to breathe.

  So I flew to safety, not soaring as an eagle, or some other noble bird, might, but skulking between treetops like a reprobate with wings.

  There was, even amongst the contempt I felt for myself, I must confess some allure to such a means of conveyance. The impact may have been greater, I suspect, if I could have felt the wind against my face – my real face – and in my hair – my human hair – rather than feeling it brush against the leathery surfaces that composed my new skin, and pull at the unfamiliar short fur that now covered me. Still, it was not my worst experience of the previous few hours, which, at the time, made it feel rather better than it was.

  At length, though, I landed, and the wonder, however faint, that flight had inspired was now replaced by a new feeling. Horror. I was a bat. I, Radu, a sower of crops and tiller of fields, a simple peasant villager, was now become a bat. My reason waxed and waned as I sat there, for some hours, perched atop a high pine. I was a bat.

  It was unthinkable.

  And yet it was.

  But no! It was madness. I was Radu, son of Petru and Ioana of Vale. I was a young man, a human young man. Not a bat.

  And what human could fly? What human could seat himself on the highest, thinnest part of a tree, and sample the night breezes from such a height? No, it was true. I was a bat.

  So my mind argued back and forth, pitting the evidence of sight against the ardor of disbelief, going over the same points again and again with fresh eagerness each time. Finally I wearied of this same discourse, and instead wondered how it was possible. In all the legends, I had never heard of this; not of a man condemned to take the shape of a bat. I had been bitten – that was true. But surely, if the Monster's bite entailed such a dire curse, men would know of it?

  “But who would speak it? The bat?”

  I sat in somber reflection for a time after this thought. Mental exhaustion had had the effect of convincing my unwilling mind that I was indeed doomed to this bat existence. Now I sat in unthinking melancholy, neither fighting my fate nor pondering it. I simply absorbed the full mortification of such an end, and for that time wallowed in.

  Then a new thought entered my mind. Rebellion. I did not want to be a bat. I wanted to be a man again.

  And as quickly as that, the branch underneath me snapped, and I plummeted downward. Branches tore at me, and I grabbed here and there, winning only a handful of needles and a slowing of my fall. Sense abandoned me. I knew not what was happening, o
r how it was possible; I simply fought to stop the fall.

  I failed. In the end, torn and bloodied, I landed in a pile of snow at the foot of the tree, and lost consciousness.

  I woke the next morning to find the sun visible amongst an intricate patchwork of clouds. Its light was bright, glaring, in my eyes, and I shielded myself from that onslaught with an upraised arm. Then I started.

  I had arms again, human arms. I got up, quickly, ignoring the swimming in my head, and felt my body. It was there, real and solid. My body. Not that bat, not that horrible, disgusting creature of the night previous. But no! That was not possible. “A dream, surely.”

  I glanced around, as though I expected to find some evidence to support such a supposition. But I found none. Instead, the broken branches, the torn clothes and crusted blood that encased me told a different tale. They confirmed, in every point, my memories of my time as a bat. I stood, stupidly, in place at that realization for some time.

  I had been a bat. Now I was a man again. But I had been a bat. My mind did not deny it, but no more did it understand it. I had some idea, faint and unformed though it was, that it was in some way connected with the monster, and the poison of his bite. But my senses were too fractured to allow coherent cogitation.

  So I got my bearings, and began to walk. In activity I found a measure of comfort, if not meaning. My mother had told me to leave this place, and I had seen only too clearly the night before the wisdom of her words. So following her advice gave me some peace of mind.

  Physical comfort, on the other hand, it did not bring. Indeed, not soon after setting off, I began to experience the same pains I had known the evening before, though not quite so pronounced. My veins ached. I felt starved and parched all at once, to the very core of my being. But I had no food, nor even water, for I had dropped my pack the night before when I transformed into a bat.

  The thought sent a shiver up my back, and I tried to ignore the hunger. I would pass Rusloc in a day's time, if I kept to this route. It would not be safe for me to enter during the day – Bishop Luca surely would have sent word out – but perhaps by night I might steal into town and relieve my hunger and thirst. For now, though, I must keep on. There was nothing else for it.

  Such was my plan, and I ignored the twisting of my stomach as I thought of bread or meat. I would have to overcome my new aversion to eating, if I was to survive; this agony that consumed my body, this unbearable, gnawing hunger, would kill me, if it was not soon quenched.

  So I walked, until morning had turned to midday, and midday to dusk. It had snowed as I walked, but it had stopped again. I did not mind the snowfall. It did not chill me as it should have, so it was no inconvenience; and it served to cover my tracks. For this, I was glad, because I could not know if Bishop Luca and my father had men searching the woods, or if they had abandoned the hunt. Perhaps they thought I was a hundred miles from here; perhaps they knew me too well. I could not say.

  My mind had regained some equilibrium as I walked, and though I had not solved the puzzle regarding the hows or whys of the bat incident, I had come to better terms with it. Indeed, I had almost accepted it. It was not such a bad thing, was it, I reasoned, to be able to turn into a bat and fly to safety when an arrow raced for your back? There were certain advantages to such an unusual ability, as I had already learned. And who could say? Perhaps it had nothing to do with the monster's attack at all. Perhaps I had always possessed such an ability. I had never had an arrow come so near to killing me before. It was possible, my mind argued, that had that same situation occurred a month ago, my body would have reacted in the very same manner. The fact that I had been unable, when I had tried it earlier in the day, to recreate such a transformation gave evidence to my mind that it had nothing to do with the monster's curse, and everything to do with a defense mechanism, a means of extricating myself from a perilous situation.

  I did not stop to wonder why I had not discovered it during the monster's attack, or how such a mechanism could possibly exist without a supernatural explanation. The explanation I had crafted sat more comfortably with me than the alternative, and I was happy to accept it.

  So I continued to walk as the day expired and night began, lost in thoughts of my own. I hardly noticed the sunset above the treetops, or anything else. The forest was very quiet – a feature, I would reflect later, that was altogether unusual in my life experience – so there was little to distract me. I moved slowly, because exertion made my veins flame and pull, and the pain seemed to be growing worse and worse as time elapsed.

  So it was that, when a new sensation swept my body, I was almost glad of it. It happened without warning. I had been thinking of something – I don't remember what, now – when a strange sound filled my ears. It was like the distant roar of music, a cavalcade of pulses and beats in quick succession. I had never heard anything like it before, and I listened in rapt awe. It seemed more than a sound, more than a song; it took on a life of its own, invading my ears and then my thoughts, until my entire being swayed to its every fluctuation.

  My feet, without knowing, gravitated toward it, and it responded by growing louder and louder. I had moved, not of my own volition, but drawn by that call, until I broke into a clearing. I started, for a moment my thoughts overpowering the thrill of the rhythm, and fear and loathing seized me. There, halfway through the glade, stood the Thing; or so it seemed to me. It was a stag, a great deer, nosing through the snow for something to eat.

  Then the music returned; but the hate did not abate. I flew forward – not in the literal sense, as I had done the night before, but I moved with as much speed and silence. I was almost upon the beast before my movement caught his eye, and he had no hope of escape before I reached him.

  I grabbed at his antlers with one hand, and forced him down with the other. I was so intent on my purpose, so near the source of that music, that I did not even wonder at this incredible, newfound strength. Nor did I wonder as I sunk my teeth into his throat, and hot blood gushed into my mouth.

  I drank a long, frantic mouthful. Then, in horror I stopped, and tried to pull away. I felt heat, the first warmth I had known in weeks, coursing through my veins. I felt it trickling down my face. I heard the music again, that sweet symphony of blood, booming and crashing with each beat of the stag's heart.

  And I ignored the creature's horror, his trembling and attempts to pull away, as I returned to feeding.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I sat, shaking and weeping, by the lifeless stag. I had drained him, only a few minutes before, of every bit of blood, and then, in a frantic bloodlust, licked the errant droplets that escaped off the nearby bramble and snow on which they'd fallen.

  Now, with the warmth of that creature's life coursing through my veins, I felt horror seize me. I understood, finally, how I had changed so effortlessly the night before into a bat: it was a mark of the monster. And I was a monster. This poor, lifeless thing beside me attested to that, as no fierce condemnation from Bishop Luca might ever have done; as no fearful glances, no subtle crossings, had ever indicated. This, this was something that I had done. This was a crime that I had perpetrated. I had sunk my teeth into that creature's throat, and drank his blood like it was water. I had heard the beat of his heart as a song, beckoning me to rip open his veins and feast on his very life. I was a monster.

  At length, I picked myself up and walked on. I could feel the cold now, and pulled my cloak tighter around me to preserve the glimpse of warmth I’d sampled.

  The fatigue was gone now. There was no agony in my veins, no constriction in my heart. My blood flowed, and pumped, as it had ever done in my human days.

  My human days! In time I would accept that they were lost to me forever, but it was a strange thought to me then to think of my life, my young life, as split between my time as a human and my time as a monster.

  As I walked I tried to remember all the legends I had heard of vampires, for that was the type of monster that I had become. I knew that they drank blood
– God, but I knew that. I knew that they could become bats and other creatures; I tried to recall what they were, but without any success. I knew that they were damned; there was no question of that. I knew that they could not walk in sunlight. “But I have walked in sunlight.” This, then, was a poser. Was the legend wrong, or had I not yet fully become a monster? Would I, on the morrow, evaporate with the mist, or burn up as God's pure light engulfed me and delivered me to an eternity of Hellfire? I did not know.

  At length, I sat down. My idea was to wait until morning. In my heart, I think I hoped that the legend was true, and that the morning sun would destroy what was left of this mortal relic. Somehow, amidst such thoughts, sleep came.

  The morning sun did not destroy me. It would my first lesson in the half truths of the legends that surround my kind. We can walk at will in the sun, and without suffering any unpleasant consequence. It does not limit our strength or injure us. What it does do – what I would learn in time – is prevent us from taking on a new form; until the sun sets, we remain in whatever state we found ourselves at sunrise.

  But it is not only creatures that my kind may imitate. Indeed, had I been clearer in my thoughts, I would have recognized this far sooner, for I had witnessed it with my own eyes. We may take the shape of mist, and travel where we will as well.

  There are some limitations to each form, within the bounds of the creature or thing's nature but always our minds are present; and always, when we return to our human shape, we return how we left it, clothed or naked as we were at that moment.

  And to our human shape, there are inherent advantages. Our strength is tenfold, our speed far greater than average. Our minds and senses are quicker, and our wits sharper. On this score, such an advantage was slower in coming to me than I would have liked, but I can only attribute that to my own frenzied discombobulation at having discovered my true nature.