Chereads / earth orc / Chapter 426 - 2

Chapter 426 - 2

Your feeding before the hunt had been a hurried one, and you'd left your victim dazed as you dabbed your mouth, Sheriff Qui impatiently ushering you to join his motley band of Kindred and mortal mercenaries for the hunt. The smell of blood on your fingertips conjures images of the mortal shivering while you slaked your thirst, their wide doe-eyes glassy and empty of concern. In the decades since your Embrace, you've distanced yourself from the horror of your nightly existence, not the least of which was divorcing yourself entirely from the indelicate art of finding your own victims.

Your alliance with Alisha had been considered an unusual one in Kindred circles, but your sire, Eden Corliss, accepted your regular visits to her herd of willing blood dolls as a necessary indulgence.

Over the years, you managed to convince yourself that there was nothing inherently wrong or unnatural about the act of feeding on the blood of the living, but a small part of you—one that still remembers a time when your heart beat within your chest—cries out with every opportunity to remind you that you are damned.

As with many other Kindred, you'd kept your original name and aspects of your mortal identity—whether as a subconscious effort to anchor your new existence in a bedrock of memorialized humanity or simple nostalgia, you cannot say for sure. But it fits you, and it is yours alone.

What name tethers this un-life to a life once lived?