16. Erik

1000 YEARS AGO

Daylight.

A storm of noise.

Hands on my shoulders.

“We need you! Brother, stand up, get to your feet!” The voice was Fabian’s, and for a moment, I wondered if I was imagining his arms around me. After all my years in solitude in this cave, his touch was as alien to me as the heat of the sun.

He clutched my face, forcing me to look at him, and I took in the handsome, familiar face of the man I had claimed as a brother long ago.

“Speak to me,” he begged, and I met his wild eyes and took in his bedraggled hair.

I opened my mouth, but no words came out, the hunger had stolen the last of them.

He lifted me, dropping me over his shoulder and carrying me through a hole in the wall. But it couldn’t be possible. This had to be a hallucination because the gods had sealed that path long ago.

I gazed back into the darkness and Andvari’s voice drifted into my ears. “Time to go.”

I shook my head as a little more clarity found me among the pounding in my head. No…I couldn’t leave. My debt was not yet paid.

I reached out and tried to hold onto the edge of the rocks, but Fabian dragged me away, not giving me a chance to gain purchase. I growled, but he paid me no heed, keeping me tight to his body and stealing me away from my place of penance.

He ran with me, and I squinted against the blinding light of the world despite the dark clouds hanging above. A thousand forgotten smells clutched my senses; lichen, moss, and pine.

The forest was a blur of dark green, and the rush of the river faded away, that sound had been my constant companion for so many days and nights, that my ears rang with the sudden quiet.

I tried to make my mouth form a word, but nothing came. I was a starving husk, a creature whose soul had been carved out, leaving me barren.

When Fabian eventually placed me on my feet, the roar of a battle found me, warriors clashing, steel blades colliding. The ring of metal, the cries of death, it all came to me at once, too many sensations making my mind spark and flash.

My eyes sharpened and I took in a sprawling field of wildflowers, cut down under the feet of nearly a thousand slayers.

Clarice swept through them like a tornado, killing tens of men with claws and sharp teeth, ripping bodies apart like they were made of nothing but parchment. Miles stood beyond her, wielding a shining blade and spilling guts as easily as slicing open the flesh of fruit. Other vampires joined our ranks, fighting tooth and nail, turning to dust before my eyes when slayers’ blades found their hearts. But the last of them were falling fast, their numbers dwindling by the second. It was carnage in its purest form, vampires versus the slayers, an age-old fight which had culminated in this furious war.

Fabian raised his hands and a dark cloud swept closer over the hill, a swarm of ravens descending on the slayers, pecking at their eyes and bare skin. The screams made my thoughts jar, but I absorbed it all in less than two seconds, and I cared about none of it. The only thing present to me in that battle was blood. The sweetest thing I’d ever smelled after two hundred years without it. In an instant, I lost all control and gave in to the rampant thirst that was my sole desire, flooded by the desperate longing to sate this need.

I sprinted toward the nearest slayer, ripped his head sideways and sank my fangs into his flesh, drinking deep. It was ecstasy, the blood hitting my tongue and sending my mind into a frenzy. Casting him aside, I dragged the next one close, tearing out her throat with teeth alone. It was savage, the curse bared in its most ruthless form, the thirst a beast of its own that desired nothing more than to feed.

Blood. Kill. Blood. Kill.

I saw red. It stained my whole world. It rained down on me as I moved between the ranks of slayers, becoming stronger than I’d ever imagined was possible.

Andvari was close, cackling in my ear, and I felt his strength reaching into my body and lending me the power I needed to devour a whole army. He wanted this, he urged me on, branding that singular need into the essence of my soul until I became the hunger, and it became me.

The horrified cries of men and women drummed in my ears, but I never stopped. I barely saw them fall as I found more necks, more skin, more blood.

Rip. Slash. Drink.

Over and over. I made a path through the battle like a hurricane devouring the land. Not one blow found me. Not one blade touched my skin. I was too fast, too strong. The curse thumped through my veins and created a monster so fierce that the slayers didn’t stand a chance.

One hundred, two hundred. I couldn’t count how many fell at my feet. Soon I was climbing over mounds of bodies, desperate for the next throat, driven to madness by Andvari’s power.

Three hundred, four hundred.

I barely drank now, the thirst desiring death and nothing more, turning me into a reaper for the gods, harvesting souls like summer wheat.

The rest of my kind pressed their advantage, but I could have done it single-handed. The battlefield ran red with the blood of the slayers, and I waded through it towards the final man still living, rivers of red washing down my body.

His unruly hair hung around his shoulders. He was dripping in the blood of his comrades, his eyes haunted, but still determined. He was on his knees, clutching a gaping hole in his stomach.

The only vampires who remained alive were my family, every sireling who had come to fight at our sides turned to dust by the slayers’ wrath. Clarice, Miles, and Fabian closed in until we had circled the final slayer. My family’s wide eyes turned to me as I approached, a mixture of fear and awe lighting their gazes.

Blood dripped steadily from my body and the tang of it surrounded me, the scent overwhelming my senses.

As the final slayer looked to me, he lifted his sword, ready to die for his cause and secure his passage to Valhalla.

Andvari’s strength withdrew from me, and I gasped, shuddering as I bent forward, the release of his power like a window opening in my mind, showing me the reality of what I had done.

The hunger was gone. I was whole once again and yet more broken than I’d ever been, the horrifying knowledge of what I’d done cutting so deeply into my chest that I released a shuddering cry, stumbling forward and nearly crashing to my knees. But Fabian slammed a hand to my shoulder, steadying me before I could fall.

I lifted my head, gazing across the massacre I’d caused with a suffocating wave of guilt.

“Brother, you can finish the last. You have saved us all,” Fabian said in reverence.

“No, I...” I shook my head, pain flaring through my un-beating heart, disgust rising in my throat. I had done this. I was responsible.

I had risen the debt on my head by a thousand lives. I was more than a monster; I was an abomination.

I stepped back from the final slayer who was glancing between us as if trying to decide who to lunge for. Even in his injured state, he hadn’t given up.

I drew closer, lowering to my knees before him.

“Erik,” Fabian barked at me.

The slayer slashed his sword toward me, and I caught his wrist, crushing it in my grip. He was weak, and it took little more than a squeeze to make him drop the blade, the hilt making a thunk as it hit the ground and Clarice hurried forward to kick it out of his reach.

I gazed into the golden eyes of the warrior and reached out, pressing a hand to his warm cheek. Though he was growing colder and the light in his eyes was fading, life still thrummed in his veins like a fragile hummingbird. He crashed backwards onto the ground, groaning in defeat. I leaned over him, frowning as I drank in the last of the life in his eyes, a terrible weight of guilt holding me hostage.

“Freya,” he whispered, his eyes distant, looking beyond me toward the afterlife. “I love you, dear wife. I wish I could come to you now.”

“You won’t make it off of the battlefield,” I rasped. “You have lost too much blood, slayer.”

He reached up with a shaking hand and gripped the back of my neck, but he didn’t seem to see me. “My sons, my boys. Magnar...Julius, take care of your mother.”

“Finish it, Erik,” Miles muttered. “It is not right to leave him this way.”

Andvari drew near, and I shuddered as his presence slipped over me. “Warrior born and monster made.”

Shock flooded me as I found new meaning in the words, an answer offered in my moment of devastation. Was the god encouraging me to turn a slayer into one of us? Was that what the prophecy meant?

I’d never sired a human before, but I’d seen the others do it. And if this was the path to breaking the curse, I had to do it. Lifting my wrist to my mouth, I dug my fangs in deep to cut into my skin then held the wound to the warrior’s lips.

He choked and spluttered but was too weak to fight me off. When I was certain he’d swallowed my blood, I lifted his wrist and slid my teeth into it, releasing my venom into his veins.

He gasped in horror, turning pale beneath me, trying to pull his arm free of my grip. His eyes glazed as the venom took root in his body and I extracted my fangs from his skin.

“Is this it?” I asked Andvari, but he only chuckled in response.

My kin were moving closer, muttering as they watched.

If I was right, the curse would be broken. This slayer would be a vampire and perhaps that meant he would be given back his life too, the moment my brothers and sister were remade as human.

“This has to be it,” I said in desperation. “Forgive me.”

I took hold of the man’s head and his eyes widened as he realised what I was about to do. A sharp crack cut through the silent air as I snapped his neck. He fell still and I looked to my family, finding concern in their eyes.

“A slayer, Erik? Is that a good idea?” Miles asked, moving closer. His blond locks were drenched with blood and his usually soft features looked hard for once, battle-worn and tainted with sins of his own.

I reached out to Andvari for an answer, but he gave me no confirmation.

The slayer beneath me jerked with life and I stood above him, watching as the wound on his stomach knitted over. He reared upwards, his eyes wide as he clutched his throat, the first moments of bloodlust finding him.

I knew how hungry he’d be in these first moments, so quickly pulled a body closer for him to feast on. The man fell on it like an animal, drinking the blood of his comrade before regaining his senses and lurching backwards. His beard was thick with blood and his eyes wide with horror.

“You can go home now,” I said as he rose to his feet.

He gazed at me with a burning intensity, then lunged toward his sword on the ground and I was surprised to find he could still touch it. The four of us tensed, but he didn’t fight us. Instead, he fled, running across the battlefield at high speed, and I turned my face to the grey sky, praying Andvari would show himself.

“Is this enough?!” I roared, but no answer came. Only the low whispers of my family reached my ears.

“Good idea,” Fabian announced. “He will kill his entire clan.”

My throat tightened as I turned to my brother, fear stroking my heart at that possibility. And as Andvari’s taunting laughter reached me once more, I realised I’d been tricked by the god once again. My action would equal more death, and I would never be rid of the blood on my hands.

No...what have I done?