Chapter One

Two Centuries Later

"You have enough blood to last you a month," Abe announces as he steps into my cabin. The wind howls like a rabid wolf through the crack as he shuts the door.

I press my fingers onto the papers to prevent them from flying away and look up from my desk. The candles flicker out, plunging my cottage into darkness, but I can see the doctor clearly.

"A month," I repeat, panic making my mouth taste sour. Four weeks of absolution until I have to sin again.

Until I have to kill again.

I hope my voice doesn't betray the despair inside me, twisting into acidic knots, but Abe's expression softens, and I know he can smell my fear.

"You knew I had to leave," he says gently as he slowly crosses the room. "I can only keep you company and do your…dirty work for so long."

The dirty work. That is my term for my appetite. Abe uses more innocuous words: our instincts. Our hunger. Our drive. As a doctor, he looks at our affliction as merely that: something that had befallen us, like a disease, to be dealt with matter-of-factly. But Abe isn't like me, not exactly. He was born with an appetite for blood. I wasn't. I was born human. I had a family, a future.

I had a soul…until I didn't.

"There are others," Abe says as he stands by my desk, his fingers tracing the gold-foiled script stamped on the Holy Bible. "The last correspondence from the monastery said it resembles an epidemic. More of your kind have been created in a surge of violence. Some of them were witches, such as yourself."

"By him? By Kaleid?" I whisper. Saying his name causes my heart to race, even after all this time.

The doctor stares at me for a moment, as if weighing the truth, then nods once. "I fear it may be worse than I originally thought, and my expertise is needed. They can't be allowed to roam. They must be rehabilitated. They must be saved. You know there is a word for us now? The humans are catching on. They call us Vampyres."

"Vampyres," I repeat. The word seems fitting.

"There are people at the monastery…" I begin, but I trail off because there is no one like the doctor. I knew he wouldn't be down here with me at the bottom of the world forever, but when he stepped off the ship eight months ago, I had hoped he would stay at least a couple of years.

Yet I know there is nothing for him here, nothing but me, and I'm not good company. My job is to become the voice for God in this cold, barren, windswept region, to provide both faith and guidance for the settlers who have been stationed here in Nombre de Jesus by command of the Governor of Chile. The people are here to prevent English privateers and pirates from taking over the Strait of Magellan, and I am here to provide salvation.

This place is supposed to be my salvation too.

But I haven't found it yet.

"When will you be back?" I ask.

"I don't know," he says, sighing again. The doctor is my oldest friend—my only friend. Abe was the one who saved me from staying a monster forever. Through his faith in me and in the rigid teachings of the monastery, the beast I became has been tucked away in the deep, black recesses of my former soul. Abe keeps me fed, keeps me pure, keeps my demons at bay.

But though I am his reason for being here, I am not his purpose in life. He has devoted his study of science and medicine to the very things science can't explain, that medicine can't control and magic can't save. Through his help, the teachings of the Lord, and the discipline of the doctrine, I have turned myself back into a man. Perhaps a shell of a man, but enough that people no longer have to fear me.

And there are others like me who need his help.

So, I know he must go.

Still, it sits inside me like a spreading stain, the sense of terror and futility of what I'll do—what I'll become—when I'm on my own again.

"Eight months wasn't enough," I manage to say, my voice thick. I want to tell him more. I want to beg him not to leave me, to choose me instead of his life's work, to let the monsters roam freely in the world so long as he can keep me sane and in his company.

Alas, even after all this time, I have my pride.

"I will be back," Abe says, putting his hand on my shoulder and giving it a squeeze. "I don't know how long it will be, but what's a few years when you're immortal? You'll have visitors in the meantime."

He removes his hand, and I glance up at him. "Who?"

"Men such as ourselves," he says, looking around the sparsely decorated cottage as if he'll see something new instead of paintings of mountains and crosses on the walls.

"Men like you? Vampyres? Or monsters like me?"

He gives me a chastising look. "You're not a monster, my priest. You are Father Aragon. You were born a man. I wasn't."

"That man died when my family died," I say bitterly. "I was turned. You've always known of your true nature, always been in control."

"That may be, but we both drink blood to survive, and we do so discerningly, do we not? That makes us the same in my eyes. But yes, men like myself, blood-drinkers who call themselves the Brethren of the Blood. They're pirates who sail the high seas on their ship, the Nightwind, nicknamed by mortal men as the Ship of the Undead. They've made quite a name for themselves in all parts of the world, looting merchant ships and ports, hunting Syrens for their blood. It's partly the reason they'll be by here one day."

I nod. "The colony." There have been rumors that a colony of Syrens live below the icebergs and barren cliffs of Roche Island. The sea between, the Mar de Drake, is treacherous, so the rumors have been mostly unfounded, said to be started by shipwrecked crew hallucinating from hunger. But I know that such creatures are real—I found one washed up on the beach once, just flayed skin, dried scales, and brittle bones. An abomination worse than me—half-human, half-fish.

I also know that even a drop of their blood sustains us drinkers for a very long time. I had heard that rumor, too, and didn't know it was true until I bit the shriveled neck of the corpse. I couldn't tell if it was a male or female, and it tasted like pure salt and death. And yet the dried, powdery blood of the creature was enough to satisfy me, as if I had just drunk from a living human.

"Yes, the colony," Abe says. "Either way, these Brethren will be coming through the strait. I can't say when. Could be two years. Could be ten years. But they're pirates at heart, and the Chilean government will sound the alarm once they enter Spanish waters. There will be an attack on both sides. You will be presented with a choice: stay and fight for Spain, even as a man of God, or join the Brethren."

I frown. "Ten years? But surely I'll see you before then."

"I hope so," he says with a bow of his head, clasping his hands at his waist. "With any luck, I'll be on the ship with them. But if not, I'm sure I will find you. The world isn't so big when you have all the time in it."

I stare at him, slow to blink. He might be leaving for that long? I expected two or three years at the most.

"I don't like this," I whisper. I grasp the cross of the rosary around my wrist, squeezing it hard enough that the gold draws blood, like I have done so many times before. My skin will heal itself in a minute.

"You don't have to like it, Aragon," Abe says gravely. "You just have to accept it. And I have to accept that even though you are a dear friend of mine, I am needed elsewhere by others who need me more. It's taken time, but you have been rehabilitated. You have been saved. My work here is done."

He turns and starts walking toward the door, and I watch him go, his red hair bright even in the darkness, with the confident walk of a man who has accepted who he is, sins and all.

I get to my feet suddenly, overwhelmed by a clawing sense of desperation. "You're my moral compass, Abe," I cry out. "I'll lose my control if I don't have you."

He gives me a sympathetic smile, a doctor's smile. Then, he nods at the portrait of Jesus on the wall. "He is your moral compass. You've been a priest for over a century now. It should be God guiding you, not me."

"You don't even believe in God."

"And neither do you," he says.

Then he nods and opens the door, swallowed up by the frigid winds and endless night.

When I was human, I was able to sleep at the drop of a hat. My wife would always tell me she was jealous of my ability. Whether it was when the children were screaming, as children are wont to do, or when the farm cats were fighting and the donkeys were braying, nothing could wake me up. The minute my head hit the pillow, even with a leak in the thatch roof that succumbed to the rain, I was dreaming.

I told her I could always concoct her a sleeping potion, something she couldn't do for herself. Our witchcraft rarely worked on ourselves, but it would for others. But she was stubborn and decided to tough it out.

Then, after a Vampyre killed me and forced me back to life as a monster, I was never visited by the sweet spell of sleep again. I spent a hundred years without a dream, a hundred years without any escape, and I was forced to reckon with the vile creature I had become.

It was only in the monastery that sleep would come in fits and starts.

Sleep that brought on nightmares, ones that continue to this day.

I pray to the God I try so hard to believe in and ask for release from the terrors, to be visited by that dulcet slumber, but still, he only grants me what I fear.

So I don't sleep most nights.

Tonight especially.

It's been a week since Abe left. The stores of blood he keeps in casks at the back of the church, casks that, if anyone was to stumble upon, they would assume is the wine of the sacramental union, are starting to run low. I have only enough to last a few more weeks before I must find my own sustenance.

Before I must kill for the first time in eight months.

The weight of it bears down on me, like a vise pressing down from the heavens themselves.

Who will I choose? One of the natives in the area who keep to themselves, naturally suspicious of the settlers and me? Or one of the villagers who comes to my church every week, ones I have gotten to know? There are only a couple hundred here, scattered throughout the settlements of Nombre de Jesus and Primera Angostura, along with the stationed military personnel. Or will I have to venture further to the larger town of Ciudad del Rey Don Felipe, as Abe had done, disappearing for a night or two until I find a victim?

And when I choose them, what will I become? Abe says it's not our fault we need human blood to thrive, that we were either born or created that way. He says it's no different than slaughtering a cow, that we shouldn't feel shame for something driven and decided by our biology. But the act of murder, of violence against another human, lets the monster come out, enough to remind me how damn good it felt to succumb to such a primal being, to become, to exist, to live without morals or guilt.

It's the monster inside me who is glad that Abe left so that I might return to that beast once more, and because of that, I am afraid.

And I don't dare sleep.

Instead, I step out into the dark night. For once, the winds have died down, giving the landscape the feeling of a long exhale, as if it can finally find peace. My cottage is surrounded by tussock grass and stunted brush and pine, a clergy house located behind the chapel, built close to the water's edge. Tonight, the waves lap gently on the rocky shore, and my sensitive vision can pick out the craggy peaks of the mountains across the strait.

It is strangely calm while I am a storm inside.

Under the light of the waning moon, I walk past the chapel and pause by the small graveyard where so many people have been buried. This settlement has seen its fair share of hardships, none related to my appetite. I feel like I am starving half the time, but they are starving too. Most of the settlers are from Andalucía, close to where I grew up. They are used to a Mediterranean climate, of sweet fruit and dry summers and soft, warm breezes. They are not built to withstand the hostility here at the end of the world.

For a moment, a terrible thought crosses my mind. I think of the dried blood of the Syren and wonder if I were to dig up the bodies of anyone who perished recently, would I find some sort of substance in the dead blood of a decaying human corpse?

But before I can even feel guilty over such a vile thought, a scream rings out, clear across the bay.

My head snaps up from the graves, and I look over to see a small speck of light moving back and forth on the dark water, and then a boat being rocked, waves splashing. My ears pick up a growl and snapping sounds, then more screams, like someone is being torn apart.

"Help!" someone from the boat yells. "Help! We are drowning! Lord help us!"

I can move fast when I need to, faster than any creature can. I run to where the rowboat is tied to shore and quickly push it into the water. There is no one around to see me in the darkness, see me moving at unnatural, inhuman speeds, and I'm in the boat in seconds, rowing fast across the calm water.

I reach the sinking boat and see a scene of horror.

There are three men. Two are alive and terrified while the other is dead, sliced down the middle with his entrails pulled out. There is evidence of a fourth person, the bloodied stump of a leg in the corner.

The smell of all the blood makes my mouth water, my vision growing sharp, and I feel my teeth turning into fangs.

I make the sign of the cross and pray I can keep the monster at bay. I need to save these men.

"Father Aragon!" one of them cries out. "Please, help him."

The villagers here know I can heal others thanks to the help of God. They don't suspect my witchcraft. But even I can't heal a man whose heart and liver are missing.

I shake my head, swallowing hard. "What happened here?"

The two men look at each other. Alonso and Jose Carlos, I believe their names are. Honest fishermen.

"What happened?" I repeat, wanting to get away from the blood and gore as quickly as I can.

"You won't believe us," Jose Carlos says, voice trembling, eyes wide. "But we were fishing for the toothfish. Then, she appeared in the water. We thought it was a drowning woman, needing help. Caught on our line, maybe. But we were wrong." He pauses. "It was a Syren."