(Disclaimer: NaNoWriMo novel 2007. It took me a while to figure out who my characters really were so they change personalities about a million times. Unedited.)

Blood Lust

Chapter One

The first time I killed a man it was to save my own life. Perhaps it had been selfish of me. I never thought it was, but others most likely did. I did what I had to to get by, and I wouldn’t let anyone else tell me what I could or could not to. It had been a few years since I killed him for the money in his pocket. I never knew him, I only knew the rumblings of my own stomach. It was possible he was a decent man, with a wife and kids. It was also possible that he beat his wife, if he had one. None of that had mattered to me then, and it certainly didn’t now. I carried no guilt for his death, for I never knew him. He was just someone with coins in his pocket. I was just a kid doing what he could to stay alive.

“Hey, kid! Aren’t you going to get up and fight?” A gruff voice sounded from above me, punctuated by his foot driving into my side. I was lying on the wet cobblestones in a back alleyway of a decent-sized city. I jerked with the impact of his foot, but bit back the cry I wanted to give from it. I wouldn’t give him the pleasure. No one would ever know how to make me suffer.

“Aw, come on, Jey, let’s just leave ‘im, he’s no fun at all, just some poor cripple.” Cripple. There was that word. A label. How people described me. One I preferred not to use.

“Naw, I think he’s got some fight left in ‘im. Doncha, kid?” Another kick to the side. I lay there, spread-eagle on the street. I wanted to curl up in a ball, to protect my organs. I wanted to hit him back, to make him suffer, but I didn’t. Maybe I thought I deserved it. Maybe I wanted to die. I didn’t understand my own head anymore, I was so far gone from a different pain that I could barely notice my own thoughts. “Nasty little Kirai.”

Kirai, a word that I grinned bitterly at. I could taste blood in my mouth, my own this time, not someone else’s.

“Kirai,” I rasped back at him, smiling just enough to show my pointed teeth as I pushed myself up on one elbow. “That’s right.” I started laughing, a bitter, choking laugh. Another kick landed on my face and I fell backwards onto my back. I couldn’t so much feel the pain as I could taste my own blood on my lips. Sweet, warm. I wanted to drink it. There wasn’t enough, there never was. I constantly craved it, and nothing would satiate the lust I felt.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” A woman’s voice called from somewhere to my right. I turned my head towards the sound. Of course I couldn’t see her, but I could still hear well enough. I wanted to tell her to stay away, that it wasn’t her fight. I certainly didn’t want to be responsible for a poor woman to be roped into something that didn’t involve her, but again I couldn’t form the words.

“Well, lookie here, she’s a fine piece of meat. Whaddya say, when we’re done with ‘im we take her for a ride, Jey?”

“Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. We need rest after a spot of hard work, doncha think?”

“Aye, that we do.”

“Stay away,” I finally rasped.

“Oh, he has a conscience, eh? Or maybe he’s warning us. What are you going to do, Kirai? Grope at our feet? You can barely stand, you’re not fooling anyone.”

It was true. I couldn’t fully defend myself in my condition, certainly not as I was. My hand itched to hold the hilt of my knife, but I doubted that would do much good. I could only use it if they came close enough to me again. I wouldn’t risk throwing it, not when I wasn’t sure who I was aiming at. I didn’t want to hit the woman.

“Well, lady, whaddya gonna do? Just stand there? Care to take a hand in punishing this poor, poor soul for his crimes against the earth and our good lord?”

“Not today, I don’t think,” she whispered. I wasn’t the whisper of someone who was scared. There wasn’t a tremor in her voice, and I was intrigued. She was something I didn’t expect on this bloody night that wasn’t nearly as bloody as my body craved.

I heard her take a step forward, then a few rapid hits landed on someone, and he fell. I heard the unmistakable sound of a sword being drawn, and stabbed downwards. I didn’t know who wielded the sword, but I guessed quickly enough when I heard another pair of footsteps rush towards where the first man and the woman had been standing. She thrust the sword into him as well, and he fell just as quickly.

“Well, that took a lot less time than I had expected. And here you were, worried for me?”

“A mistake on my part,” I rasped, trying to cling to my own consciousness. I licked the blood off my lips and forced myself up slightly from the ground once more.

“I’d say so. You’re the one who should be cautious of who you entangle yourself with. I don’t know how you got here and frankly, I don’t care.” She shifted her body weight and I heard the clinking of coins – she was undoubtedly taking the purses from the two hapless men who had been assaulting me moments before. “They won’t need it anymore,” she muttered. “Anyway, you should be more careful.”

I started laughing. “Right.” I choked out. “Careful. That’s never been my strong suit.”

“Can you stand?” she asked.

“Who knows,” I responded.

“Well, you should try, unless you want the city guard to find you amidst two dead bodies. Being what you are is enough to earn your fair share of pain from them without being near dead bodies.”

“I obviously didn’t do it.”

“They won’t care about that. Now, come on.” I felt her hand grip me under my arm and she practically yanked me up. “You’re practically starved, come on, you can walk.”

The blood rushed to my head and I almost fell down again, my legs almost giving out from under me, but she didn’t let me fall. She roped an arm around my waist and kept my other around her shoulders and led me, step by step, away from the scene. I walked blindly on.

“Where are we going?”

“Does it matter if I tell you?” she responded tartly.

“No, I’m just curious.”

“As am I.”

“Ah,” I whispered before my legs finally gave out and I fell to the ground once more and lost track of time.

--

“What did you bring him for?” an angry masculine voice demanded, almost as if from far away. I couldn’t quite focus on the words, my mind wanted to drift back into oblivion.

“I couldn’t just leave him there!” retorted the woman who had undoubtedly dragged me to wherever I was now. It still felt like the floor.

“Yes, you could have!”

“What, and let him die?”

“Oh, so you thought it’d be better to bring a Kirai to MY house. Right, brilliant thinking, there.”

“He’s different.”

“How could you possibly know that? You’ve spoken to him for how long? Ariana, no Kirai are different. They’re all the same, and he’ll bite your neck given half the chance.” He took a few angry steps to her and grabbed her roughly. “He can’t stay, Ariana,” he said, this time quieter, but with no less intensity. If anything, his rage had grown even more and he was trying harder to control it.

“I don’t want to, anyway,” I managed to whisper, clinging tighter to consciousness.

“You’ll die if you leave.”

“I’ll die if I stay.” It was the truth. I’d die no matter what I did, the only variable was time. I didn’t know how long it had been since I had tasted blood other than my own. I preferred not to think on the matter. I had accepted that death would come for me. I didn’t know how long it took Kirai to die from lack of blood. It could be years for me, maybe. If I stayed, I’d be around temptation, and I couldn’t risk it.

“Here, open your mouth,” Ariana said, closer to me this time.

“Why?” I asked, but she didn’t give me an answer. As soon as my mouth was open, she shoved something in it. A warm, wet cloth, tinged with… blood.

“Don’t question me, just do what I say. I know what’s best in this situation.”

I could taste the blood on my tongue. My body craved it, I could feel it sighing in pleasure, rapture. I hesitated only moments before pulling it out again. “I can’t have this,” I said quietly, offering it back to her.

“Don’t be silly. You look like you’re dying.”

“I’m sure I am,” I responded, a half-smile twitching my lip. “And I have no wish to reverse it.”

“Well, then, why the hell did I save you? What did I do it for if you’re just going to turn around and die on me? That’s rather rude.” She grabbed the cloth from my had and shoved it back in my mouth. “Now, keep it there. I got cut during the battle, it’s my blood and you’re not killing me by living yourself, so get over it. Tsuri, he’s staying.”

“Give me one good reason,” the man from before responded tightly.

“He can share my room,” Ariana said, standing up again.

“That’s not a good reason. He certainly can’t be in there while you work.”

How had I missed it? Had I been so out of it that I couldn’t even place where I was? The smell of cheap perfume was a distinctive symbol of a whore house. It was daytime, so of course there was no noise, but how could I have been so oblivious? I couldn’t think… I pressed my hand to the cloth in my mouth. I knew my hands were shaking. I bit down on the cloth, hoping to extract more from it than there was. It was maddening. Didn’t she know what she was doing when she gave me her blood? But I couldn’t refuse her, not in the state I was in.

“What has gotten into you, Ariana? What could possibly possess you to believe this is a good idea? Do you have any idea what my customers will say if they find out I let a Kirai lodge here? Some will be terrified, some outraged, and I can’t afford for the city guard to come banging on my door and tearing up the place to find him. He would be better off dead than in their hands.”

“Like you care what happens to him. You just want to throw him out onto the street where he’ll end up in their hands anyway!”

“I’m not denying it.” Ariana took a few quick steps forward and I heard the crack of her open palm connecting with his cheek.

“You have no right to decide who lives and who dies.”

“Oh, and like you do? How did you get those cuts, from a fall? Besides, I’m not deciding if he lives, I’m deciding if he stays here. There’s a difference. Why do you want him to stay, anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

He laughed. “Oh, that’s wonderful. You’re willing to risk practically everything for a Kirai and you don’t know why? How could you be so stupid?”

“I had a feeling, okay!” she shouted back at him, her own voice rising in anger, and still I could barely concentrate on anything except the diluted taste of blood in my mouth… at last. It was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted, and all I wanted was more.

“It’s a wonder I let you stay here, with a temper like yours. Do you know how many complaints I get about you?”

“What’s that have to do with anything?”

“Everything! You don’t listen, do you? You do what you want, and that usually doesn’t have anything to do with what the customer wants.”

“Right. So why don’t you throw me out?”

“Because you’re good at what you do, when you decide to do it.”

“Uh-huh. But he still can’t stay?”

“No!” I heard him pace, his shoes thumping dully on the wooden floor. “He can’t just sit in the closet while you’re doing your job – if you ever do it. Where did you think he would stay, anyway?”

“I just couldn’t leave him there like that,” she said quietly, and he stopped pacing.

“You’ve never had a problem with that before,” he hissed back. The tension in the air was almost palpable.

“I’m not backing down,” she responded calmly.

“I know,” he sighed. “That’s the problem with you. You always have to get your own way, no matter the cost to others. Look, Ariana, he can’t stay here. Not with my women, and not with you, unless he can pay for the room himself, and judging by his clothes, I doubt he can.”

I almost laughed at that. I could imagine how disgruntled and disarrayed I looked. I hadn’t had a bath for weeks, I was sure I was covered in dirt. I hadn’t slept on anything but the ground for a very long time. My clothes were falling apart at the seams, and I had no shoes, not to mention the blindfold I had around what was left of the ruin of my eyes, which I had torn off a shirt. Dirt broke really was true in my case.

The silence continued for what seemed like a while. My breathing sounded too loud for my own ears, and I didn’t want to be the one to break the silence. Even though they were talking about me, it didn’t seem like I should break into the conversation. I didn’t even know what I wanted, so I couldn’t side with either of them. I would be grateful for somewhere to sleep, but these people owed me nothing. In fact, I owed Ariana something, and I had no way to repay her for it. I had been wandering for so long, with no true destination in mind, just to get away from what I had been.

“Look, Tsuri, it’s only midday. Can he at least stay until nightfall? After that we can figure out what to do with him.”

“We? I haven’t even agreed to letting him stay that long!” he retorted angrily.

“He can stay in my room, he’ll be out of the way.”

“I don’t want you getting blood on my sheets!”

“Oh, like there is never blood on the sheets.”

He walked over to me and I heard him kneel down, almost angrily it seemed. “You, Kirai, what’s your name?” The disgust was evident in his voice.

I reached up and took the cloth out of my mouth and responded quietly, “Sei.”

“Foreign. You’re not from here?”

“No,” I said, just as briefly.

I felt his fingers under my chin. He turned my face left, and then right. “You’re blind?” His voice had changed slightly, softened, the disgust lessened.

“Yes,” I almost whispered. My heart was hammering in my chest and I had no idea why. I wasn’t scared, why should I be? There was nothing to be afraid of anymore, I had been through more than this man could ever do to me. It wasn’t fear, so what was it?

“He can stay,” he said, standing up and turning away from me. “But don’t get blood on my sheets.”

“Can I give him bread?” Ariana asked sarcastically.

“Fine, but none of your blood.”

Wouldn’t dream of it, I whispered silently in my mind.