Page 11 of My Master
She wasn’t sure why, but this boy seemed familiar to her and at the same time so distant, a stranger. She also wasn’t sure why she could count each tear drop that descended his face or smell the salt on his body, and under that a sweet, sweet scent that made her mouth water. Her eardrums pounded with the sound of a rapidly beating heart. His heart.
“Isis! Help! Help us!” The child was obviously calling out to her. Isis? Was that her name? She could hardly remember anything beyond this moment. Still, she found herself inching towards the boy and the dead woman. The closer she got the more keen her senses became. The woman had an open wound on her neck, two puncture wounds, oozing very little blood, her skin, although dark, had become sickly pale. The boy looked at her with pleading eyes.
“Who are you?” Isis asked, cocking her head to the side.
The boy looked confused. “Isis, stop it!” he shrieked. “You have to help mom!”
She looked down at the dead woman. Mom? she wondered. This was his mother? She looked at the woman, then back to the boy. Yes, they had similar features, the same facial structure. Isis listened, the woman’s heart had stopped, she wasn’t moving, and she wasn’t breathing.
“I can’t help her. She’s dead.”
The boy sobbed, his shoulders racking up and down in rough movements. He buried his face into his mother’s body and cried. Isis didn’t know what to say, what could she say? How could she offer her condolences to a boy she didn’t even know? She simply placed a hand on his shoulder. Suddenly, he stopped crying and turned to look up at her.
“Don’t you even care?” he demanded almost angrily.
“Why should I?”
“Because she’s your mother, too!”
Isis opened her mouth to reply but never got the chance to because at that moment, she felt a pull, a tug in her mind that made it feel like her cranium had been split open. A blinding pain that made her squeeze her eyelids shut and call out. She fell backwards on the ground, away from the boy that was claiming to be her brother, away from the dead woman that was supposedly her mother.
Her head pounded with unbearable pain and she screamed, clutching at her hair, pleading for it to stop. She felt a sharp pain bite at her bottom lip, with a finger she felt the inside of her mouth, her teeth were sharp and needle pointy, and throbbing to the point where it had begun to hurt.
Then, she heard a voice. A deep seductive voice inside of her head, it was barely a whisper but she knew it was there. She looked around frantically, sure she couldn’t be imagining it because the boy—her brother—looked just as confused as she felt.
He came out of the shadows behind the boy. He was shirtless, his feet bare, the only thing covering the lower part of his body was a piece of cloth, tied at his waist. Isis could tell that this was no man, no ordinary human. His hair was long and dark and set in wild disarray around his shoulders; his eyes were consumed with red, much like she felt hers were at that moment. His chest was covered in nothing but muscle, as were his arms and his legs. Isis felt instant familiarity.
“Isis,” the man purred. His voice stopped the pain but there was still a slight throbbing in her temples, the feel that she wanted to be close to him. She was drawn to him and she wasn’t sure why. “Isis, what are you doing?”
Isis looked at the man, then back at the woman and the boy. But her brother didn’t meet her gaze; he had turned around to stare at the man. She could only imagine his expression; shock and awe and wonder, but there was also fear, for this man emanated power.
“I do not understand,” Isis whispered.
The man cocked an eyebrow then smiled, revealing pink stained pointed teeth, similar to hers. This man was like her, she concluded. He said, “You will understand soon enough. Are you hungry, Isis?”
She was about to tell him no, she had eaten earlier, but stopped herself. There was an emptiness inside of her stomach, not quite full but not hungry. As if something were missing and she wasn’t sure what it was. She thought of the blood against her lips and her mouth instantly watered. She looked up at the man. “Yes, I am.”
He nodded in understanding. “Yes, I would imagine so.” Then, he looked at the boy. “So, eat,” he commanded, nodding at the boy.
This time, the child did meet her gaze. His eyes were wide with panic and confusion. Isis shook her head. She couldn’t hurt him. He was her brother, even though she couldn’t really remember him. She couldn’t eat him.
The man frowned. “If you don’t, you will die. Do you want to die, Isis? Do you want to die like your mother?”
“No,” she whispered, her voice weak with exhaustion and hunger.
“Then,eat!” He no longer looked happy. His thick eyebrows were pulled into a tight frown and he was pointing at the boy, who had begun to cry harder.
“I…I can’t…” Because Isis didn’t know how, and she didn’t want too.
The man snorted in disgust. “You will deny your true nature?” Then he looked at them both. “Or could it be, you just do not know how? Here, I will help you.” Then, he advanced on the boy, his sharp nails extended and cut the boy on the neck, a simple line across, that made a dark line of thick rich liquid fall from his neck.
The smell assaulted her nostrils and she couldn’t help it. She was hungry, she was thirsty, and she wanted to quench that thirst. She jumped on the child and sucked his blood. Decadent, euphoric taste exploded in her mouth. Had blood always tasted like this? Isis couldn’t get enough. She consumed, taking every last bit of it until his cries diminished into whimpers, until his whimpers diminished into faint breathing, until his breathing had stopped altogether and he died.
Her stomach still wasn’t satisfied though. She licked her lips and stood up on shaking knees, facing the man. Her skin felt like it was on fire, itching formore.She avoided looking at her little brother as revulsion clawed up her throat for what she’d done, and yet she still craved.
“And you are still hungry?” His eyes blinked red in a look of satisfaction.
Isis, sickened with herself, could only nod.
