Tales of Nate - First Kill

**originally posted 2006**

            There's water splashing across my eyelids. I struggle to open my eyes; something's matting my eyelashes together. .I rubs my hand across them, grinding into them with my knuckles.

            "Natasha, dearling, it's time to wake up. We have work to do."

            Alienor's talking to me. I finally manage to pry my eyes open, blinking against the rain falling against them. I don't feel my skin. Wait, yes, it's tight, as if pulled to stretch too far across my bones. I pull myself into a sitting position against the tree behind me, shoving my hair back behind my ears. It had finally started growing again before this. My eyes widen as I see my hands. They're red. With blood. Not mine. Someone else's. My head feels funny, there's this deep satisfaction when I see the blood as if it was something I meant to do and was happy about doing. There, there on the ground just a few feet away, what looks like a body. I scramble on all fours over to it. It's a guard. IT was a guard. He's dead. I killed him. I struggle to remember; there it washes over me with a suddenness that leaves me speechless. 

            I remember:  a ravenous hunger like I've never felt, even in the dead of winter when there was limited food for the kumpania, tearing through me, leaving me snarling, raving. Alienor brought the guard, enticed him away from his post. Left him where I could find him, he had turned away from where I was to look behind him. I lunged, grabbing for his head, my legs circling his chest and my arms twisting him, so that I could reach his throat. There, the feel of two sharp pinpricks. OH Gods, the bliss!!! The sheer ecstasy of sinking my teeth into him and feeling his blood slide past my lips and over my tongue to pour down my throat. I didn't stop until he was dead.

            I shiver with the remembered bliss of the moment. I don't regret it. That bastard is only one of the many I will see pay for what they've done to me and my family.  I can feel the hunger still simmering under the surface. I look up at Alienor.

            "Good. You feel it don't you? That craving for more?" she bends down to help me up, "you want to finish what you've started? Good. You're cousins will be joining us over the next couple of nights. For now, rest; let me teach you more about the gifts that I've given you."

            We walk away from the encampment. I look back once, still wanting to tear them apart with my bear hands. But Alienor is right; I need to learn about what I've traded my natural blood heritage for. For I can feel the absence of Daenna's blood in my veins even now. It's an absence that makes my heart bleed, but a price I pay gladly for the means to outlive these bastards and destroy as many as I can.