Of Truth and Beasts

“There are ways to make the life we consume last longer.”

True, and Chane now reenacted exactly what he had seen Welstiel do.

He took out the rods, intertwined them into a tripod, and set his dagger on the ground beside it. Placing the brass cup upon the stand, he lifted the white bottle. Its contents—thrice purified water—were precious. Pulling the stopper, he half filled the cup, remembering Welstiel’s cold, clinical explanation.

“Bloodletting is a wasteful way to feed. Too much life is lost and never consumed by our kind. It is not blood that matters, but the leak of life caused by its loss.”

Chane glanced at the black-faced cow. To his best knowledge, Welstiel had never tried this on an animal.

The very idea of the cup was revolting, not to mention the humiliation of feeding on livestock. But he needed life to continue protecting Wynn. He could not risk feeding on a human, or she might hear rumors of someone missing or found dead and in a pallid state.

Chane approached the cow. The animal raised her head and blinked liquid eyes at him with no fear. Grasping her rope halter, he led her out of the stall and moved her to one side into a clear place to fall. He pressed slowly and steadily with his foot into the back of her front knee. As she began to kneel, he tipped her over, pinning down her head. She bellowed once in panic, struggling to get up, and then relaxed.

He took up the dagger and made a small cut on her shoulder. Once the blade’s tip had gathered leaking blood, he carefully tilted the steel over the cup.

A single drop struck its pure water.

Blood thinned and diffused beneath dying ripples as Chane began to chant. He concentrated hard on activating the cup’s innate influence. When finished, he waited and watched the cup’s water for any change.

Nothing happened.

His incantation was based on researching Welstiel’s journals and the tiny engravings on the cup’s inner surface. Something was wrong. As with any mage, their workings were individual, and seldom could one successfully use the workings of another.

The cow let out a low sound. Suddenly her ribs began to protrude, as if she were turning gaunt.

Chane released his grip and scooted back.

The cow’s eyelids sank as her eyes collapsed inward. Jawbones began to jut beneath withering skin. It was not long before the animal became a dried, shrunken husk as vapors rose briefly over her corpse. As Chane heard the cow’s heart stop, he turned his gaze to the cup.

The fluid was so dark red, it appeared almost black, and it now brimmed near the cup’s lip.

Chane did not know whether to feel elated or revolted. He knew what awaited him in drinking the conjured liquid. The first time, Welstiel had warned him with only two words.

“Brace yourself.”

Chane shuddered once before he downed the cup’s entire contents. When he lowered the brass vessel, it was completely clean, as if it had held nothing at all. For a moment, he tasted only dregs of ground metal and strong salt. Then he gagged and collapsed on the straw-strewn dirt.

His body began to burn from within.

Too much life taken in pure form burst inside him and rushed through his dead flesh, welling into his head. Curled up, he waited with his jaws and eyes clenched until the worst passed and the convulsions finally eased.

Had he used a mortal human in this fashion, he could have gone a half-moon without feeding again. He did not know how long the life energy of a cow would last.

Sitting up, Chane stared at the shriveled husk until his false fever subsided, and then he carefully packed away his equipment. Strong and sated, in control of his senses, he prepared to drag the carcass into the distant stand of trees. It would be a few days before it was found. He and Wynn would be gone by then, and any talk of its condition would never be connected to him.

He paused once upon opening the barn door and glanced toward the quiet cottage. Then he dragged the husk across the fallow field.

Sau’ilahk lingered well beyond a copse of barren maples, watching in fascination as Chane dragged a desiccated carcass toward the trees. What had Wynn’s guardian been doing in that barn? Then he felt the tingle of a living presence and heard dead grass crackle in another direction. He froze in place, a still, black shadow barely more than a deeper darkness amid the night.

Something else moved along the copse’s left. Only a dark hulk at first, it circled around the outside of a leafless tree into sight.

Ore-Locks stood hidden at the copse’s backside, watching Chane, as well.