One could not thrive on the blood of rats and seagulls.
Filthy blood. Weak blood. The essence of mindless animals and winged things. You could sustain yourself on the stuff indefinitely—he knew that much, from fragmented memories—but there could be no pleasure in squeezing the life out of a furry blood bag. And the birds? They were worse. There were feathers everywhere. Fragments in his nose and eyes, like irritating pollen. The wrecked ship’s hull was a bed of red-stained white fluff.
Asunción had made a habit of lounging away from the slaughterhouse within the ship, sleeping within a makeshift coffin of furniture and desiccated bedding scavenged from other parts of the massive, teetering vessel, forever entombed in the sandy banks of the isolated northern beach.
None came here. And as he woke—waiting until the moon hung high in the sky—his yellow eyes grew wide as they fell upon tracks in the sand, winding far in the distance.
“Food?” he murmured, voice rough. Yet as he descended from his perch on the wrecked ship to the moonlit sands below, his eyes grew thin. Something made these tracks, but they were not human. Not even humanoid.
Probably not food. “But something to pass the night?” he asked, aloud, to the empty sands.
Filthy blood. Weak blood. The essence of mindless animals and winged things. You could sustain yourself on the stuff indefinitely—he knew that much, from fragmented memories—but there could be no pleasure in squeezing the life out of a furry blood bag. And the birds? They were worse. There were feathers everywhere. Fragments in his nose and eyes, like irritating pollen. The wrecked ship’s hull was a bed of red-stained white fluff.
Asunción had made a habit of lounging away from the slaughterhouse within the ship, sleeping within a makeshift coffin of furniture and desiccated bedding scavenged from other parts of the massive, teetering vessel, forever entombed in the sandy banks of the isolated northern beach.
None came here. And as he woke—waiting until the moon hung high in the sky—his yellow eyes grew wide as they fell upon tracks in the sand, winding far in the distance.
“Food?” he murmured, voice rough. Yet as he descended from his perch on the wrecked ship to the moonlit sands below, his eyes grew thin. Something made these tracks, but they were not human. Not even humanoid.
Probably not food. “But something to pass the night?” he asked, aloud, to the empty sands.
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