“The great flood? The ender of worlds?”
“Yes. It truly happened, you know.” Gideon stroked Madis’ hair as he spoke. Madis closed his eyes. It was a long time since he had been comforted. “A loving deity unleashed hell on his creation because it displeased him. There is much that can be learned from that tale.”
“A father should never harm those he creates.”
“A good father will do what he has to,” Gideon said. “One cannot always coddle. One must ask for obedience and then demand it if it is not given.”
“Do you speak of a father or a tyrant?”
Gideon smiled down at the fledgling in his lap. “Both are sides of the same coin.”
Madis missed the lesson, for rays of sun were starting to creep over the horizon and with them the need for sleep was creeping throughout his body.
* * *
For the first time in his existence, Madis felt truly powerful. He had always been strong, but all men were strong. Now he was stronger than everybody besides Gideon. He was the second strongest creature on the planet, and he could do anything. Anything at all.
One night while standing beneath the moon, thinking on all he had lost and all he had gained, Madis decided to indulge his desire for vengeance. As a human, he had thought of revenge from time to time, but it was always tempered with rational, reasonable concerns and human impulses. Consequence was a barrier that no longer stood in his way. They had already killed him. They had already forced him to destroy his lover. What else did he have to lose? What else could they take?
This was a decision that seemed to come on the spur of the moment, but in truth it had been percolating through his darkness and his fear from the moment he awoke in this new form. There were those who had wronged him, who had cost him his very humanity and the love of his life. There were those who had to pay.
The village was lit with just a little moonlight. The lunar rock had withdrawn from the Earth, moved as far away as it could, as if it wanted to cast the world in darkness. Madis wanted to cast the world in darkness.
He walked toward the village. He was dressed in a loincloth and nothing else. The scars of his torture had healed in death. His hair was shoulder length, tied back behind his head. They’d shaved it when they began to torture him, but now it was as luscious as it had ever been. He was returning not merely in triumph, but more powerful than he had ever been before.
“Abomination!” The guard spotted him.
Madis had not known who to start with. Now he knew.
* * *
Gideon found Madis outside his village just as the sun began to creep dangerous fingers across the sky, the predawn light revealing a scene of brutality. Bodies littered the streets. Not all were intact. Many of them were half-clothed and terribly maimed.
Gideon put a hand on Madis’ shoulder. It came away sticky with sanguine essence. From head to toe, the fledgling was coated with the essence of those he had once called family. The stench of death was thick in the air, vultures already coming to land, jackals skirting the far side of the village, tugging at the severed limbs of the fallen. Gideon watched, surprised and bemused as the scene provided an almost endless tableau of petty cruelties. Madis had killed in many ways, his fangs not the foremost among them. There were impalings, crushings, stonings. There were stabbings, beheadings, and yes, a few bore drain wounds. It looked like the work of a pack of wild beasts, and yet Madis had done it by himself.
It was common for fledglings to lose control and kill. Usually it was the first time they tried to feed alone. It was not normal for them to go back to their homes and slay everybody there. Not because they were more controlled than Madis, but because the transition to vampire usually resulted in a detachment from the previous life and those in it.
“Hello, Master.” Madis greeted him without any sense of shame.
Gideon looked around with a sense of growing concern. He was no stranger to violence and death, of course, but there was something about the shattered bodies of the young and old alike, the complete ruination of an entire bloodline that made him especially cold. One never truly knew what one was making when one turned a human into a vampire. Had he created a monster even greater than himself when he made Madis?
“You are drenched in blood, my sweet fledgling. What have you done?”
* * *
“Vengeance is mine,” Madis breathed. He could see the censure in Gideon’s eyes and knew that he looked like a creature from the very bowels of hell itself. He was covered in blood from head to toe, the blood of dozens layered upon him. He could feel it sticking to his skin and cracking when he moved. He was a blood-painted dealer of death, and he felt no remorse for anything he had done.
First, he had killed a soldier who had tortured him. Upon slaughtering him, he discovered that there was no real satisfaction in that. He did not merely want to kill those who had destroyed him. He wanted them to suffer first. And so he did to them what they had done to him. He killed their loved ones. He killed their wives and their precious offspring. He killed everybody who ever meant anything to them. Then, and only then, did he kill the soldiers themselves, so that in their dying they knew they had lost everything.
“Vengeance may well be yours, but these people were the last of their line. There will never be another of their kind in all the world, in all the many futures to come. You have acted rashly, Madis. We must not take our anger out on humans. Those we kill, we must kill to nourish ourselves, or in order to protect the herd as a whole. We have our place in this world, as they do. I understand why you did what you did here, but it was wrong, and it must never be repeated. Do you understand?”
“I don’t care.”
Madis felt strong. Stronger than he ever had before. Finally vengeance was his. Vengeance for Aris, his lover. Vengeance for persecution. Vengeance for pain. Vengeance for death. He was thrilled with his own dark power, and keen to do further damage in the name of righteous anger.
Gideon’s smile was dark, but no less genuine for it. He looked as though Madis had just given him a very precious gift, one he intended on enjoying thoroughly.
“Let me make you care, my rebellious little progeny,” he purred seductively.