“Which one do you want?” de Clermont asked. They were crouched in the tall grasses that grew beside a meandering stream, watching a group of British soldiers on the opposite bank. There were four men, and one was wounded.
“None.” Marcus was happy with deer.
“You must choose, Marcus. But remember: You must live a long time with your decision,” de Clermont said.
“That one.” Marcus pointed to the smallest of the lot, a wiry fellow who spoke in a broad, unfamiliar accent.
“No.” De Clermont pointed to the man lying by the water, groaning. “Him. Take him.”
“Take him?” Marcus frowned. “You mean feed from him.”
“I’ve seen you feed from a deer. You won’t be able to stop drinking from a human once you start.” De Clermont sniffed the breeze. “He’s dying. The leg is gangrenous.”
Marcus took in a gulp of air. Something sweet and rotten assaulted his nose. He practically gagged. “You want me to feed off that?”
“The infection is localized at the moment. He would smell worse otherwise,” de Clermont said. “It won’t be the sweetest blood you’ll ever taste, but it won’t kill you.”
De Clermont vanished. A shadow passed over the narrow, pebbled ford. The British soldiers looked up, startled. One of them—the largest, most muscular of the soldiers—gave a frightened shout when de Clermont seized him and bit into his neck. His two companions ran away, leaving their few possessions behind. The wounded soldier, the one with the dying leg, began to scream.
The smell of blood sent Marcus after de Clermont. He arrived on the opposite bank more quickly than he would have dreamed possible—before.
“We aren’t going to kill you.” Marcus knelt beside the man. “I just need to take some of your blood.”
De Clermont’s prey was slowly sinking toward the ground as his blood was drained.
“Christ. Please. Don’t kill me,” the wounded soldier begged. “I have a wife. A daughter. I only ran away because they said we would be put on a prison ship.”
It was every soldier’s nightmare to be flung onto one of the foul vessels anchored offshore with no food, no fresh water, and no way of surviving the filthy, crowded conditions.
“Shh.” Marcus patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. He could see the man’s pulse, skittering at his neck. And the leg—Lord, John Russell had been right at Yorktown. Warmbloods did give off a terrible stench as their flesh died. “If you would just allow me—”
Strong white hands reached in and took the soldier by the collar. The man began to weep, his begging now constant as he faced what seemed like sure death.
“Stop talking. Bite him here. Firmly. You’ll be less likely to kill him if you latch on to him, like a babe on his mother’s breast.” De Clermont held the soldier still. “Do it.”
Marcus bit, but the man whimpered and moved, and that urge Marcus had been feeling to fight and fight some more roared back to life. He snarled and sank his teeth into the soldier’s neck, shaking him slightly to quiet him. The man fainted, and Marcus felt a pang of disappointment. He wanted the man to challenge him. Somehow, Marcus knew the blood would taste better if he did.
Even without the fight, human blood was intoxicating. Marcus could taste a sourness that he supposed was from the gangrene and whatever other illnesses were pulsing through the soldier’s veins, but even so Marcus felt fortified and stronger with every sip.
When he was finished, he had taken every drop in the man’s body. The soldier was dead, his neck torn open with a gaping wound that looked as though an animal had attacked him.
“His friends,” Marcus said, looking around. “Where are they?”
“Over there.” De Clermont jerked his head toward a grove of trees in the distance. “They’ve been watching.”
“Those cowards just stood there, and watched while we fed off people they knew?” He would never have let de Clermont feed on Vanderslice or Cuthbert or Dr. Otto.
“You take the little one,” de Clermont said, dropping a few coins by his soldier’s face. “I’ll have the other.”
* * *
—
BY THE TIME THEY REACHED the Connecticut River, Marcus had fed from old men and young men, sick men and hale men, criminals and runaways and even a rotund innkeeper who never woke up from his fireside slumbers while Marcus drank. There were a few tragic accidents when hunger got the better of him, and one rage-filled attack on a man who had been raping his way across New England and who even de Clermont agreed deserved to die.