Page 72 of Envious Of Fire
That concerns Lazarus. “It’s almost morning. Are you sure?”
“I shall take the boy myself.” Salazo drifts to Lazarus, takes the naked, muscular young man into his arms like he weighs nothing, says, “Oh, you adorable creature, you sweet, adorable creature … back to the cage with you, back where you belong.” Like a phantom, bald, beady-eyed Salazo nearly floats away.
Kyle stares, thinking on the young man whose escape he just ruined, the young man he just brought right back into the den of lions, whose nightmare he just aided in extending.
But could he have helped him anyway? Was the young man doomed whether Kyle had intercepted him in the desert or not?
“We have to go,” says Lazarus.
Kyle turns. “Already?”
“Either you come with me or you stay here.” Lazarus gives Kyle a subtle twist of his lips. “But you heard Salazo. He nearly mistook you for a human. Do you think it is above a vampire to consume the blood of another vampire? I was nearly tempted to drain you in your own bedroom myself, you and the tied-down human both. It would have been a satisfactory meal.” He pulls a woolen cloak off the top of an overturned crate, sweeps it overhis shoulders, heads off. Kyle glances warily at the lone vampire still lounging by the campfire—who is staring him down like he hasn’t eaten in days—before hurrying off after Lazarus.
After cutting through the room a different way and passing the source of the drumming—a stoic male vampire wearing a kilt and a purple beret in the company of no less than six female vampires, two naked and massaging him, one fully dressed and cuddling his feet, eyes closed as if dreaming, the rest dancing—Kyle finds himself following Lazarus into another set of dark, twisting tunnels. A mere minute later, Lazarus sighs impatiently and says, “You’re holding me back, and if we have any hope of returning before the sun decides to haveusfor breakfast …”
Suddenly Kyle is pressed to the wall.
Lazarus bites his own palm, covers Kyle’s mouth yet again with it, just like in the bedroom. “Drink,” he commands.
Kyle tries to fight Lazarus off, but his efforts are laughable, his feeble protests muffled and quashed out by Lazarus’s power as the blood seeps into his opened mouth. Blood washes over his tongue like an exotic wine he wouldn’t dare confess he has craved since first tasting it days ago. After just one brief note of hesitation, he gives in to the frenzy. It’s with delirious need that Kyle holds Lazarus’s sliced hand to his face, sucking greedily, drinking with desperate satisfaction. Was he thirsty already and just didn’t know it? Or is this an ancient thirst he’s carried in him for decades, now awakened in full force? Through his veins surges an electric warmth that makes him feel powerful, huge, capable of anything at all. Whatever fog lived in his mind is at once swept away, every thought made vibrant and clear.
He has needed this blood. That is his first stroke of clarity. Why, indeed, has he starved himself all these years? This is the greatest feeling he has ever known. How could this be wrong?
The hand is gone from Kyle’s mouth, and at once, he wants it back, but Lazarus’s cold eyes find Kyle’s instead of the hand.“That is about three times as much as I fed you in a weakened state in your house. Now you shall keep up with little effort,” says Lazarus. “See this as part of what I wished to show you—how it feels to be a god among gods.”
With that, Lazarus speeds away.
Kyle shouts, “Wait!” then charges after him.
At once, the ground flies beneath his feet, as if they barely touch the floor, propelled by something deep inside him. It’s exhilarating and scary, the electricity in his muscles. Kyle feels unreal. It’s someone else’s body. Someone else’s legs. His heart pounds happily in his chest, yet each scrape of his feet against the cave floor is heard perfectly, every breath taking flight from his lips, every wisp of air sweeping past his ears, every echo of these sounds that somehow find their way back to him.
This is what it’s like to be a god.
The next thing Kyle knows is the wall of the cave—as he slams into it face-first.
“Ha!” cries Lazarus as Kyle falls back, bewildered, blinking tears out of his eyes. “Be careful, eager boy. You will drill a new tunnel into the stone with that strength.”
“What the actual fuck?” mutters Kyle, dizzy, staring down at his hands for some reason. Even after crashing into the wall, he sees both of his hands in crisp, perfect detail.
“You have to listen when you move quickly … listen and take in each breath with purpose. Breath is information. Breath is the space around you, the tunnel ahead of you. See with your air. Now hurry, I don’t have the time to teach you lessons every turn of the cave walls. Some things are best taught to ourselves. Mind your feet, too.”
Then Lazarus is off again.
Kyle hurries on, this time considerably slower. The first thought that enters his head is how little pain lingers from crashing into the wall at such a fast speed. Does that indicate astrength in his body, a weakness of the earth, or a numbness of his nerves in this strangely heightened state?
Is this what being a true vampire feels like?
Painlessness and power?
After what feels like mere seconds in the tunnels, Kyle is at once stopped at the mouth of the cave—a different mouth than the one in which they entered with the two stalactite fangs. “I’d say under an hour,” says Lazarus, squinting into the distance as he performs a quick calculation. “That’s what we’ve got before daybreak, fifty or so minutes.”
“So are we looking for this Drake person?” asks Kyle.
“Keep up.” Then Lazarus rushes over the sand.
Kyle hurries after him. Out here in the open, it’s far easier to navigate, no obstacles, only the dry air and the sand, which at this speed feels as soft as feathers on the soles, fluttering under Kyle with his every light step.
As the earth moves under his feet, the world opening up all around him—the sky, the distant mountains, the air—Kyle lets out a sudden, overjoyed laugh. He can’t stop smiling. Has he ever in his life felt this free before? This capable? Even during all those years with Tristan, he never knew such freedom. He’d even go as far to say that this is the mostfunhe has ever had in years. He’s like a child again, racing through the grass, yelling at the heavens with delirium, on the brink of giggles.
