The Hunger Read Online Free PDF

last of the pie came up into the muck among the rushes. She could hear the horse breathing as it came closer, and another breath, the rider’s, and the throb of . . . of blood. She stood, the weight of her soaked wool dress comforting. He was a big man, richly dressed. She saw well in the dark. And he throbbed with what she needed .
    Why was everything so red? Were they burning the fields? Smoke sometimes turned the moon red . . . She breathed out. She was strong. And the man on the horse had what she wanted. Needed. Throbbing there in his throat. The horse drew abreast of her. She closed her mouth and felt a stab of pain in her lip. She could smell her own blood welling there. The redness deepened and with it came certainty entwined with that smell .
    She sprang up to the road and pulled the man from his horse. He hit the ground with a thud. A whoosh of air escaped his lungs. The horse neighed in fear and wheeled away. But she had eyes only for the throbbing in the fat man’s throat. She fell on him, growling, tearing at his neck. He screamed and thrashed, but the scream turned into a gurgle, and there it was, blood, welling in sweet copper-tinged ecstasy into her mouth. She sucked at the ripped flesh and felt . . . alive. Her itching pain subsided. The man’s blood stopped pumping .
    She raised herself from the wreck of a man. Dimly she knew that his throat was ripped and that she had ripped it. His eyes dulled and his thrashing stilled. When someone saw him, they would say he had been killed by a beast, or a monster. Her mother said she was different. Now she knew how. No wonder her mother left her .
    She turned her face up to the moon, cold, sure, its cycles predictable, once you knew their secret. She had found the secret tonight to the hunger. And she felt strong. Like a strong monster .
    Beatrix ran her hand over her eyes and massaged her temples as though she could rub away the memories. Couldn’t you have told me, Mother, what I was? Couldn’t you have showed me that it didn’t have to be that way, ripping throats and killing them? I thought I was evil .
    It was Stephan who told her about the Companion in her blood that made her who she was. Her mother deigned to give her human blood sporadically during her childhood, to keep the Companion quiescent. But when the Companion started to manifest itself and its powers at puberty, her mother had abandoned her, not wanting to be burdened with the role of mentor. That fell to Stephan, and worse yet, Asharti. But she wouldn’t think about that, or what followed.
    Damn these memories! She had put all this aside hundreds of years ago. She was beyond the hurt, and she avoided evil these days. What did it mean that the memories came back so insistently now? Whatever it meant, it wasn’t good.
    She turned to the huge bed. Tonight she would not even have the distraction of feeding her Companion. She stepped out of her dress. It was Langley’s fault. She shouldn’t need blood for a week or more after Blendon. But the scent of Langley’s blood had sent shivers of life along her veins. The Companion yearned toward life with an intensity nearly impossible to resist. The rush of life when she was feeding was one way she staved off madness, and also the closest she came to losing control. A thin line. But she didn’t lose control. She hadn’t with Blendon.
    Beatrix shrugged out of her chemise, grabbed a silken gown from her dressing room and pulled it over her head. Then why had just the smell of blood begun that throbbing fervor in her veins? She teased the pins from her hair and let the auburn mass hang down her back. Langley. Something about Langley himself. She sorted through her memory of this evening. He was well made, but so were a thousand other men. She was impervious to men’s physicalcharms. An elusive expression around his mouth and eyes said he wasn’t as hardened as he pretended. He was hiding something; his wound, but more. That was it! As an expert at