The People's Will Read Online Free PDF

his hands clasped to his chest, his eyes raised upwards, his lips moving in a rapid whisper. Iuda suppressed the urge to laugh at the realization that the man was praying for him. He’d have need to pray for himself soon enough.
    Iuda began to speak again, mumbling without any thought as to what he was pretending to say. The man squeezed his arm reassuringly.
    ‘It’s all right. You’re safe now.’
    Evidently this was going to require a little more bait.
    ‘No, please, listen,’ Iuda croaked. ‘There’s not much time.’
    The man looked down, puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘It’s about …’ Iuda allowed his voice to die away. The man bent forward, but not close enough. Iuda raised his arm and beckoned, letting it fall again with an exhaustion he had little need to feign. He could not be sure he even had the strength to do this – but it would be his only chance. The man leaned over him again, just as he had done before, his ear close to Iuda’s cracked lips.
    Iuda pounced.
    His hands clamped on to the man – one to his head, the other to his back. Iuda’s nails dug through his hair and into his scalp, twisting his head to one side. The man pulled away. Iuda felt his emaciated muscles scream at him in pain, but he held on. The man was strong and was soon halfway to his feet, but he brought Iuda with him. Iuda bit. The instant rush of blood was bliss, buthis first need was not to drink. The blood would take time to invigorate him, time which his prey could easily use to fight him off. The man must die and die quickly. Iuda bit again, and pulled his mouth away, bringing with it a mess of artery and sinew. Blood cascaded over Iuda’s face – an appalling waste, but the job was done.
    The man fell limp, collapsing on top of Iuda and forcing his weakened body back to the ground. It had been a quick death – a sudden, catastrophic loss of blood pressure to the brain. But Iuda had a better purpose for the blood. He rolled the man’s lifeless corpse off him. The two of them lay side by side, like exhausted lovers who did not care to embrace one another after the act.
    The urge to remain there in silence, resting, was powerful, but Iuda knew he had work to do. They would not be alone for long. He crawled over and placed his lips to the ragged wound in the man’s throat, almost mimicking the posture of the man when he had been listening to Iuda. Drinking blood this way was neither pleasant nor easy. The blood of the dead was stale. Nutritionally it had only a little less value than living blood – Iuda had established that by experiment years before. But it tasted like a cold, thin, flavourless soup.
    Worse than that, it had to be drawn from the body. To drink from a living victim one had only to pierce the artery and let the beating heart force gush after gush of blood into the mouth, weakening in strength as it gradually deprived itself of that which it most needed in order to live. With this lifeless slab of flesh, Iuda had to suck the blood for himself – harder still in his starved condition. If he’d had the time and the strength he would have imitated a butcher and hauled the cadaver up on a rope to let it hang upside down, allowing gravity to do the work that the heart was no longer capable of. But he had no strength. In the end he resorted to lapping at what had spilled on the floor, like a cat. It was degrading, but no one would see, and it would give him the strength for better things soon.
    It was only a few minutes before the dead man’s workmate returned, racing down the steps two at a time and clutching a bottle in his hand. Iuda was seated in his chair – the same chair that had been there when the room had been his office – in a darkcorner where he would not be seen by someone coming in from the daylight. Even after so little time and so little blood, he felt renewed. He was not quite his old self, but he was strong enough to take his next meal in a more dignified manner.
    He’d placed