Deep Roots (Iris' Atlantis 2)

After Bramble was gone, I stayed outside by the road, looking at all the branches that still needed to be taken deeper into the forest. Out of sight, out of mind.

Darkness was descending and the temperature was dropping. The clouds were breaking above, revealing a magnificent crescent close to the treetops. I was standing in the clearing between trees where Rose's garden cut into the woody landscape. Plume was still perched on my shoulder. I felt his claws wrapping themselves around my shirt. Stump's presence seemed to be inspecting the cut branches.

Trees whispered in the wind, gossiping of the day that had passed near this lone house in the woods. And I had never felt more alone in my life. Or whatever it was I had.

It was surprisingly disconcerting observing Plume the raven. Just today he had torn apart a field mouse. Once he had recovered from his stupor, he had been feeding, leaving behind a trail of small rodents, and even some not so small. I had dug a pit at the garden's edge. Because the raven was a sloppy eater. Once the blood started collecting swarms of flies, Plume wouldn't touch it anymore.

And I looked at every squirrel I buried with memories that suddenly felt crisp and clear. I–the vampire me–had enjoyed a little game of linking animals. Just because I could bind a rabbit to my will, I had done it.

Plume took off, rising and landing on a pine top where he then stood, framed by the light from the equally rising crescent.

I had been willing to override two wills, bind two lives under my dominion.

And it hadn't been some years ago. It had been just last Monday.

I drew in a deep breath of the mountain air. I had tried to rid myself of the vampire Court coming here where no demi-god of death could survive. And I might be rid of the Court, and its Queen, to an extent. I had just forgotten one vampire I couldn't run away from. And that one wasn't currently clinging on a pine branch like an odd cone.

There was one in my memories, hidden in my manners, closer to the surface than I had ever realized. In the bar, I hadn't become a normal Timothy the-non-magical. Because I could no longer imagine myself a normal current human being. The one other path I could imagine was the vampiric one.

I cast my gaze to the thicket where I sensed Stump hovering. My phantasm. My first sacrifice. He had died a human. The Queen had offered to turn him, and Stump had declined. But he had lived with the real vampires. And when his well being truly collapsed and he had been bedridden of old age, he had called me.

He had said all the goodbyes he had needed and he had known he would rise no more. It had been his time.

Any one of us could have linked him and within months he could have become young and healthy. Or with the modern healthcare system he could have been kept alive for years maybe.

But Stump had understood it was his place to go, and my place to start a life as a vampire.

And even now, standing in the dark garden where cold shadows crept and only stars saw me reminiscing, I couldn't really bring myself to feel guilty. I had drunk the life force of a man, snuffed out his candle and moved on without a second thought.

Technically, by some logic, surely I had murdered him.

I tilted my head in thought. And searched for an ink shape in the shadows. Plume took lives every year. By my counting he had been leaching off humanity for some thirty years. The victims were always close to the end, either physically or mentally. It was something a vampire sensed, something that drew them in. Still it would have been ethical to argue against their outright execution.