There was a desperation in Elise’s eyes, though she hid it well. Elrick’s senses were magnified nearly to infinity. He couldn’t read her mind, but he could read her face and her body, it was like knowing the exact contours of the ocean floor based on the movement of the waves. She needed Elrick’s help to get out, but she wasn’t bluffing either--he needed her too.

“What do we do?” he asked. “I’m Elrick, by the way.”

She bit her lip, and Elrick salivated. If she bit hard enough, she’d draw blood.

He dug his nails into his palm, forcing himself to focus.

“There are two routes,” she said. “One will sound safer, and it’s what I’m tempted to do too. We go back down the stairwell, past all the other apprentices. Both of us covered in Eadmon’s blood.”

“But the other,” Elrick said, reading her eyes like a book, “has the greater likelihood of success, even though it will sound riskier.”

She nodded.

Elrick smiled. “Then we do what gives us the best odds.”

“If we go into the hall together,” she said. “I could maybe get us to the ground floor. You could change into one of Eadmon’s robes, but they are master’s robes, and you’re not a master—”

He cut her off. “But that’s not the route we will take. What is the other choice?”

There was a door between two bookshelves. Elise turned the knob, opened the door, and slipped inside. Elrick followed, and they entered into what must have been Eadmon’s lab. It was full of potions, vials, bottles, decanters, and other types of equipment Elrick had no names for. Elise grabbed vials and potions seemingly at random and shoved them into a big bag, but she wasn’t really grabbing things at random—she knew what she was doing. She had been planning this for months, he realized. She knew exactly what she needed. She closed her satchel after gathering dozens of various potions and fistfuls of reagents.

“Can’t apprentices just leave?” he asked.

“An apprentice can technically leave voluntarily before they are sworn into the guild, but I’m not a normal apprentice. I can never leave.”

“You can leave now,” Elrick asked. “So what’s the other route?”

She grabbed Elrick’s wrist, and feeling her pulse beat against his, he imagined what her blood would smell like.

“Focus,” she said, and dragged him toward the window.

To call it a “window” was a stretch. It was a small hole—a slit, really—in the thick stone wall. It was barely large enough for a man to stick his head through. The iron grates covering the window from the outside meant that not even a child could have crawled through.

“Do you see the gate down below?” she asked.

It was dark, and the gate was poorly lit—but Elrick saw everything. The moon was brighter than the sun would have been in the daylight, though the moonlight didn’t hurt his eyes like the sun would have. He saw the gate. He saw the city beyond. He saw into a window of a building miles away, and he saw a man pacing back and forth inside of that impossibly distant room. He could even see the individual strands of hair growing between the man’s eyebrows.

“Holy shit,” Elrick said.

“The gate,” she said.

“Yes. I see it. I see so much more.”

“You’re going to lose that all fast if you don’t feed,” she said. “So we need to move. When we hit the ground, you rush the gate. There should only be two guards there.”

She pressed the grip of Eadmon’s dagger into his hand.

“I can jump over the gate,” he said, feeling just how strong he’d truly become.

“You could,” she said. “And you could outrun them. You’ll lose strength quickly though, and they’d find you collapsed somewhere. You need to get me out too, and then when you crash from not feeding, you’ll need me to keep you alive. That’s why you won’t just run away without me, do you understand?”

She forced Elrick’s finger closed around the dagger. “Kill them quickly and silently. They don’t need to suffer, but they must die.”

Elise removed a vial from the satchel, uncapped it, and placed her finger over the top. She turned it upside down, and her finger stopped the liquid from spilling all over the floor. She held the vial still for a moment, then turned it back over, releasing her finger.

She placed her finger onto the stone wall, right where the wall met the floor. She moved her finger up along the stone, until it was just over her head. She brought it up in a circular motion, and finally back down to the floor, about three feet across from where she’d begun. When she was finished, she’d traced a semicircle all around the slit of the window.

Elrick watched in awe. Nothing had happened yet, but he felt he knew what was about to go down.

“I’m going to shatter this vial against the wall,” she said, removing another vial of a different colored liquid from the satchel. “Go and open the door to the hallway.”

“But—” He started, but she cut him off.

“Do it!” she shouted. “Now! And then take cover in the lab.”

Take cover. Yeah, he knew what was going to happen.

He heard the glass shatter before he even opened the door to the hallway. He ripped the door open, nearly tearing it off the hinges with his enhanced strength. Though he could feel that strength already fading as a gnawing and ravenous hunger grew in his gut.

He turned and saw Elise rushing into the lab. He followed her.

He barely got in before she shut the door.

“How long,” he began to ask, but the sound of the explosion cut him off.

“I had you open the door,” she said, “to guide the shockwaves into the open hall rather than into here. And to create as much a diversion as possible, but we need to jump out now.”

She reached for the door, and Elrick stepped away. She opened the door, and something that smelled like catpiss mixed with sulfur hit his nose. Elise ran from the lab into the ruined living quarters. Elrick followed her. Everything was charred, and there was no sign of Eadmon’s body, but Elrick could smell it. The blood was totally ruined now, and the smell of bad blood overpowered even the acrid chemical stink that explosion had left behind.

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The place where the tiny slit in the window had been was now a gaping hole, shaped roughly like the semicircle Elise had traced. Cold air drafted into the charred room, and bright, silver moonlight spilled in from the night.

God, he was hungry.

Elise pressed herself against his back. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and she clutched her arms against his chest. “You have to jump now, before you are too weak.”

“It’s five stories,” Elrick said.

“We’re committed.” She said. “The other route is not an option now. Jump!”

He jumped.

No fear pulsed through him as he fell, only instinct. Drinkers could do this, and for the next few minutes, Elrick was a drinker. He was a cat jumping off the bed. It was easy.

He landed on his feet. He didn’t even make a sound. His supercharged muscles absorbed the shock of the landing with ease. He crouched down a few feet to let Elise dismount.

Then he found himself up against the walls, drawn into the darkest depths of the shadows. Elise tailed behind him.

Drinkers feared light as men feared darkness. The torches burning above the gate made him uneasy. He’d kill the guards, but he’d do it as fast as he could, to minimize the time he’d spend under those harsh lights.

He drew his dagger and ran. His legs moved faster than he’d ever thought possible.

He leapt.

The dagger was hardly needed. His momentum just drove it into the first guard’s skull. He didn’t need to swing or thrust or twist, it just chunked into the guard’s brain and killed him before he ever knew that Elrick even existed.

The second guard had just enough time to widen his eyes. Elrick jammed the dagger into one of them, and didn’t bother to remove it as the guard fell silently down.

There was a metallic clink behind him as Elise took the keys off the first guard.

“Is this your sword?” she asked, but Elrick didn’t hear.

The scent of fresh blood hit his nose. It was even more tempting now. He could always be like this? This fast? This strong? This alive?

“Why do so few feeders make it?” he asked.

He turned to her, barely noticing the sword Owen had customized for him in her hands. He just wanted to drink the blood of the men he’d killed. He’d never need a sword again if he stayed like this.

“They are hunted,” she said.

Elrick scoffed, pointing at the dead bodies. “I am the hunter.”

“You’ll get greedy as the hunger consumes you,” she said. “You’ll take risks you shouldn’t take. The hunters are skilled and experienced. You are not.”

Elrick hadn’t even checked his skills since he’d consumed the vial. He’d noticed some skill notifications flashing across his vision, but he’d ignored them. He focused on them now.

His hard-won skills had dropped. His Mining, Swordsmanship, Stealth, Coppersmithing, Monster Taming, Anatomy, Hiding, and Bartering all had dropped by almost a full point. He had new skills, which had increased since he’d drank the vial:

Shadowcraft 3.6

Masochism 2.4

Bloodletting 6.3

Sociopathy 6.8

There were other cryptically named skills. None of them higher than 7.0. He saw his Swordsmanship skill drop by another 0.1 as he read over more of his new Drinker skills.

Those who came to hunt him would be skilled. Elrick...was not. He was a baby Drinker. If he were careful, which he knew was likely not possible, he might be able to get his Drinker skills to 20 or 30 in the next week. How long until hunters came for him though?

“Elrick,” Elise said, pressing the hilt of the sword into his hand. “We need to go.”

He heard shouts. Alchemists in ornate robes—clearly high-ranking ones—were rushing toward the base of the tower. Guards with spears and swords followed. They all thought whatever had set off the explosion was still inside the tower. Elrick understood now: No one knew they had jumped out of the window. Only the two guards who had stayed behind at the gate knew that the two of them were outside, and Elrick had killed both of them. Elise and Elrick could just walk away. Soon though, the alchemists would realize what had happened when they saw the destroyed window in Eadmon’s rooms. Even if he hid the bodies of the guards, their disappearance would be just as telling as their bodies.

“Let’s go,” Elrick said, grabbing the sword. He gripped it tight, willing himself to take a step away from the pooling blood. Still warm and fresh and inviting, but spoiling rapidly. He knew one taste would be all it would take. He could roll the dice and try to make it as a Drinker.

No. He had to do better in this life. Did he really want to eat people? In a world where you could be resurrected after death, killing people was one thing, but eating them?

He gripped his sword tighter. It was an anchor to his life as a man. It linked him to Owen, and to his new life in Antia. It reminded him of how hard he’d worked to forge it, and how much more work was ahead of him to learn to really fight with it. If he took a sip of blood, he’d throw that all away.

He took another step, and then he began to run. Elise stayed just behind him, her bloodied apprentice’s robes billowing in the crisp night air.

The Alchemist’s tower was on the edge of Antia, and a large forest was nearby. They must have needed to be near the forest to gather their reagents and potion ingredients.

Instinct took over, and Elrick’s Shadowcraft skill guided them into the forest. He found paths where there were none. The darkness was his shield, and it guided him deeper into the woods.

Elrick guided Elise’s clumsy feet. When they’d first entered the forest, Elrick had heard horses galloping almost a half mile behind them. He could still hear the horses and men’s voices, impossibly far away. He had no right to be able to hear something so far away. The horses moved slowly, and the men shouted in whispers. They were searching, but they were so far away. They were clumsy outsiders in this darkness, while Elrick was at home in it.

A pang of hunger hit. It was worse than any hunger he’d ever felt. His entire stomach cramped up, and he fell to his knees.

“Lie down,” Elise said, no surprise in her voice.

“We need to keep moving,” Elrick grunted. “They are tracking us. I can hear them.”

“You’re done,” she said. “Lie down. I’ve planned for this.”

He forced himself up, and every muscle in his body convulsed. Elrick crumpled to the ground. It wasn’t just hunger, it was pain. It was crippling, all-encompassing pain. His stomach had become a void, his throat a desert. His head pounded, begging him to end the pain.

“The need to drink will become unbearable,” Elise said, pulling vials from her satchel. “I need you to promise not to give in. Just bear it a few more minutes, and I’ll help you through.”

Give in? Oh, God. He looked at her, and as soon as he noticed the bulging vein on her neck and wrists, the cramps ceased. His body—or the Drinker blood flowing through him—was giving him one last chance. The pain that had made him wish for death was gone entirely, but he felt it waiting to come back. If he didn’t drink, it would all come right back. He didn’t want to feel that again.

“Drink this,” Elise said.

She shoved a vial to his lips before he had a chance to consider. He drank, wishing it were blood.

It was blood, but not the kind he needed. Whatever this was, it wasn’t human blood.

“Pig’s blood,” she said. “It will take the edge off.”

It did. The pain came back, but it was dulled noticeably from before. His body was angry with him for not feeding on Elise, but the pig’s blood had seemed to at least partially trick whatever it was inside him that craved human blood.

“Now,” Elise said, “I need you to be very honest with me, Elrick. Can you do that?”

He nodded, clenching his teeth as the pain intensified for a second or two, before dying back down.

“Can you work through this?” She asked, giving him another shot of pig’s blood. “Or is this not enough?”

He looked at her lips as she spoke. He imagined biting into them, and sucking their swollen redness, drinking her dry as she tried to scream. He wouldn’t let go no matter how hard she screamed.

He shook his head. “You should run.”

“If I run from you now, it will trigger your hunting instinct,” she said. “I won’t make it if I run.”

God, how good it would be to chase her down? He’d let her have a minute-or-two headstart. Just long enough that she’d think she had a real chance. Then he’d catch her. Her blood would be pumped full of sweet adrenaline, and she’d taste so much better.

“What other choice is there?” he asked.

Maybe she’d let him have a drink. Better than to be hunted down. Less fun for him, but he’d take it.

“I can’t promise I got the mixture right,” she said. “But better you than me.”

Something jabbed into his thigh. He felt a cold rush hit his vein. He lunged for her, but his legs gave out underneath him.

Elise stepped back. He clawed at her ankles, as a last dying gasp of his Drinker’s instinct, but she was too far away.

“I’ll keep us hidden while you’re out,” she said.

Elrick hardly heard her. Whatever she had pumped into him had done its job, and Elrick went out cold.