Voracious - Alice Henderson [43]
“What happened?”
“At first nothing. Full of grief and obsessed with revenge, I wandered the underbelly of Vienna, trying to find someone who knew of the creature. I had one drive: to find the thing and destroy it. Polite society, save one person, ostracized me. That one person was one of Gregor’s frequent visitors to the house: Ffyllon. He knew of the creature and its weakness, a certain type of metal. It was this friend who had given Anna the metal, in the shape of a letter opener, and told her of the creature. He wasn’t specific, but at the time I got the impression he’d been following the creature for some time. He said Anna had laughed at him when he offered the letter opener for protection, but she had taken it in appreciation of his good story about a roaming, voracious creature.
“A few days later I found Ffyllon’s body, murdered by the creature. His journal was on him, and I read it. He had followed the thing to Vienna, worried that it intended to kill a musician named Anna. In his journal, he wonders if the drinks he had the night Anna was murdered were drugged. With the hunter passed out, the creature had open access to his target.”
“Did you still have the letter opener?”
“No. When she stabbed him with it, it must have stayed embedded in him when he ran off that night. Everything happened so fast—” He exhaled shakily.
“Did this friend help you find another weapon?”
Noah shook his head. “No. He disappeared right after that and was killed before he could help me further. I vowed to take up his quest, but spiraled ever downward. Eventually I found a piece of the special metal, though, and had a knife made out of it.”
Madeline considered for a minute, then said, “Is it the same knife that’s in your pack?”
Noah raised his eyebrows. “Going through my things?”
“I needed to look at the map.”
“Ah. Yes, it’s the same knife.”
Madeline resisted the urge to tell him she’d felt how old and important it was when she’d touched it.
“I thought once I had the knife, I’d just find him and kill him. But it was far more complicated than that. I don’t think he has an inherent human form. He can look like anyone he’s eaten. Anyone at all. I realized that the hard way when a stranger attacked me in an alley in Cardiff. The creature had taken on another appearance, but I didn’t realize it until then. He’d been stalking me not only because I was a witness, but because he had been unable to eat Anna, and he wanted revenge. I slashed him with the knife, but only shallowly. He flew into a rage, twisting and screaming. He tore out of the alley and into the streets.
“For a long time after that I didn’t know where he’d gone. He covers his trail well. But little clues, like accounts of people with exceptional talent gone missing or murdered gave me his whereabouts.
“And so I’ve been hunting him. Across four continents, for over two hundred years, it’s all I’ve done.”
He sighed and put his head back in his hands.
Madeline just stared at him, not knowing what to say. Finally she asked, “But how are you still alive?”
Noah stayed silent for several moments, then he looked up at her, his eyes tired and bloodshot.
“The blood,” he said. “Over time I noticed … changes. I was able to see in the dark. I rarely needed to eat. I was more energetic and started noticing that I was aging quite well. Then I realized it was a little too well. Fifty years went by. On those rare occasions when I returned home, I saw that my friends had gotten wrinkles and grown stiff, and I still looked the same. Then they started to die of old age. And I still looked twenty-four. Later, when I was very emotional, when feeling anger or”—he looked at her—“passion, I began to change physically. The more time goes by, the more I change, the more abilities I gain.” Noah fell silent.
“What abilities?” The tremble returned within her.
“The power to heal quickly. To see in the dark. To not need much sleep. To change small