As her eyes opened, she recognized her benefactor as much from his white Roman collar as from his dark eyes and hard face.
Father Rhun Korza.
It was the same man who had tricked her into this coffin.
But how long ago?
As he held her, she let her arm fall to the ground. The back of her hand came to rest against a loose stone.
She smiled up at him. He smiled back, love in his shining eyes.
With unearthly speed, she smashed the stone against his temple. Her other hand slipped up his sleeve, where he always kept his silver knife. She palmed it before he dropped her. Another blow, and he fell.
She quickly rolled atop him, her teeth seeking the cold flesh of his white throat. Once she pierced his skin, his fate lay at her mercy. It took strength to stop drinking before she killed him, patience to empty half the wine from the coffin before she sealed him inside it. But she must. Fully immersed in wine, he would merely sleep until rescued, as she had done.
Instead, she had left only a little wine, knowing he would soon wake in his lonely tomb and slowly starve, as she had while imprisoned in her castle tower.
Lifting her finger from his stolen cross, she allowed herself a moment of cold satisfaction. As she moved her arm, her fingers dragged over a battered shoe atop another pile.
This tiny bit of leather marked her first kill in this new age.
She savored that moment.
As she fled the dark catacombs—blind to where she was, when she was—rough stones cut through the thin leather soles of her shoes and sliced her feet. She paid them no heed. She had this one chance of escape.
She knew not where she ran to, but she recognized the feel of holy ground underfoot. It weakened her muscles and slowed her steps. Still, she felt more powerful than she ever had. Her time in the wine had strengthened her, how much she only dared to guess.
Then the sound of a heartbeat had stopped her headlong flight through the dark tunnels.
Human.
The heart thrummed steady and calm. It had not yet sensed her presence. Faint with hunger, she rested her back against the tunnel wall. She licked her lips, tasting the Sanguinist’s bitter blood. She lusted to savor something sweeter, hotter.
The flicker of a faraway candle lightened the darkness. She heard the pad of shoes drawing nearer.
Then a name was called. “Rhun?”
She flattened against the cold stone. So someone was searching for the priest.
She crept forward and spotted a shadowy figure stepping around a far corner toward her. In one raised hand, he carried a candle in a holder, revealing the brown robes of a monk.
Failing to see her, he continued forward, oblivious of the danger.
Once close enough, she sprang forward and bore his warm body to the floor. Before the man could even gasp, her teeth found his luscious throat. Blood surged through her in wave after wave, strengthening her even more. She reveled in bliss, as she had every time since the first. She wanted to laugh amid this joy.
Rhun would have her trade this power for scalding wine, for a life of servitude to his Church.
Never.
Spent, she released the human shell, her curious fingers lingering on the fabric of the robes. It did not feel like linen. She detected a slipperiness to it, like silk, but not like silk.
A trickle of unease wormed through her.
The candle had snuffed when the man fell, but the ember at the wick’s tip glowed dull red. She blew on it, brightening its color to a feeble orange.
Under the dim light, she patted down the cooling body, repulsed again by the slippery feel of the fabric. She discovered a silver pectoral cross but abandoned its searing touch.
She reached down his legs and pulled a shoe from one lifeless foot, sensing strangeness here, too. She held it near the light. The top was leather, scuffed and unremarkable, but the sole was made of a thick spongy substance. She had never seen its like. She pinched the material between her thumb and forefinger. It gave, then sprang back, like a young tree.
She sat back on her haunches, thinking. Such a peculiar substance had not existed when Rhun had tricked her into the coffin of wine, but now it must be commonplace enough for a lowly monk to wear.
She suddenly felt like screaming, sensing the breadth of the gulf that separated her from her past. She knew she had not slumbered for days, weeks, nor even months.
But years, decades, perhaps centuries.
She accepted this brutal truth, knowing one other.
She must take extra care in this strange new world.
And she had. Moving from the shoe, she picked up a white ball with a red star on it from the tabletop. Its surface felt like human skin, but smoother. It repulsed her, but she forced herself to hold it, to toss it in the air and catch it again.
Upon leaving the catacombs, she had been so frightened.
But soon others became frightened of her.
She had crept through the tunnels, expecting more monks. But she had encountered none as she followed the whisper of distant heartbeats ever higher.