A strigoi had been here. A strigoi had killed here.
A barmaid, thin and riddled with sores, lay sprawled next to the corpulent innkeeper on the filthy floor. No heartbeats echoed from their chests. They were dead and would remain so.
Broken crockery crunched under his boots.
Firelight gleamed on his silver blade.
Bernard had trained Rhun with this weapon, along with many others, readying him for his first mission as a Sanguinist. It had been a year ago to this very day that Rhun had lost his own soul to a strigoi attack, taken down beside his sister’s grave.
Today he must begin to redeem himself.
Bernard had ordered him to find the beast that had been terrorizing the local village. The rogue strigoi had arrived only days before but had already killed four souls. Rhun must turn its foul appetites to holy ones, as Bernard had done with him, or slay the beast.
A creak drew his attention to the corner where a rough-hewn wooden table had been pushed up against the wall. His sharp vision picked out a shape in the darkness beneath it.
The strigoi he sought crouched there.
Another sound reached his ears.
Weeping.
In a single bound, Rhun crossed the distance to the table, yanked it away with one hand, and hurled it across the room. With his other hand, he dropped his blade against a dirty white throat.
A child.
A boy of ten or eleven gazed up at him, his eyes wide, his short brown hair trimmed by loving hands. Dirty fingers wrapped around his bare bony knees. Tears stained his cheeks—but blood stained his chin.
Rhun dared show no mercy. Too many Sanguinists had died because they had underestimated their prey. An innocent young face often masked a centuries-old killer. He reminded himself of that, but the child seemed harmless, piteous even.
He spared a quick glance to the dead bodies on the floor, reminding himself not to be fooled. The boy was far from harmless.
He twisted the boy around and clutched him against his chest, gripping him from behind, pinning his arms down. Rhun dragged him to the fireplace. A mirror hung above a crude wooden mantel.
The reflection showed the child to be quiet in his embrace, unresisting.
Unhappy brown eyes met his in the mirror.
“Why am I a monster?” those young lips asked.
Rhun faltered at the unexpected question, but he took strength from what he had been taught by Bernard. “You have sinned.”
“But I did not, not of my own will. I was a good boy. A creature broke through my window in the night. It bit me. It made me feed on its blood, then fled. I did not ask for that to happen. I fought against it. Fought with all my strength.”
Rhun remembered his own initial struggles against the strigoi who had stolen his soul and how he had succumbed in the end, embracing the bliss that was offered to him. “There is a way to stop the evil, to serve God again.”
“Why would I want to serve a god who let this happen to me?”
The child didn’t seem to be angry, merely curious.
“You can turn this curse into a gift,” he said. “You can serve Christ. You can live by drinking His holy blood, not the blood of humans.”
The child’s eyes strayed to the bodies on the floor. “I didn’t want to kill them. Truly, I didn’t.”
Rhun loosened his hold. “I know. And you can stop killing now.”
“But”—the child met his gaze in the mirror again—“I liked it.”
Something in the boy’s eyes sang to the darkness inside him. Rhun knew this first mission was as much a test of him as it was of the boy.
“It is a sin,” Rhun stressed.
“Then I will end up in Hell.”
“Not if you turn from this path. Not if you dedicate yourself to a life of service to the Church, to Christ.”
The child considered this, then spoke. “Can you promise me that I won’t go to Hell if I do as you say?”
Rhun hesitated. He wished he could offer a sounder truth to the boy.
“It is your best hope.”
Like so much in his life, it was a matter of faith.
A burning log slipped off the fire and rolled against the fireplace stones. Bright sparks flew onto the floor and extinguished there. Rhun sensed that the morning approached swiftly. The child looked toward the window, likely feeling it, too.
“You must decide soon,” Rhun said.
“Does the sun burn you?” the child asked, wincing from remembered pain.
“Yes,” he said. “But through Christ’s blessing I can walk under the noon sun. His blood gives me the strength and holiness for such.”
The boy’s round eyes looked doubtful. “What if I drink His blood but don’t truly believe?”
“Christ will know the falsehood. His blood will burn you to ash.”
The child’s small body shivered in his arms. “Will you let me go if I say no?”