Genesis (Cain and Abel #1)

Chapter Six

On the night of Abel's sixteenth birthday, the boy lay awake, miserable and ill. He scooted away from the fire-they had managed to find a forest not completely frozen over, and Eve had done the rest-then closer again. His veins burned, but his skin felt icy, and he shivered uncontrollably. Every few minutes, a sharp pain sliced through him, wracking his body. He curled himself into a knot one moment, only to throw his arms wide the next. He could feel every grain of the dirt beneath him, hear every sound, see every movement. It was overwhelming. It was going to drive him mad.

Let it end, let it end, he chanted in his mind, but it didn't end. He rolled onto his stomach and looked silently at Cain and Eve, begging them wordlessly for help, but they were fast asleep, contented and oblivious.

Tears leaked from Abel's eyes, and when he wiped them away, he found to his horror that they were red and bloody on his fingers. Without thought, he licked his fingers quickly, cleansing them of blood. He stopped almost immediately, horrified, and then licked again, unable to help himself.

There was a terrible pain in his mouth. His gums were ripping open. He was dying. He must be dying.

And then, abruptly, everything seemed to stop and coalesce into a moment of perfect clarity. His senses were still overly strong, and there was still pain, but he no longer cared. The entirety of his mind was focused on one thing, filtered through a red haze.

Abel flowed to his feet in a single movement, turning his head sharply. He padded forward silently, whisking past trees as quickly and silently as a jaguar. He was no longer a clumsy human. He was no longer thinking or feeling. He was the hunt. He was the hunter. And part of him understood that if he hadn't scented this prey, he would have turned on those nearer to hand-on his companions.

There! In the undergrowth. A deer, shaggy-haired to endure the weather, eyes wide. It saw him flowing toward it and its tail rose. In a moment, it was leaping away, faster than a grown man could run.

But Abel was faster still. He was little more than a blur as he sped on and grabbed the deer in his arms, bearing it to the ground, his teeth already plunging into its neck.

The deer was dead when he pulled himself away from it. He felt engorged, his veins swelling with blood not his own. His mind was back, and he wiped his mouth and chin and chest with loathing, but he could not get the blood off. Fat and sated, he waddled to a nearby stream and rinsed himself before falling on its bank in a doze.

When he woke, he sped back to came as fleetly as the deer might once have.

The deer had been the first animal he had killed in a very long time. But he knew it was only the first in a long line. He didn't know, yet, how long it would be until the need drove him to kill again, but he did know it would come

And he knew, finally, what the gift of a fire dragon's blood really meant. In a little under a year, Cain would know as well. Before that happened, he had to figure out how to protect his little brother.

***

Abel dreamed, and saw himself when he was barely a year old, content in his mother's arms. A woman approached, carrying a newborn, and Abel knew immediately who it was.

I'm dreaming, Abel thought. It was a strange feeling, to watch himself as he had been, like he was a spectator rather than the person who had lived this memory. There were that he hadn't recalled until now. The way the cave ceiling was darkened with soot, the way the smoky firelight played off the red-painted face of the midwife. He could smell the sharp, floral scent of something besides regular wood in the fire, and underneath it all a faintly sweet, metallic smell. That smell he focused on-it was subtle, but at the same time so thick it seemed to settle into his nose and mouth, coating his throat. He forced himself to look instead at his brother in the midwife's arms.