Origins of Blood (RE)
Chapter 71: An Urge (1)

Chapter 71: An Urge (1)

Elliot’s POV

“Fate is cruel, and still, it is the source that leads us to our destiny.”

–– Elliot Starfall

A sharp, ghostly pain spears through my right arm—what’s left of it, anyway. It’s gone, hacked off, burned away, but I feel phantom fingers twitching in the dark, clawing at nothing. I press my left palm hard against my knee, feeling the damp fabric of my trousers soaked with the foul brown water of the sewers, this fetid grave for anything that can’t crawl out. My teeth grind against each other as I fight the twisting in my shoulder. My stump jerks uncontrollably, rolling from side to side like a demented marionette, the phantom pain so vivid I want to scream.

There’s no blood. The wound sealed thanks to that monster’s blood I drank. My curse. My gift. The torn fabric of my shirt sticks to the redness and greenish-black bruising around the scar. It’s healed in a way that should take weeks. But I don’t feel blessed. I feel like filth. Like rot. The only good thing in my mouth is a sickly sweet metallic aftertaste I can’t stand. I spit it onto the floor.

My legs shake. I’m shivering under the sheer weight of it all, like a mountain pressing on my spine.

What would Ren do?

My brother is dead. They killed him. Those blue-blooded creatures that pretend to be people. That’s why I’m here, shoes drenched in blood. The cold-looking blood, but being ironically warm, half a man, staring at the wreckage of what we are. I try to stand, but the world swims, so I grab the slimy wall to steady myself. I’m lost. No plan. No future. Just this endless city mist, cold as death. Wandering. Hunting. Killing them. Dying.

No long life for me.

I correct myself. No life at all. Sooner or later, the city will swallow me whole.

I wipe the cold sweat from my brow and stagger a step forward, my boot slipping in the gore that used to be a man. A young man. He might have been a brother. A son. Just like Ren. My jaw tenses. My heart roars with hate, but it’s empty too—a cold, silent void. Is that eternity? Just this hollow stare?

I push the thought aside. I force myself to look at them. Gene stands over the woman, his hand curled into a fist. I still feel myself left in the sewage, in the void. Cham stares at the ground, feet shuffling, refusing to see. There’s a child in the corner—no older than fourteen—trembling so violently I can hear the fabric of her dress rustling.

My teeth ache as I clench them. My left hand tightens on my knee so hard the fabric nearly tears. I want to vomit. I already did, too many times. My stomach burns from the acid and the blood I drank instead of real water, real food.

Gene’s voice cuts through it. “Don’t move!”

He roars it at the woman, and she jerks but doesn’t try to flee. He punches her in the stomach. The child sobs, high and thin, the sound of an animal cornered.

I watch it all. I don’t move to stop him. Why would I? I don’t believe them. They beg for mercy, these creatures. They cry when the knife is at their own throat, but laugh when they hold it at yours. They’d kill a human child and call it sport. They’d enslave us, whip us until the flesh splits, sell us off like cattle. And yet now they weep?

I lick my teeth and feel the rough plaque on them. Disgusting. My body feels like it’s dying, shuddering under me, and deep down I know: I am going to die. It’s not a question of if, only when.

Gene keeps hitting her, aiming for her belly. Not the face, not the legs, not the arms. He’s careful. Deliberate. She’s pregnant—belly swollen, unmistakable even in the dim light. I see it. Cham sees it, and he wants to stop him. I can see it in the way his eyes flicker, the tremor in his fingers.

But I don’t stop Gene, and neither does Cham in the end.

Cham still has some humanity left in him. That tiny flickering spark that Ren used to have. That I used to have. But my light went out. I feel the shudder in my lungs, the fracture in my world. Hope is dead, and so is mercy.

That child in the corner? That unborn thing in her belly? Sooner or later they’ll be just like the father—enslavers, torturers, murderers of my kind. It’s only a matter of time. I can’t risk it. None of us can.

So, I let Gene do it.