Chasing Orion
Chapter 4: Blood in the Sand

Isis took some steps backward and began to turn transparent. Mist absorbed her lower half leaving just her bust visible.

“If you do that, you can no longer have any association with us. Those people can never know where you came from or that we were involved in any way. Our relationship will end here.”

I looked down at Mara hanging lifeless in my arms. An overwhelming feeling of ownership came over me again and I knew what I needed to do.

“I understand,” I replied regretfully.

We nodded to each other, and then she vanished.

The Orionak allowed me to take one of the smaller personal fighters from the hangar to go down to the surface. The smaller faster ships had the ability to cloak and could easily avoid detection in landing. Then they would remote pilot back to the ship.

With the earth getting bigger in the cockpit leaving all that I had learned behind me, I could not help but feel a sorrow for what I was giving up. There was still so much that I wanted to learn, and part of me felt a disappointment that they let me go so easily, but then again maybe they did not.

I knew they would be watching me just out of fear of disrupting their operation. If I became a threat, I am almost certain they would intervene. Would they want a confrontation though? There were two of us now and I alone was a difficulty.

It would take an army now to bring us down, and I do not think they would want that kind of exposure, but Mara was my priority now.

Although we had never met before today, it felt like I had known her my entire life. I knew everything about her just from her blood, and now I assumed she knew everything about me as well. I hope that also meant the she knew the information they gave me from the database.

If she knows what I know than all should be ok once I get her fed and acclimated. Feeding will be something new to both of us.

The moral implication of knowing taking someone’s life for the benefit of ourselves could become an issue. As we entered the earth’s atmosphere, the autopilot engaged the cloak once we passed through and made the turn towards our home. All I could think about was getting her blood.

My progeny was starving and dying in front of my eyes and I could not do anything about it. That realization quickly suppressed my moral objections in killing someone for their blood, which to us was life.

The sun was just starting to break down below the horizon turning the sand a coincidentally reddish color in the sunset, and from its reflecting colors, the Nile looked like a river of blood.

The ship made a hard bank serpentining between the pyramids and gently touching down in a dense pack of building materials that was now in the shadow of the large pyramid. I scooped up Mara and departed the ship quickly dashing into cover feeling the ship take back off behind me.

I set her down gently amongst a pile of timber obscured from view and concentrated intensely taking in all the sounds and smells that were flooding into my senses. I could hear the roar and crackle of the smithing quarter at the other end of the city, and smell the brine coming off the Nile a few miles to my east.

It was easy to focus on a single target now and I rapidly gained focus and acclimated. I could also feel Mara in a way I could only describe as an extension of part of my soul in intensity. I could feel not only her location, but also her state of well-being, which to say the least was not great. She was very near gone, barely clinging on to life.

I inhaled deeply searching out who ever smelled the best to me. It all smelled so appealing, like going to a massive celebration feast the Pharaoh held a few times a year with hundreds of exotic foods and spices he had acquired in trading over the year. They were parties for the gods. That thought made me laugh to myself knowing the truth.

A scent hit me strongly and I focused on it. I do not know what or who, but I knew where. I changed my armor into standard street clothes with a deep hood and set out into the flow of traffic.

Citizens were bustling about as normal during the end of the workday with people socializing outside their homes and families retreating indoors for the night’s meal. I followed the scent as it trailed amongst the streets running over the scenarios in my mind to what I was going to do.

I clearly had the advantage in speed, stealth, and strength, but I could not let anyone see me just attack some random person and sink my teeth into them. This was going to take tactics, something I was not exactly great in doing.

I rounded the corner near one of the fountains and locked onto the scent. It was a small pack of young handmaidens from one of the temples of Osiris. The girls were barely in their middle teenage years but I think I understood the appeal of their scent. They were clean, pure, and ripe for lack of a better word. To an extent, I still felt somewhat uneasy having thoughts of that nature, but the overwhelming urge to drink was just too much to ignore. My morality left as quickly as it flashed back into my mind.

At this time of day, there were far too many people to do this covertly and Mara could not wait until the streets settled down. It had to be now. I closed my distance to the girls and saw my window of opportunity open.

The girls were hugging the right side of the street alongside a building, and the street had opened on the left side to one of the stables. I darted up the wall and leapt across the buildings dropping in behind the horses scratching at them with my nails before darting back up onto the roof.

They reared up startled and began to kick and break down the railing corralling them, creating a simple yet effective distraction. Everyone focused on the commotion giving me an opportunity. I darted back across and dropped down silently behind the girls. In the blink of an eye, I struck the girl nearest the back of the group in a pressure point knocking her unconscious.

I grabbed hold of her and moved as fast as I possibly could back up the wall and across the rooves toward where I left Mara.

I scooped up Mara and carried them both into the large pyramids construction entrance and went down into the bottom level that they had just finished excavating out. I knew no one would be down here, as the pyramids are off limits to everyone but the Pharaoh and the Sah at night.

I gently set them both down against one of the Anubis statues inside that I felt was somewhat fitting for what was about to occur. Mara moved slightly fighting to change her form and extended her fangs.

She was deteriorating very rapidly, much faster than I thought she would. Her skin was starting to dry up and flake off. Her eyes had become foggy and I did not even know if she could see anymore.

I could feel the pain that she was in which was excruciating with every movement feeling like her bones were breaking. I moved her head and laid it down on the girl’s lap facing up. I slit open the girl’s wrist with my nail and held it above Mara, letting the blood drip down into her mouth.

When her mouth was full, she took a big gulp swallowing it down. I felt the blood hit her stomach like a bomb exploding with energy, shooting down through all her extremities.

She latched on tight and took another big gulp followed by another. She snapped open her eyes and grabbed hold of the girl’s arm jerking it out of my hands, down to her mouth sinking her teeth into the young girl.

Her skin began to heal back to normal and I could feel a burning excitement within her body, like a perverse addiction to the blood. She let go of the girl’s arm roaring viciously toward the ceiling showing her blood-soaked teeth. Then she flipped over and ripped off the young girl’s robe and dress exposing her pale naked flesh.

She grabbed hold of her legs and jerked them apart then lunged at the girl’s inner thigh sinking her teeth in once again. I smirked thinking to myself how smart she was going for the large artery.

Something I had never thought of before. I also felt somewhat proud in a way. My little Mara making her first kill. Granted she had help, but this was still her first taste of a human and purity.

I knelt next to her and she stopped looking up at me with a small trickle of blood running down the corner of her mouth. She moved her hand to just above the girls exposed breast and made a small cut with her fingernail.

She grinned making a little grunt sound at me then went back to drinking. I leaned down grasping hold of the girl’s side then sank my teeth into her at Mara’s cut, drinking. About a minute later, she was dry.

The girl had turned a pale blue color and her heart had stopped beating. Mara started to bite her in other places on her body searching for more blood, but there was none. After six or seven more bites, she finally gave up the search and crawled backwards, perching herself up on her feet.

She was panting and wiping the blood off her face with her fingers licking and sucking them clean. As I watched her, that feeling of her being a child went away and replaced itself with lust and desire seeing the grown woman she had become.

I could feel her emotions having the same argument inside her. She clenched her teeth and growled at me. I picked up the girl’s robe and draped it over her body then slowly approached Mara.

Her eyes were bright red again as she looked up. I could see her muscles tense up and then she lunged at me. The force of her jump pushed me backward up against the wall, and she locked her arms around me aggressively connecting her lips to mine.

The sensation we were both feeling was indescribable. Energy was rippling back and forth between us, and her scent and her taste changed. I wanted her more than blood. I grabbed hold of her and spun around slamming her against the wall cracking it slightly.

She gasped in a pain and shock and looked at me before attacking my lips again. She ripped off my belt and necklace collapsing down my armor and tossed them both aside. I returned the gesture throwing hers behind me.

She thrust herself against me pulling me tightly against her. It hurt at how strong she was, but I ignored it. I pushed her hard away from me up against the wall again, breaking it some more.

She looked at me with scared eyes and I quickly leaned down sinking my teeth into her right breast. She cried out with pleasure and dug her nails into my back piercing my skin. To make sure she could feel the pain and the blood flowing out of her, I bit down hard and sucked the blood out of her fast.

Her blood was amazing. I knew my blood was not appetizing to her, but that did not seem to be stopping her.

She dragged her nails up my back slicing me open, which quickly healed back over a moment later. She growled and pushed me up moving her legs back against the wall, then pushing off it, sending us flying backwards and onto my back. I gently ran my fingertips up her sides and down the front of her as she slowly settled down on top of me.

I could feel the waves of pain rushing through her as she did so, with this being the end of her innocence and the start of her first moment as a woman. I could smell her more vibrantly than ever before and her scent was intoxicating.

It was as if a switched turned on in her head from aggressive and violent to calm and delicate. Her body relaxed and the monster that she was subsided returning her back to the young woman she was. As she began to explore her body with mine she leaned down laying herself on my chest and kissing me again gently but much deeper than before.

We stayed like that and passionately shared each other for several hours. Afterwards, I gathered our gear and I carried her up to the top of Khufu’s Pyramid where we laid together watching the night sky pass by overhead.

With our new vision, everything looked new in a sense. We could see way more detail in the night sky. Humans have such poor vision in comparison that the real night sky comprises of every color of the rainbow from all the nebulas, and patches of gas around the stars.

It was quite amazing. Mara buried herself against me draping one arm over my chest.

I wrapped my arms around her back pulling her up against me. She nestled in tighter in response and let out a small sigh. We do not need to sleep anymore, but she closed her eyes anyways pretending to. In a moment, the last few hours processed through my head and I came to a realization.

“The whole world is ours now Mara. We are the gods now.”

As quickly as I said it, I knew what that meant. In a sense, I was correct. None of the humans could really do anything about it, and I was confident that neither could the Orionak, or at least not without a bunch of trouble. I did not however want us to be that way. We did not need to rule anyone, nor did we want to. The side effect of being able to do anything meant that we did not need anything.

“We won’t be like them though Mara. We do not need to rule. We must be humble and cautious with what we are. The humans can never know about us or we would inadvertently destroy them leaving us with nothing,” I quickly retracted my statement.

She looked up at me resting her chin on my side.

“I just need you. You’re my god,” she replied in her soft delicate voice.

I smiled and rubbed her back as she laid her head back down. Her words bounced around in my head for what felt like hours.

A commotion of Sah and Egyptian guards down on the ground broke us from our rest. We both jerked up as we heard them and listened intently.

They were looking for the girl and had started searching the construction area. There was no doubt that they were going to go in the pyramid next.

Just as I had the thought, Mara was already on her feet reattaching her belt and necklace. I quickly grabbed mine and slung it on engaging my normal black armor and mask. She adjusted her clothes and changed into armor like mine but with a slight purple hue to it.

Her mask and shape shifted again and became clearly feminine and allowed her hair to fall out the back but was otherwise identical to mine.

“I’ll follow you,” she said through the masks communications system and crouched at the edge of the roof looking over to the guards.

“We can’t let them find that body. We need to move her back up here for the moment, until we can bury her properly. She might have been food, but she still deserves to be properly honored for her sacrifice,” I said looking over the edge.

Mara nodded and leaped off.

“Follow me huh?” I mumbled watching her glide downward.

She giggled and crawled down the wall of the pyramid then darted in through the doorway only a few feet away from the guards undetected. She was incredibly quick. However, it was too late. The guards followed in behind her a few seconds later.

“The guards went in right behind you Mara,” I said leaping off the roof.

She giggled again in reply, but this time the giggle had a much sinister tone behind it. I landed hard kicking up sand and dashed inside behind them.

The guards had gone up to the main chambers giving us an opportunity. I went down to the sub chamber and stopped at the doorway. I quickly sunk into a shadow behind a statue watching a Sah guard standing in the middle of the room staring down to where the body was.

The body was gone, but a substantial puddle of blood remained and was soaking into the sand. The Sah guard crouched down and began studying it carefully. He keyed a button on his wrist bracer and signaled for the other guards. I concentrated on finding where Mara was, and seconds later picked up her scent.

She was only a few feet from the guard hiding behind an altar in the middle of the room with the body of the girl. If the rest of the guards came in, they would have her trapped. They would easily discover her as they searched the room. As the options ran through my head, a mild panic came over me, knowing that this will probably end with more blood in the sand. If the guards turned up missing as well than that would most definitely cause alarm, but it was the safest option to prevent discovery.

Mara would not hesitate to defend herself and that would be a horrible and gruesome fight if she attacked with the same ferocity that she showed in her passion. Human guards are also one thing compared to the Sah. The Orionak would undoubtedly know who did it and most likely be unhappy about it.

The rest of the guards poured into the room and I felt Mara tense up and change getting poised to attack. I slid over crouching in front of the doorway. There were seven guards in total. Four were Sah and the others human.

They inspected the blood then started their search of the room. Mara made a trilling noise in a series of clicks and got the attention of the guards. I guess this was the option. The moment the guard got to the altar his torch extinguished, followed by the others. She moved so fast that it looked like air.

I even had a hard time tracking her as she fluttered around the room snuffing out their torches.

“Clever girl,” I whispered to myself.

It was now completely pitch black in the chamber. Even the Sah could not see with their enhanced vision on their masks, which needed some bit of light to work.

Mara flickered around the room again pushing the guards into each other, knocking some of them down, and all the unaware that they were not just bumping into each other. She stopped crouched down in front of my face and lowered her mask to which I followed.

She gave me a quick kiss on the lips then lunged backwards jumping up high nearly scraping the ceiling with her head. She glided through the air landing on top of the altar, scooping up the girl’s body. She jumped again gracefully gliding back over to me landing without making a sound. I whispered,

“I love you,” so only she could hear it then rose my mask again.

She grinned and raised hers back up following me out of the chamber. We ran outside and scaled the Pyramid again to the top.

Mara gently set her body down against one of the massive stones and changed her armor back to her luxurious dress and tiara. I changed down my armor back into more of a skin suit and cupped the side of her face in my hand.

“I was almost certain you were going to attack.”

She nuzzled my hand with her face.

“You said we’re better than that,” she said quietly leaning down to look at the girl.

“She was so young. Never able to run or play or dance again. Her family will never know what happened or where her body is.”

Mara ran her fingers through the girl’s hair straightening it out profiling her face.

“You were so very delicious though,” she said cocking her head to the side and clicking her teeth together.

“The guards are going to know something is not right. They saw the blood. The Sah will most likely be able to do scans of it and find out who the blood belonged too,” I said wrapping my arms around Mara’s waist and pulling her against me. “And you were amazing. You’re so fast, I could barely see you.”

Mara grinned and quickly flashed her teeth at me making a little playful roaring noise, and then darting out of my hands to the end of the roof crouched down looking out over the city that was starting to illuminate from the rising moon.

“We need to wait for the night to age a few more hours until most of the guards are off the streets, then we can take the girl for a proper burial. We can take her to one of the mummification houses in the Necropolis. No one will be there this time of night.”

I crouched down next to Mara, looking out over the city with her.

“Well, what do we do until then?” she asked peeking off the edge.

I leaned into her and gently bit her shoulder.

“I can think of something to do.”

She giggled looking over to me, and then leapt off the roof as hard as she could, cracking some of the stone under her feet as she pushed off. I watched in awe as she just glided through the air traveling well over a mile before starting to descend. She landed amongst some palm trees along the waterway making no noise and not even disturbing the ground.

She turned back looking at me and then sprinted off toward the water. I took a few steps backward to get a running start and leapt off the roof. I had never really explored my abilities in this fashion to know my full physical capabilities. I was good at falling long distances, but this type of thing was new to me.

Flying through the night sky like this was amazing, having the landscape and outskirts of town flying past under my feet. I held out my arms like a bird and drifted effortlessly out toward the trees.

I went a little farther than she did landing almost in the water into a low crouch. My eyes darted around the riverbank searching for any threats or anyone that might have seen us. There was nothing out here as I expected.

I could smell a small herd of goats and a small farm about a mile down the river. The salty air from the Mediterranean gently blew in and I caught Mara’s scent that stopped at the river’s edge. That concept took over my brain and I looked around for her but could not see her. I spoke her name that would be a yell to our hearing, but there was no response.

I could feel her, and although slightly muffled, I knew she was nearby but not the exact location. I looked around the ground where her scent concentrated and found her footprints leading into the water.

I collapsed down my armor and walked out into the water to my waist. The sensation of the water on my skin was foreign to me now. It had texture to it that it never had before. I could feel all the tiny organisms and grains of sand that were flowing past me. Some of them had energy that felt like a soft static as they touched me.

The resistance of the water was practically nonexistent, and I could walk through it as if it was not there. I went out deeper up to about chest level and stared at the moon that was making a long white reflection shimmering across the water.

My admiration for the moon became quickly interrupted as something brushed past my leg and started to circle around me. Although their vision was very poor at night, bull sharks have been known to swim up river in search of food. I could feel the current of the water start to swirl around me as it continued to circle me rapidly.

Slowly, I sunk down under the water to look at what it was. To my surprise my vision underwater was almost as good as it was above. It had a miniscule distortion, but I could easily see through it.

I was instinctually holding my breath, even though I did not need to breathe anymore, other than picking up scents. There were dozens of fish swimming around, and I could hear turtles and other animals moving around on the bottom. A small pocket of crocodiles was moving along the water about five hundred feet away. I did not see any shark, or anything else near me, and went back to the surface.

A few seconds later an explosion of water erupted in front of me about ten feet away. Mara came rocketing out of the water spinning, twisting, and flipping high into the air then splashing back down balled up to clearly splash me with water. She repeated this several times getting higher and higher with each jump doing different poses and acrobatics.

I smiled and relaxed content that she was happy and enjoying herself. With each jump, she would giggle and splash more water deliberately at me. I would return the gesture flinging the water at her creating a massive wave and splash that would knock her out of her acrobatics sending her crashing back down, letting her create a bigger splash back at me.

We played like this for a few minutes then she stopped, and the water went calm again. I cautiously started to look around wondering what was going to happen next. I went out deeper forcing me to tread the water, and that is when she attacked.

She came up from behind and below me pushing me upward. Before I had time to react I was in the air and flying, flailing my arms around from the surprise before coming back down crashing into the water in the most ungraceful, uncontrolled way possible. She had launched me a few hundred feet up and away.

I gathered myself up surfacing to prepare for what was going to come next. Mara was just drifting there in the water where she was with a blank expression on her face, and then she very slowly descended under the water.

I could not tell if she was playing anymore, or if she was upset about something. That push was much more forceful than I expected, and her demeanor was no longer playful. In the time, it took me to have that thought and process what it meant, she was at me again. She slowly ran her body up mine as she surfaced in front of me and wrapped her arms around me pulling me against her.

Feeling her body again against me excited me and made my skin hot, which started to steam in the brisk night air.

She could feel my excitement and grinned moving her hips against me.

“This is amazing,” she said pushing off me doing a small flip in the air making almost no splash and then instantly darting back over wrapping herself around me again.

“You’re amazing,” I replied gently biting her jawbone then connecting my lips to hers. “I never thought that this would be the path my life would have taken. A little while ago, I was human. A slave laborer, now I’m this and I have you, which is more magnificent than anything I could imagine.”

She blushed shyly squeezing on to me tighter. She laid her head down on my shoulder and whispered into my ear,

“I thought my life was over up there in that room on the ship. I watched that creature slaughter everyone and save me for a snack, toy, or whatever I was going to be. I was there for weeks, in the dark, alone. I gave up on everything and knew that this was all I had left and was going to die there.

I couldn’t even end my own life. There was nothing, I was at the mercy of that thing. Then you came, and I knew in that moment that my life was about to change, it was either finally going to end or you would save me, and I guess you did both, but now I’m something better, something important. I don’t know how or why, but I just feel that we are meant to do something important to have such wondrous gifts.”

I wanted to cry listening to her words. She blinked her bright red eyes softly then looked up into the sky. I kissed the side of her neck biting her gently and she looked back down.

I grabbed hold of her hand and started to swim away.

“Let’s go be monsters.”

She got a submissive but malicious look on her face and started to follow me. We dove under the water and started to pick up speed rapidly. Swimming came as easy as running did and within a minute or two, we were at the mouth of the Nile entering out into the sea.

Mara seemed to have much easier time than I did, as she would make loops around me and burst off in front of me and come flickering past me in a string of bubbles.

We dove deeper toward the bottom where it was cold and black. We both stared in awe at the different kinds of fish and sea life we kept swimming past undoubtedly scaring to death.

I went to the surface to get my bearings followed by Mara shooting out of the water into acrobatics again. We knew that the sea opened into the ocean out west and was a good two-week trip by boat and like twenty-two hundred miles away.

We dove back under and headed west swimming as hard and as fast as we could, occasionally surfacing to see where we were and to stop and spy on the other cities and cultures we had never seen before. Some of them looked a little like ours, but mostly they were unique to themselves.

We continued to head toward the ocean for another couple of hours when the sun started to rise. Mara seemed to be having the most fun leaping out of the water like a dolphin and knocking over fishermen in their boats as we passed by, having them completely unaware of what happened.

The sun had just started to crest over the horizon when we reached the strait leading into the Atlantic. I stopped to watch the sunrise behind us and Mara did a couple more circles around me and then did a final jump into the air.

When the sunlight hit her, she let out the most inhuman and painfully sounding scream imaginable at the top of her lungs. When she reached the peak of her jump, flames were completely engulfing her body.

Her cries stunned me and sent waves of panic through my body feeling the pain that was devouring her body.

She came crashing down into the water flat on her back. I quickly grabbed her and dove straight down into the darkness. She was cringing and shaking from the pain, seeping blood out from tears in her skin. All I could do was hold her.

I remembered a sunken ship we passed on the way a few minutes back, and quickly drug her back down to the ship. I smashed through the side of the hull and tucked her inside of it. She was very weak at this point and seemed to be going in and out of consciousness.

“Come on think. What to do? Blood! She needs blood!” I shouted under the water trying not to panic.

I darted back out of the wreck and over to one of the fishing boats that Mara had tipped over. It was a small boat with only three anglers sitting up on the keel of the boat trying to paddle away. I shot out of the water grabbing one of the anglers and drug him under the water down to the wreck.

Mara was barely conscious but knew what she needed to do. Before I had a chance to move the man over to where she was hiding she zipped passed me snatching him out of my hands in a tumbling tackle movement or as well as I could describe underwater. Luckily, for the man he had drowned a few seconds before.

She sunk her teeth in and the water clouded with blood. As she was drinking, the wounds on her body started to heal. When she finished, she flashed her bright white teeth and swam past me out of the wreck toward the other anglers.

I felt the need to stop her, but I also knew it would help her. Part of me was also somewhat curious to what she would do knowing that the sunlight would hurt her again, and the men were sitting on top of the boat out of the water. Still I followed her.

She hovered a few yards under the boat slowly rising, testing how the sunlight in the water would affect her. It did not seem to be doing anything to her, as she got closer and closer. She stopped just under the waterline and looked up to the anglers.

They noticed her and became frantic picking up their oars and smacking at the water trying to hit her.

She moved around testing out their stability on the boat trying to see if they would fall in on their own. I knew she could just grab the boat and pull it under the water, but it looked as if she was playing with them, tormenting them, causing as much fear and stress on them as she could.

As they would rear up to swing at her, she would knock the boat making them fall to their knees. Every time they stood back up, she would knock them down again. It had become a game to her now playing with her food.

It was somewhat adorable, and I somewhat felt proud watching her evolve into the monster I told her we should be. After all that is what we were.

After several minutes of this, the men stopped trying to get back up and just remained sitting down holding onto the keel of the boat as she rocked it back and forth. She sunk back down and moved off from the boat about three hundred yards slowly rising back to just under the surface. She waited there patiently for the men to relax and get curious peeking over the side.

She looked down at me and grinned then bolted toward the boat. She held out her arms to make drag and picked up speed creating a large wave in her wake looking up at just the last second as she dove under the boat slamming the wave into the boat sending it rocking and rolling wildly.

One of the men lost his balance and fell over the side. He frantically grabbed at the side of the boat trying to climb back on with the other angler reaching out for him, but it was too late, Mara was on him.

She snatched him from the side of the boat almost dragging the other man into the water too and took him straight down. He was kicking and punching at her as hard as he could and then became engulfed in a cloud of his own blood.

The other angler began to sob and cry knowing there was nothing he could do. He knew he was next. Mara calmly swam back up to the boat hovering just below the surface again looking up at the angler. He was sitting down looking back over the edge down at her.

She looked over to me and I just smiled to her. She looked like she was thinking very hard about something, deciding on her next method of attack. The angler took a small ivory figurine out of his pocket and played with it in his fingers before kissing it and tossing it off the side of the boat.

Mara watched as it slowly sank down past her. She started to circle the boat quickly making a slow whirlpool forcing the boat to start to spin. The man did not move and just started to talk to himself while sobbing.

We had never heard that language before and could not understand what he was saying, but he was passionate about it.

He made a final gesture with his hand and jumped off into the water. Mara stopped spinning and swam up to the man stopping a few feet in front of him. They both looked at each other for what felt like several minutes. Mara flashed her teeth and growled at him.

He closed his eyes ready to accept the fate from the predator in front of him. Mara flickered away and grabbed the small figurine still falling and placed it back into the man’s hand. He opened his eyes startled by her touch and looked down into his hand.

Confused, he stared at her. Her face turned to a feeling of shame and confusion. I could feel her emotions turn from a ravenous monster back into the young girl she was before. I swam up behind her and placed my hand on her back. The sight of me scared the man as if one monster was not enough. Running out of breath the man surfaced gasping for air.

Mara knocked the boat out of the water flipping it several times in the air landing it right side up. She grabbed the man and tossed him out of the water and into the boat.

The man stumbled and flopped around briefly getting his bearings and recovering from what just happened to him. Mara grabbed hold of the keel of the boat and started to swim toward the shore in the direction the men had been paddling.

The man tightly grasped the side of the boat as she picked up speed. I followed pacing alongside of her.

Around ten minutes later, we approached the shoreline with several other boats of similar design anchored off shore and docked at a wooden pier extending from the shoreline. Mara pulled the boat up to the dock and the man jumped off dropping to his knees.

Mara and I backed off and hovered just under the water looking up to the man. He got to his feet and looked back down at us. I nodded to him and he nodded back. Mara just stared up at him with a guilty expression.

The man knelt on the side of the pier and tossed the figurine at her. She caught it in her hand as it sank and examined it carefully. It was a figurine of a man embracing a small child at his side. She looked back up but the man was already gone running down the pier toward some buildings. She shifted her belt to make a little pouch and put the figurine inside it then swam off.

I followed along next to her as she headed back westward through the sea. She was not spinning around anymore or playing in the water, she just cruised along at a moderate speed.

Oh, how I wished I had Osiris’s abilities to read minds to know what was going through hers right now. I could feel that she was hurting and struggling with what she was, like how I did the first few times I thought about it.

We passed by under another of the boats she had flipped over earlier in the day, but there were no people on or near it. She stopped and went up under the boat surfacing in the air pocket. I followed her up and surfaced wrapping my arms around her pulling her against me.

She put her arms around me, buried her face into my neck, and started crying heavily. I did not know what to say to her, I just held her tightly rubbing her back.

“I really was a monster, wasn’t I?” she asked me wiping away tears from her eyes.

“A monster? No. However, you were showing off instead of just taking what you needed. You could have been much worse. Given the circumstances, you were docile given our capabilities. I’m sorry I made you this way, but I couldn’t let you die like that, I thought that this would be a better life. I was wrong.”

She composed herself and kissed my cheek.

“No, I wouldn’t trade this for anything. This is amazing. I just need time to accept all of this. Maybe try animal blood.”

In that moment I felt stupid, I never considered animal blood. Yes, humans smelled the best and probably tasted the best, but that does not mean that we required them for our survival.

“Then let’s go be the monsters we want us to be and forget this morning’s unfortunate events,” I said changing my form into the creature inside me.

For a moment, Mara looked scared, but quickly changed to exposing her true nature now. She still looked mostly human compared to me, only having some of her facial feature more pronounced and aggressive looking. Her skin remained the same as well and did not turn grey like mine did.

“So, what are we going to go be monstrous about?” She asked with a newfound excitement.

“You’ll see little monster,” I said bolting away from her heading back out toward the ocean.

In this form, I was much stronger and much faster than normal and was easily able to keep her from passing me, which was clearly frustrating her.

As we approached the strait I slowed down and let her pass me as we entered out into the open ocean. You could see the bottom slowly start to fade away as it got deeper and deeper. We turned and started to head south about a hundred miles off the coastline.

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