It didn’t immediately dawn on me that I was quickly gaining more clarity of thought, more decisive impulse. Not getting back to myself, but to… something else.

And then I knew what it was. Now that the initial shock of… whatever this was, had worn off, my hunger was taking hold once again. I cursed under my breath, trying to focus on escaping, but it was no use.

My head swam as the world became hyperreal, too bright, too loud. Colors seemed to pop out from every surface like someone had set the contrast of the image too high. The acrid odor of dying Mythicals, once a horrifying fear toxin, now seemed to imbue me with a twisted vigor, turning my attention to a growing sensation of angry hornets in my brain.

The itch of my skin became a burn, and I scratched it violently, to no effect.

I knew what this was. Food was near. I needed only to catch it.

No, I thought, it was more, but…

I scrunched my face as I tried to find the words for it. Some… moral… or philosophical…

Something was trying to kill me, so I was allowed to kill them.

That was it. Justification. All there was to it. I wanted to kill, and I was slowly giving myself permission.

“No, Norman. Don’t,” Morgana said, shoving me behind a concessions counter, “You don’t want to do this.”

I growled and seethed. The fear and bloodlust swirled in my gut like indigestion from hell, burning and clawing at my chest and abdomen.

It was so hard to think.

“Tell me about Darkchaser,” Morgana said, putting her hands on my chest. Intellectually, I knew it was to calm me down, but in a more primal sense, I knew it was to keep me down. Keep me away from my prey.

“Get…urghhh…” I said, biting my tongue, forcing back my demand for release.

She was right. I didn’t want this. She was right. Listen to her. Listen. Listen. Listen. I repeated it like a prayer.

Images of ancient battle flashed through my mind’s eye. Iron armor, banners held high. Men screaming… triumphant. Agony. Sweat. Blood. The smell of excrement.

“Urrgh…I…nnrgahh,” I groaned and struggled. The taste of my own blood on my tongue was bitter and alkaline. I needed substance.

“Listen,” She said, her voice dropping to a penetrating whisper, “Listen. Hear what’s going on around you. Past the screams, past the violence. Bring yourself back here, to the real here.”

There was no stable place in the bedlam. Her words fell into the void inside me, clawing at its edges…

Hanging on.

“Tell me about Darkchaser,” Morgana repeated, pushing me down harder as my body continued to rise to standing of its own accord. She was strong. So strong. How was she so strong?

“I…you already…” I said through growls.

“Yes, I know what it is. You do, too,” She said, grabbing my head with both hands and locking our eyes together, “Tell me about Darkchaser.”

My head still swam, but now it swam against the current. Feebly but inexorably, self-control reemerged.

“It’s…ungh…hunter power. Scares…Myths-” I began.

The acidic sensation in my gut abruptly clawed its way further through me, and it seemed to push at the edge of me, ready to burst through the thin membrane holding it back.

The thirst regained its edge.

******

As he slapped a fresh clip of splinter sabots into the airgun, Edward Herbert briefly reflected on his rampage.

He really thought he’d have more to say. The bloodlust had been building in him for so many years, honed and refined by his mentors at the Holy Remnant.

“It is good,” The elders had told him, “It is right. These creatures must never have the chance to return to their old ways.”

He took an enormous breath, generating a cool breeze as air moved towards him.

“That’s right! FLEE! Only makes it more fun for me,” Edward screamed. His voice rattled his own ears, shaking the pictures on the wall with its jet-engine volume. The Thunderous Bellow struck fear into mortal and monster alike. Paired with the subsonic terror generated by the power of Darkchaser, no abomination would dare stand against him.

“Remember what they are. Remember what they do to the weak, to the helpless. They play with the body and mind of the ordinary man like a doll, and they are not gentle.”

He was disappointed in himself for repeating what he said a minute earlier verbatim. Shouldering the airgun, he methodically pulled the trigger, dispelling the mild feeling of cringe he felt at his subpar threats. Violence could be very effective therapy.

Down went a vampire, two wizards, an enchantress, and a six-woman gaggle of fortune-tellers.

Blood suckers. Demon spawns. Succubi. Deceivers.

He had been given so many gifts. Not only the hypersenses of every Hunter, but Thunder Bellow, Darkchaser, Heartseeker, and more yet undiscovered.

“You are wasted on an ordinary life. You were made to remove evil from the world.”

Smiling, he offered a prayer of thanks for the guidance of such pious and wise teachers, just as he’d been trained to do.

Sensations like tiny static shocks in Edward’s brain alerted him to magic being performed nearby. A teenaged sorcerer, face still speckled with acne, made a pitiful battle cry and waved his shaking hands in circles to summon a repulsion spell.

Edward felt his bloodlust swirl like acid in his gut. He reveled in it, absorbed the rage and amplified it tenfold. He lost the words to tell this child how he had perverted the air by drawing it into his bony hands. There was nothing coherent he could say to let this whelp know the pathetic magic wouldn’t even ruffle his hair.

“A hopeless waste of effort,” Edward said in another Thunderous Bellow, knocking the kid to the ground. He wasn’t satisfied with those words, either. Just didn’t have it today, he thought.

Crying out from the pain of burst eardrums, he scrambled backwards, trying and failing to stand, his equilibrium obliterated from the assault of the Hunter’s voice. Edward sauntered casually up to the boy, bending down to growl in his ear.

“Would have been a better use of your energy to run.”

That was a little better, he thought. Anyway, the shank would have words all its own.

When Edward pulled the wooden dagger from its sheath, the boy saw the serrated, blackened tips, and began to scream hysterically.

******

A nearby voice cried out in pain; the sound was abruptly shut off like a lightswitch, replaced by the quiet, unsettling sounds of ash and calcium bits hitting the floor. The plastic smell surged once again as the victim’s death odor washed over us. In the split second between the smell and the impulse I knew was coming, my head went too hazy for logic. I surrendered to the coming slaughter, ready to toss Morgana off and leap towards the hunter. It was time to feed.

The hunger, the fear… it was all too much. This was going to happen. It was undeniable, inevitable…

But the impulse did not come.

As the haze wore off, I became aware of a tube in my mouth. Tasteless, thick liquid was pouring down my throat, and with every gulp, the world around me was once again coming into focus. Someone was giving me Synguine.

The relief was incomparable. There was still fear and rage, but they were now tempered by conscious thought, notched down just below the threshold of overwhelming. I could think again. The thoughts were still of imminent death, despair that things could suddenly go so wildly, completely wrong, but I could answer those thoughts now, control them…

No. It wasn’t control. Influence. I could influence myself. The dread still felt like submerging in an icy lake, but I had at least found my way up. Drowning in it was no longer inevitable. In that moment, I vowed that I’d never again take that feeling of rationality for granted.

Morgana was sitting half atop me, holding the bag of Synguine in one hand and the tube running to my mouth with the other. Vigilantly, she watched the gap we had fallen through, perhaps planning on what to do if the Hunter came through it.

Intense shame suddenly washed over me. It was all I could do to hold back… something. Tears, a screaming fit, uncontrollable shaking… it was one more way the whole world had gone wrong, when I hadn’t yet processed the last few things I never imagined I’d ever experience. Somehow, I managed to limit my reaction to gently removing the bag and tube from her hands.

“It’s alright. It’s alright,” She said, as reassuringly and quietly as she could.

It wasn’t alright. Nothing about what was happening was alright. Someone was out there slaughtering us, and here I was, ashamed of needing to eat. So afraid, I was amazed I hadn’t pissed myself. Angry to the point of doing something stupid and very, very final. I was like a baby sipping a bottle during a thunderstorm.

“Tell me about Darkchaser,” She whispered.

“You…” I gulped down the last of the Synguine, “You already know about Darkchaser.”

“Yes. But you need to remember it, right now.”

The sound of slow, crunching footsteps grew closer, and we both fell silent. Lightning surged across my nerves, and my body locked up.

“Tell me,” She said, her voice seeming to reach into my mind and shake it, like a young tree being climbed by a child.

Darkchaser: a rare H-gene power that caused the Hunter to produce pheromones that inflicted bone-deep terror in those with expressed M-genes. No Mythical scientist had had much opportunity to find out much more than that, but there had been stories of Mythicals who had defied Darkchaser Hunters in the days before there was M-science.

How was that possible?

How was I doing it?

Because… yes. By having conscious thoughts at all, I was defying this Hunter.

Not just defying, I realized, but growing in defiance. Accelerating. Hyperfocusing. What was this?

The thoughts were clearer now, clear as distilled water, sharp as a razor blade. This wasn’t hunger; this was the raw craving for the hunt. This was what thousands of years of vampire evolution had honed in us. The ones who killed the most survived. The ones who were second to their prey died of thirst.

Pure evolution. Hunters used Darkchaser, and it gave them dominance. Doesn’t work on a few of us. I’m now the father of a better breed of vampire. My children will…

Except, we had no children. Couldn’t have children. This was a lineage we had chosen for ourselves. No, I couldn't blame evolution for this.

The craving was so strong. Focus, I admonished myself.

However Darkchaser affected the vampire brain, it wasn't working on me. If anything, I only grew more eager, more thrilled by the prospect of sinking my teeth into the neck of the Hunter. I'd never tasted human blood before…

“How does Darkchaser work?”

Morgana's voice was like a suggestion of a whisper in my brain. It was so quiet that I wasn't sure she'd actually said anything.

Still sitting perfectly still, she had closed her eyes.

Was she…?

******

“Hang on sweetheart. Help is on the way,” Morgana was saying.

I couldn't see who she was talking to, nor anything else.

“There's so much blood. It's…it's not stopping!” A young woman's voice entered the sightless space. She was panicked, hysterical.

“You don't need to stop it all, baby, just keep as much pressure on it as you can,” Morgana said, her voice clear and sharp like a drill sergeant, yet somehow soothing.

I could feel the young woman's mind beginning to gain clarity as Morgana's magic took hold.

The enchantress knew people. She could guide them down whatever path she wished. 1500 years ago, she had undone the greatest wizard who ever lived.

Now she was a 911 dispatcher. Not a mere dispatcher; she didn’t think of it that way. This was important. This was a worthwhile use of her considerable abilities. She was happy here…

Well… not happy. That wasn’t the right word. She didn’t relish the cries of anguish and horror she heard on the phone every day. It took someone strong, really strong, to not only keep their own composure, but to guide others - sometimes lots of others - through situations where lives were on the line.

Her supernatural calm and focus radiated out to everyone she touched. The young girl on the phone was still putting pressure on her father’s gushing wound. The firefighters and EMTs found their equipment and raced to the scene with machine-like efficiency.

The rumors had been true. She was the Morgana Le Fay. I felt it in her mind as the images of her ancient conquests flashed before her. This was the same magic that had reduced a king and his retinue to scattered remnants that would fade from public consciousness. She had destroyed them thoroughly; not only had she ensured their downfalls, but she had made it so their existence was a question, not a fact.

And here she was, talking a 19 year-old through an arterial bleed.

There was more, so much more. After her days as a sorceress, she had played medium and fortune teller, still deceiving for her own gain and amusement, until she found that her incredible connection with anyone she met was more satisfying to use sparingly, and only as suggestion, rather than domination.

“How does Darkchaser work?”

Her voice, like something spoken into my ear, sent the visions sailing towards the horizon, as though she were calling me back to the real.

And then, I knew what I had to do.