Henry knelt between two trees, the outlines of some of the outlying tents of his old unit visible from a distance away. But his mind's eye could only focus on the look of panic on the face of the child from the village, and he retched hard, trying to bring up some of the fluid he'd taken from the boy's body. He was only mildly successful.

He had, of course, found nothing stirring, much less cooking, among the cluster of huts at that particular hour. As he tried to consider what it was that had brought him there, his eyes settled on the young boy who, on the way to the little scrap-wood lean-to that passed for a bathroom, had tripped and skinned his knee on a jagged rock. Good lord! Henry thought mournfully, for he'd approached the child, explaining in simple and quiet terms that he was a doctor, that everything would be fine, that he didn't have to cry. But as he leaned down to comfort the child, before he knew it, he'd driven a pair of fangs he hadn't previously known he'd had into the skin near the wound and begun to drink.

When the mother had emerged from the door, he'd disappeared in a blur into the trees, listening to her begin to cry over her unconscious son, pick him up and bear him away. When he touched his hand to his mouth, and indeed found blood there, he began to try to cough up the ill-gotten goods. What satisfaction he'd found in the sustenance from the child was cancelled out by the sheer horror of the experience, and some of the blood eventually came back up. It didn't help. Between that and the now familiar draining feeling that seemed to accompany the odd habit he seemed to have developed of moving exceptionally quickly. Steadying himself against a tree as he stood up, he trembled with fear as the pieces of the puzzle fit themselves together into a picture that was quickly becoming undeniable.

Henry was a vampire.

Even as the words finally ran through his mind, he knew they had to be true. Oddly enough, it explained so many of the other things about which Henry had been wholly confused that as a result he found this simple statement a lot easier to swallow. Erm. As it were.

He watched himself, as he walked toward the camp, to make sure that he was moving at a relatively normal speed. He had no desire to exacerbate the situation.

~