Explanation did not yield wisdom as Judith enumerated all the strange and savage gifts her resurrection had placed upon her. Upon them both, Sybil corrected herself. They were stronger than any who called themselves men, faster than any beast of the field or the very runners of Marathon. Their flesh could be hewn, bones broken, and blood drawn by the gallon. It would only drive their hunger to greater heights. The strange entity that had granted Judith these gifts would only permit their end if they were beheaded or staked within the earth such that they could not leave to feast. The sun would wither their strength and burn their skin, blind them due to the predator’s senses they now possessed.

Rather than soothe her beloved, as Judith’s gentle voice had intended, Sybil grew only more agitated by the moment. She considered what she was as her dark-haired comfort spoke of their hidden claws and fangs. They were never without arms to defend themselves nor the appetite to stay their hand. While that may have appealed to someone with the history of her love, Sybil could only think of how her gentle nature had been subverted. Consumed by a foreign curse that even now burned within her stomach as an insatiable hunger. One that her keen nose guided her to sate.

“So, I am to gorge myself from the veins of the innocent and you would call this salvation?” Sybil demanded, unable to look Judith in the eyes. She instead curled her body upon the floor, fingers digging into the soft flesh of her upper arms.

“We need never fear mankind again. They are our supplicants. Our food, even,” Judith spoke alluringly. A certain element of her lover refused to acknowledge it but the idea of never fearing her fellow travellers was intoxicating. Few had ever heard of such creatures, let alone how to destroy one. She would not have to fear inquisitor or alderman or sheriff. She could lay in the arms of her love without reproach. Though a dark voice within her noted that Judith had been changed. Would they do as her dreams bade, become like animals and feast upon humanity?

“I will fall to the sin of gluttony,” Sybil spoke with absolute certainty, a hollow look in her eyes. “I must forsake this hunger or be bound by it as you have,” she added with resolution, gaze flicking toward her lover. Her face twisted with offence, reclining from her position over the prone form of Sybil.

“Sister Francis was an accident,” Judith dismissed with a wave of her hand, as if recounting nothing more than culling a chicken for her meals. But Sybil, whose stomach had been hollowed by hunger, now became cavernous with realisation. Lora’s distraction did not draw its source from a letter to Judith’s father, how could it? He’d disowned her the night she’d drawn her betrothed’s blood. In her sorrow-addled state, her desperate need for relief, Sybil had ignored the death of another. “I was simply hungry after my resurrection. I wandered the town in search of some comely woman or vagrant, but she insisted upon pestering me. Once I had drawn her past Myfanwy’s cottage, she sought to drag me back to the abbey as a ghost or revenant in need of exorcism. Her fate was her own doing. I hadn’t prepared,” Judith recounted defensively, driving Sybil to sit upon her knees in disbelief. Her lips had dried, her throat clenching against the disgust and revulsion that even now threatened to disinter what little she’d eaten. But the hunger was there again. And it wanted to savage those who lay just beyond.

“You’ve made a murderess of me,” the blonde woman gasped, standing with sudden fright. Her eyes were searching, flying from window to door to her lover’s placating hands. Yet nothing appealed beyond for she was trapped by the sunlight as surely as the monster that had made her.

A darkness came upon the room then. Far more complete than a cloud passing before the sun, it swallowed all but the floor beneath their feet. The joyous paintings of animals upon the walls were gone, replaced by twisted vistas of a forest beyond their worldly knowledge. Mists rolled from within, and a presence impressed itself upon their predator’s senses. Judith, who had remained almost irked by the concerns of her star, now fled to her side to grasp her hand. Something wicked had manifested about them.

“Feed or do not. Live or die,” a feminine voice emerged from the darkness. Sybil strained in the direction it had issued from to see their ghastly visitor. She could only discern a curvaceous form, womanly and strong. A chill wrapped itself around her stomach as she saw four great curled horns upon her head. “You offer the breath in your lungs in pursuit of vain purity. In this conceit you sow the seeds of bloody vengeance, done by your beloved’s hand upon the abbey. Whether by fear, by murder or by pestilence, this place shall be cleansed of mankind’s follies. You work against my design in vain. Toil instead to your own benefit. Feel the apple skin of their flesh break beneath your fangs. Embrace the joy I offer. Elsewise, condemn her to her own anger,” the creature spoke at length, her presence receding as the roots began to flake into the shadows that had wrought them. The sun slowly began to return with force enough for Sybil to slam the shutters closed. The ghastly wind that heralded her arrival had cast them open. In moments after the dire warning of that hellish spawn, her illusions had vanished.

Judith stood fearfully, visibly shaken by the appearance of what had most likely been her patroness. That she could manifest so powerfully in a sacred place was silent admission of her prowess, in Sybil’s summation. But that thought was lain unremarked in the shadow of the conflagration that had possessed her mood in that moment.

“You entreated the services of a demon for petty vengeance and implicated me in its schemes?!” The nun demanded in uncharacteristic anger. She could feel them more so now. Those infernal tools affixed to her jaw. Had she thought it would do any good, she would have pried them from her gums. All that was left to her was impotent rage.

“She is not a demon!” Judith retorted in a low hiss, dragging Sybil from the door fearfully. The blonde woman attempted to wrestle her lover from her, receiving a lesson in just how much feeding empowered them. Her foolish demonologist easily wrangled her into relative stasis due to her accidental homicide. “You needn’t kill when you feed. Take but a little, sustain yourself a day at a time if their lives mean that much to you,” Judith soothed, kissing her forehead reassuringly as Sybil seemed to calm herself. The relief that smoothed her features allowed the callous comment of her beloved to go unchallenged. “Myfanwy worships her as you do the almighty. You needn’t fear her strange appearance. She will do right by us if we fulfil her terms, and we shall never see her again. We shall go to Francia!” Judith cajoled, a smile coming to her features as she recalled their promise to each other.

“Is this why you visited this curse upon me? So, we might indulge eternally?” Sybil asked in a small voice, fearful that she had simply traded heaven for the world. A fallen world, wracked with sin and suffering.

Judith’s smile fell, a look of profound sorrow overcoming those strong features. Oh, how Sybil adored them. The sharpness of her cheekbones, the defined jaw that sported that infuriating smug grin. She’d seen carvings and paintings of Espania, near the place of Judith’s birth. Where the sultan still held sway even now. Whatever else they may be, Sybil felt a stab of contrition as she reminded herself that she loved this woman. She alone moved her to act where all else being equal she would fail.

“I did not entreat the goddess as part of a vendetta,” Judith began with a distant voice, averting her eyes. “I sought a means to be safe from them. All the lecherous men and their world. Their vile violent condemnations and the silent god who called for them. I saw myself foolishly as your protector. Someone who could allow you the time to join me,” she sighed, eyes moving to lock with Sybil’s. The nun had seen such a look before. A conflicted rictus between benevolence and honesty. It seemed that honesty won the day. “They took everything from us before we drew our first breath. They took from me a life of the hunt, my father’s estate, a bride of my own. A life of status and contentment. Even the choice of God was slapped from my hands by their callous fingers. But that can be swept aside by what they did to you,” Judith seethed, her voice quivering with suppressed fury. From the satchel hanging from her belt, she took an innocuous phial. A slim glass phial that had once contained three drops of hemlock. Perhaps more.

Sybil’s hands shook, her eyes filling with disbelief as she drew together the facts. She slowly stood, retreating from her beloved to the door. She groped for the handle, shaking her head. She denied it to herself and Judith, stammering even as the medically knowledgeable undead recounted exactly what the correct dose would have been. That hers had been twice that.

“Prioress Lora is overworked. It must have been a mistake,” Sybil reasoned desperately, finally opening the door and fleeing into the stairwell beyond. “I have to go for morning prayers. I must be saved from this!” the nun garbled as she continued her flight from her chambers. Judith leaned over the banister of the landing desperately, her lack of habit blinding her under the sun’s rays. Her love begged her to return, bellowing that Sybil could not be like them. The blonde woman closed her ears and drew her veil defiantly, shutting out both sun and the sound of reason. Miracles were possible even for the most damnable of spirits. They could still find a way back from this nightmare.

Sybil burst through the chapel doors, avoiding the gaze of any who dared to look at the distraction. Taking her place in the rear pews, she closed her eyes and clasped her hands. There would be no prayers for the nobles nor the clergy nor even the pope himself. Sybil’s earnest thoughts were only of herself and Judith and their predicament. She beseeched the heavens for mercy, some sign of clemency from the hunger that writhed within her. The other nuns, though focused on their duties, shared surreptitious glances and the odd whispered comment at their sister who even now trembled like a cloven foundation.

There was no mercy. Even as the seconds drew into minutes and her desperation continued to build, Sybil felt no divine light nor intervention on her behalf. She whimpered, closing her eyes yet more tightly against the pain in her stomach. Her teeth, those detestable fangs, seemed to grow in her jaws as she resisted her hunger. Her temptation.

The steady thumping of their hearts began to consume her hearing. The pulsing of their veins and the deafening whispers they traded. Sybil heard them all. A percussive cacophony of condemnation and lurid gore that sung siren-like to her bestial appetites. Still, even against all of those demands, she continued her prayers. Was this but another test of her altruism? Had praying for her own salvation damned her?

A presence sat beside her. At first it was unremarked upon by the frantically muttering nun pleading for some measure of easement. A stay from the pain that now had begun to tear into her chest. Her own heart, which had beat in cruel mockery of its living counterpart, slowed to an agonizing stop. The muscles that drew her breath screeched in pain whenever the reflex asserted itself and her mind sluggishly fired in thought. It was only when the woman beside her cleared her throat and placed a hand on her shoulder that the remains of Sybil could acknowledge her.

“Sister you are not well,” the voice of the abbess informed her. The grip of her hand and the stern tenor of her voice cowed the nun with its authority. She looked up meekly through her veil at her middle-aged senior. Margaret had ever been the more appropriate choice for abbess. Shorn of her husband and unwilling to remarry, she’d joined the convent after leaving her estate to her son. More importantly, her father had needed a loyal overseer for his wineries. “You must attend your bed immediately. Shall I send for sister Lora?” she spoke evenly though her question sounded as a threat in the mind of the paranoid nun.

Sybil opened her mouth to speak but froze as the smell of the abbess’ blood filled her nostrils. Upon being told she would have to drink blood Sybil had assumed the metallic tang of it would be her penance for such sacrilege. But the bouquet that greeted her was of the most salivating spices, a strange aroma that reminded her of beef. It was a bite away and she could take as much as she wished. They wouldn’t stop her. Would they all taste so delicious? With their doe-like eyes and their adorable mewling cries. It brought to mind Judith’s groaning whenever she’d been bitten in the heat of the moment. Was that why the goddess had chosen their fangs? Such a wonderful decision.

Abbess Margaret called her name loudly, breaking her ravenous train of thought. Sybil heaved a great grating breath into her screaming lungs, reminding herself of the moment she found herself in. Swallowing hard against her disgust, she rose to her feet urgently and refused a visit from Lora. Without a moment’s care for the reply, the veiled woman fled the chapel and down the cloister. She stood in the herb garden, looking toward the tower and calculating. She had no perception of time and Judith may lie in wait to spring yet more horrifying truths upon her. She needed a sanctuary. She needed….

Sybil wrenched open the door to the wine cellar, hoping to lock herself in one of the cells as she fled down the spiral stairs. With that perhaps she could buy enough time to think. To process the horror that had unfolded upon her within the last few hours. This deluge of unreality that had cast her sane world into shades of horned monsters and foul hungers. The pain grew in intensity until the slight nun fell to her knees between the racks of wine. There she lay, whimpering and clawing at the earth beneath her in a futile attempt to drag herself deeper into the dark.

Her head snapped up, fangs sliding free of her lips as that delicious scent called to her again. She could hear a heartbeat. Indelicate footsteps and muttered curses and the thudding of a barrel being manhandled down a staircase. She could wait for her. Lie there as a wretched trap. And as Rebecca’s benevolence drove her towards charity, Sybil’s jaws would snap over that delectable throat.

“I thought you would be at morning prayers!” she called over her shoulder, shifting with bared teeth against the pain into a more comfortable sitting position against the racks. Soon enough, Rebecca rounded the corner to see Sybil lounging in a most unladylike manner on the chair next to her workbench. The freckled woman scoffed as she rolled a barrel along its lip before righting it near Sybil and seating herself upon it.

“Is this some new era of your grief?” Rebecca asked with surprising restraint, indicating to the veil that obscured her features. “Seeing as the abbess has jeopardised my salvation for her own monetary gain, would you care for some 1690?” the slight woman asked with a mischievous grin, bringing a reluctant chuckle to Sybil’s pained throat. She accepted on the slim chance that wine might soothe or sate her but a little. Rebecca opened one of the many tapped barrels she’d set aside strictly for communion purposes, unaware how prophetic her final sentence was close to being. “Far be it for me of all people to question your affections,” she began, stirring Sybil once more from her ravenous thought spiral. “But this seems more than mourning the passing of a friendship. It’s as if you truly loved her,” the freckled woman noted with a sad tone, one filled with regret and lamentation not just for her sister. Sybil understood then, taking the wine and placing it down with a solemn silence. “I’m perhaps one of the few in this abbey who understood your loss for what it was. And I’m sorry for my cowardice. When I rested where you do now, I would have fallen into the arms of any woman that offered me sanctuary. I hoped to secure you from straying. But you found your way to me all the same,” Rebecca reminisced over her wine, leaning forward to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

It came like a striking serpent. The hunger lashed out using Sybil’s jaws as a conduit, threatening to tear Rebecca’s throat asunder. A hand came up to steady her prey’s head, the other holding her arm still to subdue any struggle. Many would have expected some form of animalistic snarl or serpentine hiss. The eerie silence was the worst part, Sybil would reflect in hindsight. Rebecca never knew how close she’d come.

The nun fought against her novel predatory nature, forcing herself to stillness. A heaving breath shuddered from beneath the veil, followed shortly by a whimper. Desperately, Sybil attempted to mask her despair by sipping from the goblet of wine that she’d placed next to her on the table. The wine did little to sate either her hunger or her panic. She replaced it with a shaking hand before staggering to her feet. She had to escape. Escape all of them. There could be no opportunity to fall. No fault through which murder could slip.

“I’m proud of you, Sybil,” Rebecca smiled as her sister passed, arms crossed upon her stomach in abject agony. “You were stronger than I was.”

She ignored the freckled woman’s words. Not because they were unappreciated but because her heedless mind thought only of one thing. Dragging her back to that crypt and opening her fellow’s veins. She felt no remorse for such thoughts. No twinge of compassion. And what little humanity that yet remained in her soul rebelled against those facts. In that moment she would have savaged any single nun who did not call her friend. Any nameless shambling congregation of sustenance for her failing body. The nuns’ prayers had most likely saved them from her. Would that hers had saved her from her hunger. She laughed bitterly at the irony, using the wall as a crutch to drag herself to her bedroom tower. Her cell if she had her way. In those few moments between the landing and her doorway as she crawled toward it, she felt the lack of faith that belonged only to starving men. The notion of being so completely forsaken that they would devour their own shipmates.

Unable to drag herself even above the frame of her bed, she instead chose to feebly shamble beneath it. That would provide safety from sunlight and sight both. There, wracked with pain whenever she dared move even minutely, she prayed for sleep at least. Sleep that never came. She was condemned to lay beneath the bed, impotent fangs on display as her veil fell from her features. Her addled mind could barely note the hardened black claws that protruded where fingernails had once been. Her skin which could not retain anything but the grey pallor of death.

Footsteps sounded after what felt like an eternity. The befuddled nun could only croak that she wasn’t receiving visitors through her still-open door. She hadn’t the strength to close it. She even pondered whether she had the strength to attack this visitor. Not even her nose worked to detect the delicious scent of their blood.

“Sybil? Sybil!” Judith cried, pulling the bed from atop her. The nun hissed with pain as the sun hit her eyes, feebly pawing in the open door’s direction. Judith raced over to close it, shielding her eyes as she did so. She appeared to have plundered a habit, its veil skewed from use. With a firm hand, the dark-haired woman lifted her enfeebled lover’s face and ran the nozzle of a wineskin under it. Her mouth reflexively opened to the delicious spiced, beefy scent within before Sybil clamped her jaws shut, pushing it away with a groan.

“Come now drink it! It’s from Francis, it will do her no good,” Judith growled, lifting Sybil with her free arm. With her star propped upon her knee, she once again offered the wineskin. She only received a distrusting glare in return. Judith had never seen their eyes turn red before. It brought a concerned look toward terror. “Our mutual benefactor keeps her from putrefaction for just this purpose,” Judith snapped, babbling her explanation with an almost desperate voice. Sybil had heard that tone before. The nun closed her eyes with a pained expression, aware that her knightess was verging on tears. She felt shame building within her, taking the wineskin with her hand.

At first, Sybil gagged with the very notion of what she was doing. But the moment the blood touched her tongue, instinct took over. Its intoxicating taste filled her mind so completely that she forgot her pain, refusing to even pause for breath as she emptied the wineskin’s entire belly into her own. The nozzle came away from her lips barely dripping, her hands desperately and almost angrily wringing more relief from it. Her tongue lapped at the air, fangs piercing nothing as her nature demanded she find something new to open. With an aggressive grunt, she flung the wineskin from her with teeth bared. Judith’s arms wrapped around her comfortingly, removing Sybil’s habit for fear of staining it. Soon enough, her fingers ran through the blonde’s tresses as they once did when they shared a bed. Sybil found her way back, tilting her head inward until she’d buried her face against Judith’s chest. Her face was a picture of disgust, for what she was and what she did. Her guardian felt guilt crawl through her, pulling Sybil closer.

“I was afraid you would only drink it from my lips,” she joked, attracting a reluctant chuckle from between her arms. “There is nothing to be ashamed of, Sybil. Your fangs only enhance what I adored before,” she rumbled, thumb stroking her diminutive lover’s shoulder. Sybil felt the compliment infuse her flagging sense of self, twisting upward to kiss her champion. Chastity gave way to sensuality briefly as the pair felt passion creep into their embrace, only to be broken by the clanging of a bell in the distance. Sybil felt herself turn almost ferally, nostrils flaring as she heard someone setting foot upon her stairs. This one smelled like meat.

Judith stood herself up with alarm, eyes wide as she replaced her veil. She gave Sybil the briefest of embraces before her unnatural speed carried her to the doorframe and from there, out the window that sat upon the landing. Sybil wrestled with the hunger that still lingered but a little, shifting her bed into a reasonable position before making a great show of cleaning her chambers. A polite clearing of the throat behind her revealed the presence of prioress Lora.

“Regrettably, I must ask you come to the refectory, sister,” she reported with kindness yet an unusual formality. Sybil replaced her habit and drew her veil once more over her face, merely nodding at the request. “The sheriff has discovered another of our congregation. Your father has arrived. He is fearful of our safety,” she added with an almost overcome voice.

Once again, Sybil’s mind raced. The realisation crushed her. Then her fangs bared themselves once more.