"Finish what you are doing, Jacob. You need the blood - every drop of it."
"It is in your nature to kill your prey and you know it. Kill him NOW!"
"Just a little more Jacob - so you can end his suffering and forget about it and move on..."
Three different voices inside Jacob's head urged him at once to complete the hideous deed he was now performing - that of forcibly taking a human's blood to sustain his undead body.
Hunting in London had become nearly impossible in recent nights. Jacob could not believe his luck when he had seen the man hastily moving from his van to open the door of his store. He was visibly fearful to be alone in the deserted street, even if only for a short while, and he kept looking about for signs of any danger that might lurk or wander around. Presumably he had forgotten something in the store when he had closed it earlier and had now been forced to come back for it.
Jacob had parked the car at a comfortable distance and let the man go inside before approaching silently. He had waited patiently at the store door, ready to trigger his supernatural speed as soon as the man opened it to come out and force him back inside where they would be safe from prying eyes. He had even taken the care to keep out of the peephole's sight by leaning against the door. His sire would be proud. So would his secret mentor...
The man had been caught unawares by Jacob's incredible speed - and fell back inside the store. Jacob was on him in an instant. His strength and agility being naturally greater than those of a fat man in his early fifties, the man was rapidly controlled. Jacob was not, in truth, of a cruel nature, but he thought best to make the scene appear as much as possible like a common burglary, so he punched the man in the head to knock him unconscious, and only then bared his fangs to reach for the man's neck...
The flood of emotions began. Jacob felt the man's unconscious surprise at the vampire's bite. He felt his fear, first very intense, then somewhat subsiding as in acceptance of Fate. Jacob began to see images in his head, figments of the man's life. Two men posing for a picture in front of the store some 20 years ago, presumably the man and his brother. The man's wife, a large kindly matron working in a bakery. The man at his brother's funeral, leaning over the open casket for a last goodbye. The man and his wife welcoming their son home from college for Christmas. The man getting married. Days going by in the store with not so many customers as he would have liked.
Although Jacob *saw* the images in his mind, he did not *feel* them. He did not reach into any of them to find the man's sorrow, grief, joy, concern, hope or love. He simply discarded them from his mind, one after another, as if browsing through a book. His only focus was on the man's heartbeat and the taking of his blood. Jacob had started out not wanting to kill the man, yet now...
...the voices inside his head, all aspects of his nature, told him to move in for the kill. How can one resist one's own nature? Jacob plunged his fangs slightly deeper and kept going. More images began to flood. The man in the military, serving in the navy during the Falklands' War. Discard, go on. The man playing with other boys of his age at school. Discard, go on. The man being dressed up for Sunday school by his mother. Discard, go on. The man entering King's College for his first class. Discard, go on. The man studying combinatorial analysis with Ian across the table in front of him. Something doesn't feel right, but discard, go on. The man having lunch with Quentin and Edward and Jacob's mother.
Jacob's eyes opened in sudden surprise as he realized what he was doing. He instantly stopped his feeding. He stood up, knocked over a shelf, and for a moment did nothing but try to reach back into what he had seen. Images can be just that - pictures. Anyone looking over another person's family album may find some interesting pictures, but he will never find the substance behind each of those pictures that makes them special. That is only accessible to the person who *lived* the family album. As Jacob had seen the images of his own life mixed with the man's life, he had not been recalling them.
He had been forgetting them.
He was now dialing 911 from the store's phone. "Hello, there is a man in need of urgent medical care in a store over on St. Michael's Street. He is unconscious, and his breath is irregular."
As Jacob watched the ambulance arrive from a safe distance, he felt an intense relief. His humanity had been saved! It would live on.
That the man might not survive in spite of his efforts to bring assistance did not, for once, occur to him.
