The scent hit Ezra Thorne two blocks from the cathedral,a sweet, cloying aroma that made his teeth ache and his hollow chest tighten. Not blood. Never blood. Nostalgia. The particular flavor tonight was childhood innocence, with top notes of first bicycle rides and lost baby teeth, all undercut by the bitter tang of forgotten promises.
He adjusted his silk scarf, though the evening was mild, and slipped into the shadowed alley beside St. Loius. The stone walls, centuries old, radiated memories of their own,solemn vows, whispered confessions, quiet despair. He absorbed none of it. These were not his memories to consume.
The source was inside the cathedral. He could feel the pull, a psychic thrumming that vibrated in the marrow-less bones of his fingers. A donor, ripe and overflowing. Probably a young parent, holding their sleeping child during evening mass, awash in the poignant, fleeting beauty of it all. Or an old man, revisiting the pew of his baptism, drowning in the sweet sorrow of time passed.
Ezra 's throat burned with a thirst no water could quench. He needed it. The emotion, pure and potent. Not the memory itself, but the feeling it generated,the vibrant, living energy of nostalgia, joy, grief, or wonder.
He was a Variant. A psychic vampire who fed not on blood, but on human emotional experience. His kind called it Essence. And he was starving.
With practiced ease, he scaled the drainpipe, his body moving with a preternatural grace that belied his apparent forty years,years that had not truly passed for him since 1887. He perched on a gargoyle's head, peering through the stained-glass window depicting the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. The vibrant blues and reds fragmented the scene within into jewel-toned shards.
There. In the third pew. A woman in her thirties, her head bowed not in prayer, but buried in the soft hair of the small boy sleeping in her lap. The emotional aura around her was a masterpiece of golden light shot through with silvery threads of sadness. Nostalgia for the present moment, Ezra diagnosed. She is already mourning this perfect second as it slips away. It was exquisite. And it was pouring out of her, wasted on the uncaring stone and quiet air.
Ezra focused. He parted his lips slightly, not to bite, but to draw in a slow, deliberate breath. His unique physiology did the rest. An invisible filament of intent, a psychic straw, extended from his being to hers. He began to siphon.
The emotion flooded into him,a warm, honeyed sensation that spread from his core to his extremities. The sweet ache of love, the piercing knowledge of impermanence, the overwhelming beauty of a child's trust. It was complex, rich, and utterly nourishing. The hollow ache in his chest receded. The slight tremor in his hands stilled. His senses, already sharp, became crystalline. He could hear the moth beating its wings against a candle sconce across the nave. He could smell the dust on the hymnals, the faint trace of the boy's strawberry shampoo.
He took only what overflowed. The First Law of the Variant: Thou shalt not drain. To take the core emotion, the memory that generated it, was to leave a human hollow,an emotionally catatonic shell. Ezra was an ethical feeder, a connoisseur, not a glutton. He skimmed the cream of the excess.
As the last drops of the poignant nostalgia filled him, he withdrew his psychic link. The woman shivered slightly, as if a draft had found her, then pulled her son closer, placing a soft kiss on his forehead. She would feel a little lighter, perhaps. A little less burdened by the bittersweet weight of her love. She would sleep well tonight. Ezra had done her a service, in his way.
He dropped silently back into the alley, sated for now. The city stretched before him,a sprawling buffet of human feeling. The frantic ambition in the financial district, the heady lust in the nightclub quarter, the quiet despair in the hospital wards, the creative frenzy in the artist's garrets. All were his for the careful taking.
He walked, hands in his pockets, a well-dressed ghost amidst the thrumming life of the city. He passed a couple having a vicious argument on a street corner, their rage a spicy, peppery cloud. He took a polite, tiny taste. It was pungent, energizing. He passed an old woman feeding pigeons, her contentment a gentle, buttery warmth. He savored a wisp.
This was his existence. Careful, eternal, isolated. Other Variants existed, he knew, but they were solitary predators by nature, territories respected, methods varied. Some fed on fear, thrilling in the adrenal rush. Some on joy, becoming addicts to laughter. Ezra preferred the complex vintages: nostalgia, profound awe, the quiet satisfaction of a life's work.
He was nearing his haven,a forgotten sub-basement of the city's central library, accessed through a disused sewer grate,when a new scent stopped him dead.
It was wrong.
It was Essence, but corrupted. Stale, sour, and riddled with a psychic static that felt like screams heard through broken glass. It wasn't the clean overflow of emotion. This was a residue, a stain left behind after a violent, total draining. A Hollowing.
He followed the trail, his feeding high replaced by cold dread. It led to a narrow mews, a picturesque lane usually filled with the warm glow from cottage windows. Tonight, one window was dark.
The door was ajar. Inside, a man sat in an armchair, staring at a blank television screen. A cup of cold tea was on the table beside him. He was breathing, his heart beating steadily. But his eyes… his eyes were empty. Not sad, not vacant. Empty. As if the very color of his soul had been bleached away. He would respond to basic stimuli, eat if fed, sleep when put to bed. But he would never laugh, never cry, never feel a flicker of anger or love again. The core of his emotional being, the wellspring of his memories' meaning, was gone.
Ezra recoiled. This was the great taboo. The act that turned Variants from secret parasites into monsters. This was not feeding. This was annihilation.
And on the psychic air, lingering like the smell of ozone after lightning, was a signature he did not recognize. It was another Variant, but one twisted, ravenous, and utterly without law.
As Ezra stood in the devastating silence of the Hollowed man's home, a terrible understanding dawned. The careful, secretive balance of his endless life was shattered. A predator was hunting in his city, consuming not just sustenance, but souls.
And the hunger he had just sated? It returned, sharper and colder than before. But it was no longer a hunger for nostalgia.
It was a hunger for justice.
He turned his back on the hollow shell in the chair and stepped out into the night. The buffet of human emotion still swirled around him,joy, grief, desire, fear. But he tasted none of it. His entire being was focused on that one, sour, screaming trail.
The hunt, he realized, had just begun.