Made wordcount! Apparently doing it in 300 word chunks helps a lot.
I felt the death of the man I killed. No, that’s a lie. I sucked in that man’s death, drinking it in as his soul swirled around and through me before it went somewhere else. I don’t know where, and I’m glad I don’t. From the way that soul was quivering and trying to catch itself on my dead flesh, it did know where it would end up, and it was not looking forward to the destination.
What was that like, drinking a man’s death? Like nothing finer. It felt like lightning, or the tamer stuff the savants keep in their jars, only getting touched by it made me strong, tough, wild. Parts of me — well, they didn’t stop hurting, because when you’re dead, pain is something to have to remind yourself to feel. But the bits of me that were too tight loosened up, and the bits that were maybe sagging a little got springier. Colors got brighter, too. Clearly, my poor abused undead flesh found more death to be a fine pick-me-up.
Now, here’s the thing; that part wasn’t evil, or wrong. It was just a death, and the fellow had it coming or I wouldn’t have drawn on him. What was nasty was how much I loved drinking up that death. It filled me, made everything warm and happy for a moment, and when it started to drain away I wanted to cry out at the loss. I couldn’t hold it in, though. How do you grab death? You can’t. You can open up another body to get more, though, and right then I craved doing just that more than I’ve ever craved anything else, living or dead.