Like Adam
Underneath that sorrowful mask, Thierry is still a dark beast foraging in the wilderness.
Hannah knows, and quietly accepts, because he keeps it deep inside. Only now and again does he slip, does she see a little sliver of the monster inside: when he's so close to orgasm he can't bear it, growling; when they're in battle and he wants so badly to to kill.
But it is always there: he cultivates it, a little garden, collects fuel for this tiny fire every day. At night when she sleeps beside him and can no longer hear his thoughts, when the door to their bedroom is locked and no one can interrupt--then, and only then, does the mask slide away.
Underneath is a man who was once a man until a creature from his darkest nightmares and most wonderful dreams came and stripped him down to starving meat and bone. Underneath is one who keenly remembers that final day of mindless hunger, that first day when that terrible burning was sated. The second day at the Three Rivers.
The hunter, the first one to hurt him with his flimsy spear--his blood was so hot it burned Theorn's tongue; but it was a burn like purifying fire, washing away hesitation. There was the blood, and the hunger, and the terrible pool of hate and fear and rage in his gut. That was all there was.
They were all satisfying in their own way: the young women with their wimpering, the older with their pincing little nails, the children with their screams. Even more than they, he relished the men, their impotent anger, their helplessness to deny his gift of oblivion.
Dozens of bodies later, when he realized he drank from Hana, the kind one, his mask of sorrow found its smallest beginnings.
But before it did, Thierry remembers, her blood was most satisfying of all. He saw himself reflected in every tiny particle, saw his endless desire, his endless pain. He saw the conflict of him, in her, and her blood was the purest coldest spring water to him, the softest resting place, the fire that did not burn.
He found peace in her blood. He found a peace he will never find again, not even here in this intimate room, not here where she lies warm and breathing and safe forever in his arms.
In the Night World some refer to him as Adam, from the humans' mythology, because he was the first man of his kind; and, he admits, there are undeniable parallels. Like Adam, he defied his maker to receive forbidden awareness, of both good and evil. Like Adam, he has paid a terrible price for his knowing, his loving. Like Adam, he will never rest; he will never regain that which he once had.