That night, I was still mostly a man among men. Loyal to Pizarro. I actually ran the message I had died with to the artillery emplacement on the opposite hill. Even war was slow then — the message was still timely.

The cañoneros gave me pisco, the local drink — after women, the first thing soldiers find in any country — which I swallowed. I didn't get drunk. I felt sick. Their jokes weren't right, their laughter sounded foreign. I sat at their fire, seething with my secret. I walked away as if to piss in the bushes, and left—

I flew back to my own companions and found the same experience there. They didn't see the change, greeted me as one whose life they had feared lost, called me Torreón as always — a play on my name, the bull, the tower — they said I was a lucky bull, that women favored me because of my sad eyes.

It was true enough. Among the type of woman who can be had, I took whatever I wanted. And even, once or twice, a virgin of a not-so-good family. But all of that was nothing, after the night before. The embrace of my master washed away the thought of any other woman, any other kiss. There is no heat in the mortal body like a vampire's kiss, and hers — the sensation of her blood running into my cold limbs, swelling my tired heart, igniting my senses...

I sat at the fire of my friends with a terrible strangeness growing in me. The alcohol in my body was sickening, and woke my other hunger. When they lay to sleep, I went hunting for the first time—

It is one thing to hunt a man as a soldier, to kill, to win a war, to leave a battlefield with a victory for your nation, your house, your King and your God. It is something else entirely to float above the trees in the night, the barest shadow under the stars, and hunt for men to drink their lives away. To be as elemental as a cloud, as fierce and absolute as a tiger — and in the end, more sated than any mortal man can ever be—

I found a group of sleeping Inca warriors, more of Atahuallpa's troops. I killed and drank three; the rest I simply destroyed, the way one crushes and scatters a nest of freshly hatched vipers with the foot. I killed and drank again just before dawn, an Inca scout sleeping alone in the woods. Saturated as I was with this new hunger and its senses, I could hear hearts for miles around me, not yet knowing to distinguish what was man, what animal, what bird. I dug into the ground for a second day as this mortal music quickened around me.

The third night, when I came to the campfire, the questions started. "Where were you all day, Vachon? Ay, we tried to tell the capitan you had deserted..." this was a joke, that came with a slap on the back, "but he said, no Torreón must have a girl in the woods...." I was stupid, I said I'd been with Amado's fusileros all day.

My best friend — a friend we all admired for his principles, his courage, and his quick wit, a man so devout we called him Celo, zealot — said, "No, Torreón, you were not." He waited to say it privately: "Torreón, are you committing treason?" It was beginning to happen, the soldiers selling information to the Incas. He pushed me hard, challenging me, and the beast rose to defend itself; my teeth were in his neck before I knew.

The shock of it stopped me from killing him. To this day I am grateful Juan Domingo Martin y de Xerez did not die at my hand. He stood before me, half-drained, groggy, uncomprehending. "Celo, you have seen a ghost," I told him, then thought of something better. "Javier Vachon died in the grip of a black leopard, and you only barely escaped — Vachon tore the leopard from your neck, and it destroyed him." It suited my humor to die a hero, not a suspected traitor, and he would have an excuse for his throat.

Pushing him gently down to sit on the ground, I kissed his forehead once as in those days we kissed the beloved dead, telling him, "Celo, now you are very sleepy. The last thing you saw was the leopard dragging Vachon into the trees. Vaya con Dios, Celo." I had learned the first lesson of the distance I must keep from mortals. And then the hunger rose to sweep away the sentimentalism, and its passion called me into the sky to listen for more Inca hearts.

That was the very last of my life as a man.