Maybe he should find a nice, comfortable perch in the city and wait for the sunrise. It would be nice to see the beautiful orange glow of the morning sun again, even if it would only be for a very short time. His entire world had become a constant array of grays and blacks. Torchlight only brought the faintest whiff of color to his eyes, and the acrid smell of pitch always accompanied it. But true sunlight… he hadn’t thought he could miss it so much.

Taras gathered up his meager belongings and stumbled up the stairs to the cellar door. He would have to find a new place to wait out the day. Just because the beggar hadn’t tried to kill him this time didn’t mean that would be the case every time. In addition, the man might have friends accompany him someday, and Taras did not like the idea of being surrounded by strangers while he slept on, helpless.

He plodded through the streets of Antioch’s forgotten houses, his once tall and strong frame bent halfway to the ground in hunger and pain. His mind battled back and forth between wanting to go back to feed on the beggar and looking for a place to lay down and die. So far the latter held the edge. Would he see Mary again if he died? Was there room for someone like him in the afterlife?

Probably not.

The faces. They came to him sometimes during the day. Not in dreams, Taras had not dreamed since he died, but in his memories as he lay waiting for sleep to claim him. He could still remember the faces of the people he had killed in Jerusalem: the two guards at the Damascus Gate, the woman and her son on the road to the city, the potter and his family… all leapt into his mind in vivid detail each time he laid down at dawn.

His kills for Rome had never haunted him this way.

Whatever gods had watched over him in life would have no love for him now. Taras stepped over another drunk, this one snoring in the street, and walked on. The hunger gnawed at his insides like a rat trying to escape a burning box. His mind screamed at him to go back and feed on the drunk, that no one was nearby to see. Still he walked on, his feet dragging on the ground because he no longer had the strength to lift them.