“Good,” Max said, taking a deep breath. “So, we became not only murderers but rapists as well. Nothing and no one was safe from our viciousness. We were ruthless. We were abhorrent. We were beasts, and by that time, we had also discovered that we were virtually indestructible. As you would think, the villagers always tried to defend themselves with spears and arrows and knives, but that didn’t stop us. Hell, it barely slowed us down since we were always on a feeding frenzy. We became almost arrogant about it, standing there defying them to try, taunting them to try, and then we’d kill them. Except one night, Kerwin became a little too cavalier, and he paid for that mistake with his life.”

“What happened?”

“It’s a shame, actually. He was a fine-looking specimen of a man. Tall, with shaggy blond hair and eyes the color of the ocean. Like us, he’d been born into money, and with the power that now flowed through our veins, it seemed to escalate his ego to a plateau none of us had yet reached. We were in the midst of annihilating another village when one of the natives ran at Kerwin with a hatchet. Kerwin, being the cocky son-of-a-bitch that he was, threw back his head and trumpeted out a laugh, and a second later, that hatchet sliced through Kerwin’s neck like a knife through butter.”

“Christ,” Bennett murmured.

“Yes, well, it taught us we weren’t totally indestructible, so there was that, and we were slightly more careful as we continued to pillage and plunder across the continent, killing almost every living thing in our path.”

“How long did this go on?”

“Most of us didn’t return to any part of our former selves for almost four years. We traipsed through the country, hunting and feeding, with no semblance of being anything other than monsters. We literally lost ourselves to this…to this affliction. It made us feel invincible. It made us feel like Gods.”

“Wait,” Bennett said, touching Max on the arm. “You said most of you.”

“Yes, Etienne was the exception. Don’t get me wrong. He murdered and raped like the rest of us for quite a while, but just like he had done during our voyage, Etienne began observing and processing what was happening. Unbeknownst to us, he began to fight against the urges, denying himself blood and flesh until the craving became too great. By doing so, he realized we didn’t need to feed every day, and we didn’t need to kill either.” Max looked over at Bennett. “Not that it stopped us, mind you, because we still hadn’t discovered that we could compel people to forget us. So, to protect ourselves, we rarely left witnesses.”

Max got to his feet. “Let’s head back to the house. Shall we?”