“This Prince, does he believe in right and wrong?” asked Derek. “Take me to him, use me as your bargaining chip, as you call it. Maybe he’s better than you and that one who keeps me here as if I were a bird in a cage, or a fish in a bowl of water! I have a heart, don’t you understand it! I have a…”

“A soul?” asked Rhoshamandes.

“Everything that is conscious, aware of itself, has a soul,” said Derek.

“Everything?” asked Roland. “How do you know?”

“I know,” said Derek. But he didn’t know. He really had no idea. He knew exactly how he’d been made, and by whom, and he had no idea whether or not a soul was included in the package. He couldn’t bear to think that he didn’t have a soul. He refused to even entertain the idea. But you can’t really behave that way towards ideas, can you? With his whole being, he knew that he had a soul. He was a soul! And his soul was Derek, and Derek suffered and Derek wanted to live! And Derek wanted to be freed from this prison.

Rhoshamandes embraced him gently and brought Derek closer to him, and once again he bent to drink.

Derek closed his eyes, and felt the fang teeth touching his neck. He sought to empty his mind, to banish all words, all images, and to feel only the sharp prick of the teeth, the soft kiss of the creature’s breath.

“Hmmm, warm, salty, warm as a human being,” whispered Rhoshamandes, his voice now drunken even though he hadn’t drunk. That was the way with them. Even before they feasted on him, the hunger made them drunken. Their eyes glazed over. Their hearts tripped. They became their thirst. That’s how and why they could suck the life out of humans, and out of Derek. They turned into beasts. They looked like angels, but they were actually beasts.

“Drink, and find my soul,” said Derek, “and know what you do is wrong. But then it’s always wrong when you drink, isn’t it? Everyone you kill has a soul.”

“Open to me, tender one,” said the stranger. “I mean you no harm.”

Derek closed his eyes and turned away. Then came the sharp fine stinging pain and immediately behind it the rush of sweetness, of more of those rippling chills on his neck, his back, down his arms and legs. The world dissolved, and with it the fetid dust and soot of the dungeon cell. And he was floating as this thing drew the blood out of him in deep slow draughts.