When Jari arrived home, it was already dark, the day had fast expired and the next one arrived with yet more shocking news. Another terrible murder had occurred while the village was asleep and this one was more shocking than the last because it was old Taona himself! A harmless old man that rarely bothered anyone, yet he had been brutally killed.

It scared Jari the most because he was probably the last to see the old man alive. He was the last one to talk to him. At that moment he remembered that he had yet another strange dream the previous night. In this one, he was lying on the ground and watching as a concealed figure slowly walked towards him. He couldn't move his legs for they had been severed, ravaged and he was bleeding profusely. When the unclear figure was right in front of him, he realized that it was a spitting image of him.

After this recollection, Jari's head started to ache intensely, at one point he felt as if it would just split open, thus he left the market and decided to make his way home and rest. The dream kept recurring in his head, with the details jumbled up each time, warping around strangely in his mind.

Mysteriously, by the time his family compound came into view, it was already dark, as if he had somehow lost track of time on his way home, as if he had taken the entire afternoon walking down the path.

What was even stranger was how the aching instantly disappeared with the darkness and in its place was a newfound energy that he hadn't possessed before. He could feel everything, the soft rushing of the evening breeze on every pore of his skin, he could hear the song of every single cicada at once with an unrivaled clarity. And smell of the fresh cow dung all the way in the kraal like it was merely at his feet.

There was a new smell too and a strange beating like drums at the village dance, only quieter and more nuanced, like they were beating from a confined space, the beating and the smell went hand in hand, calling him, feeding his curiosity. As he was about to move towards it, a voice came out of nowhere.

'It is high time you stopped,' it said.

The voice came from behind him, by the time he turned his head, the man was already in front of him, a man he did not know.

'Stopped what?' Jari asked, suddenly realizing that he was salivating.

'The reckless killing. What you have done is too careless, ravaging two villagers in that way. I cannot allow you to go on.'

Jari was confused, yet he could still feel that he was being called, yet he could still feel the saliva trickling down his chin, the feeling was intense and indescribable and his teeth...

'I know you feel it, that heat, that sensation of your teeth grinding against each other as they try to leap out of your mouth, the impossible hunger rising inside of you. It is all part of it, but I have never witnessed delirium of this magnitude,' he said.

Jari suddenly remembered his conversation with old man Taona when he went to see him, the answers he had to his question that seemed to have been lost to him already, a conversation he had conveniently forgotten.

'Legends speak of terrifying beasts that are worse than the mere witches we have heard about,' he had said.

'These creatures wear a human face but they drink from the vein as if it were a calabash brimming with fresh beer. They hunt at night like the most dangerous of predators do, they smell blood and weakness and they pounce. They live among us, befriend us and deceive us, with teeth as sharp as thorns and eyes that stare into the soul.'

Those were his words, perhaps some of his final words. The headache came back suddenly and he saw again the dream he had the previous night, his legs mutilated while he whimpered in pain, pleaded for mercy, the other "him" stepping into the light, but this time, he opened his mouth to reveal sharp long menacing fangs. He then realized that the injured man on the ground was not him, but old Taona with an absolute terror-stricken look on his face.

'What happened to me? What have you done to me!' Jari said after his recollection.

He felt the long teeth protruding from his mouth as soon as he became aggravated and he almost went beside himself with rage and confusion.

'It was not me who did this to you, but someone else,' the mysterious stranger replied.

'The strange encounter from my childhood? The mysterious man with frightening eyes, I see it now,' Jari said.

'This happened to you at most three nights ago, you are a new one, freshly turned,' the stranger said.

'Turned?'

'Transformed into a blood sucker, a predator of the night,' he replied.

'But this memory, the man with the blood eyes, how is it all connected?' Jari protested.

'The memory is probably not real, or yours. You are in a delirious state, your mind is unreliable. It will hide things from you that you should know and show you others that don't exist. You will want to hunt irresponsibly, feed on things that you don't require. It usually takes a single kill to cure it, but I've seen what you have done, I have never seen it quite like this. It is the work of madness.'

Jari was trying his best to comprehend what he was being told, that he was the one who killed old Taona, a harmless village man. A man that had been kind to him. Then it suddenly started coming back to him, how he had mercilessly feasted on his blood, the despicable things he had done to Jeke's corpse, tearing him to shreds as if he was nothing.

His head was pounding away again and his teeth poking out, ready to pounce. He smelled it, the sweet satisfaction that awaited him, the beating, the drumming away of the heart. He started salivating once more, like a wild dog about to feast on its prey. The ravenous hunger was simply intoxicating.

The mysterious stranger kept holding him back, his hand was firm against his chest and he was adamant. Jari did not care, his hunger had increased ten fold now, it was gnawing at him from the inside out, his mind was telling him that he depended on whatever lay where the beating was coming from.

He grabbed the man's arm, threw him across the path and he landed near some shrubs. Before Jari could leave, the man sprung back up, growling and revealing his own enormous fangs and kicked him clean, almost shattering his jaw in a single movement that was impossibly swift.

Jari fell to the ground, panting and whimpering like a wounded dog, but then he leaped at the mysterious man without even stopping to collect himself, almost as if the pain and anger were giving him more power, he toppled him over, then subdued him with his right arm, his grip on the neck was extremely tight.

He could feel the rhythm of the neck heaving up and down, a pertinent urge to crush his bones under him, to rip him apart and pull his limbs off in opposite directions. To laugh at his disheveled body and pluck out his eyes. The thought of it exhilarated him, he could feel himself smiling, grinning while thinking about it, but moments later, when he felt the wetness of blood between his fingers, and tricking down his lips, he knew they weren't only thoughts.

He felt more alive, a feeling he hadn't possessed before. A power he hadn't possessed before was coursing inside of him as he stared at his compound, where he could hear every word spoken, all the laughter, every movement and a smile beamed through his bloodstained lips as the soft rhythm of the drums beckoned him.