It was likely a good thing that the being who once was known as Jacques was so incredibly distracted by the burning thirst in his throat. He hardly noticed the strangeness of the world around him. He payed no heed to the car that rushed past so quickly without looking, assuming it was a horse and carrieage ang giving no more thought to it. The street lights were much brighter than the normal lanterns he was used to, but he assumed his eyes would adjust. The area he staggered through when he reached the top of the hill was all residential, lacking the neon signs of the historic mainstreet tourist trap, and the thriving city beyond that was only blocks away.<br/><br/>His body shaking and trembling, Jacques -- it was the only name he could remember to call himself, but still it didn't feel quite right -- faltered in his footsteps. He breathed deeply, raising his nose a bit and turning to his left. He could smell something. Another scent solidified the trace of human in the air and all reason left him. The need to feed became a frenzy and he rushed toward the scent. what he found was a ragged old beggar rooting through what seemed to be a rubbish bin standing at the side of the road.<br/><br/>Jacques struck silently, far too fast for the old man to give any reaction. His iron hands gripped so hard around his meal's arms that they broke. His teeth tore open the skin pulsing in panic at the man's throat with the ease of a heated knife through warm butter, releasing a torrent of hot, gushing blood from within.<br/><br/>The blood stained the man's clothing as it dripped free of the jaws that clamped over the wound as his struggles and screams became weaker, subsiding first into moans, and finally silence. When the body finally fell to the pavement, Jacques panted and looked around, wiping his mouth of a little of the blood that had spilled. Noting the body at his feet, he frowned with some concern. It was only a human, but he preferred not to kill when he could help it. The man was dead. Chiding himself for his carelessness, he picked up the body and hid it inside the bin.<br/><br/>Now that reason had somewhat returned to him, he became aware of the state of his clothes first. Dirty, rotted, filthy, coated in blood. Hmm. Odd. It was decades since he had fed so violently that he had made such a mess. Curious...<br/><br/>What was more curious was the scene in which he found himself. His memory was hazy at best. He struggled to recall anything about himself in any great detail. The area was not familiar at all, yet somehow he felt the desire to keep moving. Uneasy, he did so, choosing a direction at random. The houses were strange. Far more plain than the estates and homes that he could recall, and yet they seemed... different. More complex, perhaps. He paid little attention as he kept walking, struggling to recall the memories that were so reluctant to surface.<br/><br/>What was wrong with him???