Once they heard what it allegedly was, Stephan said it should have big paws and the short golden fur of a lion. Francis said that wasn’t right at all— it should have a human head and torso, legs like a calf with cloven hooves, and soft brown, white or black ears like a calf too… Stephan eventually elbowed Francis into silence as they approached a muddy paddock where the ill-fated things were corralled after being caught. 

It was mostly vampires in the hunter’s camp. Vampires were such a problem in the region that Arthur himself had been nearly recruited as a hunter this spring past. He’d been intrigued by the commission bonuses, the idea of travel and sleeping under the stars. He’d eyed the weapons and tools the hunters wore at their belts and tucked in their boots with admiration and envy. But he’d lost his stomach for it after seeing what he would have to do to the vampires he caught.

The Bahkauv was no exception, it seemed, despite being a rarer and much more regional phenomenon, not at all the infamous menace vampires had become. In fact, it seemed to Arthur that the thing was human as it cowered in the mud, eyes tracking the hunter that circled it. 

“How do they know it's a Bahkauv?” he asked aloud, not expecting his friends to have a response he didn't have himself. 

Meanwhile, the hunter sloshed a bucket of thick, oily substance onto the cowering creature and struck a match. 

“Oh good God,” Francis breathed beside him. All three of them were frozen in place, waiting to see if the hunter would toss the match.

He did. 

The substance now covering the Bahkauv was clearly some sort of accelerant. Pitch, maybe. Immediately, the fire spread over it and leaped three feet high so the creature appeared as a burning ball, invisible inside a wall of orange flame. Though they could not see it very well, they could hear it. Its shrieks of terror turned to screams of pain— agonized and gut wrenching. Francis was gripping Arthur’s forearm without realizing he’d done so, as if to say do you see this?His mouth was open in shock at the scene before them. Arthur glanced about. Some of the people, hunters and civilians alike, had stopped to see what this particular commotion was about, but they went back to their own business once they realized. This was not out of the ordinary. 

“We use the sun on the vamps,” said a hunter who had come up to the fence to watch. “Easy and extremely effective. But that thing doesn’t burn with the sun. They find drunken soldiers and latch onto them until they’re weak enough for them to attack. Vicious, thieving little creatures. And since there’s a lack of drunken soldiers wandering around alone here lately, who do you think we found this one leeching on?”

“A hunter?”

The hunter nodded.  “Unwise little thing, no? Sunlight doesn’t really bother it, but we found it a similar experience…” he nodded at the twisting and writhing flame in the paddock.  Whatever the substance was was finally burning off. The flames dwindled in the wet mud until they could see the creature beneath, now naked and terribly burned, but clearly alive. The screams tapered off to loud, alarming moans, separated by thin breaths drawn with great difficulty. 

“Why?” asked Arthur with an incredulity he later realized must have sounded terribly naive to a hunter. 

The hunter looked at him, deciding how to answer. In the end he just laughed, and clapped Arthur on the shoulder before wandering away toward the north side of the encampment.  

The one in the ring, dressed identically to the one Arthur had just spoken to, approached the Bahkauv. Arthur was now convinced it was not human after all, or it would not have survived that sustained heat for so long, with no oxygen to breathe. Right? Surely.

The hunter watched the thing struggling to breathe for a moment, tilted his head and toed it in the ribs with his boot. It shrieked in pain, eyes blind and white, blood and saliva dripping from its open mouth, its burned lips. The hunter seemed to consider the condition of the skin, which looked from a distance as though it was already changing from charred to red, from red to pink. 

“Is it healing?” Stephan asked in a low voice. He was not sure he wanted to know. 

“So quickly,” Francis muttered, his forehead deeply creased in distress. Even so, Francis could not help but watch. Arthur knew he was sharply observing, forming questions. His curious mind would not allow him to look away. 

Arthur, by no means a scientist or a scholar, wondered why it was he couldn’t stop looking. The hunter splashed more of the pitch-like substance onto the creature, who howled and threw up its hands protectively, uselessly, against the second lit match that was coming. 

“No,” Stephan exhaled in disbelief. “So soon?”

The flames flew to the accelerant faster than their eyes could follow, and the screams began in earnest again, filling the paddock. Arthur winced and looked away. 

“I need it,” Francis said, nodding emphatically. “Not a vampire. I need to take that to the University. Why study what everyone else is studying? Sure they’re rare, but that means my research would be rare, too. Possibly unique.”

“You don’t know what it’s capable of,” Stephan cautioned. 

“It likes to eat drunken soldiers, for God's sake," Francis argued to the backdrop of horrific wailing. “It will be tied up and muzzled, if we have to. And it's so... pathetic. Look at it."

Arthur and Stephan did. The flames had burned off again. The unfortunate creature was attempting to crawl away from the hunter, who was following it slowly. 

“It’s probably less dangerous than a vampire anyway. And it can move in the sunlight without being carried or making a scene.” Francis looked to them for support. Nearby, a shrieking vampire was being dragged into the sunlight. 

“This place is making me a bit ill,” Stephan said.

"I did warn you both." Arthur turned to Francis. “If you really think it’s a good idea, I’ll bargain for you. You’re too excited about it. They’ll realize they can rip you off.”

—

The Bahkauv was badly burned. This was nothing new, but each time was its own unending Hell. Every inch was agony as it crawled, blindly, across the paddock. The cool mud might have been a relief but for the way it sucked at the skin of its hands and knees, taking much of the ruined flesh with it as it made each slow inch of progress. It didn’t know where it was going. It only knew that staying put would mean more pain, and it could not tolerate any more pain. It was stripped to its barest instincts, and its instinct was to get away.

Dimly, it remembered the hunters didn’t like when it tried to get away from them, even just a few feet to curl up in a corner or against a fence. They’d stake it in place with one of their sharp vampire-sticks, through its hand or the tendons of its foot, grounding it in place to torment until it was mindless, incoherent and screeching like an animal.

Its melted sight began to come back, and it could see the blurry outline of men’s legs standing in front of it. It stopped crawling, paralyzed in fear. It could do nothing but lie on the ground and pant, throat and lungs burned from inhaling fire, but unable to die, just like the vampires in the sun.

A heavy collar was fitted around its neck like a yoke, and someone was yanking it roughly to a standing position. The Bahkauv shook so badly from the recent pain of burning that it collapsed once, twice. It cringed deeply as the hunter who held the leash backhanded its burnt cheek. “Up,” he hissed. “Do you want another round as a parting gift?”

“It’s fine,” said a new man's voice. “Enough. Enough. Here.”

Through slowly improving vision, it saw its leash change hands. It was not prepared to look anyone in the eye, even once it could see well enough to distinguish faces again.

It kept its eyes down, trembling violently as ropes were wrapped around its wrists and then looped through the collar so its hands had to stay crossed near its chest. A leather and iron muzzle was fitted over its head and tightened around the back of its neck. The sharp bit went to right the back of its throat, almost far enough to make it gag. The sides bit into the burnt flesh of its face. Once, it would have been ashamed of how it drooled pinkish foam in front of all these humans. Now it neither knew or remembered shame when the threat of more pain was present, which was always.

A man was picking it up. It hurt terribly, but all the Bahkauv dared to do was whimper through frantically grit teeth. Another pair of hands went under its armpits and hauled it higher, up and into the saddle of a chestnut horse. Each point of contact from the saddle was fresh pain, burnt skin and nightmarish friction. It tried to sit up on its own for as long as it could, but lacked the strength. Once the horse began walking in the direction of the road, it had no choice but to slump weakly against the chest of the man sitting directly behind it and holding the reins. 

It received no punishment, except for the way the man's rough clothes touched its skin. As the Bahkauv's sight returned to normal, it looked about to see two more men on horses of their own. Its healing skin itched and burned, but all it could do was twitch helplessly and watch the horse’s bobbing mane in front of it, or the leafy spring forest pass on either side. It shivered intermittently.

"Give it a blanket, Francis," one of the men said.

"Won't that hurt it? Its skin still shines like a burn."

"Remarkable how minor a burn it looks already though," said the man behind it in the saddle. "Considering."

The human voice, so close it could feel the vibration from it in its back, set it to trembling again.

Exhaustion from the days torture soon set in, and it fell into bouts of unconsciousness that only resembled sleep. It woke from one such period of dreamlessness with a startled flinch, unsure where it was or what was happening. The man he was riding with had his arm around its waist, anchoring it so it did not slump to either side and fall from the horse.

Dread and fear pooled in the Bahkauv’s stomach at the human contact, a large gloved hand splayed across its naked belly. Humans were cunning and cruel. They loved fire and tools, like the metal ones they used to crush its fingers and toes in the evenings when the sun was down and the screams of the vampires had quieted.