Editing Dante (section)

===The Red Thirst===
[[File:Drink Dante.png|thumb|200px|right|Chug! Chug! Chug!...]]
{{topquote|He was an angel, not a monster.|Dante on why he refused to take living blood}}

Despite suffering from the [[Red Thirst]] like all Blood Angels, Dante refused to drink living blood for the longest time. There is a discrepancy in the novelisation about when he took the decision. On the one hand, Dante thinks at one point that he had not drank living blood since the incident on Ereus V, whereas the decision is shown as being taken after he lapses to the thirst at Tobias Halt. In any case, Dante consequently suffered from a constant hunger for blood, compared to an appetite "gnawing at his stomach and soul" and a "hunger that filled his dreams with the bright lustre of blood".

In one council scene, Dante is shown as counting blood drop rubies in a bowl, evidently said to help in meditation. While it is not explicitly stated that it is to ward off the thirst, the immediate context for the scene is his decision not to drink wine spiced with 'dead' blood, and so one can interpret it as an attempt to distract himself from the temptation. Note that Dante did occasionally drink wine spiced with blood. It is just that by that point in the book even the tiniest dollops of dead blood could drive him to almost intolerable temptations.

He eventually drinks living blood near to the end of ''Dante'', courtesy of a gambit by his mortal equerry Arafeo. Arafeo, knowing he was dying of old age and aware of Dante's weariness as well as his fears about the Imperium's future, cut his own wrists before using Dante's sense of honour (and his need for blood) against him to drive Dante into drinking his blood, finally rejuvenating him both physically and mentally.