by Slay (epub)
Her bare feet padded against the ground soundlessly, the rough stone barely noticeable. She knew the distance to be great--she had struggled down the hill laden with burdens often enough--but tonight, the journey slipped by as quickly as a dance. In what seemed only a moment, she arrived at the gently lapping bank of the river.
The column of light still shone. Up close it flickered as though made of flame, but a white flame offered no heat. Blue tendrils spiraled within. Though the column seemed to rise from the dark waters, it was not reflected in their depths. Dienihatiri bent and dipped her fingers into the warm water and raised them to her face to cleanse the street dust from her skin.
When she uncovered her face, the column of light burned mere inches from her. She fell back onto her bottom, grunting in surprise. A voice spoke. An impossible voice that was both a battle cry and a soothing whisper, both male and female, both in the air and vibrating within her own chest. “My Destroyer,” it said.
Dienihatiri shivered though she was unaffected by any chill. Laying her hand upon her heart, she noticed that she could not feel it beating. She scuttled like a crab, backing away from the light, her face wet with tears she had not realized she was crying. Somewhere within, she understood, though her mind still rebelled against the idea.
A warmth bloomed in her chest and Dienihatiri who had risen to her knees, collapsed against the earth, pinned there by overwhelming grief. She heard no more words, but the voice spoke directly to her heart, filling her with sad duty. She understood. All the attempts to help Pharoah understand, all the chances he had been given to do what was right--all these had failed, and the worst of punishments would now have to be dealt.
She was to be the instrument.
She whose own son had been snatched from her arms and killed because Pharaoh feared the prophecy that one of their tribe would evince his end and purged the city of male Hebrew infants. Pharaoh would see his own tactics turned on himself and his people and only then would his blindness be alleviated--enlightenment was cruel.
Too afraid to beg release from the task before her, she lay on the ground while tears watered the earth beneath her face. At length, she found the strength to rise and dared again to gaze upon the column of light.
“Come.” The single word thrummed in the air and underneath her own skin.
She dared not speak her acquiescence but turned her obedient feet in the direction of the palace. Silently, she moved past the familiar domiciles of the slave quarters, the homes of people she had known all her life. Further ahead, up the hill, she knew the houses grew grander. As she walked, a pain spread in her belly, a horrible hunger like none she had ever known. She could eat for weeks and never find her fill.
The light flitted ahead of her, bouncing from hovel to hovel. As Dienihatiri passed each one, she turned her head to look and found herself repelled--though this had once been her home, she could not enter here now. The feeling was physical, like she’d been shoved back by an invisible hand. If she tried to step nearer these doorways, pressure grew behind her eyes and her skin crawled as if scorpions pricked at her.
Standing outside one home, she saw the spatter of blood on the doorpost. The smell of it burned her nose and throat, and a retching feeling rose through her guts. She backed away, hand over her mouth and nose.
Then the voice hummed across the air, calling to her. “Here, my Destroyer.”
Dienihatiri followed the call and stopped on the threshold of a large home, consisting of several rooms. The column of light spun beside her, the twisting patterns of shadow and fire exhorting her to begin her work. She leaned towards the entry with trepidation, but no answering counterpressure arose and she crossed the entryway.
Her feet made no sound in the silent home, and she quickly made her way to an alcove where a woman slept in a chair and a boy-child rested in a small bed. The hunger spiked in her and she felt her teeth grow long and press into her lower lip. She opened her mouth to alleviate the pain and a delicious smell assaulted her senses. Before she knew what was happening, she had seized the child and sunken her teeth into the tender flesh of his neck. In a matter of seconds, he lay limp in her arms, lifeless and still. He had never even struggled.
The woman in the chair slept on.
Horrified, Dienihatiri replaced the boy in his bed and fled from the house. Back out on the street, she fell to her knees, expecting to be struck down for the horror of her crimes. Instead a warm glow fell over her, soothing as the sun’s rays at dawn. Gulping back the tears, she stared into the light which swirled implacably around and around.
“Come.” The voice vibrated within her chest, as if it spoke from within her own heart. “There is much work to be done.”
House after house, the scene was repeated. Dienihatiri screamed within her mind but dared not speak aloud her revulsion and loathing. First born sons of Egypt were sacrificed by the score, and there seemed no end to her hunger or God’s demands. Guilt soured the blood she swallowed, even as her thirst continued unslaked.
Unasked questions swirled through her mind. Why me? Can this be just? She dared ask none of them.
Child after child breathed his last in her arms and still the light swirled, demanding more. The name she’d been given echoed in her consciousness. Destroyer. Destroyer. Destroyer. Dienihatiri no more.
By the time they arrived at the steps of the palace, dawn should have been approaching, but darkness still inked over the starless sky. Pharoah’s eldest son’s rooms lay at the edge of an opulent garden, made green by the labor of slaves who fought the arid land and forced impossible blooms from the earth. Dienihatiri breathed in the moist air and let her fingertips brush the leaves of exotic plants as she traversed the path--still beautiful, despite the blood shed for their existence.
The guards slept at their posts and Dienihatiri considered this a blessing. She could have killed them, if it were necessary. The strength coursing through her muscles was sufficient to topple buildings and rupture mere human flesh like the thinnest sheet of papyrus. But God had seen fit to clear the way for her, at least. She could perform her horrible calling without the need for additional violence. She longed to cast the duty away, to throw herself on the earth and cry for the violence she had wrought, but one could not refuse the demands of the Lord, regardless of the difficulty and pain.
Who was she to question His will?
The boy was perhaps ten years old, long and lanky, still boney with new growth.
He lay on his back in silent repose in a room lined with small precious objects, playthings, and scrolls. Dienihatiri climbed into the bed, raising the boy into her arms. Despite the many lives she had ended that night, hunger still drove her. The boy’s body twitched in her arms as she drained him, but weakly, like a puppy suffering a minor nightmare.
When the task was nearly complete, a gasp of anguish disturbed her in her work. Dienihatiri looked up to find a man in the doorway, eyes wide with horror, one hand clasping at his sumptuous robes while the other fought for purchase on the doorway. He froze there, whether held by God or immobilized by his own grief Dienihatiri could not have said.
She knew him to be Pharoah, though she had never seen the man in her life. Their eyes locked, connecting them. Dienihatiri felt as if her own tears ran down his cheeks, but she did not relinquish her task.
The voice hummed through the air. “This is what your pride has wrought.”
When Dienihatiri let the shell that had once housed Pharoah’s heir crumple to the bed, the man fell to his knees, a keening cry rising in his throat. She stepped over his outstretched arms.
As had been the case in every household she had entered that evening, no one saw her. People who might have tried to stop her were asleep or simply not at their posts. She reached the street without the slightest outcry, despite Pharoah’s wail rising into a howl behind her. An answering cry sounded in the depths of Dienihatiri’s own unbeating heart, though no sound escaped her blood-reddened mouth. She knelt in the street, allowing he
r empty hands to fall open to her sides.
She waited, head bowed to the ground, grief washing through her like a river after rain--fresh and raw, forceful and frightening.
When at last she raised her head, she found she was within the column of light, surrounded in a swirling glow that evoked at once the night sky, the warmth of a fire, and the mid-day sun. Looking made her giddy and she closed her eyes, letting tears flow freely over her cheeks, salt stinging her lips.
“Rest now, my Destroyer. You have served me well.”
Oblivion, her final wish, was granted.
Quadrille
Colin Cloud Dance
Back
Being a vampire is disgusting. Whoever decided that it was romantic and sexy was delusional. The blood lust, the killing, the avoiding detection, the lack of control - the worst part is that my victims orgasm as they die - part of the chemical makeup of my saliva.
Right
Being a vampire is hereditary. When I turned thirty, I developed a thirst for blood that culminated in me murdering my lover. I staged the dead body as best I could to implicate a suicide. After a time long enough to avoid suspicion, I packed my things and left California to go spend time with my family in Virginia before I committed suicide. I had decided to kill myself. I felt guilty that I protected myself from the murder charge rather than go through a trial, incarceration, and execution.
Back
The impact of my saliva starts with a kiss.
* * *
Right
“Oh, you are like Uncle Leviathan. We didn’t think there would be one of you in this generation. I guess you are a late bloomer,” my father said.
“Why did you keep this from me and from the rest of us?” I asked.
“Well, there is no point in talking about our family history if there isn’t a new vampire to raise,” my mother said.
“Aren’t vampires some Hungarian shit? How can I be Black and a vampire?” I asked.
“Obviously, you don’t need to be Hungarian or Romanian. Watch your language!” my mother warned.
My life was destroyed, and my mother was worried about me saying ‘shit’. I didn’t know whether to walk out or start crying.
“You need to figure out how to keep yourself fed without drawing attention to yourself. That’s what Uncle Leviathan does,” my father said.
“How does he do it?” I asked. “Isn’t there some way to suppress it?”
“Not that he’s discovered. He works in palliative care,” my mother said.
“Is his being…like me…the reason he never comes around?” I asked.
They both sounded, “Ummhmm.”
“He didn’t want to burden the family. He tried to keep what he was up to in the dark, to protect us,” my father said.
Left
My family convinced me to make a new life for myself. I decided that the easiest way to cover my…needs…was to travel to places in conflict. Places where finding a dead body was normal. I camouflaged myself as a journalist specializing in covering wars. I moved to Syria.
Back
I can dry kiss people, but if my saliva comes into contact with skin, a chemical reaction occurs. It is a slow reaction, but it works. My saliva is absorbed through the skin and enters my victim’s bloodstream. Two chemical components of my saliva are important during this phase: a mild sedative most closely related to winter berry and an aphrodisiac similar to cloves.
Right
One moment she was there, at the head of the alleyway where I was still holding the body of a soldier. She was wrapped in brown cloth, with a black scarf framing her face. The next moment, there was a strong wind and a small tornado of dust that grew in size and strength. I dropped to the ground with the body underneath me and covered my head with my arms to protect myself from the swirling dust. After some time, the wind subsided. The semi-arid environment was like this, sudden winds, too much sand and dust. Wind made a fog of dust, like walking in a thick haze at times.
I rolled onto my back and the woman in brown was standing above me, watching me. “Salamat?” I said.
“American?” she said.
“Yes. Do you speak English?” I asked.
“Enough.” She circled me, never turning her back. I thought about what to do with the body and what I could and could not do with the body while she was watching me. “Leave the body,” she said. “You should come with me. I can protect you. You are like me, but…I think different.”
I felt exposed. Death felt near. It had been a thought of mine that I would eventually be a fatality while working in a war zone. It was a way to end my pernicious life without killing myself. I had promised my parents that I would not commit suicide, but if I got killed…
Now that Death was stalking me, I wanted to live. Why? I asked myself. Was it just a habit?
She made a rude sound that indicated her impatience. Then she vanished, as I was picked up by the wind and carried away. I was surrounded by dust and couldn’t tell up from down. This must have been the equivalent of being sucked into a tornado. I was pushed and pulled by the wind. When my feet touched the ground, I was picked up again. My arms and legs sprawled in all directions as I floated, tumbled, drifted, soared. As the sun set, the wind subsided, and I found myself on a beach. My ears rang from the wind. I liked that I had a normal human response such as my ears ringing. Since becoming a vampire, my stomach no longer got nauseous or hungry or felt empty. It was as if that organ no longer existed in my body. There were other parts of my body that seemed similarly absent, so nice that my ears were normal. I lay on the sand and watched the sky darken. Since I had just killed, I was satiated. It would be another three days until I would need to kill again.
Back
My need for blood turned me into a gentleman in terms of adopting the old-fashioned manner of kissing a woman’s hand and I do the same for bisexual and gay men. If their sexuality is not clear, I put a bit of my spit on my hand and simply shake hands with my victim.
Right
The wind picked up again and I saw another whirlwind of dust and sand coming towards me. I jumped up and started running along the shore away from the dust devil. I remembered watching swirling leaves when I was growing up in Virginia and thinking how fun it was to run into the middle. Just entering those gentle swirls disrupted the flow, dissipating the wind and collapsing the mini-tornado. Not so this time. I did not want to be spun away again. The woman in brown was running beside me, matching my pace. My masculine pride was hurt since I considered myself to be a fast runner.
I stopped.
She stopped.
“Can you book us passage by boat away from here?” she asked.
My mind could not catch up to what was happening. Why was she here?
“How are you here?” I asked.
“I brought you here.”
“What?” She stared at me.
I stared back at her.
Her skin was not white. It was a light brown. She had brown eyes, a straight nose, and thin lips. She was very plain. She was…
“You are the wind?” I asked.
She nodded. “I am a djinn.” She smiled at me and said, “and you are a vampire.”
The feeling of Death approaching returned. How could she recognize what I was? If she could recognize me, did I have to be on guard for other people recognizing me, too? How could I conceal myself better? She touched my arm and my attention returned to her. “Can you book us passage by boat away from here?”
“Yes,” I said. “Where do you want to go?” My brain did a rapid dance with the vulnerability of her knowledge about me. Stilling my brain, I said, “How did you find out I was a vampire?”
“You were holding a body drained of blood,” she said. I laughed in spite of myself, then pondered how I could be laughing in this situation. It was relief. She hadn’t recognized me, so much as recognized the situation in which she found me.
“I want to see your country, America.”
“That isn’
t a good idea. The trip is too long by boat and with my...condition, that could be a problem.”
“Let’s go to Africa or Europe, anywhere but Syria.”
I checked my pockets to find my passport and wallet. I had a secret wallet under my shirt that had American dollars for emergencies such as this. It would be nice to not be so alone. I hoped that my loneliness wasn’t leading me into trouble, but what could be more troublesome than ourselves: a vampire and a djinn?
Left
In the winter, Ukraine was deadly cold, but Wayra and I were impervious. We dressed warmly but that was just camouflage. The Russian backed separatists used the cold as a weapon entering the warm homes of soldiers and civilians capturing many prisoners because the cold sapped their will to fight. On the one hand, there were hardly any casualties; on the other hand, it was harder for me to kill. I had to learn a new way to hunt and kill, which Wayra facilitated. We would go out when we knew a storm was coming, otherwise Wayra would create a mini-storm. My victim could then be classified as a casualty of exposure after becoming disoriented in the storm.
* * *
Back