by Ben Stevens
Maya wondered how this creature would look and behave if it were at its peak strength, and shuddered, banishing the thought from her imagination. The creature was the very definition, the anthropomorphic manifestation, of hungry. It seemed to possess a hundred mouths and nearly nothing else.
“What is it?” she dared to ask, her voice muffling the slithering sounds of both the needles rapidly sheathing and unsheathing and the wiggling of the tentacles themselves.
“This is our Progenitor. The Hunger. It’s not every man that gets to meet his maker.” Don Luis stepped forward, away from Maya and toward the creature.
The limp, tired appendages that only a moment before had seemed on death's door now leapt off the floor and snapped at Don Luis, the torchlight flashing off their needle-probes in the dark. Maya gasped.
“A bit more common is the man who kills his maker. God is dead, so they say. And while I haven’t killed my god—can’t kill my god—I have dominated it and surpassed it.”
Maya listened to Don Luis gloat and wondered at what he meant by “can’t kill my god.” She decided it best not to ask too many questions, lest he realize his slip of the tongue.
“As you can see, it is a little angry over this fact.” Don Luis waved his torch at the reaching spine tubes, and they recoiled from the heat.
“I was dying, like the rest of the rabble that survived the Storm, eking out a miserable existence in what was left of the world. Between the bandits, the Drop-trash, and then the advent of the Harvesters, my prospects for longevity were not good. Not good, that is, until I stumbled upon this thing before you. I had been crossing an open bled of desert when a sandstorm began to rise just east of me. It looked bad; it looked like it was growing, and it looked like there was a very good chance that it would soon be coming my way. It would have killed me for sure. I was already malnourished and weak. Dame Fortuna would smile on me that day, as she has every night since, for not far from where I was lay a small outcropping of rock, an archipelago of stony hills; a good place to seek shelter, for it was probable that I would find a cave or at least a crevasse in which to hide.” Don Luis stared ahead into the room, through and past the creature bound there, reliving in his mind’s eye the events that he related to Maya.
“I made it to the rocks just minutes before the sandstorm made it to me, and a cave I did find. I crept into its darkness without regard for my safety. To remain outside would have surely meant death by exposure. What I found inside I thought worse, at first…”
Maya allowed herself to look as intrigued, as she actually was. Don Luis continued his monologue.
“From the darkness came the stings. I felt molten pain in several places over my body at once. I could hear the slithering and sucking of a hundred mouths. I screamed, and my cries of pain echoed off the cave walls, driving me mad. It was a nightmare, and I thought for sure that I was just another victim of the Drops, another post-Storm casualty, that my life was finally over and had meant nothing in the end. It bound me in its vast array of tentacles and fed on me until the darkness of the cave was replaced by the darker black of unconsciousness.” Don Luis opened and closed his hand, making several fists as he recalled his torture at the hands of the Drop-Beastie.
“After some time, I have no idea how long, I awoke. There was no pain and my first thought was that I was in Heaven or Hell. A leftover from my early childhood; my poor mama was a simple-minded Catholic woman, but it’s not her fault, for it was part of our culture before the Storm and the Drops. Now, even the most innocent child knows the only god is he who takes and makes for himself. As I have.” His eyes glowed with self-righteous pride as he spoke. Maya felt a chill run down her back as she attempted to digest this man’s misguided way of thinking.
“Soon I realized that I was still on this Earth—the cold dirt floor of the cave gave it away, though I wasn’t keen to the fact that I was not quite alive.” At this, he grinned like a spoiled child who got the toy he felt he deserved. “I was attacked, but not killed… or so I thought. I knew not where the stinging tubes were, and I didn’t want to stick around to find out. To this day, I have wondered deeply as to the exact nature, the mechanism of this thing, and the vampiric, immortal qualities it bestows on its victims. Are they a side-effect of this being’s eating habits? Its alien biological needs? Or is it simply how it breeds? Sure, that sounds crazy, but who are we to question the mechanics of alien and human interaction? I call what I am “vampire,” but what does that mean? That is a human word, from ancient mythology, yet here I stand, bitten—well, stung, rather—eaten and killed by an alien, yet now immortal, superhuman. Truly born again. Fire and sunlight kill me, and I need blood to survive. The shoe fits, and I care not to ponder semantics.”
“It’s as good as a description as any,” Maya agreed, looking back and forth from the alien urchin to Don Luis.
“I left the cave in a weakened state, having been killed and not yet having fed. I was in a fever, a dream state, and I remember not where I wandered. The last thing I remember is the night sky beginning to turn lavender with the promise of dawn soon to be, and collapsing on the desert floor, the weight of the sky pressing me down. A band of human survivors came across me; they must have. I only remember vague images as I floated in and out of consciousness. Men and women, inheritors of pre-Storm military equipment and weapons, carving out a meager, post-apocalyptic life. I remember the noise of their vehicles, the old kind that still ran on fossil fuels, and their voices. They just happened to be on the move, and their paths crossed mine that fateful night. Good for me, bad for them. I faded in and out over the next day and a half. Maybe longer. They must have put me in the back of one of their large trucks and assigned someone to care for me. I don’t know how it all played out… I never got the chance to ask them…” Don Luis waxed nostalgic and smiled.
The urchin lunged for him again with a volley of outstretched tentacles. They fell short, unable to reach him. Their vain attempt snapped him out of his reverie, and he spun on them, striking one with the torch. Maya blinked as the torch left a comet’s tail tracer through the chamber’s darkness and blinked again when she heard the flat, wet smack of the tentacle being hit. The spine tubes withdrew again, like a beaten dog, and attempted to bite Don Luis no more.
“It must have been days now that I think about it, but at one point, I was back, only it wasn’t the old me. It was the new me. I awoke in the back of a truck on a bed that my saviors had prepared for me. I could hear the cicadas of the night blanketing all the other sounds, but what I remember most is the hunger. Like this thing here,” Don Luis pointed at the urchin with his torch, “I was possessed by an insatiable hunger, the likes of which I had never experienced, even as a starving, malnourished youth, hustling in the streets of Old Puebla, back before the dons took me in. I remember then, for the first time, I could smell my cure. I could smell the blood that lay trapped inside the bodies of every man and woman in that caravan’s camp. Back then, that first time, it felt like I had no control. It wasn’t until after, when I had had my fill, that I saw a better way. I tore through that camp the way the tidal waves and hurricanes from the Great Storm had torn through the coastal towns of my country. Nothing could stop me. Nothing. I was a force of nature.” Don Luis’s eyes glinted red, and his voice rose in volume as he told his tale.
“Toward the end there, some tried to stop me. They shot me full of bullets, which I squeezed out of my body by simply thinking about it. The ease with which I slaughtered them, all thirty-something of them, is probably what made it click in my head later that night. The idea, the notion, the truth, that I was not an animal, but a god. A wolf amongst dogs was an understatement.
“I was not content to live like a savage and hunt my prey in the wilds the way those who attacked you did. I had a much grander vision, and so I set out on a quest. I sought out and approached the banditos that roamed the countryside and made them offers. Offers of immortality and power. Offers they couldn’t refuse. Those who did became my
dinner. Those who didn’t became the soldiers in my new army; the lieutenants in my new cartel. We organized, we grew, we built. Before long, we took human slaves and kept them in pens, kept them alive and used them as our never-fail, always-available food source. One thing led to another. I rewarded the most obedient humans with privileges of comfort and some manner of freedom, and soon my cartel had loyal foot soldiers that could serve and protect me during the daylight hours. The system of reciprocation I showed you tonight developed. This city was built. This kingdom was born. The rest, as they say, is history.”
Maya listened intently, and, encouraged by the candid nature of Don Luis’s tale, she continued to stare longingly into his dark eyes, continuing her charade of excitement and arousal. She would have done any actress from Ratt’s old cinema movies proud. Don Luis, excited by Maya’s show of interest, continued his tale without reservation.
“The world was my oyster, or so the saying goes, but one thing loomed over my shoulders, one thought troubled my daily torpor. It was the same, age-old question that has haunted every man since time began. Being essentially immortal did not make this ponderous conundrum go away.”
“What was it?” Maya asked huskily between heavy breaths.
“Where did I come from? Or, more precisely, who made me?” Don Luis’s eyes flashed like fire. “The question turned from a mildly amusing riddle to a burning need, an obsession as strong as my thirst for blood. Especially one night after I observed a peculiar phenomenon.” Don Luis stared off at the blank walls of the chamber as he recalled the event that had changed his afterlife.
“A few years after New Puebla had become the functional society that it is today, I was betrayed and bitterly disappointed by one of my top lieutenants. The man, a cousin of my Sofia, disobeyed a direct order I had given him. It’s been so many years now that I can’t remember exactly what the order was anymore...” Don Luis trailed off; then his eyes flashed again.
“It had something to do with taking the cattle, er, humans in public. Yes, yes, that was it! I told my men that they couldn’t do that. It would create fear and dissent. It was the same reason that a rancher removed the animal to be slaughtered from the animals that were to remain alive. If you kill one in front of the others, they tend to… freak out, and things don’t work as smoothly anymore.” Maya got the clear and distinct message that it wasn’t the rape and murder itself that Don Luis had outlawed, just the location. Just don’t do it in public.
“Anyway, the man had done just that, and there was blowback. The humans rioted, and many had to be put down before order was restored. I was extremely angry with my fiancée’s cousin for disobeying me and costing me a good percentage of my stock, not to mention the headache that all the PR would most assuredly give me. I chose to have this man executed in public the day before I married Sofia, cousin or no.
“Death by sun. It was easy; it was clean, not messy. It sent a strong message. The other vampires would learn to obey. The humans would be placated, feeling that justice had been served, that their king was fair and benevolent. Sofia would also learn that queen or no, cousin or no, I was the boss and not to be trifled with. It would set the stage for a healthy and proper marriage.”
“I would never question your authority, my lord.” Maya leaned in close to Don Luis and rubbed her body against his. He smiled at her and continued his tale.
“Still, it didn’t quite work out the way I had envisioned. I had this man tied to a stake in the city square in the late hours of the evening. The humans had woken early, for all wanted to be there and witness the rising sun of justice, the King’s Law. The vampires of the city, myself included, retired, of course, just before the first rays of dawn peeked over the horizon. We would come back at dusk to sweep away the ashes of our fallen comrade and take stock. And that is exactly what we did, but when it was over, the inventory was off, the numbers didn’t add up. The lieutenant burned, all right, and according to loyal human testimony, it was a glorious torch. It gladdened the hearts of those who had lost friends and family during the brief uprising to witness some vampire death for once, and I was happy to provide it. I could not abide anyone disobeying my laws. But something revealed itself slowly as the night went on. A good number of my men seemed to be missing, most of them belonging to the contingent that the now-crispy lieutenant had commanded. At first, I thought, incredulously, that the lieutenant’s men had been so loyal that they had left New Puebla in some sort of protest or tacit rebellion against my justice, but a quick search of their assigned domiciles revealed the truth of the situation.” He paused. “They had burned in their sleep.”
Honestly intrigued and no longer acting, Maya cocked her head a bit and squinted at Don Luis.
“At first, it was a mystery, but a clue fell into my lap in the form of a report from one of my close advisers. Every one of the vampires who had spontaneously combusted had been sired by the executed lieutenant. In fact, no one he had sired still lived. Every human ever turned by him had burned in their beds when he burned at the stake. I took this information from the adviser in secret and promptly killed him to silence him. Until now, no one else had ever found out the truth.” He gripped Maya tightly, his lust for her burning in those unearthly eyes.
“Kill the headwaters of the river, and you kill the river.” Maya’s eyes widened with fevered interest and a ray of optimistic treason, though to Don Luis, her expression was one of horror and shock.
“This revelation sent stark terror into my heart. How could I be the undisputed ruler of this burgeoning kingdom if my Achilles’ heel lay somewhere out there in the wilderness, just waiting to be found and exploited? I tackled this new quest with ten times more urgency, more fury and more resources than I had the building of this city-state. I led an army out into the desert hills where I had stumbled across the thing that had turned me. Although my recollection of that fateful night was blurry at best, I found the creature after only three weeks of tireless searching. Having to bring portable shelter and set up a hermetically sealed camp every morning slowed things down and made the expedition a little tough; capturing and subduing the demon urchin once we found it was more so. I lost nearly half my men to the urchin when they battled it, but my numbers and persistence paid off.
“I watched the creature as we battled it, I watched how it behaved. It seemed to grow stronger with every one of my men that it killed. I watched how it sucked them dry with its needle-mouth-tentacles and turned them from herculean immortals into something more resembling a dried-up maize husk. I quickly realized that it grew strong with the blood of its victims the same way I do, the same way all vampires do. And why not? It was what made us. I was sure of it. This thing…” Don Luis gestured to the limp and exhausted demon urchin chained in cold iron to the chamber floor.
“This thing was the original vampire. As much as I am loath to admit it. I am nothing more than the spawn of a creature from the Drops. I still don’t have any way of proving it, but somehow, I know, from a whisper in my mind, that all the bloodlines can be traced to this creature, and I felt that it had been here on Earth before. Later, I proved that theory to be true. It had been here before, though how, and for how long, I cannot say.”
Maya wondered what he meant by this and recalled the cryptic message that Ratt had received from the intelligence behind the Drop.
“I ordered my men to fall back, and instead, we surrounded the creature’s lair and starved it. Anytime the thing attempted to leave its lair and do battle with us, we chased it back into the cave with arrows of fire. I learned early on of the thing’s fear of flame. Hence the need for this insurance policy.” Don Luis raised the laser pistol and waved it for Maya to see.
“Our perimeter was so tight that not even a small field rodent could get into the cave and provide sustenance to the thing. I had outsmarted it, for, despite all its power, it was simply an animal. Yes! I had outsmarted it, and I meant to outlast it. We fed first on the humans that we had brought with us to help watch over us
during the day. It was risky, but everything that I had witnessed thus far led me to believe that the creature could no more wade into the sunlight than its creations could.
“While I couldn’t control any small animal possibly getting into the cave during the day, the payoff was worth it. My vampires and I fed well and grew strong, while the strength of the demon-thing waned with the passing of each day. Besides, the chance of any creature of a substantial size just wandering in was remote. I had the beast to the wall, so to speak. We tested the waters for two days after the last human in our party had been drained dry. The beast was still beyond us, so we made a hasty retreat. I decided that my top officers and I would feed on the lesser foot-soldier vampires in the party. My regiment shrank in size but grew in power and, within another week, the beast was near starved. When we finally entered the cave, we found it in a condition much as you see here. Using fire and steel, we corralled and caged the beast. We performed bloodletting on it and brought it to the edge of death, but I dared not let it die and even had to resort to sacrificing one of my officers to it on the journey home. That was nearly a disaster…” Don Luis glanced down at Maya and then wrapped up his tale.
“Let’s just say that the trip home was arduous and harrowing and even once here, it took me quite a while and cost me quite a bit of manpower before I could find the right balance between life and death at which to keep this thing. But balance I did find, and now I am nigh-unstoppable. I keep my god in chains, in the depths of my palace, and no one, save you and me, knows the value of it.” He smiled a self-satisfied smile. “Once you are my wife, you will be as powerful and safe from harm as anyone ever was or could be. We will rule over the masses forever!” He was drunk on his lust, he was mad, and Maya smiled.
“You mentioned that it has been on Earth before?” she asked, wanting to seize the chance to possibly illuminate Ratt’s mysterious message.