by Casey Lane
I didn’t answer the question that morning. It wasn’t long before I was sound asleep in the sarcophagus, well past when the last of the heat waves ravished Pompeii. By the time I rose the next evening, there was a little more ash in front of the doorway, but not much. Debris had finally stopped falling from the sky. For the first time in days, I didn’t smell lethal gas. However, a burned stench still permeated the air. I stepped outside the tomb.
The radiance from the moon and stars was nearly blinding, a night almost as bright as day. I could easily see that the surrounding grass, trees, and other vegetation had been roasted alive, the countryside leveled and charred black.
How ironic, I thought. Roman law demands that no one be buried inside the city’s walls. Now, the entire city is a tomb.
I caught the man’s scent before I saw him, or heard his cart clattering down the road. I caught his scent even before that of his oxen, which were groaning as he tugged their harnesses, unable to go further for the ash blocking the road. The cart was full of jugs and other vessels, carefully packed so as not to be jostled on their journey. The man was a merchant, most likely, from a place where news of Vesuvius had not yet spread. He was headed toward the city, but quickly saw that he would never make it.
His eyes bulged, and his jaw hung open. Without taking his eyes off ruined Pompeii, he leaped out of the cart. He was a portly man who reminded me of Egnatius, except younger, and with more intelligent eyes. He wore a straw hat against the late-day sun, probably forgetting to remove it when the moon rose. It was a humid evening; the air had the consistency of soup. Yet I was cool and dry as a dog bone. Still staring at what was left of the city, the man removed his hat and wiped perspiration from his forehead. Again, the scent—a metallic perfume—floated in front of me. I inhaled.
Blood. That was what I smelled. I could hear the man’s heartbeat; steady, at first, then faster, more erratic. I felt that strong, familiar tugging at my chest, the way I did when I first drank from the chalice. The pain wasn’t as bad now as it had been then. Yet, I knew, somehow, there was only one way to stop it.
The man looked at me in disbelief. What must he make of this tall, pale man in a tattered toga, whose eyes are brighter than normal, veins bluer than they should be? He looked to the city. He narrowed his eyes and looked at me again.
“Where is everyone?” he demanded. “I am Memmius, of—oh, never mind. Who are you? What happened here?” I stared at him in the strangest way, and did not answer. He took me by the shoulders and shook me. “For the love of the gods, man,” he shouted, “tell me what happened!”
I paused before answering. “Death,” I said simply. Then, I grabbed the man and sank my teeth into his throat.
Now, I knew what the fangs were for.
I let my hunger take over. Instinct did the rest. The man struggled, but he proved no match for my strength. He was as weak as an infant in my arms. Killing someone in such an intimate way was nothing new to me. In those days, battles frequently consisted of men murdering each other at close range. We did not have the luxury of a few feet of distance your modern pistols offer. No, the longest weapon you might have in your hand was a spear; more often, it was a sword. I lost count of the times I looked into a man’s eyes and saw death take hold. Death that I had put there.
No, killing was nothing new. What was new was the profound pleasure I took in it. Before, if I killed a man, I lived, and he didn’t. It was as simple as that. Yes, there was a certain exaltation in it, the thrill of victory. But now, I lived because he didn’t. The rapture was immeasurable. Every night after was like the first night I became a vampire, an equal exchange of my blood for his. Or hers. A life for a life. I could feel their strength flowing into me. This new bliss made me forget about Pompeii, about how it ended. About my grief over Sabine. About everything.
My dead lover’s words floated on the breeze next to my ear as I drank. From the goddess Carna can spring forth new life or total destruction. It seemed Sabine had planted the seeds of both in me.
When I was finished, I let the man’s body fall into the ash. Blood was smeared over my lips and chin, dripping onto my tunic. The oxen bellowed in fear and tried to back away, still attached to the cart. But they weren’t that much harder to kill than the man, and I feasted on their blood as well. Little did I know at the time that I was hungrier than most newborns, not having fed for days. The beasts’ blood was nowhere near as luscious as a mortal’s, but it was strong, as oxen are. It would serve.
I left the man and his animals lying there, on the road to Pompeii. With so much death in the city itself, those who found them would hardly think twice about a few more corpses. Nor were they likely to care about the man’s pallor, or the two strange wounds at the victims’ throats. No, the secret of what I was remained safe, especially since I left the area so quickly. Let those who came back and found them think it was a sacrifice, the work of an angry god, or a demon.
With Pompeii devoured the way it had been, they might not be wrong.
When most mortals are turned into vampires, they revel in their extraordinary powers. They rejoice in the strength, the speed . . . the ecstasy of the kill. But despite my newfound abilities and bloodlust, I felt no small aspect of my power had been stolen.
Now, the animal nature I’d trained to serve my will had turned against me. I could not teach myself to ignore hunger the way I could when I was a mortal soldier, and then a general. When I had to force my body to endure unending miles of harsh weather, crude sustenance, and murderous barbarians. Now I was the barbarian, with a hunger that demanded to be fed. That refused to release me during the day. That stole my energy and vigor as soon as the sun rose.
Yes, I was the servant, and my hunger the master. If I didn’t learn to control it, I would not only be a hunted animal, but a very dead one. If I thought disguising my witch powers was difficult before, this was ten times worse. I had no desire to see my military focus on discipline and victory warped into an animal need for survival. To scurry from sunlight, to hide what I was from mortals, like a tense, feral cat. Yet, that was exactly what was happening.
There was no question of my trying to become emperor anymore. Vampires may rule the night, but we are completely at mortals’ mercy during the day. No matter what barriers I put up, the chance was too great that some zealous humans would find and exterminate me. No, the only option was secrecy. Skulking in the shadows forever . . . that was my lot.
There I was: poised to be on top of the world. To take over everything. Then, in an instant, I was cast down as far as Fate’s arm would reach. The lowest of the low. I thought I’d crawled my way out of that hell as a slave.
I was wrong.
It pains me to think that much of what I could have become vanished in a few mouthfuls of blood. In due time, I learned that couplings involving two vampires—or even vampires and mortals—never yield offspring. I would never have a son. Not that I considered myself a family man, but I always assumed I’d at least have an heir to pass on my name.
Now that, too, had been stolen from me. I was cursed not only to march through eternity, but to do it alone. In the centuries that passed, I never heard of anything even close to a cure. As far as I know, vampirism is a disease which has no remedy.
Yet, there are upsides. Vampires cannot contract common mortal illnesses; we are even stronger than witches in this regard. I wouldn’t have to use magic to keep myself from aging; vampires remain frozen in time at the moment they are turned. I was still a witch. I could still do magic. At least one thing hadn’t been stolen from me. Finally, consuming blood, as you’ve seen, makes me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt. Here, at least, I had a power over life and death that I’d never felt before, not in any arena or battlefield. And its heavenly taste would have to suffice, as I soon learned my body would tolerate no other forms of drink or nourishment.
And there is something beneath it all. Something about blood and life and death and currents. As a vampire, I didn’t just perce
ive the world differently. I felt it differently. Like things moving around in the earth. Creatures, roots, heat . . . it was part sensory, part sorcery, but nothing like I’d ever experienced in either. When I drank, I felt waves of magic undulating through the world. I became one with all things. I swore that if I just held on a little longer, drank a moment more, I could hear the secrets of the universe being whispered to me.
But then, just as dreams burn away with waking, the feeling faded. It was wrenched from my grasp, drifting into nothingness, like my lost city of Pompeii. Like my Rome. Like the man I had once been. The only magic I ever wanted, forever denied me.
To answer your unspoken question, reader: no, I am not the first vampire in existence. Yes, I was surprised as well. It turns out that the possibly fictional Carna was not to blame for my—or anyone’s—turning into a blood seeker. No, that honor went to a completely different supernatural being. Perhaps knowing her feast day’s association with doorways, this creature was playing a practical joke on us. Perhaps it saw Carna’s day as a fitting moment to step into the world, or to make its presence felt. I think the first time it did so precedes the fall of Pompeii by quite a few years.
But it is not a story I have time to tell you right now. Suffice it to say that, eventually, I learned to make others of my kind. So, I was not as alone as I might have been. Still, they all left, one by one, or I found it necessary to destroy them.
Children can be so ungrateful.
Like Sabine, I had little luck finding out who Carna’s worshippers had been, or where they got the blood-filled chalice in the first place. There are times when I do wonder whose elixir of life it was. Perhaps it came from more than one vampire. Perhaps, one day, there will be a knock at the door, and another of my kind will throw open their arms to me and cry, “Son!”
Unlikely.
And so, I became even more brutal and stoic than I’d been before. What use was the sanctity of life, of the four elements, when you would never be one of the life-giving forces of nature? My element, fire, can only destroy. Therefore, I had to hard. To be Titus. To survive. Whether vampires are members of the “undead” is a matter I shall leave to historians. Let us just say, for now, that part of me died in Pompeii.
Whether it was the better part is yet to be seen.
Chapter Nine
So, I was dead. Or a large part of my spirit was. Where did that leave me? Well, as you can imagine, when someone dies (especially if that someone is you), you are left with a great many questions.
Did Sabine know what was coming with Vesuvius? As an earth witch, how could she not have felt its rumblings? Perhaps the volcano gave no indication of its murderous intent. Had the chalice and its strange contents indeed been a harbinger? Was that why she took her own life, rather than die more horribly at Vesuvius’s hands?
Did Sabine know what the blood would do to me? It would explain why she was so frightened of it. I should have listened to her counsel when she first acquired the chalice, instead of trying to seduce her. Being the older and more powerful witch, she had sensed its magic better than I.
Why didn’t Sabine want to rule by my side? Hadn’t she said it was merely her disdain for Egnatius that kept him from being emperor? But she had no such qualms with me. She’d all but spelled it out the first time we met. But maybe I misjudged her. It was so long ago, the memory of that night and the wine swilling around in my head. Possibly, not even the thought of spending an all-powerful eternity with me was enough to keep her here. It was a cutting realization.
Over the years, I came to see how foolish my earlier notions had been. It didn’t matter if Sabine saw us as deities or not. Or if I could impress upon mortals our divine sovereignty. If she was tired of living, nothing would convince her to remain on earth another day—not as a witch, not as a goddess.
I saw now that it had not been ennui that had Sabine in its iron grasp, but despair. Could I have done more to drag her out of the depths of such hell? Had I left her alone in that wilderness, as surely as I’d left her on campaigns? Had I been the betrayer, not she? These were questions I could never bear to ask myself for long.
I should have recognized her weariness at life. But I was too busy feasting on my own joy. I thought I’d found the cliché of my soul’s mate. That everything I’d overcome in my life—slavery, battles, mastering my witch powers—had led me to that point. To her. I always thought we’d be together somehow, in the end. That Egnatius would die, or that I would kill him. There seemed to be no rush; we had forever. We would walk the earth like the gods we were, safely above the mortal rabble.
But to Sabine, I was no great love. I was merely the last in a long line of distractions until she chose how the end would come. She had probably been contemplating using that dagger for quite a while. No, dear reader, I don’t think she caused Vesuvius to devour Pompeii. But nor did she find some contrivance to run to the surrounding hills to save herself. To save me.
As to why she had chosen that particular day, that particular moment, to end her existence, who can say? Perhaps, if she was forever cloaked in despondency, one moment was as good as the next. Why even try to outrun a volcano, when that seems as pointless as everything else? The eruption of Vesuvius was simply as convenient a time as any.
As the centuries passed, in my more fanciful moments, I liked to think I was more than a distraction to her. That I meant something. That I could have made her happy. How I wished she’d at least given me the opportunity. Oh, how I have loved Sabine these long millennia! And how I have hated her. Hated her for adoring me, for leaving me. For the part she played in my becoming a vampire. But all this breathless rage was futile. I might as well scream my heart to Sabine in the wind. She had never truly heard me, and she never would.
I lamented I could not give her a funeral. There was nowhere to mark where her body had lain. Perhaps Vesuvius had given Sabine her own commemoration, in a pyre the size of a city. Or is Sabine one of the lemures now, a spirit doomed to wander because she has not had a proper burial? If she is not, maybe she is in some incomprehensible, hellish dimension. Or, perhaps Sabine is beyond all feeling, all consciousness. Perhaps Charon crosses the river Styx with her in his arms. I have no way of knowing.
After that first evening, I did not turn back to see the ruins of Pompeii again. I soon heard that Vesuvius claimed the neighboring town of Herculaneum as well. But, by this time, I hardly cared. As I understand it, about two thousand people were killed in Pompeii altogether—Egnatius among them—though many others managed to escape. Over time, people returned there searching for their valuables, or perhaps to rebuild. But there was nothing to rebuild from. Then, the looters came for whatever the citizens left behind. Scraps of metal and pottery that resurfaced. Coins, or still-usable brick and stone.
Eventually, they stopped. Then, there was no one to remember what Pompeii had been. The letters of Pliny the Younger describing what he’d seen that day from his perch in Misenum were ignored for fifteen hundred years. Until then, the city all but vanished into myth, as did I.
I suppose you’re all familiar with what came after. Around AD 117, the Roman Empire was at its largest. But, by around AD 476, it had collapsed entirely. I did not stay within its borders the entire time. I wandered around for some while after Pompeii was destroyed. The Flavian Amphitheater—the Colosseum to you—opened the following year. That would have provided me with some measure of distraction, had its gory games not taken place in the daylight. But such losses seem trifling now, when I compare them with all the rest. For instance, ironically, Rome did have an emperor named Titus—from AD 79 to 81. It just wasn’t me.
And although I’ve had many run-ins with the High Council over the centuries, I couldn’t turn to them for help after I was made a vampire. Not even when I was desperate to find out more about this new creature I’d become, and thought they might be the only ones who knew. They’d already formed opinions of me long before I ever darkened their doorstep. I doubt they consider me a real wi
tch. Perhaps, in the past, they would have.
But now, with the addition of my vampire blood, I’m just an abomination to them. And to most other vampires, my witch powers are something even more otherworldly . . . something to be wary of. So, I am soundly rejected by both tribes, though I do have the odd friend here and there. My son has said he feels the same way, being half-in, half-out of the mortal and magical communities. Sometimes, I think we have more in common than he’d like to admit. Or than I would.
But I’ve kept you too long, dear reader, and my sad tale is drawing to a close. They say many things contributed to the fall of Rome. But, for me, it all ended that summer morn in Pompeii. What had once been a mighty city—like a mighty civilization—reduced to ash and rubble. Like a man of great dignity and power shrunken down to mere beast. Like me. And whether it happened in one day or a hundred thousand days, the result was the same. A dream deferred. An age ended. A paradise lost.
After all I had done for Rome, her children betrayed me. By dying out, they betrayed me. Just like Sabine. I feel, above all, that this was the loss of my innocence. Not when I ravished my first lover. Not when I made my first kill. Not even when I was ripped from my semblance of a mortal body and turned into a vampire. It was when I realized that hard-won happiness would never be mine. A monster’s story can only end one way. And it is never in the monster’s favor.
If you saw me now, I would appear much the same as I had then: a well-built man in his forties. Naturally, my wardrobe has changed a bit. Togas have been relegated to buffoonish parties young people attend while feigning the receipt of an education. Today, you might see me in a black button-down shirt and suit, and custom shoes (Italian, of course).
Why did I go on, you might ask? I suppose that, like all living creatures, I dread “not-being” too much to do anything else. It is not that I do not tire of the endless centuries, as Sabine predicted I would. I do. But besides the fear of not-being, there is usually some form of distraction to help me while away the time. Women. Blood. More women. You could say that, after a few millennia, living has become a habit.