by Jeff Gunhus
“Needless to say, I stayed tucked deep into my shelter, singing the Ibn Al-Lar as best I could in the fouled air.
“Just as quickly as it had come, the storm passed. It is the way of the desert. There is no time for waste. Either there is a storm or there is not. There is no in-between. I only knew the storm was gone because a glassy silence replaced the howling of the wind. At this point I was buried under the sand, wedged in an air pocket between the rocks.
“When the howling went away, I considered that perhaps it was only because I had been buried so deeply underground that I simply could no longer hear it. As I started to dig my way out, I had no idea whether it was a few feet to the surface or if an entire mountain on sand had been dumped on me. I had no choice but to sing the Ibn Al-Lar and claw through the loose sand, hoping that it would not collapse on me and swallow me whole.
“Finally, after an hour of digging and eating sand, my hand broke the surface and felt the fresh air. It felt like coming up from water after choking on a stale lungful of air for too long.
“After I pulled myself from the desert like a corpse rising from the dead, I saw that the storm had reclaimed the rocks that had been my shelter. They were completely covered with sand as if they had never existed at all. I shivered at the thought of how close I had come to that same fate, buried alive with no marker to show that I had ever been alive. I mention this because having my mortality in my mind impacted an important decision I made later.
“The entire time I climbed through the sand, I chanted the Ibn Al-Lar under my breath. It’s rather difficult to sing with a mouthful of sand. And now that I was on the surface, I found myself without water and with a throat and lips so dry that I imagined they might crack like a dried riverbed in a drought. But I knew I had to sing, so I lifted my voice onto the wind the best I could and sent the song into the desert to seek out the djinn.
“It wasn’t long before I received a response.
“A scorpion crawled out of the sand only a few feet from me. I imagined it was surviving the sandstorm the same way I had, but I didn’t let our shared experience stop me. I immediately plucked it from the ground, pulled off its poisonous stinger and popped it into my mouth. Desert things, of which I was one, know that all living things carry water in them. This scorpion was all crunchy exoskeleton and mushy inside, but the tiny amount of moisture it added to my mouth felt like I was drinking a casket of water from the finest oasis.
“A second scorpion crawled out from the sand behind me. Then, a third. The sand all around me bubbled like water coming to a boil as dozens and then hundreds of scorpions broke the surface. The snakes came next. Slithering out from the sands and pushing through the piles of scorpions to come toward me.
“My first impulse was to run. But run where? The rocks were gone. The desert erupted with a plague of poisonous creatures in every direction. There was nowhere to go.
“Then I saw my enemy. Eight of them stood in a circle around me in the distance as if marking the points of a compass. The air was still. Yet their black robes caught the faintest breezes and billowed around them. Hoods hung low, obscuring their faces. One was dressed in red and stood out like a flame against the pale sand. I knew I was looking at the Lord of the Djinn. It had answered my foolish call, and now it was here to take my soul. I saw the shadow of death. And, I’m ashamed to admit, I was afraid.”
Gregor paused, lost again in the candle flame that flickered in front of him, hypnotized by its dance. The weight of his last words settled into the room. I was afraid. It came out bitter and filled with regret, and I knew whatever terrible thing was about to happen in his story came from that one truth. That one dark admission.
I was afraid.
I’d long forgotten about the fading afternoon light coming in from the street outside. The questions I had about the Vampire Lord were now only whispers in the back of my mind. I knew somehow this story from centuries ago was linked to where I was today, but at that second I wasn’t sitting in a comfortable chair in an apartment in Marrakech. I was standing with Gregor in the hot desert, singing the Ibn Al-Lar to the wind, an ocean of scorpions and snakes at my feet, the djinn lord striding toward me…and I was afraid.
“The scorpions and snakes didn’t attack,” Gregor continued. “Not at first. They piled up on themselves a foot deep, churning around me in a circle like some living whirlpool. But they left a small patch of sand where I stood untouched. No cage forged by men would have been more effective at holding me captive on that spot. I watched as the red-cloaked djinn walked down the slope of the sand dune toward me, joined by two of the black-robed ones on either side of him.
“I sang the Ibn Al-Lar louder, hoping this would be my weapon against this evil. My heart leapt when the black-robed djiin stopped in place, their hands to their heads as if in pain. I sang louder still, and they staggered backward. But the one in the red robe never broke stride. It was as you would expect death to be. Unstoppable. Immovable. Untouched by one man’s petty attempt to avert it with nothing but a song.
“It stopped just outside the writhing swath of scorpions and snakes and watched me. The Ibn Al-Lar had no effect on it, so I stopped singing. I squared my shoulders and thrust out my chin, trying to hide the fact that my legs shook like those of a child afraid of the dark. I sought out the creature’s face, but the dark shadow under the cowl of its hood was like darkest night. A piece of me thanked mercy that I did not have to look at what I knew would be a terrible sight. The desert was deathly quiet as we stood staring at one another.
“The djinn made a guttural sound in the back of its throat and swiped at the air with its hands. All at once the scorpions and snakes converged on me. They swarmed up my legs, under my clothes. I jumped and swatted and kicked, but there was nothing I could do. There were thousands and thousands of them. I fell to the ground and they covered my body, so thick that I felt their weight pushing on me. My face was still clear, but I felt them crawl into my ears. I screamed, and they flooded into my mouth, pushing down my throat. I felt them in my nose. In my head.
My eyes were still clear in those last moments, and I saw the red-robed djinn walk up and stand over me. It raised its hands over me, palms open, moving from side-to-side like a conjuror. Then it clenched both fists and, all at one, every scorpion and snake within reach of my skin sank their fangs or stingers into my body, pumping their venom into my blood. I’d never felt pain like that before. Every muscle in my body spasmed. My back arched so violently that I thought my spine would break. But I held on to life. Even with the pain and the futility of my predicament, I wanted to live. Even if just for another second. I loved life so much that I clung to it with everything I had.
“Amid all the pain, a voice reached out to me in my head.
“It said, You want to live. It wasn’t a question, but a statement.
“Yes! My mind cried. I want to live!
“What are you willing to pay? the voice asked.
“Anything! I’ll pay anything. Just let me live. Please, I beg you.
“Are you certain of this, Ahmed el-Tayeb, Sheikh of the Shaouri? the voice asked, echoing in my head.
“I would like to be able to say I was out of my mind with pain so I didn’t understand the question. Or the consequences of my answer. But this would be a lie. Like any man, I hoped my death would be a brave one, but I cowered in the face of it. I would have done anything to live. Anything at all. The djinn saw this in my heart and knew my answer.
“Then I heard the most amazing thing. The voice began to sing. A gorgeous, female voice, sweeter than any sound I’d ever heard. And it sang me the Ibn Al-Lar, the most pure version of it there could ever be. I followed the sound in my head farther and farther into myself until at last, I could follow no more. I drifted out of consciousness, out of time and place, and fell into a black sleep.
“I wished I had stayed in that sleep as I was meant to, but it was not to be. When I awoke, it was into a nightmare unlike anything I could have imagined.
”
Chapter Seven
Gregor stopped, took a pitcher from the table near him and poured a glass of water. He offered it to me, but I shook my head. He nodded and drank it slowly, his eyes closed as if easing some long remembered thirst. He emptied the glass and placed it back on the table, his hand resting on it, fingers absently running along the rim. I felt a surge of panic that he had decided not to continue with his story, and I fought down the urge to say something. I was about to lose that battle and blurt something out when he finally continued.
“When I finally opened my eyes, I was in a cave in front of a small fire. On the ground next to me was a stone bowl filled with water. I tried to reach for it but my body refused to move. Panic filled me. I was paralyzed. My eyes could move in my sockets, but that was it. My mouth was so dry and stomach so empty that seeing water so close and not being able to touch it was torture. A terrible thought occurred to me. Perhaps I was dead and this was to be my own personal hell. A place where what I needed was endlessly dangled in front of me, just out of reach.
“But then an angel walked into the cave. Not a real angel, but given my state of mind, you’d forgive me for thinking she was. She was tall and dressed in a simple white gown. She moved with a grace I felt more than saw, although she did seem to glide across the cave floor when she moved. Black hair fell down past her shoulders. Her face was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Fair-skinned. Wide, kind eyes that blazed blue. High cheekbones. Full lips that were moist and red, a rarity in the desert. She was the most beautiful woman I had even seen.
“She saw that I was awake and smiled at me. She raised the bowl of water to my lips and, God’s mercy, it was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted. It filled every dry, cracked crease in my mouth. The second drink washed through my insides and made me feel whole again. When she pulled the bowl away, I mouthed the words thank you, which she greeted with another smile.
“Slowly, feeling came back to my body, and I realized my paralysis was only temporary. The woman saw me flex my hands and move my feet and nodded her approval.
“‘Do you have a name?’ I finally managed to ask. I hardly remembered my own, but I needed to know hers.
“‘Caroline,’ she replied.
“‘It was you,’ I said. ‘Yours was the voice I heard. The song.’ I spoke the same way my thoughts came to be. Disjointed and out of order. But she seemed to understand.
“‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was I who asked you those questions. Do you remember?’
“I fought through the fog in my head, but then I remembered. ‘You asked me what price I was willing to pay to live.’ She nodded.
“‘Your soul was so strong. I’d never felt that before,’ she said. ‘I granted you your wish.’
“The feeling was back in my arms and legs now. I was still sluggish, but I was able to prop myself up. I looked behind me and saw that I was lying on a red robe. I looked up at the woman, horrified. She was the djinn, I thought. ‘What did you do to me?’ I said, pushing away from her.
“‘Only what you asked,’ she said. ‘Only what you begged me for.’
“I knew the old stories. I knew the superstitions. Slowly, I raised my hands to my throat and felt the puncture holes there. And then I knew.”
“Wait,” I said, breaking into the story. “Are you saying you’re a djinn?”
Gregor looked up at me, frowned, and shook his head. “No, use the head, boy. I’m a vampire, of course.” He opened his mouth, and his incisors grew twice their normal length.
My mind wheeled at the implications. The fabled vampire hunter of the Black Watch was actually hunting and killing his own kind. But that wasn’t all. There was an entirely greater level of complication to the story. Gregor watched as I connected the dots. The only reason it took me so long was that it was too incredible to believe.
“The woman,” I said. “She wasn’t really a djinn, was she? That’s why the song didn’t work on her.”
Gregor nodded. “She was a powerful vampire living among the djinn for her own reasons.”
“And now,” I said slowly, “she’s the Lord of the Vampires.”
Gregor closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. Maybe hearing the truth out loud was more than he could bear. When he opened his eyes, he looked somehow older and weary. “She calls herself Shakra now. But under the hatred and pain she is still my Caroline. So when you ask me to help you kill her, you are asking me to kill my creator. Worse, you’re asking me to help you kill the only woman I ever loved.”
I wanted to ask a hundred questions all at once, but I knew better than to try. Gregor had decided to tell the story exactly as he wanted. Nothing more, nothing less. I waited impatiently for him to continue. He regarded me with an arched eyebrow as if waiting for another question from me. When none came, he settled back into his chair and continued his story.
“The next few days in the cave were terrifying as the vampire blood took hold of me. I fell into a dark depression as I realized what I had brought upon myself in my moment of weakness. I felt ashamed that I had been such a coward in the face of death that I had dishonored my ancestors to escape it.
“Caroline sat with me in silence for those days. Watching me. Waiting for the inevitable questions to come. And come they did. One day I started to ask them and our conversation went on unbroken for weeks. It may have been months. Years. Inside the cave, there was no way to mark time. Neither of us needed sleep. Periodically she would leave and return with some desert animal, and its blood would provide the food I needed. We talked about what we were and what it meant. We talked about everything she had seen and learned. About the nature of good and evil.
“I began by being afraid of her, but my feelings grew. When she left to hunt I felt part of me missing, and I was agitated until she returned. I will spare you the details of those long days and nights I spent with her except to say I fell in love with her. And she with me.
“But slowly, as my strength returned, even though I felt a contentment I’d never experienced before, I knew I had to return to my tribe. I was sheikh. My bloodline had led the Shaouri for generations beyond memory. I felt the pull of my obligation and the requirement for my honor. But when I told Caroline this, she grew silent and cold. I had expected a discussion, an argument even, but none came. Her quiet unnerved me, for I did not know what it meant or what she was thinking. But trying to pry open a woman’s heart when she wants it to remain closed is a fool’s errand, so I left it alone.
“The next day I left the cave, begging her to come with me. She refused and predicted I would come back to her soon enough. I told her I would come back to see her in a week no matter what, and we would discuss her joining me again at that time. Again, there was a coldness to her I didn’t expect as I left. I should have known then that something was wrong.
“I traveled by foot to the oasis where the tribe would be camped. When I was human, the blistering heat would have made the journey impossible. But to my vampire skin, which you obviously know can be in the direct sun, it felt comforting. I missed Caroline from the second I left, but I looked forward to reuniting with my people. I had visions of introducing them to Caroline and taking her as my wife. Together we would look after the Shaouri and protect them for all time.
“I smelled the fire before I saw the smoke. I caught the scent on the breeze and knew immediately what it was. There was more than wood being burned. My vampire senses could smell the unmistakable scent of human flesh.
“I ran to the oasis, coming over the rise of the sand dune with a terrible feeling about what I would find there. But what I saw was worse than anything I could have imagined.
“Every tent burned to the ground. Every farm animal not only killed, but ripped to shreds and its parts scattered. All of my tribe, every Shaouri man, woman and child, were stacked in a pile, dead. As I ran to them, out of my mind with grief, I saw the unmistakable signs left behind by their murderers. The djinn.
In a moment of perfect clarity, I und
erstood.
Caroline had done this. She loved me as much as I her, and she was willing to destroy the only other thing in the world that would compete for my affection. In her world of cold reason, the only solution was to eradicate the tribe so that I could not be pulled back to it.
“One by one, I carried the members of my tribe down from the pile, washed their bodies, and buried them. I grieved for a day and a night as was our custom and then set out to avenge my people.
“Finding the djinn was easy enough. My new vampiric senses told me exactly where to go. My anger told me exactly what to do. Within a few days, I had killed every djinn within twenty miles. But there was one who I saved for last.
“I found her standing on the crest of a giant sand dune in the middle of the desert. There were no footsteps leading to her. She had been there long enough for the wind to shift the sands and cover her tracks. She was waiting for me. Maybe she knew that if she stood in one place long enough, I would find her. When I approached, I saw that her eyes were closed and her face was tilted up to face the sun. Even then, with anger boiling through me, I found her beautiful.
“She opened her eyes and looked at me with such longing that I knew why she had done it. I knew she loved me. But I couldn’t forgive her. I couldn’t forgive myself. It was my weakness that had killed my people every bit as much as it was her ordering her djinn into the camp.
“But I also couldn’t kill her. This was the truth of it and I’m certain she knew it.
“We didn’t exchange a single word. We looked into each other’s eyes and everything that needed to be said was said. I would spend the rest of my life hunting her kind, killing every vampire I possibly could to repay her for taking my tribe from me. That destiny would be both my vengeance and my penance, tied together in a murderous, bloody knot that could never be untangled. From that moment on, I left behind everything that I ever was—father, husband, leader. The name Ahmed el-Tayeb meant nothing to me any longer. I was Gregor the Vampire Killer.…”