He didn’t stir as I narrowed the distance between us. Ten meters… Then five…
I hope he was dreaming something pleasant, for it was his last night in this world.
Ordinarily, I’m hesitant to kill the young, even one as close to manhood as this boy, but I was not myself that night. Injury had robbed me of my normal compassion, as surely as it robbed me of my memories.
It shames me to describe the exhilaration with which I killed him, the pleasure I derived from drinking his life’s blood, but I’ve sworn that I will speak no lie in the recounting of my long life. Even those acts which cast me as a villain.
He cried out when I threw myself on him, shrieking in his sudden terror like a toddling child. I threw my good arm across his head, pressing his cheek to the ground to bare his throat, and then I bit into the warm meat of his neck.
And when I say bit, I really mean “maul”.
In my hunger, I savaged that poor boy. I drove my face into his neck, slashing and biting and ripping huge chunks of muscle and flesh out of him. He heaved beneath me, pushing at my head and chest for a moment, pissing in his fear, but the fight, like his life, ran out of him quickly. He collapsed beneath me with a quiet groan, his eyes rolling toward the moon before losing the spark of awareness.
I sucked the blood out of him as quickly as I could, for it would not spurt as forcefully when his heart stopped beating. He died and then I pumped down on his chest, trying to force as much blood out of him as possible.
I rose up on my knees, feeling the heat of his life surging through me. I moaned and threw my head back as the bones of my face shifted, realigned.
My injuries healed rapidly. My left arm finally came free of my back and dropped down by my side. My dangling foot drew back to the mangled stump of my ankle, reattaching. My right arm snapped and popped, becoming the arm of a man again, smooth skinned and with only the natural joints and bulges.
I licked the blood from my lips, my fingers, my forearms. Turning back toward the boy, I stripped away his furs and underclothes until he was naked beneath me, then I dropped upon him and began to bite into his flesh. I gnawed at him like a starved wolf would gnaw at the bones of a reindeer, slashing him in a thousand different places to suck the last dregs of his blood from the capillaries of his skin. I gutted him, pulling his organs from the cage of his ribs, then licked the juices from his tangled entrails. Finally, I plucked out his heart and ate it raw.
Kneeling there beneath the stars, with the boy-man’s blood smeared all over my hands and chest and face, I cried out in the dark.
“I am Gon! I still live!”
3
For the first time in seven thousand years, I had a man’s shape; I had a man’s voice. For the first time in seven thousand years, I spoke as a man spoke.
But my name was all I knew.
I sat down beside the corpse of the young Mammoth Hunter and tried to recall my past. Though I could sense memories trembling at the edge of discovery, there was still a vast gulf of darkness separating me from my recollections.
“I am Gon,” I said hoarsely. “But who is Gon?”
I looked toward the mangled corpse beside me, but my victim could be no help to me.
“Who are you?” I asked him, then gazing all around, “And where am I? What is this cold and barren place?”
My face knuckled up as I put my questions to the starry heavens.
I placed my fingertips to my features and explored them, running my touch through my disheveled hair, then down to the jutting cliff of my brow, the bony bridge of my nose with its soft bulbous tip, then finally on below to my broad and sensual mouth, rimmed by wiry tufts of mustache and beard. Who am I? It troubled me intensely that I could not recall the image of my own face. There was no pool of water nearby in which to gaze. I thought, maybe if I saw my own face, I would remember myself. Maybe I would remember who this “Gon” fellow was. I decided I would look on my reflection the first opportunity I got.
But for now…
For now I would walk as a man walks. No more crawling in the grass like a snake.
I looked down my body in the moonlight, admiring the shape of it. No longer mangled, no longer broken, it was smooth and white in the lunar light.
There were still blemishes and a couple places where the bone showed through gaps in the flesh, but I looked like a man again. There beneath me was a man’s feet, a man’s hairy legs, a man’s cock and balls (my organ standing rigidly at attention, I must confess; that happens a lot when male vampires glut themselves on blood, a little something you might not know… or want to know!).
My hands glittered in the silver light. I tried to brush away the sparkles, thinking them frost perhaps, or some dusting of stone flecks, but I soon realized the winking was actually a quality of my white, smooth flesh. My skin was not soft and tan like the skin of the dead boy, but of some inscrutable material that seemed porous and unnatural.
The joints of my hands popped a little when I squeezed them into fists. I studied them as I turned my palms and flexed the fingers, and for just an instant I remembered carving a little deer out of wood for one of my children, holding it up in these hands to examine it before passing it on to my grasping son.
My son…!
Excited, I tried to picture the boy’s face. I tried so hard my forehead furrowed, but the image would not come. I felt my eyes grow moist and I scrubbed them angrily.
“Where are you, son? What is your name?” I whispered. “Are you still alive? Are you waiting for me to come home?”
If I had a son, I reasoned, then I must also have a wife, but I could not summon her visage either.
The blood inside me was cooling now. My flesh began to wither and grew chill. I watched a mist rise off the surface of my skin as my body temperature dropped, then turned my face toward the North, my eyelids narrowing down to greedy slits.
If I had more blood, then perhaps I would remember!
My hunger stirred, restless, greedy. Pangs of agony coiled and struck the inside of my belly, a nest of angry snakes. I observed my flesh draw tight to the bone. My cock drooped and shriveled as the dark thing inside me—the Living Hunger, the Venom-- used up the last of the Mammoth Hunter’s blood. I cast my gaze down to the murdered boy-man. His clothes were shredded and stank of his strung out guts. No, I could not wear those things! Better to be naked. Besides, the cold seemed to have no effect on me. I could feel it, but it did not pain me. It did not make my muscles quake.
But I must have more blood!
I turned northward and began to limp toward the camp of the remaining Mammoth Hunters. I could not run. I could not lift myself from the earth in great bounds, but at least I was no longer crawling on my belly in the dust.
I walked for a couple hours in the dark, until I’d drawn near their camp again, then squatted down outside the glow of their leaping orange fire. They were making quick work of the mammoth, I saw. Some of its hide was already staked out to be scraped and tanned later by their women.
All but two men were wrapped up in their sleeping rolls, snoring. There were two hunters on watch, guarding their kill from any hungry scavengers that might be bold enough to sneak into the camp by night. They were sitting by the fire, talking quietly, their spears thrust in the dirt.
I pondered how I might snatch one of them without alerting the others. The hunger inside me was an agony.
On the far side of the camp, a wild dog cried out.
The guards grabbed their spears and rose, blinking into the darkness. One of them took a braided paddle-like contraption and shook it toward the shadows. Some kind of noise-maker. The animal yipped and whined but did not approach the light. After a while, the men relaxed and sat back down, putting their weapons aside.
It was not long before one of them began to nod. His partner gestured for him to lie down and rest. I leaned forward, excited, as the first man curled up in his furs to sleep. There was just one man awake now. An old one, by the smell. Could he stay awake m
uch longer? I rose to a crouch and crept a little bit closer.
He caught the flash of my eyes in the dark! I’d forgotten how reflective my pupils were. I saw the old hunter turn with a start and he probed the dark around me with his gaze, plucking his spear from the ground.
Quickly, before he caught sight of me, I dropped to the ground and squeezed my eyes to slits.
He pushed upright, hands on his knees, and weaved his way through the other sleeping hunters to look for me. He stared very near where I lay.
I was starting to think he could actually see me when his shoulders slumped and he returned to the fire.
I waited.
At last the old man nodded off, his chin to his chest, and I slipped through the dark to the hunter lying furthest from the fire. Clamping my hand over his mouth, I twisted his head violently to one side. His eyes flashed open but it was too late. I opened his arteries with my fangs and began to feed, even as I dragged the thrashing man into the dark.
His heart was strong and hot blood sprayed into my mouth-- a coppery flood. He pulled at the hand clamped to his mouth. Kicked his feet. A couple of the others stirred in their sleep as my victim writhed and clawed at the earth with his fingers, but I had strength enough to steal him away undiscovered.
I drained the man under the moonlight and then lay back on the ground beside him, lacing my fingers over my heart. I sighed contentedly, feeling his blood coursing through me. Looking up at the sky, I realized I once believed those points of light to be the spirits of my forefathers. I recalled my father saying they were the campfires of those who’d passed into the spirit world. I turned to the man lying beside me, excited by this reclaimed memory.
“I remember now, Brulde! Those lights in the heavens are the spirits of our grandfathers,” I said, but then I realized the man beside me was dead. Who was this Brulde I’d spoken to? Why did his name come unbidden to my thoughts?
Who are you, Brulde? I wondered, sitting upright.
I put my hands to my head, squeezing my temples in frustration.
Brulde, Brulde, Brulde… and Eyya, my wife! I could picture her face in my mind suddenly. The blood of the Mammoth Hunter was healing my brain.
My woman’s name was Eyya! She had large brown eyes and dark coarse hair, which she braided with gleaming blue and black feathers. I remembered how her skin glowed in the sunlight, for she loved to paint her flesh with gold ochre. She thought it made her pretty, and it had.
I remembered her pushing me into the soft warmth of our sleeping furs, her hands on my shoulders. “Rest now, husband. Let me comfort you tonight,” she murmured, smiling down at me. I watched her full breasts swing above my mouth. Oh, how I wanted to wrap my lips around those big, crinkled nipples, suckle at her bosom like a baby! But not tonight. Tonight she was the sucking one. I gulped as she unlaced my leggings and freed my stiffening worm.
I remembered Eyya, her face sweaty and straining, as she squatted over the birthing pit I’d dug and lined with rabbit skin, her strangled cry as our first child swelled out of her maidenhood, spilled moistly into the furs. I was so overwhelmed, I almost fainted. Eyya fell back on her bottom, exhausted, the umbilical cord trailing from between her thighs, and I scooped our baby from the birthing pit and cleared his little mouth with my finger. With trembling hands, I cut the cord and tied it with a length of string.
“Look, beloved! It’s our baby!” I said, laughing and crying at the same time, and then the tiny thing wrinkled up his purple face and started to wail. So loud! Such a strong little boy!
“I want to name him after my father,” I said, weeping proudly, and Eyya nodded.
The memories were so powerful, they swept me to my feet. Where are you, Eyya? I wondered, turning in a circle. I wanted to fly back home to her, but I did not know where I was!
I had to remember more. I had to remember my way back to my family!
I returned to the camp of the Mammoth Hunters that night and took one more.
My strength and the speed of my movements were growing exponentially. In my ignorance, I marveled at my powers, and at the rapid restoration of my body. Even the places where bone was showing before had vanished, the flesh growing over the wounds.
I slashed through the undulating grassland, quick as the wind. Quicker. My third victim’s neck snapped like a dry stick when I dragged him to my fangs. He didn’t have time to thrash or cry out like the other. I fed on him like a starved wolf, and then I dragged the two bodies away and hid them from their companions.
Daylight was fast approaching. I could see its radiance on the horizon, the low clouds glowing purple and pink along the rim of the desolate steppe. I was tired. My belly was full-- sloshing even, with the contents of my victim’s veins. The blood was not being utilized as quickly as it had before, and like any living man with a straining stomach, I only wanted to sleep, but I dragged the bodies behind me without slowing. I knew I must hide them before I allowed myself to rest. The why was not important. It was an instinctive urge.
I carried the two bodies a good distance away before I searched out a place to hide myself for the day. I felt I needed to conceal the evidence of my predations, and myself, from the men I hunted. I still did not yet remember the measure of my powers, and I feared vulnerabilities there was no need to worry about.
If I was in full possession of my mind, I would not have feared the retaliation of the Mammoth Hunters, but though some of my memories had been restored, I was still very ignorant of my past and my superhuman vampire attributes.
As the first blazing wedge of the sun flashed over the distant plains, I wriggled into a crevice in the earth, a narrow cleft that running water had carved alongside a dry creek bed. It was out of sight and just barely deep enough to conceal my whole body. Still I was pretty sure I’d travelled far enough from the campsite of the Mammoth Hunters. I didn’t think they would stumble across me as they looked for their missing companions.
I slept with my face turned toward the dark. Though I could feel the sun on my back, my bare flesh tightening with the heat, the darkness inside the crevice was cool and comforting, and my grip on wakefulness soon loosened. Dirt trickled on my cheek as I closed my eyes. Dangling roots tickled my nose. My mind cast adrift like a leaf on a stream. Soon after, I dreamed.
Yes, vampires dream.
Our sleep is very deep, and alternates between passages of death-like insensibility and vivid dreams. My memories were returning, and my dreams that morning were shot through with flashing fragments of my human life in the valley of the Swabian Alb. I dreamed of my early childhood, a son of the River People. I dreamed of my mother, who died when I was young, and I dreamed of my father, whom I idolized, the mighty hunter Gan. I dreamed of my older brothers. I dreamed of our crowded wetus, and playing tag with the child who would one day become my tent mate, my blonde-headed cousin Brulde.
I dreamed of the Fat Hands, and how they came down to the river to catch fish and bathe. I was a little boy in that dream. The hulking Neanderthal men seemed so big and fascinating. I loved to watch them wade out naked in the river. Someday I will be as big and strong as them, I thought to myself. I waded into the river to help them, pulling the fish from their spears when they caught them.
The Neanderthals laughed at me and called me Little Worm in their deep, resounding voices. “Here, Little Worm! Get this fish off my spear for me!” Stodd, the towering patriarch of the Fat Hand fishers, yelled after me. His massive, hairy body rippled with muscle. “Quick! Don’t let it flap off!” His teeth flashed broad and white within the tangles of his bushy red beard.
I dreamed of the day our village was raided by the Foul Ones, the tribe of flesh-eaters that resided to the north of our valley. They were men like us, but despicable and depraved. They stole our women and children. They raped. They murdered. They ate the flesh of their own kind, and wore the bones as ornamentation. My father had rescued me from one of the strange invaders just as the marauder was about to scoop me into his arms and steal me away.<
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The monster who made me a vampire hailed from those same cruel people, or so I believed. He sharpened his teeth like they did, and wore human bones as decoration. I dreamed of him flying down into the charnel pit where he had imprisoned me, his furs spreading out like the wings of a great bird of prey. He landed in a crouch and stalked toward me, and I scrambled away across the stiff, frozen bodies of all the Neanderthals he had devoured and discarded. His eyes flashed red in the shadowed pits beneath his brows. His lips split open to reveal what looked like a hundred sharpened teeth. He was coming to kill me… He was coming to steal my life away!
Dreaming of the fiend who made me a vampire, I jolted awake. For a moment, I wasn’t sure where I lay, only that it was dark and I was enveloped in the smell of raw soil. For just a second, I thought I was back in the charnel pit where I had been transformed into a blood-drinker, and, panicking, I began to claw at the earthen cavity surrounding me.
I spilled out of the narrow channel of dirt and rolled onto my back. Lying there in the dry wash, the grass overhead swaying in the wind, I saw the moon and stars, and realized it was all just a dream, that I had slept through the day, undiscovered, and night had returned.
Hunger squeezed my guts. I was cold, starving.
I rose naked in the starlight and reached out with my senses. There, to the north: the Mammoth Hunters. They hadn’t abandoned their camp. Not yet. I could smell their warm bodies, hear the murmur of their voices, even at such a great distance.
With a wicked grin, I leapt from the dry creek bed and went to hunt.
4
I took their leader Korg that night.
There were five left by then: Korg and his second-in-command Lene’Hab, an old hunter named Elk, a young man named Hammon and the boy-child Ilio. None of them were sleeping when I returned to the camp. They all stood guard around a blazing fire, watching the outer darkness with their weapons clutched tight in their fists.
I could smell their fear as I circled the camp. I kept a far enough distance that they did not see the flash of my eyes or hear the sound of my movements. The blood of their brothers had healed my body. I moved like a wraith in the moonlight, blurring from one vantage to another, probing for weakness, waiting for an opportunity to strike.
The Oldest Living Vampire on the Prowl (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 2) Page 6