“Have you never seen your uncle or any of the other men in your village engage in sex?” I asked.
Ilio shook his head. “No. They always put up curtains when they lay down with their women. At least, my uncle did. He said it was man’s weakness that he must return to the womb, and that we should hide that weakness from view, lest others make a mockery of it.”
I shook my head. “My people were not ashamed of their pleasures. It is the act that makes children… and keeps our wives tolerant of us. Why be embarrassed of it?”
“I’m not ashamed,” Ilio said. Then he finally confided, “When I was cleaning my penis yesterday, it grew rigid and then a sticky fluid squirted out of it. It never did that before. It felt really good. Does your penis do that, Thest?”
I laughed. “So that is what this sudden curiosity is all about!” Sobering, I replied, “That’s a perfectly natural thing, and, yes, that is what happens to mine if I… ahem! clean it too rigorously. Don’t worry about it, boy. That is merely your body pouring forth its seed, and when you take a wife and you impart your seed within her belly, it will grow into a baby inside her.”
Ilio nodded, relieved. “I just hope mine grows as large as yours.”
“It may grow even larger,” I conceded. “When it comes to that, the size of the branch varies with the tree.”
It was a time I think back on fondly now, the raising of the child Ilio. I’d lost my own family when I was made into a vampire. In those first few decades of my vampiric existence, I was barely able to control my bloodlust, if at all, and could only watch my children grow from afar. I did not dare come near them, lest I bring them to harm. With Ilio, I was a much older Blood Drinker. I had more control of my hunger. I could enjoy the rearing of a child, for I considered him a son no less than the sons of my own flesh-- Gan and Hun, Gavid and Den. That’s not to say I didn’t hunger for his blood. In fact, my craving for his blood drove me to hunt the forest nightly, gorging on the blood of any unfortunate animal that crossed my path. My wicked appetite was bearable only when I was glutted on the blood of the forest wildlife, my belly straining with it.
Ilio was a good son. He overlooked my faults. He was respectful of my decisions, mindful of his chores and took great pleasure in my approval. He strutted when I complimented his skills with a bow. He beamed when I exclaimed over the size of a deer he’d killed, or the cleverness of his snares.
Over time, he noticed further peculiarities about my vampire nature. Once, when I laughed out loud at his wit, he took note of my fangs. He later asked if all my people had fangs like a wolf, and I answered, “Yes, Ilio.”
When I asked if my teeth frightened him, he shrugged and said, “No more than anything else about you. We are just made differently, I suppose.”
Finally, one rainy afternoon, he demanded to know why I left the cave at night, when I thought he was sleeping. He wanted to know where I was going, what I was doing.
“I am hunting, Ilio,” I answered. “I do not eat food as you do. When you were younger, I pretended to eat so you wouldn’t be frightened of me, but you are older now. You know that I love you, and I wish to be honest with you. I hunt at night when you are sleeping. I catch my prey and suck the blood from their bodies. I have an illness and that is how I must eat.”
Ilio shuddered. “That’s disgusting.”
I nodded. “Yes. It is.”
But later that night, as I waited for him to grow sleepy, he smiled at me affectionately and said, “You can go hunting, Thest. You do not need to wait until I sleep.”
Returning his smile, I rose and unlaced my boots and breeches. “So I do not tear them, or stain them with blood,” I explained, stepping out of them. I crossed the cave to the opening, naked, then looked back at him and said, “I will return shortly.”
“Be careful,” he called to me as he sat by the fire. He was stringing his bow.
“I promise,” I chuckled, then flew into the night.
Sometimes, during my nightly hunts, I ranged further out than was necessary. I climbed to the highest tree I came across and I gazed out across the darkened landscape. To the east across the endless plains, to the mountains in the west, I reached out with my vampire senses, searching for others of my kind. I had not forgotten the evidence of their predations, the plundered village of the Denghoi, so I maintained a vigil, both for Ilio’s safety and my own curiosity.
I searched the ground sometimes for more of those strange, crescent tracks, but I never found anything of note, no vampires, no strange beasts with moon-shaped footprints. I spotted human nomads sometimes, travelling in small groups across the grassy plains or picking their way through rocky passes in the mountains, but no other vampires like me. Still, I searched, and I often wondered what my vampire brethren looked like, how they behaved, what deities they might believe in or myths they might extoll.
The only vampires I’d ever seen were the fiends who’d accosted the peaceful valley where I’d been born: the strange little blood-drinker and his powerful, vile master-- the creature who stole away my life.
Another summer passed, then autumn and winter. It grew bitter cold. We hung hides across the entrance of our cave and huddled around the fire. Winter made Ilio surly. He was restless and cranky. My little boy was just a head shorter than I now. His face was pebbly with acne, his mustache growing in. I think he spent half the cold season sleeping and the other half masturbating. He was so hormonal the cave stank of his burgeoning manhood. Finally, when spring came round again, he asked if we could leave our home in the mountains.
“I want to travel again, Thest,” he said, his voice husky, having deepened in the past three months. “I want to be around other people. I want to find a woman to lie with.”
I nodded. Of course. I knew he’d fly the nest someday. This was as it should be. It should come as no surprise to me. “Where do you want to go?” I asked him, my heart breaking just a little at the thought.
“South,” he answered eagerly. Did he think I would object? I only ever thought of what was best for him. “My uncle used to talk of a tribe called the Oombai,” he said, “Though he usually called them the Ground Scratchers. They used to trade with the Denghoi before my people were all killed. He said they were an odd tribe, and that they worship some strange goddess who lives beneath the earth, but the women of their country are plentiful and very fair to look at. So he said.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Then South it is, Ilio.”
3
It saddened me to think of leaving our little burrow in the mountains. There were so many things I knew I’d miss. I’d miss its grand view of the Pannonian Plain, the sight of the endless grasslands shining under the moon, so still and calm and peaceful. I’d miss the forest and the falls. I’d miss my nightly hunting excursions, the abundant wildlife, the simplicity of the life we’d made together, all alone here on this mountain, but Ilio was becoming a man, and I knew it was time for him to seek out others of his kind. I’d possessed him long enough.
It was time to find a new home for him.
We gathered what belongings we could comfortably carry and said good-bye to our cozy little warren. As Ilio bent to his preparations, I surveyed our home for the last time: the plush furs we’d covered the floor with, and all the boy’s wall paintings. Ilio had covered the walls with handprints and paintings of deer and fish. He’d even made a drawing of me, a white humanoid figure with two orange dots for eyes. I was not too keen of his paintings at first. My people were superstitious of such things, but I grew accustomed to them eventually. Even came to appreciate their beauty. I would miss our home.
“Are you ready to go?” I asked him, placing my torch against a rock near the entrance. Its flames whipped and made a sputtering sound in the wind that swirled through the mouth of the cavern.
Ilio tied off his pack and sat back with a sigh. He looked all around the cave, his eyes large and grave, and I watched his brow furrow with emotion. I was glad to see the hesitation on his face. I
felt less maudlin, then.
“This was a good home,” he said.
“Yes, it was.”
I made a point not to look back as we departed.
We picked our way down the familiar footpaths toward the grassy plains, the moon high and bright, the late spring breeze balmy and pleasant. Ilio walked ahead of me, excited to be underway.
“Do you think we’ll ever come back here?” he asked as we descended the rocky scree, sliding a little in the loose soil.
“No,” I answered.
I was tempted to reach out and snag him, lest he turn his ankle. Young men are so careless!
“Oh.” He ducked his head and dropped back beside me, lost in his thoughts for a good distance. The mountain slope had leveled out. Our legs swished through knee-high grass. “I’ll miss our home,” he said finally.
“As will I,” I replied, and I put my hand on his shoulder.
The country of the Ground Scratchers was many days travel across the southern plains, but the dry sea basin was flat, and the grass, so early in the year, was rarely higher than our hips. We were lucky. The weather was mild and game was abundant. We only had difficulty once, and it was my fault.
Four days journey from the cave where we’d stayed so long, I ranged out further than I ever had during my nightly hunts. The moon was fat and bright, and I had detected a strange scent on the wind, a thing I’d never smelled before. I followed the strange scent out into the plains, roaming so far from our camp I could no longer see the light of its fire or sense my young companion sleeping next to it.
Without Ilio’s limitations to accommodate, I could take to the winds, which was a pleasure to me.
Vampires cannot actually fly, just so you know. We can leap great distances. We can move at such speeds that we skate through the air, guiding our movements with our bodies. The trillions of tiny cells that compose our physical form, you see, are hollow chambers. We are not sloshing bags of water, like you humans. Though we are very resilient, we are mostly empty things, granular masses of lifeless, dried up cell capsules. You’d be surprised how little we actually weigh, and it’s that emptiness, like the hollow bones of a bird, or dry cork, which allows us to glide through the air, an outlandish trick, to be sure, but quite exhilarating.
But I digress.
On a wooded hill, I found the black scorch mark of a months-old campfire. There were several faded footprints on the ground around the coals, the markings of leather-clad feet and canines, and near the trees, the same crescent markings I’d encountered in the desolated village of the Denghoi, the moon-shaped imprints of an unfamiliar beast-- heavy things, I could tell, because the impressions were deeper than the others. It was the first signs I’d encountered of the mysterious Others in more than a year!
The camp was long abandoned, but their smell and the smell of their beasts lingered, albeit faintly.
Sometime the previous autumn, my vampire brethren had passed within a few days journey of our home. So close, and yet I had failed to sense them! Touching the faded markings in the earth, I inhaled their ghostly scents and fixed them in my memory.
The discovery was terribly exciting for me. I wanted to meet these other vampires. I wanted to lay eyes on other beings like myself.
They could be brutal, I knew. These Others had devastated Ilio’s people, but was I any less vicious? In my hunger, I could be just as cruel.
I decided I would seek them out, once I’d found a suitable home for my adopted human child, and thinking that, I rose and resumed my hunt for blood.
I was tracking a wild boar through the grassland when I heard, very weak with distance, a frightened cry arise in the moonlight.
Ilio--!
I heard him call my name, his voice gone shrill with fear. It echoed across the open plains. “The-eeeeeest!”
For half a second, I froze where I was standing, paralyzed by the terror in the young man’s voice, then I turned on my heel and bolted across the undulating plain. I shot across the grassy prairie, fear transforming my heart to ice. I cut through the savanna with such speed that the hip-high grass parted behind me in a widening V, hissing like the surface of the sea in the wake of a fast boat.
As I arrowed through the plains, my feet barely touching the ground, my ears picked up snatches of a confrontation: crude demands and low, cruel laughter. I heard Ilio’s grunts and cries of pain, and caught the smell of strange, filthy men.
There--! Now I could see them! They were still small with distance but drawing rapidly nearer by the second.
Two nomads had stumbled across our camp and were accosting the boy. I could see the interlopers in the firelight. Burly men with spears and long tangled hair, their faces painted red and black.
My adopted son was struggling with the smaller of the two marauders while the bigger one was lowering his leggings in preparation of sodomizing the young man.
Ilio kicked his legs and yelled in protest. They’d already peeled off his breeches.
Laughing, the smaller man wrestled the boy to submission.
As I swept through the campsite like a hurricane wind, whistling past the struggling trio, I threw out my right hand and let it collide with the back of the smaller bandit’s head. My fist struck his skull with enough force to tear his head clear off his neck. Blood and brains sprayed in the air, splattering my arm and chest and face. The brigand’s pulped head went spinning off into the grassland. Where it landed, I knew not… nor did I really care.
The impact fissured the flawless white flesh of my right hand. As I skidded to a stop and turned to launch myself at the bigger man, the Living Blood inside me healed the webbing of cracks almost instantly. Before the smaller man’s decapitated head even hit the ground, my hand was whole again.
The headless man was still holding Ilio’s wrists. His body hadn’t realized its top was missing yet.
With a snarl, I flew toward the bandit trying to assault my child. I hooked my fingers into his tunic and lifted him from the ground, his leggings tangled round his ankles. We sailed twenty feet past the campsite before returning to the earth and went rolling in the grass. I came up overtop him and loosed a ferocious hiss, letting him get a good look at my blazing eyes and wolf-like fangs, then my jaws lunged down into the unwashed meat of his neck and I tore his pudgy flesh open.
He screamed as I ripped and gnawed into him. He caught my hair and tried to pull my fangs from his throat, but it was too late. He was dead already. He just didn’t know it yet.
In my outrage and fury, I was wanton. I drained him dry, ripping and mauling his body in the process. I always lose control of myself when I feed, but when I kill in anger, I’m a raging demon.
When I was done with him, he lay in pieces, and I was soaked in his blood.
I sat back, blinking in horror at the mess I had made. My body was covered in blood and flesh and slivers of shivering organ meat.
“Thest?” Ilio murmured, approaching me cautiously.
“Stay back, Ilio!” I commanded gruffly. “Don’t come near me!”
I felt him stiffen in fear, then said more gently. “Please, boy. Go back to the fire.”
I sensed him withdraw and tried to get a grip on my blood-hunger. For a second, I’d almost lunged at him. I took a deep breath and wrestled the ravening demon in me. I felt the hunger abate. It coiled up inside me, grudgingly, grumbling in complaint. I surveyed the mess beneath me with distaste, then rose from the mound of torn meat and slippery entrails.
I looked at my hands. Gore dripped and dribbled from my cold white fingers. I felt the sticky fluids trickle down my beard and chest and legs.
“Close your eyes, Ilio,” I implored when I returned to the fire. “I don’t want you to look at me.”
“Thest—“ he started to protest.
“Please, Ilio. I ask this for me. Not for you.”
“Yes, Thest.”
When I saw that he had closed his eyes, I stepped into the firelight and seized the body of the smaller bandit. I grasped i
t by the ankle and dragged the corpse away into the grass. I carried the flopping cadaver to the carnage of its companion and heaped it onto the deconstructed remains, then walked away to find a pool to bathe in.
It was a good thing I’d disrobed to hunt that night, as was my habit. If not, my clothing would have been ruined by all the blood.
The pool was marshy and surrounded by reeds, but it was deep and refreshing, and I walked into it until the water came up to my chest. I stood for a moment, looking at the gelid reflection of the moon on the surface of the pond. Wisps of fog rose from the tiny, rippling mere, drifting in pale tendrils in the chill night air.
How many times have I washed the blood of murdered men from this cold white body? I wondered. That was a question I could not answer. Countless times, for sure, and I did it one more time that night-- washed the blood of murdered men from my skin-- feeling sullied and morose, before I returned to check on Ilio.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, stepping into the firelight.
Ilio was sitting near the fire, swaddled in his bedding. He jumped a little at my question, turned his head to look at me. “I am uninjured,” he answered, relieved to see me. “They said they wanted our belongings, then the smaller one tried to hold me down and so his big companion could mate with me.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I was far away and didn’t know there were others nearby. I was careless.”
“It’s not your fault, Thest. You saved me.” He looked away, his bulging blue eyes turned toward the dark horizon, his face troubled, as it often seemed troubled, with too many thoughts. I was struck once again by his resemblance to my old companion Brulde. That same pensive stare. “I tried to fight them off, but I was not strong enough.”
“You are still growing,” I said, drawing near the fire so that its warmth could dry my skin. “You’ll be big enough to protect yourself soon. Don’t be ashamed. I’ve been bested in combat myself, when I was still a…” I let my words trail off.
“Man?” Ilio suggested.
“Yes,” I said softly.
The Oldest Living Vampire on the Prowl (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 2) Page 10