The Oldest Living Vampire on the Prowl (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 2)

by Joseph Duncan

  I watched the German’s face as he recounted the incident, the flush of arousal in his cheeks, the sheen of perspiration on his brow and upper lip. My hunger leapt inside me and I had to hold myself immobile, lest I seize him and drain him right that instant. I have preyed on the wicked for millennia. The sight of such unrepentant evil stirs my hunger to unbearable heights.

  No! I told myself. Not yet! There is still much you desire from this fiend! I wanted his life. His whole life. I wanted to hear him recount his evils. His confessions were like seasoning. They would make my meal, when I surrendered to my appetite, all the more delicious.

  I restrained myself, but barely, and speaking in a husky rasp myself, I urged him on.

  “So what did you do with the boy?” I asked.

  He blinked. Looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was sitting there listening. “The jono? Oh… we, uh… took him to the pier. No one ever goes down to those wharves anymore. We drove down there with the kid in my trunk. Took him out and tossed him in the Meuse. We, uh… pulled some of his teeth and cut off his hands first, so it would be difficult to identify the body. On our way back to my flat, we took a little detour through the ghetto and threw his hands and teeth down a storm drain. Let the rats have them.”

  “And the girl? How long did you keep her?”

  “About a week.”

  4

  He went on to describe, in graphic detail, the ruination of Amelie.

  Lukas and his cohorts continued to abuse and molest the child until all that remained was an inhuman thing, starved, mute, the hopeful young girl she once was consigned to drift like a ghost inside her own mind, howling inside the haunted house that was her skull. When she was used up, they called over a gentleman named Huang Zhiyua, who they intended to sell the remains to, but Mr. Zhiyua took only a brief perusal of the merchandise before walking away, holding his nose and flapping his hand in her direction. There was nothing left to do but dispose of the body then-- still living, yes, but little more than animate flesh.

  Lukas left his flat at midnight—less than five hours ago—walking the girl onto the icy streets wrapped in nothing but a threadbare blanket. He’d raped her one last time before he decided it was time, and his semen still trickled down her thighs as she stumbled to his car like a zombie. When he opened the trunk and gestured for her to get in, Amelie climbed obediently inside.

  She didn’t fight. She didn’t cry for help. She welcomed death. For her, it would be a relief, I’m sure. An end to hunger. An end to thirst. An end to shame and degradation.

  This man, my captive, had just snapped her neck and tossed her into the Meuse when I spied him from my perch on an abandoned warehouse. When I flashed down from the snowy sky and snatched him from the ground, the impact knocked him unconscious. If I had not seen him murder such a beautiful child, and if he were not so beautiful himself, I probably would have killed him right there. Drained his blood on the roof of the abandoned warehouse and then flung his remains into the icy river with the body of the child. Instead, I was beguiled, and, despite my hunger, I wanted to know him, and I wanted to know the child he’d murdered so heartlessly. So I brought him to my home, leaving his car running on the pier. Leaving the child’s steaming puddle of urine to freeze upon the grease-stained wharf.

  When he had finished speaking, Lukas pulled a face and asked, “You have something to drink, Drac? My mouth is dry.”

  I rose without answering and walked into the kitchen to pour him a glass of water.

  As I went, I curled forward a little, putting my hand upon my belly. My blood hunger was twisting me up inside. The pain was horrid, a wrenching, burning sensation in my guts. I did not know how much longer I could resist it before I was forced to consummate this brief affair.

  Oh, what a mess it was going to make! When I’m this hungry, I’m a savage. He’ll probably be torn to pieces!

  Unless…

  As I filled a glass with water, my mind seized upon an alternate plan. Something that would buy me a little more time with this beautiful villain. I grinned as it came into my thoughts, full blown and wonderful.

  It would be apt, the justice of it both beautiful and brilliant.

  As I returned to the bedroom, Lukas eyed me nervously. “I don’t like the way you’re looking at me, Count,” he said as I approached him.

  I smiled. I didn’t bother to hide my fangs. “You shouldn’t.”

  I held the glass to his lips and allowed him to drink. As his Adam’s apple bobbed, I stared at the veins in his neck and temple, throbbing almost imperceptibly beneath his flesh. My free hand wandered toward his throat and I jerked it back to my side.

  He gasped when I took the glass away. I turned to set it on my dresser and he belched softly and excused himself.

  “We have a little problem, you and I,” I told him.

  “How’s that?”

  “I don’t believe I can resist killing you much longer,” I said.

  He stared at me without expression. “That sucks,” he replied.

  I laughed softly as I sat back down on the edge of my bed. “I have a proposition for you. Something that may allow me to converse with you a little longer.”

  “And what’s that?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I want you to call your friend Hans. I have a cell phone. I will dial his number for you. You will call him and invite him here to my home. I will give you the address. Tell him… Oh, I don’t know.” I waved my hand absently. “Tell him you met some lovely young women, but there are two of them, and they’d like him to come over and join the party. Tell him whatever you think will convince him to come.”

  “You’re planning to kill him and drink his blood so we can talk a little while longer,” Lukas said. The viciousness of my proposal made him grin. There was a look, too, of fascination on his face, as if I’d promised him a magic show.

  I rose and drifted toward the balcony doors. “Of course.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to talk anymore. Maybe I’d rather just get it over with,” he suggested.

  “Do you really want to die right now?” I asked, turning suddenly toward him.

  He took in my gleaming gold eyes, my white shriveled flesh and long, curved fangs, and thought better of it. Shaking his head, he stammered, “N-no. I guess not. I’ll call him.”

  “I thought as much.”

  Lukas squinted at me. “He’s a big fucker,” he said.

  I walked to the fireplace and picked up one of the pokers. Smiling mildly, I bent it into a U shape. I flexed it, then snapped it in two and tossed the pieces on the floor with a clatter.

  “Fuck,” he wheezed.

  “I’ll go get my cell phone,” I told him, striding across the floor.

  He stopped me as I reached the doorknob. “I’ll do it, but I have one condition,” he called out to me suddenly, speaking in a rush.

  I put my hand on the doorframe. I didn’t look at him. “And what would that be?” I asked.

  “I want to watch you do it,” he whispered behind me.

  I smiled, but it was not a smile of amusement. It was a smile of despair. “Of course,” I murmured. “If that’s what you’d like.”

  5

  Lukas made the call, or rather, I made the call for him. I dialed the numbers as he ran them off for me, tapping the keyboard of my modern little phone with my long, white finger. I was unsure as I held my cell phone to his lips if he would actually betray his friend, or if he would dare to warn him off-- maybe even plead to the man for assistance-- but he did pretty much what I asked of him, and I have to give him credit: he’s a very persuasive fellow. Despite the hour, he enticed and cajoled Hans until he’d convinced the man to get up, throw some sexy duds on, and drive across town to my suite. My prisoner looked up at me with a strange mixture of fear and hate and excitement when I snapped the phone shut and ended the call.

  “He’s coming,” he said. “He’ll be here in thirty minutes.”

  I left the room without speaking. As I near
ed the door, the pornographer called out behind me: “Remember what you promised!”

  I closed the door and crossed my apartment to my dressing room. There, I tied back my hair and applied cosmetics to my hands and face and throat so that I would appear, at least for a few moments, like a living man. The flesh-colored foundation, manufactured by a company called Lancome, concealed the pallor of my flesh and the wriggling blue worms of my blood-starved veins. Except for the eyes, I looked… almost human.

  The eyes would give it away, but I only needed the man to step inside. He would not notice the strange gleam of my stare. Not until I’d closed the door and locked it behind him. Then it would not matter.

  As a final bit of preparation, I set the stage for the second act of this evening’s performance. I put a CD in my stereo system and turned the volume up loud, then mussed up my living room, pulling a couple pillows askew on my sofa. I surveyed the room, my hands on my hips, then grabbed a pair of my trousers and tossed them on the floor.

  Smiling at my handiwork, I recalled a line from the old children’s poem:

  "Will you walk into my parlor?" said the Spider to the Fly…

  I waited patiently near the door, my appetite increasing with every passing moment. The hunger inside me was a fire sizzling in my guts, burning inside every wriggling vein. Thirty minutes passed. Then forty. Lukas called from my bedchamber: “Is he here yet?” and I commanded him to be silent. Forty-five minutes after my captive had convinced his associate to come and party with us, I heard the elevator down the hallway ding! The doors slid open and footsteps trod toward my apartment. Heavy footfalls. A big man.

  I could smell him as he drew near. Too much cologne. Cigarettes on his fingertips and lips. I could smell the leather jacket he wore. The mints in his pocket. The odor of his flesh. His sexual excitement (Lukas had told him there were women waiting, young and drunk and willing, looking for a fourth).

  The doorbell chimed. I waited. On the second ring, I opened the door.

  “Hello?” I said.

  Lukas was not exaggerating. Hans was a huge man. Almost seven foot tall, and powerfully built. He was dressed in a leather jacket and white silk shirt, open to the breastbone to expose his sculpted pectorals and a large gold crucifix.

  (Don’t worry, my readers. As you’ll recall, religious icons have no effect on me!)

  His horn rim glasses were fogged from the cold outside. His lank blond hair—so pale it was almost white—hung down in a stylish shag from beneath a toboggan speckled with melting snowflakes. His nose was red from the cold, and he was sporting American blue jeans so tight the full length of his cock could be seen running several inches down his pants leg.

  What is the motto?

  Ah, yes! If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

  The large man looked down at me with surprise, then his one good eye narrowed with suspicion. “Who are you?” he asked. He had to yell to speak over the pulsing music.

  I told him I was the Diener… the butler.

  “Please, come in,” I said, standing aside and sweeping my arm out.

  He walked in, scanned the room as he slipped off his jacket. “Is Mr. Jaeger still here?” he asked. The puckered scar on his face was deep. I wonder how he’d gotten it. His glass eye didn’t quite align with the eye that was still sighted. It peered off at a disconcerting angle, rimmed with a bit of mucous.

  “The group has retired to the bedroom,” I said with just a hint of feigned disdain. He tossed his leather jacket into my arms and I folded it and draped it upon a settee. I shut the door, locked it, threw the deadbolt. After a moment of consideration, I chained it, too.

  “Where?” he yelled.

  I turned and gestured toward the door across the room.

  “Lukas?” he called, as he plodded toward the bedroom. “Hey! Don’t start the party without me!”

  I stalked quietly behind him. The scent of his blood was maddening. I inhaled the smell as it billowed around me in his wake, hot and salty and nourishing.

  Hans opened the door.

  Lukas ogled him, bound to my Louis the Fifteenth with silver duct tape.

  “What the fuck?” the giant exclaimed.

  Even for his bulk, the big man was quick. He spun around as I lunged at him. His fist shot out like a cannon, but for all his speed, I was faster. He might as well have been moving in slow motion.

  I pivoted, arched back. His strike pierced only air.

  Hans stumbled forward into my arms, and I swung him around and onto my bed. His eyewear clattered on the floor. We collapsed upon my sheets like lovers. I looked at Lukas for a second, saw him watching with wide eyes and a stunned—but rapt—expression, then I curled my lips back from my fangs and sank my teeth into the big man’s neck.

  Hans howled in agony. He tried to push me away, but I was too powerful for him. I was snarling. The world went red and hazy as I fed. The pleasure was orgasmic. I gripped his blond hair and jerked his head sideways. I heard his vertebrae crunch. I nearly pulled his head completely off, but I was beyond care. I was beyond reason, beyond mercy. Well beyond good manners! I was so hungry, and the blood was so hot and tasty… and there was so much of it! This giant was a veritable smorgasbord. An all you can eat buffet of blood!

  My chin was dripping. My sheets and mattress, I’m sure, were ruined.

  He was dead, but I was still hungry.

  I tore his shirt open and plunged my fist into his sternum, punching through flesh and bone. I pried open his ribs, ripped out his heart and squeezed it into my mouth. I lapped at the blood that drizzled from his entrails, then finally, thinking of all the runaways and kidnapped children he had raped and murdered, I shucked down his jeans—despite the cold, he was wearing no underwear—and I tore his cock and balls from between his quivering legs.

  I wheeled toward my captive, holding the man’s organs in my bloody fist.

  Lukas was watching in horror… but he was also aroused. I could smell his sexual excitement. I could see the evidence of it pressing the front of his slacks out.

  “You covet this?” I demanded, the rapist’s penis flopping in my fist. “This is what you serve? This is your god?” Not meaning Hans’s penis specifically, but The Penis. Lust, and its gratification.

  Lukas shook his head no.

  I flashed toward him, moving faster than he could see. As the speed of my movement blew back his expensively styled bangs, I grabbed him by the hair and forced the mutilated genitals into his mouth… as much as would fit in there. They really were quite enormous!

  “The Catholics eat the flesh of their god. You can do the same!” I hissed. I was enraged, trembling. I turned brusquely away, tried to reign in my emotions.

  Lukas spat the torn and shriveled cock from his mouth and screamed. It was an outraged, womanish cry. His face and clothes were smeared with his associate’s blood. “You bastard!” he howled. “You fucking monster!” He retched, then vomited into his own lap.

  My back still turned to him, I started laughing. “Yes, that’s right. I am a monster! What did you think you were dealing with?”

  He puked again, then groaned, dry heaved a couple more times. He raised his head, his eyes bleary, snot hanging from his nose. He began to thrash against his bonds. Hysteria had taken his reason. He wrenched back and forth in the chair, making it hop and scoot on the floor.

  I turned and struck him with my foot. The blow drove him across the room, chair and all, and he crashed against the wall.

  The impact shattered my expensive antique chair.

  Oh, now that was a waste! That chair was 300 years old!

  Lukas lay crumpled and unconscious on his side, plaster dust drifting from the chipped drywall above.

  I sighed, disappointed with my loss of control. After a moment, I walked to the pornographer and checked to see if he still lived.

  6

  “I’m going to kill you,” I said when he opened his eyes. “Have no doubt of that. My question to you is this: do you want to hear the rest of
my story before I do it?”

  The Battle with the Elders

  1

  The thought of sinking my fangs in the necks of those old villains stirred me to passion. I left the boy with a stern admonition to keep out of trouble, then I took to the tree tops and flew through the boughs and branches down the side of the low mountain. I paused near the border of the plains and scampered to the top of a towering spruce, clinging to the swaying trunk to look out across the undulating green landscape. Very far away, the orange light of a couple campfires glimmered on the plains: the warriors the Elders had sent after us. But the warrior camp was kilometers away. They could never hope to cross the distance to our hiding place in the rugged hills before I returned, even if they knew which direction to travel, which I’m sure they didn’t.

  I toyed with the idea of descending upon them. Without the boy to look after, I would make short work of them, and I’d fed very little before setting off on my mission. It might be enjoyable to take a couple of them for my dinner, send the rest of them fleeing in terror… but my heart shied away from the needless cruelty. The offense did not lie with the huntsmen; it resided with their masters.

  Pushing aside my brief fantasy, I took a better grip of the spruce and leaned back, causing the top of the tree to bend earthward. As it rebound, I used the forward momentum to give my leap a little extra oomph. I stretched out like a bird in flight, my arms spread to my sides for a moment, before I twisted around in midair and descended into the emerald canopy below.

  I weaved my way through the limbs and foliage, climbing, swinging, leaping from branch to branch. When the forest thinned, I dropped to the ground and sprinted across the grassy plains, pumping my arms and legs at full speed.