And what of this child? I thought to myself. Was I being a fool on his behalf? Might it not be a disservice to him to protect him so jealously from harm? What would become of him, sheltered and untrained in war, if something should happen to me? He would be weak and defenseless. He did not have my strength and invulnerability to rely on. The dark blood had worked a lesser miracle on his flesh. In strength, he was only slightly more powerful than the little pet my maker had kept, the strange and twisted Blood Drinker I had killed with a blow to the breast, the one we’d called the Lizard Man.
“Ilio, wake up. It is night,” I said, nudging the boy.
Ilio’s blue-white eyelids fluttered open and his face and flesh took on the animation of life. He turned his head to me and smiled, then became aware of the muck we wallowed in. His lips twisted into a grimace. “Yuck!” he exclaimed, holding his dripping hands before his eyes.
“It rained,” I said, then rolled over and crawled toward the entrance of the small cavern. The mud squished and bubbled between my fingers as I slithered forward on my hands and knees. I pushed the stone out of the opening and clambered out onto the mountainside.
The sky overhead, I saw, was thick with clouds, but for the time being it was not raining. There was a flicker of lightning in the lowering heavens, a series of low, pulsing strobes. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
The forest surrounding us was slick and dripping, its denizens hushed by the recent downpour. The atmosphere was heavy and seemed charged with the promise of another violent deluge.
Ilio climbed out behind me and stood waiting. His white flesh was smeared with mud.
“Let us find a pool to bathe in,” I said, and he nodded. Looking over my shoulder at him, I smiled and said, “See if you can keep up with me, little monkey.”
I leapt into the bough of the nearest tree and flew through the forest toward a fall I had come across. I heard Ilio pursue me, laughing as he tried his best to keep up with me. It was a game, but in truth I was testing him as well, taking a measure of his speed and strength. I was quite pleased to find that he had little trouble moving through the treetops, and if he were just a bit stronger and faster, he might have actually overtaken me.
The woodland ended abruptly ahead. It seemed the world had come to an edge and there was only sky beyond. I dived into the empty air. Below me, the roar of white water, cascading over a rocky escarpment. I fell toward the foaming pools. Fizzing liquid enveloped me.
I surfaced, swept my wet hair from my eyes, looked up just in time to see Ilio dropping over the cliff behind me, his arms and legs pumping. I jumped out of the way as he disappeared in the spume, a great explosion of water blooming up in the fuming mist.
He burst from the water, laughing. “I almost caught up with you!” he boasted.
“You did very well,” I agreed.
Grinning, he dunked his head in the water and scrubbed the mud from his hair. I did the same, and when I could not wash it all out, the boy waded to me and helped. He squeezed the clinging mud from my wavy locks, swirled my hair in the churning water.
“I wish my hair was long like yours,” he said wistfully. He used his palms to wipe the last of the mud from my shoulders. “It does not grow after becoming what we are, does it?”
“No.”
I swam toward the shore, my body gleaming and white again. Climbing onto the mossy rocks, I waited for Ilio to join me.
The boy had paused, hip-deep in the pool. He was looking down at his hands, his face thoughtful. I spoke before he could voice the realization in his eyes:
“You are strong, but the dark blood has left you far too vulnerable for my comfort. If you are brave, I would like to try to strengthen you. I have been remiss in my responsibilities toward you. I should not shelter you so much. You should know how to defend yourself in battle. You should know how to fight, and if necessary, how to take men for your sustenance. My only excuse is that I love you, and I wished to preserve your innocence a while longer.”
Ilio nodded gravely. “I understand, fa—I mean, Thest.”
I smiled. “In many ways, I have become your father, Ilio. I gave birth to this cold life you now have. I would rather you consider me a brother, however. It will strengthen you to think of yourself a man, not a man’s son.”
“And how will you try to make me a stronger Blood Drinker, Thest?”
“You were dying when I made you as you are, so you do not remember, but the trick is a simple one. I must pass the Living Blood inside me into your body. This was how I was made this cold white thing many years ago, and this is what I did to you.”
“And you wish to do it again? To see if it will make me hardier?”
I nodded.
Ilio drew himself up. “I’m not afraid. Do it now. I would walk at your side in all things an equal. Even into battle. I would not have you fear for me.”
“Lie back on the stones, then,” I said.
Ilio reclined on the rocky bank. Despite his declaration, there was anxiety in his eyes as I leaned over him. “Open your mouth,” I commanded, and when he obeyed, I brought up the black blood, the vile living fluid the Oombai called the ebu potashu. I put my mouth over his and the blood bolted out of my guts with a tearing pain. Ilio lurched, swallowing convulsively, his eyes wide. He kicked his legs and pushed against me, but his strength was no match for mine.
When I saw that it was adequate, and that he had swallowed all of it, I released him.
He rolled away from me, shuddering and whining in pain. He curled into a tight ball, his face twisted. Every muscle in his body was spasming. It seemed his flesh blanched just a little bit whiter, became just a little bit harder; perhaps it was only my imagination. Eventually, the spasms passed and he uncurled his body. He rolled onto his back, gasping.
Seeing how little he had changed, I suggested we try again.
“No! No more!” he cried breathlessly. “The pain is too much! I can’t bear it!”
“All right,” I said quickly. “Not tonight.”
“No,” he said, crying a little and shaking his head. “No. Not tonight. Please.”
“That’s fine, Ilio. I promise, no more tonight. Can you rise?”
I could tell by his countenance that the pain was abating. He sat up and nodded his head. I took his hand and helped him to his feet.
“Let us feed,” I said. “Tonight you will accompany me on a raid.”
5
It was never my intention to allow him join my battle with the Elders, but I thought the boy would be safe enough if we should raid the warriors I’d seen camped upon the plains. I planned to avoid a direct confrontation with the men who were searching for us. I merely intended to pick a few stragglers from the edge of their encampment, steal some weapons and clothing and blood for our sustenance. Ilio, I felt sure, would be safe enough on this mission, and it would give him a bit of experience in such matters, experience he would require in the future, should we ever be parted.
At the rim of the great grassy plains, we climbed to the top of a tree and scanned the flatlands for their camp.
“There,” I said, pointing.
As the moist wind whipped through our hair, we looked down upon the campfires glowing in the dark. The warriors had moved their camp closer. Much closer. “They saw your fire last night,” I said to the boy, glancing toward him gravely.
Clinging to a swaying branch a few feet away, Ilio returned my grim stare. “They were coming for us?” he asked.
I nodded.
“I knew they were too far away to reach us before we rose,” I said. “But we will have to abandon our muddy little hole and find someplace else to sleep come morning. Come, boy. We have much to do tonight.” I released my grip and allowed my body to plummet to the ground. Bounding lightly from bough to bough, I landed in a crouch and awaited him.
Ilio dropped beside me. With the vampire child at my side, we moved swiftly through the grassland toward the warriors’ camp.
As we travelled, I counsel
ed him on our strategy, and upon the manner in which he must fortify his courage. To make war, I told him, one must put aside fear and sympathy. One must embrace the thought of death in battle as a glorious fate, and have no pity upon one’s enemies, even if they cried and begged for mercy. To cling to either of those sentiments led only to failure. Both were a sure recipe for disaster.
“You must remove your mind away from your flesh when you make war,” I said. “You must make of your body a weapon to be thrown upon your enemies. If your thoughts are free of fear and sympathy, your strategies will be more cunning, your success more assured.”
“Your people must be great warriors,” Ilio said admiringly.
I laughed. “No, we were very peaceful, but we knew that all living things must fight for their survival. It is an evident truth. You need only observe the world around you to see it. So we trained ourselves to fight, even as we enjoyed our days of plenty. We had no love for conflict, but we did not deny its necessity.”
“It’s easy to have no fear when you are strong,” Ilio said, worrying perhaps about his small stature.
“The fight is won here,” I said, pointing to my temple, and he nodded.
As we neared the encampment of the Oombai warriors, we slowed and took care where our feet fell. Staying low, we circled the camp stealthily. When we came upon a lone sentry, standing guard at a little distance from his fellow warriors, I put my hand on Ilio’s shoulder to halt him and pointed toward the man, whose back was to us.
“See how that one longs for death?” I asked. “He stands at a distance from his brothers, with his back turned toward the night.”
“He’s watching the fire,” Ilio whispered.
“I want you to take him. Move as quickly as you can. Cover his mouth with your hand and pull him into the darkness. Do not allow him to struggle or cry out. Bite his throat here on the side and drain his blood with all your might. Do it quickly, without pity, or return to our muddy hole now and await my return.”
Ilio’s eyes gleamed with hunger. I’d barely finished speaking when he shot from my side. Had I thought he needed encouragement? I’d underestimated his blood-thirst. I watched as he swept through the grass toward his target. If his back had not been turned toward us, the human might have seen a pale blur, if anything at all, though I could follow the boy’s movements easily enough. He was fast. I watched him flash through the dark with new respect.
Ilio leaped like a crazed badger upon the larger man, knocking the sentry to the ground. Although their struggle was not as silent as I would have wished, the low grunts and cries were not loud enough to rouse any of the other warriors.
Ilio dragged the man away from the light of the campfires, his arms wrapped about the sentry’s neck and shoulders. He jerked and wrenched his victim’s body as he stumbled away with his prey, having a little bit of difficulty with the task, but only because he was inexperienced, not because he lacked strength. I moved to join him, and arrived in time to see Ilio duck his razor-sharp fangs to the doomed man’s neck.
His victim bucked and kicked his legs as the boy drained him, but fell limp quickly enough. Ilio drained the man as I’d instructed. The warrior’s body sagged. His arms rolled into the grass, fingers twitching.
Ilio’s head jerked up as I drew near. His mouth and chin glittered with blood, black in the moonlight. His eyes were as feral as any wild predator guarding its prey from another.
He grinned then, the wild look in his eyes fading as he came back to himself. “It tastes good!” he sighed.
Then he dipped his mouth back to the man’s neck.
Watching the boy make his first human kill filled me with horror and self-loathing. He was blameless in this crime, as he would be blameless in all the rest that were sure to follow. Out of weakness, out of loneliness, out of love, I had made him what he was-- a killer—in full knowledge of what that entailed… and in so doing, had unleashed more death on the world. His sins would forever belong to me. I would wear them like a stone about the neck.
The Oombai warrior’s spirit had departed. I didn’t want to look at the man’s face, but my eyes were drawn to it nonetheless. Mouth drawn in pain, empty gaze rolled toward the moon, Ilio’s victim silently accused. I ripped my gaze away, shame stabbing me deep in the guts.
“Come, boy,” I whispered hoarsely. “Strip his body and take his weapons. We must hurry.”
We hunted a while longer, claiming four victims-- two each-- before quitting the camp. Before we were finished, we were respectably clothed and armed. I’d even claimed a magnificent cape, one of dyed woven cloth trimmed in black crow’s feathers. The mantle of a commander, who I killed as he shit in the weeds. We stole away into the night, our predations undiscovered and our bellies bulging with the hot blood of our enemies.
We traveled north until I felt we were a safe distance from the warriors who pursued us. In a thicket of pine, I embraced the boy and gave him some final instructions before I departed, just in case I didn’t return.
Continue south, I told him. Look to your safety before all things, and refrain as much as possible from feeding on humans.
“You’ll come back,” he said, smiling at me confidently.
I returned his smile, then turned and blurred into flight.
6
In truth, I had every confidence I would return. I prepared the boy for the worst only because I knew: the outcome of battle is never a sure thing.
Fate is a fickle mistress. She had conspired to make me immortal. She had preserved me for untold millennia, even in the belly of a glacier. Yet, who could say when she would tire of my foolish endeavors? As I raced across the Pannonian Plain, all but flying beneath the lowering sky, I wondered if this night, by some disastrous misfortune, might be my last on earth.
And for what? I wondered.
Was this justice? Or petty revenge?
I like to think I am a peaceful man, that my heart is inured to such base emotion, but for all my vaunted powers, for all the eons I’ve walked this world, I am still a man. My soul is still a man’s soul.
And those old men had offended me.
As I drew near the country of the Ground Scratchers, I prepared my heart for war. I gripped my purloined spear, set my mind apart so that it would not worry needlessly for the flesh that was its seat.
Light splashed the lowering heavens. Thunder rattled across the plains. Spicules of cold rain spattered my flesh as I hurtled through the night, each striking me painfully due to the speed at which I was racing.
Up ahead, flickering torches.
They were waiting for me.
Two lines of warriors stood, ready for battle, arranged in a narrowing corridor. There were some six or seven dozen warriors lined up, assembled on the plain at the edge of their village, eager to defend their masters. At the center of the phalanx, the three remaining elders waited, armed and armored. Hault stood in the middle of the trio, tall and imperious, a spear clutched in his hands. His weapon was large and ornately decorated, with a carved shaft and a large, curved stone point, more a symbol of office than an instrument of battle, but deadly all the same. On both sides of him crouched his cohorts Gant and Ungst, their bodies laden with fine armor made of bone and leather and lined with glossy black feathers. A great cry went up when their warriors caught sight of me.
I came to a stop, facing them across the whipping field of grass.
This place, this great open plain, would be the sight of countless battles through the ages. How many empires had skirmished here for supremacy? The Huns, the Gepids, the Ostrogoths. The Habsburgs and the Ottomans, too. But this night… this night was mine, a rogue vampire, intent on justice.
“Depart from this country, Blood Drinker!” Hault demanded. He had to project his voice, as I’d paused a good distance away, cautious of his bowmen. “Go, and return here no more!”
I cannot give you an exact translation of what he said, as I was only halfway familiar with their tongue by then, but I am sure that was the g
ist of it.
“You have offended me, and I will have my vengeance!” I cried back at him. I spoke in the Denghoi tongue. Perhaps he understood me. Perhaps he only understood a little. Nevertheless, he shouted his rejoinder.
“I warn you. We have battled your kind before… and we have always triumphed!”
“Not tonight!” I roared, and then I bolted toward them.
Three dozen arrows whistled in my direction. In the dark, with the torch flames twisting and lightning pulsing in the heavens, it was difficult to mark each projectile that flitted toward me. I tried to dodge the weapons as they converged on me, pivoting this way and that, my hands snapping one direction and then another to slap them out of the air, but there were so many! Despite my superhuman speed and agility, I was impaled half a dozen times.
I stumbled to my knees, the shafts quivering in my flesh. There was one in my neck, three in my torso, and yet two more in my thigh and upper arm. I tore them from my flesh and rose to my feet. I could feel the Living Blood inside me, healing the wounds even as I stood. Before the bowmen could fire again, I cocked back my javelin and let it fly.
My spear flew straight and true. The elder Gant was bowled clear off his feet. In fact, I struck him down with such force that his feet came straight out of his boots. He rose, tottered forward with the shaft protruding from both sides of his torso, then he squawked once, clutching the shaft protruding from his heart, and collapsed.
Another barrage of arrows shurred in my direction.
Rather than try to dodge them on the ground, I leapt straight up. Lightning flared as I sliced through the heavens, great tongues of electricity racing across the contours of the lowering clouds. Time seemed to stretch in that stark white light, every drop of rain gleaming like a tiny jewel, every arrow hanging suspended as if from invisible threads-- even I, perched upon the wind, my stolen clothes and great black cloak flapping languidly, as if drifting underwater.
The Oldest Living Vampire on the Prowl (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 2) Page 19