Then the night returned. I dropped to the ground.
Crouched in the center of the gauntlet, I bared my fangs and hissed. Several spears whisked toward me, and I plucked them from the air.
Leaping between the two remaining elders, I drove the spears into the fat one named Ungst, piercing him through. The plump old man bellowed in fury, blood bursting from his lips. I used the spears to drive him to his knees, then pushed him onto his back and pinned him to the loess. The whoremaster died, blood boiling out of his mouth in a bubbly red froth.
The smell of his blood enflamed my passion. I felt drunk with hunger and the sheer monstrous pleasure of murder, all the world painted red and slick and salty. I turned at last to Hault, my lips peeled back from my fangs, but before I could wrap my hands around his wattled neck, a strange weapon seized me by the shoulder.
It was an anchor with multiple hooks. Made of bone and attached to a long and slender woven cord, the strange weapon sunk its barb into my shoulder before I could puzzle out what I’d been snared by. An instant later, the rope went taut, and I stumbled back.
Another rope with a hooked anchor arced through the sky above me, and being reeled quickly in by the warrior who’d cast it, sank its flukes into my upper thigh.
And another was cast upon me, and another. I felt myself hauled from the earth, my flesh ripping as the ropes were pulled ever tighter. If I were a lesser vampire, those barbed weapons would have been my doom. Even strong as I was, the clever ploy nearly bested me.
But I am powerful. If it were not so, how could I have endured some 30,000 years? For naught am I the oldest living vampire? No, this outlandish tactic would not defeat me!
Hault stalked toward me, thinking me beaten. The old man thrust his lance into my belly, his lips peeled back from yellow, crooked teeth. “DIE!” he shrieked in triumph.
Enraged, I grasped hold of the ropes suspending me from the ground and yanked them with all my strength. Some of the old man’s warriors let go, the flesh stripped from their palms. Others were flung into the sky, their bodies pinwheeling away in the dark like windblown leaves. I dropped to the ground and lunged at Elder Hault.
His eyes went wide in shock and terror.
I grabbed him by the shoulders, and, with one swift jerk of my head, tore his throat out with my teeth.
7
My vengeance was fulfilled. Aioa’s spirit could rest in the ghost world; Ilio’s corruption was revenged.
The last of the Elders fell to his knees, his palms wrapped round the spurting hole in his windpipe. He gazed up at me, his gleaming eyes wide, filled with horrified disbelief. To make sure he was not preserved by the vampire blood he and his cohorts had used to prolong their lives, I cocked back my arm and struck his head from his shoulders. It went rolling away in the grass, and his body, taut and twitching, toppled onto its back.
But the spears and arrows continued to rain down around me. I was struck in the back, the legs, the buttocks. Stubbornly ignoring the pain, I stalked to the body of Ungst and pulped his head with one stomp of my foot. I did the same to Elder Gant, and then I turned to face the horde of warriors encircling me.
They fell upon me, roaring, enraged. I threw myself into the mass of human bodies, howling like a demon. My assault was merciless. With my vampire strength, I tore their arms from their sockets, ripped their heads from their necks. I threw them into the air with all my strength. I was stabbed and slashed and bludgeoned, but each time I was knocked to my knees, I rose to battle on.
At last I fought my way free of the Oombai army and I leapt into the sky. As the heavens gave birth and the rain slashed down on the killing field in earnest, I withdrew.
I jumped clear of the battleground, but landed badly and sprawled onto my hands and knees. I paused for a moment to twist the spears and arrows from my cold white flesh, then gathered my strength and leapt again.
Wounded, exhausted, I returned to my son.
A New Path
1
It was dawn when I returned to the boy, but the morning light was tempered by the churning heavens, the clouds thick and gray. A cold rain lashed the plains, sweeping in twisting cold sheets across me. Ilio leapt to his feet when he saw me stumbling through the drumming deluge, my back bent, my body shot through with arrows and the broken shafts of several spears. I could not reach them all myself. He flew to me with a look of horror on his face and helped me to the thicket of evergreen trees where I’d instructed him to await me.
Sitting on a soft mound of pine needles, I allowed the boy to tend to my wounds. He pulled the spears and arrows from my flesh with a grim look on his face. Most of the wounds were deep enough to kill a mortal man.
I was no mortal, but their removal was painful nonetheless. Some of them he had to wriggle to and fro, and one was set so deep he could do naught but push it through to the other side of me and drag it out by the head.
“Is it done?” he asked. “Are you satisfied?” Tears rimmed his eyes as he asked me this—vampire tears, black and gummy.
“Yes,” I said tiredly. “It is done.”
He’d stripped off my wet cloak and outer coat, and watched as the living blood welled up in my wounds, slowly erasing them. Before he sat beside me, my flesh was white and flawless.
Once again, I am a gore-streaked spectacle, I thought to myself. My stolen clothes were tattered and soaked in human blood. My hands were gloved in bits of flesh and bone. My hair was dripping from the downpour, and the water that ran down my face was stained bright pink by all the human debris.
I stared south, toward the land of the Ground Scratchers, feeling little in my heart… only the physical sensations: cold, wet, exhausted.
“You need rest,” the boy said finally. “Come. I made a shelter while you were gone.”
He pulled me to my feet. I allowed him to escort me to the lean-to he’d constructed in my absence. It was quite large and comfortable, the floor padded with pine needles. I longed for a fire, a big, warm, crackling fire, but even for a vampire, that would have been a miraculous accomplishment in this torrential downpour.
Ilio spread out my cloak and I hunkered down and crawled inside. The boy joined me a moment later and covered the entrance with branches, blocking out the moist gray light.
“Where do we go now?” he asked in the dark.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
He put his head on my shoulder and I embraced him-- my boy, my son, my vampire child. “It doesn’t matter,” he said with a sigh. “You live. That’s enough.”
Listening to the thunder and the rhythmic susurration of the rain, I fell asleep.
2
I woke at twilight to the sound and smell of a terrified human being. Rising from my bedding, I pushed aside the branches covering the opening of Ilio’s lean-to and stepped out into the thicket. The rain had moved on and the crickets in the woodland were buzzing merrily. I was still wet and there was no fire to warm my flesh and dry my clothing, but I paid little attention to my discomfort. My attention was riveted instead by the sight that greeted me upon rising.
Ilio had ventured out while I slept and returned now with a human captive. It was one of the Oombai warriors who had pursued us across the plains. Ilio dragged the man—who was at least two heads taller than the boy-- behind him by the ankles. The warrior was bound with leather cords, and lashed and twisted his body as the boy dragged him across the ground.
I walked out into the grass to meet them, the hunger inside me leaping at the sight of the trussed human.
“You need to eat,” Ilio said, then dropped the man’s legs. I could tell by the pink warmth of the boy’s flesh that he had already fed.
The human was bruised and bleeding. When my gleaming eyes turned to him, the warrior began to yammer hysterically in his native tongue, his eyes wide with terror. I understood Oombai well enough by now, but I ignored his cries for mercy.
I lowered myself to my knees beside the flopping warrior. Pulling the man into my lap a litt
le, I pushed his chin to the side and lowered my mouth to his plump, blood-filled flesh. As the warrior began to sob, despairing of his life, I sank my fangs into his neck. He stiffened and bucked, but I held him firmly and drained him as quickly as possible. I did not wish to make him suffer. I’d caused enough suffering of late.
When the man was dead and my appetite was sated, I rolled his carcass away and rose.
Ilio watched me with a faint smile, hoping perhaps for some word of praise.
“You took care?” I asked.
He nodded. “This one was walking alone across the grassland. He didn’t see me. I struck him down from behind and bound him with his own laces.”
I could feel the warrior’s blood inside me, the heat threading itself through my veins. The last few aches and pains from the previous night’s battle throbbed and faded. I smiled at the boy, touched by his care. His love—perhaps even more than the blood—strengthened me.
“Where do we go now?” I asked.
“When I was hunting, I saw a group of humans traveling east,” Ilio replied. “I think it was some of the slaves the Oombai kept. The Neirie. There was a column of smoke rising from the village of the Ground Scratchers, too. Perhaps the slaves rose up and won their freedom.”
“Should we follow them?”
Ilio shrugged. “Maybe we should seek the other Blood Drinkers, the ones the Elders spoke of. I would like to know what they are like.”
We returned to the lean-to and I fetched my cloak. It was still wet and stank of blood, but I was reluctant to discard such a fine piece of clothing. I threw it over my shoulders and tied the laces, grimacing a little at the smell… and at my own ripe stench. I would have to bathe and wash my soiled garments before the odor drove me to distraction.
“And what if these Blood Drinkers are the ones who attacked your village, Ilio?” I questioned him. “What if they’re the ones who massacred the Denghoi?”
Ilio sighed. “I don’t know. I know now the hunger that presses our kind to violence. Perhaps… if they are kind like you… and not cruel and wanton… I can forgive them their trespasses.” He looked up at me as we started across the grassland. “It would be nice to live among our own kind, don’t you think?”
Thinking of the destroyed Denghoi camp, I was not overly enamored with the thought… or the prospect of their kindness. I remembered my terrible excitement when I first caught their spore, but now…
“Perhaps,” I said. “Let us follow the humans for a little while, first. But we must be careful to stay at a safe distance from them, so that we are not tempted to harm them. It would not do to free them from one set of masters, only to give in to our own base desires.”
I surveyed the plains as we walked, the rolling hills, retreating in all directions.
“These lands are still unfamiliar to me. We may come across those other Blood Drinkers by chance, or choose to seek them out later, but for now, let us watch over and protect the humans who escaped those greedy Oombai. We can be their guardian spirits for a little while. Is that agreeable to your thinking?”
Ilio considered the idea. His smile flashed out at me, white and pointed. “Yes, that would be a good thing!” he said.
Liege, Belgium
6:30 am, December 23, 2010 A.D.
“And so that’s it?” the German demanded.
“Hardly,” I replied. “But I’m afraid that’s all the time we have tonight.” I nodded toward the brightening balcony doors, the low December light pressing to the frosted glass.
I’d bound him to another chair after knocking him unconscious, and he glowered at me, his face bruised and swollen. “You’ve told me nothing. Just a story about how you killed some corrupt old men.”
I shrugged. “It is what it is. Life is not plotted like a novel.”
The German snorted with derision. “I thought you would tell me something important. Some grand revelation.”
“Such as…?”
“I don’t know,” my captive said sullenly. “Does it matter if we’re good or bad? Is there life after death? Is there a God?”
I chuckled. “For our sake, I hope not.”
Suddenly furious, the pornographer lashed in his bonds. Spittle flew from his lips as he screamed at me: “I listened to you all night long! What was the point? You’re the oldest living thing in the world, and you’re no wiser than anyone else!”
“I told you,” I replied calmly. “This grand revelation you were hoping for. I did tell you. You just didn’t grasp it.”
He stopped struggling. Nostrils flaring, he glared at me. “What? If there is some meaning in your tale, then explain it to me, or finish me now. I’m tired of waiting for you to kill me. My body aches, and I have to shit. I’m tired of being tied to this chair, for fuck’s sake. Tell me!”
“I have lived for thirty thousand years,” I whispered, leaning toward him dramatically. “For all my time in this world, for all my experiences, I’ve discovered only one thing ever really matters.”
“What is it? Tell me!”
I leapt on him then. With a snarl, I seized him and brought my fangs to his neck. He screamed in anguish as I bit into his flesh, severing his carotid and jugular with one quick slash. The blood gushed out of him, hot and salty, filling my mouth, spilling down my chin. I grabbed his hair and jerked his head to the side and sucked his life out in great, greedy draughts. I filled my belly with him, and when he was a hair’s breadth from death, I brought the Living Blood up from the center of me, and I spat it onto the spraying wound.
I stepped back and watched the black blood knit the ragged tears back together. The bleeding slowed… stopped. His eyes rolled groggily toward me. He was pale with blood loss, only half-conscious.
“Why?” he croaked.
“Because I can. Because you deserve this,” I said. I smiled. “I have many more tales to tell you.”
Adieu, For Now
Evening comes as I complete this second volume of my memoirs. In just a few hours, it will be Christmas morning, a celebration of the birth of a radical young rabbi named Yeshua, who was delivered—or so the story goes—in the manger of a donkey, some two thousand years ago.
Was he really the son of God?
I don’t know.
I’ve seen a lot of messiahs come and go in thirty thousand years. But I’ve always liked the message he preached. It’s too bad no one really understands it. Instead, the powerful use his name to draw lines on the battlefield of our souls. The weak retreat into its shadow.
I think he would weep if he knew the atrocities that have been committed in his name. I’m sure of it, actually. I wish I had met him, but I was living in Rome when he ministered to the Jews.
In the adjacent room, my captive audience sleeps fitfully in his chair. I can hear his soft snores. I can smell the rank odor of his excrement. He soiled himself sometime during the day, while I slept in the guest room on the other side of the suite.
I’m not sure why I’ve let him live, only that I’m not finished with him. I want to tell him more, and I want him to tell me more as well.
But for now this tale is told. Perhaps it’s too brief. I’m ever insecure of my literary talents, but I didn’t want to encumber you with some thick and clumsy tome. I’m afraid I may grow tiresome if I ramble on too long.
I hope you are still curious about me. I hope you’ll read the volumes to follow. I promise there is a meaning to it all. No Grand Revelation, perhaps, but a truth, a real truth, and a good one.
I’m sure, if you’re a wise and virtuous person, you’ve already figured out what it is. I’m loath to write it out explicitly, only because it sounds cliché, and maybe you won’t read any more of my stories if I do.
For now, I bid you adieu.
Until we meet again, I remain your friend,
Gon,
The Oldest Living Vampire
About the Author
Joseph Duncan lives in Southern Illinois with his wife, his kids and all the voices in his head. This
is his fourth novel.
The Oldest Living Vampire
The Prehistoric Cycle
Book One
The Oldest Living Vampire Tells All
Book Two
The Oldest Living Vampire on the Prowl
Book Three
The Oldest Living Vampire in Love
Book Four
The Oldest Living Vampire Betrayed
Book Five
The Oldest Living Vampire Unleashed
The Oldest Living Vampire on the Prowl (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 2) Page 20