Dhampire

by Baker, Scott

  The cave was as I had remembered it, elfin, beautiful, shimmering. We unrolled our sleeping bags and spread them out.

  There was a last moment of utter agony as I finished undressing, and then I was free. Free until we returned to our bodies and Monteleur drained us as he had drained us at Carlsbad.

  We tried to hold ourselves back as long as we could, keep to our separate selves, but it could have been only a few hours at most before the walls separating us from each other went down and we met and merged, melted into the living energies surrounding us. Only to be wrenched from our joy, find our androgynous body once again standing knee-deep in the salmon-gray mud.

  Dara gave me control and we started for the hill.

  "Is Monteleur here, Dara? Or Uncle Stephen?"

  "I don't think so." Her sibilant whisper. "And father's still not conscious of our presence here yet. But they still might be able to listen in on us."

  "What about Michael?"

  "I don't know. He's here, under the hill, just like we are, and he's half Naga, but I don't know if he's conscious of being here, or if he can hear us out here away from the cave."

  "We'll have to risk it. I've been thinking about what you were telling me. The last time. Where is it, exactly, Patala? And is there any way we can get there?"

  "It's within the earth, under it, and beneath the ocean, but—It isn't anywhere, exactly, or not any one place. When I lived there we could, I remember, look out and see, see almost anything, but now—When they took me away to live with father we just walked through the gates and then walked a little longer, five minutes maybe, or a half-hour, through some sunny fields full of wheat, perhaps, or something like wheat, and then we walked into the shadow of a tree, and then down through a passage beneath its roots into the cavern beneath the house. But after they went away and left me with father I tried to find my way back and I never could, not even when they'd come to visit him and I'd try to follow them…"

  "What about them? Our grandparents, or even the Queen I told you about, the one who saved me from the coral snake? Is there any way to get through to them, maybe get them to help us?"

  "No. I don't remember anything about a Queen, but—They don't care. Or, no, they care, they care more than anyone, but it's not like—They don't do anything, or try to stop anything. That first time, when they gave me to father, they just stood there all beautiful and peaceful and smiling while he made me watch one of the vampires—his father, I think it was, or maybe his grandfather—kill a girl not much older than I was, and men he gave me to the other vampires to play with, not hurt, he stayed there and made sure they didn't hurt me, but they were all around me, staring at me and touching my face and all over my body and telling me how much they loved me and wanted me and wanted me to be like them—And they just stood there watching, they didn't do anything to try to save the girl, they didn't care how horrible it was for me, how frightened I was, or—But before they left me alone grandfather took one of the—serpents—from his… aura and gave it to me to wear on my arm—"

  "And Uncle Stephen found it where I hid it and destroyed it. But you don't have any other way to find them, or—I don't know. Let them know you need their help."

  "No. I tried. All those years, even with the… bracelet I tried to talk to them, get them to come back for me and take me away but they never did."

  I would have held her, kissed her, done what I could to reassure her if we'd been in our own bodies. Here, there was nothing I could do. We waded the moat, began to climb the hill. Just before we reached the crest Dara had me kneel and drink from one of the streams.

  "More, David. We may need the strength it gives us."

  I swallowed more and had started to straighten when an idea struck me. I scooped some of the red liquid up in our cupped hands, climbed the rest of the way to the crest of the hill and splashed it on the green face. The face opened its eyes, stared down at me.

  "How do we get to the next level?" I asked.

  "There are no further levels," he said. "From here there is only return. Return to your own bodies, or to the bodies of those others who are joined in me."

  "Which others? Michael, Uncle Stephen, the vampires?"

  "Your ancestors. Those already joined in the communion of which I am the nexus."

  "How would I return to one of their bodies—to my grandfather's, say? And what would it involve?"

  "I would merge you with one of them. You would be passive, a passenger only, experiencing what your grandfather experienced without awareness of yourself."

  "And how would I get back?"

  "I would bring you back."

  "And what would happen to this body while I was gone?"

  "It would remain here."

  "I don't trust him with our untenanted body," Dara whispered, "not even here. But perhaps it would be worth the risk if only one of us were to go while the other stayed here, in this body."

  I tried to look into him, enter into his consciousness and find the passage whose walls were doors leading to my ancestors' souls, as I'd done when I'd first defeated him and obtained dominion over him, but was unable to find it. Perhaps it didn't exist on this level, or existed in a form I couldn't recognize.

  Yet for all his impenetrability I still had dominion. "I'll go," I said, "if you're sure you'll be safe here."

  "I'll be safe."

  "Put me in my grandfather," I said. "Dara will stay here, in this body, to command you until I return. Bring me back here at dawn."

  And I was Mihnea Bathory, beating wings of furred membrane high above the deserted streets of a small town. It was sometime after midnight. I had no awareness of myself as David Bathory. I was Mihnea.

  My thirst burned within me, made me shiver with rage even as I flew, though I had drunk the blood of two young girls tonight. But I had not drunk deeply enough to satisfy my need, drunk them to death and beyond, till they were emptied and I could fill their emptiness with my love, make of them my other selves and share with them the love they felt for those they had cherished among the living. And they had been only strangers, my love for them only brief and trivial, their blood not that that I needed, that of Stephen, Peter, Michael, David, Dara.

  Suddenly, there below me, at the edge of town, walking across the only bridge to the tiny island in the artificial lake that was this town's answer to the monotony of its countryside, I saw a girl crying softly to herself. She was thin and without beauty, but her tears made her infinitely desirable.

  I swooped down at her from behind, coming so close to her head that she felt the wind of my passage stir her long hair. She looked up, startled, saw me climbing, my black skeletal wings clearly visible as I flew in front of the moon, wheeled, dived down at her again, blotting out the moon completely, and then halted, hovered just above her in a flurry of hairy wings, so close she could see the red fire in my eyes, smell my rank odor. She screamed, began to run. I climbed back into the sky, let her go perhaps a hundred yards, halfway across the island, then swooped down in front of her again, letting one of my wing tips brush her shoulder. She tried to turn back, stumbled, then picked herself up and ran for the bridge, but I was already there, hovering in front of it, red eyes gleaming.

  I ran her until she collapsed, hysterical and sobbing, then came to ground on the other side of the bridge and resumed human form. I was dressed, as always, in clerical black, with only my unorthodox crucifix to betray my imposture.

  She heard my footsteps on the bridge, heaved herself up off the ground, prepared for a last desperate attempt at flight, but the moonlight gleamed on my clerical collar and when she recognized me for a priest she collapsed once more, still sobbing, but this time with relief.

  "What's wrong, child?" I asked, helping her to her feet.

  "Thank God you're here, Father! I'm a, a Lutheran, but—Thank God you're here!"

  "Why?" I asked. "What's wrong? Is it something I can help you with?"

  "There's a giant bat—" She stopped, realizing for the first time h
ow impossible her story was, then went on defiantly, "—a giant bat chasing me. It wouldn't let me across the bridge—"

  "A vampire?" I asked. She looked eleven, perhaps twelve. She'd scratched her face in her flight; the scratch had already scabbed over but I could feel her warmth, see the delicate pink tracery of the capillaries just beneath the surface of her skin, the throbbing in her throat.

  "Yes!"

  "Surely you're joking," I said. "If there's something you don't want to—"

  "You're a Catholic priest!" she accused. "You're supposed to believe me!"

  "In evil, yes, but in vampires? Perhaps you did see a bat, or a big bird, maybe an owl, but—"

  "It chased me. And it wasn't just a bird or something. It was too big, and it knew what it was doing. And I could smell it."

  "Where is it now, then?" I asked reasonably.

  "I don't know—it flew away. You must have scared it off."

  "In that case it doesn't really matter whether I believe in it or not, does it?" I asked. "Do you think you can make it home safely?"

  "Please come with me, Father," she pleaded. "I don't—want to be alone right now. If you could just, take me home—"

  "I can't, child. Not now. One of my parishioners left a note saying she was going to drown herself here tonight. I've got to find her, and before it's too late."

  "Could I, could I borrow your cross?" the girl asked, chastened. "I'll mail it back to you, or something—"

  "My crucifix?" I asked, pleased. "All right. You can bring it by the church tomorrow. But be very careful with it, and make sure you bring it back tomorrow."

  "Thank you, Father." She smiled hesitantly as I took the crucifix from around my neck and handed it to her. She started to put it around her own neck, then stopped, stared at it, seeing it clearly for the first time in the semidarkness.

  "But—," she stammered. "But Christ is upside down!"

  "That's right," I said, smiling gently, letting my eyes glow red as I held her with my gaze, forced her to lift her head, bend it back to expose her neck as I caught her in my arms, bent to her bared throat.

  But I had no fangs, I could not bite into her, feel the thick rich blood spurting forth, I had to suck it painstakingly through the unbroken skin, and it was never enough, a pitiful trickle that only fed my rage, my need, and for the third time this night I hated my children for what they'd done to me, for what they had reduced me to.

  I left her unconscious but still living, to recover with a story she would never dare tell, and flew back to the estate.

  I lay down in my coffin, closed the lid over me, felt my consciousness begin to fade—

  I was myself again, back atop the green hill, facing my father's great vegetal face. But I couldn't feel Dara's presence in the body we shared.

  "Dara?" I asked, but there was no whispered response, and the muscles of my mouth and throat remained lax when I tried to relinquish control of them.

  "Where's Dara?"

  "She asked me to put her into father's mind as soon as you quitted him." My father's speech was slurred; his tendrils hung limp and flaccid. The blind-faced fliers passed unmolested overhead.

  I decided I had no choice but to believe him, sat down on one of his roots to wait for her return.

  "Son, you know I love you," he said presently.

  "And?" I twisted around to stare up into the green darkness of his eyes.

  "Merge with me. Submit to me. Let me fill my veins with your blood, so that I can then submit to you as my own father now submits to me."

  "But I already command you."

  "It is not the same. Our souls are divided."

  "No thanks," I said, remembering the unassuagable loneliness that had been so much of Mihnea's thirst. "But I suppose you made the same offer to Dara?"

  "Yes. She refused."

  "Has any member of the family ever accepted?"

  "Many. My own great-grandfather—"

  "And how does he feel about it now?" I asked.

  "He had never tried to declare the Compact void."

  "What Compact?" I asked, remembering the letter he'd written me just before his death.

  "The Compact you make with Satan to become a vampire."

  "Tell me about it."

  "After you die the wind claims you. But if you are to become a vampire Satan offers you a chance to escape."

  "And the terms?"

  "They are not harsh. Satan offers you new life as a vampire, with immortality and freedom from Hell—"

  "I thought death was just the falling and the wind."

  "That is death. There is also Hell. But Satan offers you escape from both death and Hell, and will grant you the powers you need to satisfy the hungers of your new existence. In return He asks only that you worship no other god than Him, and that you spend your days in Adoring Him."

  Which must be what Dara was experiencing now, unless she was just lying trapped in Mihnea's body while his soul was elsewhere.

  "And what is it like, the Adoration?" I asked.

  "My transformation is not yet complete, so I have not yet spent a day in Adoration. But I know, from my other selves what it is like. They sleep."

  "That's all? They just sleep?"

  "They dream of dancing."

  "Has anyone ever withdrawn from the Compact? Declared it void?"

  His face wrinkled, as though he was trying to frown. "I don't remember," he said at last.

  "What about mother?" I asked. "Saraparajni? When you sealed her back into her coffin for seven years?"

  He seemed confused. "Saraparajni… underwent the transformation but—No. I don't remember."

  I brought him some of the liquid from one of the streams, splashed it over his mouth. "Does that help?"

  "I… before she had ever tasted blood she let me… I sealed her into her coffin and—"

  "Tell me about that. About the seven years."

  "It is part of being a vampire, part of our natures." He sounded more sure of himself. "If we are sealed into our coffins for seven years without being released or tasting blood before our release, and if we emerge from our coffins onto the soil of a foreign country where a different language is spoken, we become mortal again, though we only live for five years as human beings."

  "And afterwards? After the five years as a human being?"

  "We either become vampires again or we—die. Forever."

  "And mother did this, you sealed her into her coffin and took her—where?"

  "To Mexico. It seemed safer than trying to take her overseas—"

  "Did you have friends in Mexico, people helping you?"

  "No. There was no one we could trust."

  "And after that. After she had Dara and her five years were over—?"

  "She returned to Patala."

  "Did she die there?"

  He seemed confused again. "If she'd been human… That was one of the limitations, but she was never truly mortal. She was a Naga."

  I splashed more liquid over his face. "Did she die there?"

  Because if she was still alive Dara might be safe there, might be able to escape becoming a vampire when she died.

  "I don't know."

  "How did you meet her? Did you go to Patala and then bring her back with you, or what?"

  "No, it was in a temple. A temple of Shiva. In India. We were helping pay for a mission there, and one of the missionaries wrote us and told us about a beautiful woman the people said was a Naga, a snake-goddess. She called herself Manasa then, or that's what the people called her, I don't remember, exactly, but—She was so beautiful. So graceful. I'd never seen anyone so beautiful. And then when I learned she was really a Naga I wanted to marry her, so we could gain her powers for the family. I thought that with the Naga intelligence in my sons and daughters they might be able to become vampires who wouldn't need to be controlled by the living…"

  "Why did she marry you?"

  "I don't know. I never knew."

  "She converted you to her god, didn
't she? To Shiva?"

  "No. She tried, but—No. I worship Satan. Only Satan."

  I continued to question him, splashing his lips and face with the red liquid from the streams whenever he grew sluggish or seemed confused, but learned nothing that he hadn't already told me, or that hadn't been in his letter to me.

  I was sitting on his roots when I felt the subtle alteration in the rhythms of our shared body that signaled Dara's presence. My father's tendrils began darting up into the sky again, seeking out their victims. It must have been dusk in Illinois.

  "Dara?"

  "Give me time, David. Give me time. I've spent the day in Hell." She was using our mouth and throat to speak, too tired for her special way of whispering. I went back to the stream, drank some more of the fluid from it, sat down by its edge and waited.

  At last she said, "I was in Hell, David. That's what they do when their bodies are asleep, they're in Hell, dancing the dance of torment. Satan feeds on their agony and despair, He taunts them with the knowledge of how He's cheated them and how He's going to do the same thing to them again, and how there's no way they can ever escape. He makes a Compact with them—"

  "I know about the Compact," I said, then gave the use of our mouth back to her again.

  "But Satan cheats. He has never honored His Compact. His vampires, all His other slaves and servants, spend their days in agony, in unending torture, but when night comes He makes them forget what's happened to them during the day so they don't know that He's broken the Compact—"

  "Why don't they renounce it during the day?"

  "I thought I told you—During the day they're all merged with Him, part of Him. His will is their will and He tortures them by torturing Himself. Their pain is His pain… He has created a Heaven so the damned will suffer from their knowledge of its existence but He Himself is all the damned, they are all part of Him the same way I was part of Him, I was Him, I was Satan—"

  She broke off. We were shaking. I stood up, walked around a little, cupped us some more of the liquid and drank it.