Dhampire

by Baker, Scott

The task had been set for all time, but the choice was still ours. Whatever we decided, Satan would eventually be destroyed—if not now, then years or millennia or eons later—while other, equally evil, gods would survive His passing, still others come into being after He was gone. There was no one to force us, no one to reproach us if we decided to remain safely sheltered in Patala until time itself came to an end.

  I remembered that first time Michael had taken control of me in the forest at my father's funeral, the way he'd used me to violate Dara, had used our shared pain and degradation to provide him with the power he wanted. As Satan needed not only His victims' pain, but even His own, to maintain His continued existence.

  No one to force us. Only Satan's agony, our Bathory faces staring out at us through the masking flesh for all eternity.

  "Send us back," Dara said.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  « ^ »

  Saraparajni gestured and I felt a strange sudden emptiness within me where the heavy cool porcelain egg Monteleur had become in Patala had been… saw Dara start as the familiar passed from me to her.

  Taking upon herself the death that should have been mine, that I'd entered Patala to escape.

  The space around us was filling with clotted red-black shadows, drifting darknesses. I took Dara's hand, held tight to it. Around us I could still see the jade pavilion in its gardens, the undersea palace of white ice, the fiery caverns beneath the world-mountain's roots, but superposed on them was Uncle Stephen's torture chamber, my father frozen motionless in the act of gulping down the last of the blood spurting from the severed jugular and carotid veins in Stephen's neck.

  I took Dara in my arms, pressed her to me, held her.

  At last we let go of each other, stepped forward together into shadow.

  Dara screamed—and within her Monteleur too screamed, a terrifying frenzied bellowing as the familiar reawakened to find itself in her alien, Naga-impregnated flesh. There was a sudden burning implosion in my belly, a horrible sickening internal slithering as my torn and damaged tissues were sucked in to fill the void where Monteleur had been… a frenzied thrashing visible beneath the taut skin of Dara's belly as she collapsed to the floor of the torture chamber, Monteleur still screaming within her, arched her back in a single, final bone-breaking convulsion, and died.

  Monteleur was silent. Gone. Had deserted her body as soon as she was dead.

  The pain from what the familiar had done to me before Vasuki had paralyzed it, from the wounds which would have killed any normal human, came rushing back over me, but I held it off, refused it: I was the sole surviving Bathory dhampire now; all the life the vampires had stolen from those they'd killed, those they were even now feeding upon, came flooding into me, a black burning tide… and I drank it, used it to keep to my feet, wall off the pain, begin healing myself even as I held back my father and all the others—their skin dull white, smooth and dry as polished bone, all of them reeking with their victims' blood, their own rotting graveyard sweetness—used the strength I drank from them to resist the insane hunger in their eyes like dead, glittering sapphires or emeralds, dilated black opals.

  Dara lay dead and crumpled at my feet. Falling through the cold and the wind, the empty darkness, already beginning to forget me, forget everything but the hunger blossoming within her.

  Perhaps Monteleur was there with her in the freezing void where I dared not follow him, taunting and tormenting her.

  Around me the cavern blazed like burning metal. The family was bloating itself on the last remaining members of Stephen's coven, his other followers. I made no attempt to stop them, contented myself with forcing the vampires outside the cavern and back in Illinois to leave their innocent Victims alive and healthy enough to recover, as I drained all the Bathory vampires of the life and strength they stole, used it to complete healing my body.

  When at last I was strong enough I carried Dara back out of the cavern to the cabin, laid her on the bed I'd once shared with Alexandra. She felt light, empty, a hollow wax sculpture. I lay down beside her, climbed the shadow tides back to my father, took from him the knowledge which had enabled him to prolong the forty days of Aunt Judith's transformation for so many years.

  The method was simple, involving garlic and holy water, thorns from the wild roses which grew in such profusion on the family estate back in Illinois. Stephen had a stock of everything I'd need. I waited until dawn came and I could relax the hold I was keeping on Father and the others, then treated the hundred and forty-four half-transformed victims in their coffins—all those who were to have been possessed by members of the secondary covens for the Lammas Day Sabbat—with the garlic and holy water, shoving the thorns in under the loose clammy skin of their chests, directly above their unbeating hearts.

  I was interrupted by a delivery truck full of food and drink for the Sabbat, twice more by disciples of Uncle Stephen's arriving early to take care of tasks they'd been assigned. I accepted the delivery, using my power to focus the delivery-man's attention to pass myself off as Uncle Stephen… used the same power to deal with all but one of the others the same way I'd dealt with the two Provincetown cops what seemed like so long ago, turning them away from all possibility of disbelieving me when I told them the Sabbat had been rescheduled for All Hallows Eve and that Uncle Stepheri wanted them to remain in seclusion, not trying to contact him or any of the other coven members, until then.

  If we hadn't succeeded in destroying Satan before All Hallows Eve Dara and I would both be dead, and vampires, and nothing we could do now would keep Satan from repossessing them after we too were His.

  The final man was the only member of Uncle Stephen's prime coven who hadn't been in the cavern when the vampires killed the others. An undertaker from Salinas. He was as easy to deal with as the others had been: Stephen had told them all to keep the locations of their parents' and grandparents' bodies secret, telling no one—not even him—where they were, but I kept the man from noticing that I wasn't Stephen and that what I was saying was in contradiction to what Stephen had ordered him to do, sent him back to Salinas prepared to treat the bodies he was keeping hidden in his funeral home with garlic and holy water and wild rose thorns.

  There was no way I could force the dead coven members to tell me where their dead parents were hidden, no way I could command the vampires they would become on Lammas Night, when their transformations would be complete and they'd emerge from their coffins for the first time, to converge on the cavern, reclaim their childrens' bodies…

  And kill me if they could, rip me open and drain me of all the life and strength the Bathory vampires had stolen for me, the force so strong within me now that I could see my skin blazing brighter than the caverns, the vampires, anything else around me.

  When the undertaker was gone I took care of all the bodies of the victims from the night before, dragged them to a chamber deeper in the caverns which my father's memories had told me Stephen had kept as a refuge, its reinforced-steel door covered inside with layers of rosewood veneer, its stone walls protected by spells.

  I built a bier for Dara from the stacked corpses, laid her out on it.

  Kissed her chill lips one last time before returning to the outer caverns to clean up the remaining signs of the previous night's slaughter, make sure that all the familiars Stephen had summoned for his Sabbat were secure in their pentacles.

  When night came I stationed a vampire over the pentacles, so I could keep watch over the familiars through his eyes and make sure they remained undisturbed, then used the rest of my ancestors to try to search out the places were the coven members' murdered parents had been hidden. A few I found—John's family were in their family crypt; there were three backpackers in a ravine behind Chews Ridge where their daughter had buried them after she killed them; another man in a fresh grave in the Monterey Cemetery, just across from the college—but the rest were too well concealed.

  Would be emerging from their graves Lammas Night.


  Coming after me.

  * * *

  Chapter Forty

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  The undertaker returned the next morning with everything I'd ordered him to get for me: a chunk of flesh from the newly dead corpse of a man who'd died of natural causes, the silver bowls and platters, pastes… everything I'd need to prepare for the night when Dara's transformation would be complete. I put the flesh in the freezer in the cabin, turned the undertaker away from all memory of ever having known Stephen or been a coven member, sent him away. Spent the rest of the day reinforcing the chamber in which Dara lay on her bier of unrotting corpses, beginning my preparations for the Ritual.

  Uncle Peter arrived the following day, Lammas Eve, as did the Black Men from the lesser covens who were to have been fitted with their new familiars before the Sabbat. I turned the Black Men away from their memories of Stephen and their covens, sent them away, but it was harder to decide what to do with Uncle Peter. I finally turned him away from all his memories and fears, left him a child with only enough self-awareness to feed and clean himself. There'd be time to restore him to himself if Dara and I succeeded; if we failed he'd be doomed anyway. This way he'd at least be able to escape his fear and guilt for a while.

  Lammas Day I dealt with the few other men and women who arrived as I'd dealt with the others. That night I locked myself in my secure chamber, stationed my ancestors outside the door to deal with any non-Bathory vampires or other intruders who might try to force their way in.

  Three tried. I let them continue until I was sure that they couldn't make it past the door and protective spells, then had my ancestors capture them and hold them till dawn.

  The following day I destroyed them with fire, then returned once again to the chamber. I spent most of the next thirty-eight days in the clotted shadows beside Dara's bier of stacked corpses, watching over her and remembering her, leaving only when I had to do something for Peter. Thirty-eight days watching the beauty drain from her face and body only to be replaced by something else, a cold aggressive parody of the person she'd been, an obscene exaggeration of her natural sensuality and sexuality. Watching her lengthening canine teeth push their way like slow-crawling ivory worms out from beneath her ever-redder lips.

  Every night I stationed Bathory vampires outside the door, kept the other Bathorys from doing their victims any lasting harm. Two more non-Bathory vampires were caught trying to force their way in to me, a third escaped. We caught another when Mihnea surprised her killing a teenage boy camped just off my property.

  But though I could force the Bathorys to leave their victims alive, I had no control over the new vampires, and every night brought a dozen or more killings in Monterey or Carmel, or among the thousands of military men stationed at Fort Ord.

  It was almost impossible to keep myself from climbing the shadow tides to Dara, prevent myself from using them to enter her consciousness as once we'd entered my father's together, but she was of the same generation as I was and I had no dominion over her. Had I joined her I would have been lost, swallowed up in her transformation, yet though I dared not open myself in any way to what was happening within her, I could still feel her transformation reflected to me through the others, sense the growing elation in all the vampires I ruled as the moment approached when her transformation would have reached its end and they would all be free of my dominion.

  Even shut off from her as I was, I felt the change in her when her transformation was complete and Satan took her from her body for her first day of torment in Hell. On that last day of my dominion I sealed all the other Bathory vampires in their coffins while they slept to keep them from taking any physical part in what happened between us.

  Then I knelt beside her bier and concentrated in the way which Saraparajni had revealed to us in that last instant of total memory, until I could see Saraparajni in Dara, see the All-Mother, the Creatrix, She who was simultaneously mother, mate, and daughter to all created beings. She held the body of an infant to Her mouth with one hand, lapping its blood with Her thick black cat's tongue, while with the other She held a second infant to Her breast, suckling it. Her hair and skin were glossy black, and around Her waist She wore a sort of skirt of dangling hands, boneless forearms, while cobras coiled and twined around Her neck and shoulders.

  She was utterly beautiful, utterly horrible. Kneeling there before her I worshiped her until at last she shuddered on her bier of waxy-fleshed corpses, a convulsive trembling that twisted and contorted her body and face without touching the dead stillness within.

  Her face was a mask of rage and pain and hatred, the Bathory face that lay hidden as well beneath my own features, yet it was still only a mask, and beneath it I could sense the hungering emptiness, the need to gouge me hollow, empty and consume me and make of me only another vessel for the hunger that had already eaten her.

  In the weeks I'd spent watching over her I'd prepared everything necessary for the Ritual, readied myself as best I could. I put aside my fear, let it flow through and from me, waited.

  She opened her eyes and stared at me, made a low inhuman glottal sound deep in her throat. Conflicting emotions, none of them truly hers, chased themselves across the smooth perfection of her face, never touching the hungering deadness beneath, and then she smiled.

  Her teeth were shiny white behind too-red lips, her breath was foul, and yet the very foulness, the deadness of her drew me to her, awakened all my need for her. I let her draw me down beside her onto the bier, lay trembling with pleasure as she trapped me in the shimmering depths of her golden eyes, while she ripped open my throat and warmed herself with my living blood.

  Through the door I could hear a muffled scream from Uncle Peter. It went on and on while she drank from me, suddenly stopped.

  When she'd drunk enough to warm herself, feel my life flowing through her veins, I wrenched myself free of her eyes, used the stolen strength I'd taken against this day from my ancestors to hold her will and my need away from me long enough to open myself once more to that total memory I'd been taught to summon, just long enough to use the last of my stolen strength to send that memory flooding into her, superpose it on the dark tide of life she was draining from me, shock her into awareness, into readiness to receive her own lost memories, there where they'd awaited her in the keeping of her Naga soul.

  She choked, tried to scream. Her hands fell away from me and her eyes lost their fascination, grew dull and confused as she fought against her body and its hungers, her vampire's inability to accept and believe the truth her Naga soul was showing her. She began to shake, barely retained enough control to keep from vomiting up the precious blood she'd drunk.

  The blood that would lend her the life she'd need for the Ritual.

  "David, I'm—I'm not strong enough." Her voice was ragged with need, and yet still a cold, angry monotone. Dead. "I'm afraid and I… need more blood, I have to have it to go on, but please, David, don't let me take too much—"

  I helped her sit up, held her steady as she drank from my opened throat until I was too weak to let her continue, then pushed her gently away from me, over to the far side of the chamber where I'd set up everything we'd need for the Ritual, all the objects and symbols that would help reinforce and imprint the meaning of what we were doing on our consciousness.

  "David, hurry, they've got Peter, he's letting them out—"

  We cleansed ourselves in a pool of scented water with the appropriate rituals, rubbed each other with the scented oils and pastes proper to the first part of the Ritual, dressed each other with clumsy haste in robes of coarse red silk. The air around us was heady with flower smells, fragrant oils and spices, the rich greenness of tree saps and grasses, everything that was freshness and life.

  We sat down facing each other across a low silver table set with platters of human and animal flesh, fish and dry hard bread, goblets of bittersweet nectar, with its trays holding the objects I'd chosen for us to contemplate during the Ritual feast: flowers and flower garlands, blades
of freshly cut green grass, the skull of a weasel, grains of rice, water containers and a libation jar, a lump of kneaded clay with five aromatic eucalyptus leaves across its top. The points of departure for our visualization and contemplation of human existence in its entirety, everything we needed to partake of and cherish that existence.

  The moment of total memory we'd been granted was beginning to fade back into empty factuality; I could see Dara trembling with her need, feel my own need to sacrifice myself to her hunger twisting inside me.

  And outside the chamber, through the steel door, I could hear a confused din: Peter and my ancestors preparing to try to force their way in. But the door would hold; we had the time we'd need.

  I thrust them from consciousness, dipped the fingers of my left hand into the shallow silver bowl of vermilion paste in front of me, drew an equilateral triangle on the silver surface between us, its apex pointing to Dara, then touched my paste-covered index finger to Dara's forehead, just above the space between her eyes. As I washed the paste from my hand in a second bowl Dara dipped the corresponding fingers of her right hand in a second bowl and drew a second triangle over mine, but with its base towards her and its apex pointing to me, so that the two triangles superposed formed a six-pointed star. Then she touched my forehead as I had touched hers.

  It was as though an eye opened, but not an eye there in my forehead where she'd touched me with the paste, not an eye that was in me or was any part of me at all. But it opened and I saw.

  In the center of the six-pointed star Saraparajni sat on a throne of burning diamonds, and everything about Her was golden. She had rich lustrous golden-brown skin, long flowing hair, golden eyes, the slim graceful body of a girl just barely adolescent, yet from the waist down She was serpent and She rested on Her golden coils.