The Oldest Living Vampire Unleashed

by Joseph Duncan

  He was a youthful immortal, not very strong, but lithe and beautifully featured with long rippling golden hair and startling blue eyes. He flew to us, panting as a mortal man might do, then caught himself at the sight of me, startled by my presence. He bowed. “Forgive the intrusion, Father--!” he gasped. He had no need for breath, being a blood drinker, but some blood drinkers cannot rid themselves of their mortal habits, and he was obviously one of them. “I bring news—from the outposts--!”

  “Compose yourself, Tatto,” Drago said. “Now, tell us what is the matter.”

  It was obvious from Drago’s tone—that of a stern father-- that young Tatto was one of his blood children. But we all had countless blood children now. Each of us had opened our veins at the Temple, donating our Living Blood so the priesthood could make more vampire fighters. I myself had donated twice last night. My contributions had spawned four new blood drinkers. Three were powerful near-Eternals. The fourth, though weak, was gifted with the ability to kindle small fires with his thoughts. It was an intriguing talent, and one that might be honed into a formidable weapon if the lad was able to develop it.

  “Uroborans come!” the messenger exclaimed, startling us all. “The God King has sent an embassy to treat with us. There is an Eternal among them. And mortal hostages! The one who leads them called them the Tanti. He said they were a peace offering.”

  “Treat with us?” Drago howled in disbelief, and Bhorg burst out laughing.

  I held up my hand. “How many?” I asked.

  The messenger looked at me in confusion.

  “The hostages,” I said. “How many?”

  “Six.”

  “Are any of them children?” I asked, thinking of Aioa, her daughter Meegan. Or Irema’s two boys.

  “No children, Father. Three men and three women.”

  Zenzele was watching me closely, suspiciously. She did not trust me to be rational when it came to the Tanti. It pained me that she should doubt me still. That Gon, the old Gon, the sentimental fool, was dead. He had died along with his blood child Ilio. But I could not blame her for distrusting me. Not after all I had done. I had betrayed her, snuck away to Uroboros, surrendered myself to Khronos. She would never forget that, never quite trust me again.

  But I was not that man anymore.

  “The Eternal,” I said. “Describe him to me.”

  “Ancient when he took the Blood,” the youthful blood drinker answered. “Back bent, flesh wrinkled like the bark of a tree. He is dressed in flowing robes and a tall headdress with a beaded fringe.”

  “Edron,” Zenzele said. “The God King’s majordomo.”

  “And his escort,” I said. “How many?”

  The messenger frowned, looking down at his fingers. In that time, we could only count to 21, a number for each digit on our hands and feet-- plus one, if you were a male. Most knew only one, two, three, and many. “Four attendants and many guards,” the lad finally answered.

  “And where are they?”

  “They have encamped near Far West Post,” the messenger said.

  “Did the Eternal, Edron, say anything else?”

  “No, Father, only that Khronos wishes to treat with us, and that he, the old one, awaits your decision.”

  They all looked at me.

  I thought about it. I thought long and hard, ignoring all the activity around me: the training exercises, the blood priests rushing to and fro, the bleeders feeding our blood drinker warriors. I felt sorry for Neolas’s priests, who were trying to manage so much at once. Even in so primitive a time, war was a complicated enterprise. It was no longer just one group of angry men bashing in the skulls of another with clubs and big rocks. I didn’t realize there would be so much… administration.

  And now this!

  Well, I wanted those Tanti hostages. When this was all over, those six men and women might be the only surviving Tanti. The last of my mortal bloodline. Regardless of what I thought of Khronos’s “peace offering”, I could not let this opportunity pass.

  “Tell Master Edron that I will treat with him,” I finally said, to everyone’s shock and consternation. Insulting though it was, I ignored their expressions of outrage, their little gasps and cries of disbelief. “Tomorrow night, we will dispatch an escort of troops to see them safely to the Temple of the Bloodletters, here within the city walls. That is where I shall receive him. Tell Master Edron that I personally guarantee his safe passage to and from the city of Penthos. Tell him… I accept Khronos’s offering of peace, and we will see if we can come to terms. We do not want war any more than the God King does. That is it. Now go, and deliver my message to the Uroborans.”

  Tatto bowed and raced away.

  “You can’t be serious!” Drago fumed, once the messenger had passed out of earshot.

  “Do you take me for a fool?” I snapped, glaring at him. “Of course, I know this is a deception! Khronos is vulnerable. His sweet talk of peace is just a ploy to delay us from attacking. Have you not sensed his Eye flitting overhead? He knows that we’re amassing our troops. He sees the new blood drinkers we make every night. His motives are as transparent as water. But Edron has something I want. Those hostages may be the only Tanti we can save, the last of my mortal progeny. I will have them, and if I have to smile and kiss a snake to get them then that is what I shall do. But I am no more inclined to make peace with our enemies than they are. The God King will fall!”

  Drago bowed. “Apologies, Gon.”

  “No need to apologize,” I said. “Your lack of faith is not unwarranted.” I addressed them all then, meeting the gaze of each of my allies. “I know I’ve acted unwisely in the past. I’ve allowed Khronos to manipulate me, to deceive me. I’ve put you all at risk. But that man is no more. He died the night Khronos and his sycophants tore my son apart. My first bloodborn Ilio. By your faith and strength, I have been given a second chance. I have been reborn, but I am not the sentimental fool that I was before, and I swear to you all, right here and now, I will never again place the welfare of the few, or the one, ahead of the all. I will not be a fool for the God King again. This I promise you, my friends, my allies, my lovers.”

  I looked on their faces and saw loyalty, I saw hope, and I saw something new—something I had never seen in their eyes before: unequivocal trust. They had forgiven my past mistakes. Their faith, now, was absolute. Anywhere I went, they would follow. Anything I asked of them, they would do without hesitation. I loved them completely in that moment, and swore in my heart of hearts that I would never betray their faith in me again.

  “Now,” I said, grinning wickedly, “let us arrange a proper reception for Master Edron!”

  8

  It is always a little surprise for me when I cross the path of an immortal I have not seen in years and behold that he has not changed at all. I always expect them to be different somehow, to be altered in at least some trivial way, but they never do. Edron looked exactly as he had when I last saw him, though his robes were a little more splendid, his headdress larger and more ornately decorated. Old he was when he took the Blood. Older even than Chaumas had been. The flesh of his ugly face was deeply crenelated, like someone had taken it and crumpled it in their hands. He had icy bluish-gray eyes and a long, hooked nose and a bitter little sneer of a mouth. He always looked as if he had just bitten into something sour, lips pursed, eyes narrowed to slits. I have never seen a gentle emotion pass across his features, only hatred, fury, outrage, disgust.

  I hated him completely.

  That, also, had not changed.

  He hesitated when he stepped through the western gate, confronted by several hundred hostile mortals. The Temple of the Bloodletters was slightly elevated above the surrounding city and I could just see him from my seat in the temple’s central circle. I watched him pause, his puckered mouth shriveling even tinier, a dog’s clenched anus, as the men and women of Penthos cried out in loathing at the sight of him. Were it not for his entourage pressing him forward, I think he might have turned and f
led. And I know if my guards weren’t holding back the mob, my people would have pounced on the reviled Eternal and ripped the old fiend apart. Many of them had been hounded by the God King’s slavers their entire lives, had lost loved ones, their entire tribe, to the hated Uroborans.

  The guards I had placed along the path were barely holding back the crowd. They were powerful immortals, every one of them, but the surging crowd smashed against them again and again, causing the line to tremble and sway. A hundred mortal hands reached out, fingers curled, to swipe at the Eternal, trying to catch hold of him, but that was what I wanted. I wanted Master Edron to feel some measure of the fear he had inflicted on so many hapless mortals over the millennia. I wanted him to feel vulnerable and small. I wanted him to feel despised, to know that he was despicable.

  “How good it would feel to call off those guards,” I said to Zenzele under my breath. “To let the crowd have him. To watch them tear him apart.”

  She did not reply, but placed a restraining hand upon my forearm.

  Bhorg, who was standing to my right, overheard my comment and grunted in agreement.

  I sat up straighter, trying to appear regal, as the Eternal and his entourage started forward, staying well to the center of the corridor my guards had cleared for them. I had dressed for the occasion in my finest clothes, donned a great feather-trimmed cape, leather boots and plated gauntlets. Zenzele had painted my face to make me look more fearsome, my eyes circled in black, my lips a bright bloody red. My headdress was cumbersomely large-- much larger than Edron’s ceremonial cap—and was fashioned to give me the appearance of a bird of prey. Zenzele was similarly attired, though her cape was trimmed in fur rather than feathers, and her ceremonial headdress gave her the likeness of a she-wolf. I watched impassively as the God King’s delegation filed steadily toward us, the crowds to either side of them howling for blood.

  “There they are! The Tanti hostages!” I hissed, sitting forward in excitement. I had feared that Master Edron would leave his prisoners behind, hold them in reserve to insure his safe passage. “The God King’s ‘peace offering’!” I snarled. “The old fool has brought them!”

  “Steady, my love,” Zenzele whispered.

  I composed myself, affecting once more the dispassionate expression of a bored aristocrat.

  It was difficult, for it infuriated me to see my kinfolk in bondage. They were woefully thin, their naked bodies filthy and covered in cuts and bruises. Eyes hollow, they stumbled after their Uroboran captors, heads and wrists secured to wooden stocks. I recognized two of them, though they were much younger the last time I’d beheld them, cousins of Ilio’s wife Priss, my old friend Valas’s niece and nephew. They looked old now, their tangled hair streaked with grey, their faces deeply lined and hopeless. They did not even seem to know where they were, and shrank back in fear from the howling mobs to either side of them. It was all I could do to remain seated. I wanted to leap from that dais and fly to their rescue.

  Edron stared straight ahead as he marched. For him, there was no screaming horde, no gauntlet of trembling mortal hands straining to catch hold of him, to pull him into the maddened crowd and rend him limb from limb. But I could see his apprehension in the tautness of his mouth, the way he focused his attention on each step, first the right foot, then the left foot, and then the right foot again. My vampire senses are very acute. I could smell his fear. I could taste it. His apprehension was as fine as mortal blood, and every bit as satisfying.

  Edron saw me watching him and scowled. A moment later, something moist and brown struck him on the side of the head.

  He recoiled, wiped the viscous fluid from his cheek with his hand. I saw the outrage on his face when he realized what it was and very nearly burst out laughing.

  Human excrement!

  Edron flicked his hand in an attempt to be rid of the offensive matter, but the sticky substance clung tenaciously on. An instant later, someone else pelted him with their scat. He bared his fangs at the crowd and hissed, but this was no mob of starved and dispirited slaves. The people of Penthos did not fear the blood drinkers, for they had lived shoulder-to-shoulder with their immortal cousins for years, decades for some. They knew they had the superior numbers, and a city full of immortals—their brothers and sisters-- sworn to protect them. They roared right back at the Eternal, surging like a violent wave against the picket of soldiers holding them at bay. I was afraid for a moment the line might break, that they might actually get through to the Uroborans, but my guards pressed back against the crowd, faces strained, and just barely managed to hold the mob in check.

  More dung whizzed through the air, striking Master Edron and his attendants in the face and chest and shoulders. Bhorg laughed uproariously as Edron and his escort, their dignity forgotten, ducked their heads and made haste for the Temple of the Bloodletters.

  And so it was in disgrace, splattered in mortal shit, that the God King’s envoy came to treat with me for peace.

  I did not rise to greet him but leaned back with a moue of disgust, fanning my hand at the sickly-sweet odor of human excrement that accompanied his entourage.

  “Master Edron,” I said, “welcome to Asharoth.”

  I could see that he was battling to restrain himself, shoulders hunched around his ears, body shaking with rage. If looks could kill, I would be twice over dead right then. A piece of excrement about the thickness of my thumb dropped from his cheek and rolled down the front of his robes, leaving a brown trail. Somehow, he managed to suppress his indignation and opened his mouth to address me.

  “In Penthos, we bow to the Father when we address him,” Bhorg interjected, stepping forward with his mighty hammer.

  We did no such thing, but Edron did not know that.

  Master Edron glared at the hulking barbarian at my side, then shifted his gaze to that massive stone hammer. Bhorg’s hammer, composed of pure granite, was some three or four cubic feet in volume, and about six hundred pounds. The old fiend might have been an Eternal, but a hammer that size would pulp his head all the same. I could attest to that. I have seen Bhorg strike his foes with such force that their bodies literally exploded.

  I think Edron must have seen such a thing once or twice himself, for he reluctantly lifted the hem of his robes and hunkered down. It took all of his self-control to do it, but he bowed.

  “All of you!” Bhorg roared, pointing at the rest of the envoy with his hammer.

  Edron shivered as the mortals surrounding the Temple began to jeer. They laughed and pointed, shouting insults at the humbled Uroborans.

  I waited for a terribly impertinent amount of time, then indolently pronounced, “You may rise, Master Edron.”

  Edron rose.

  “How shall I address you?” he asked.

  “Here, among my people-- among my children-- I am called the Father,” I said. “But you are not one of my children. You are, in fact, a killer of my children. Therefore, you may call me… Most Righteous One. Or, if you prefer, simply Gon.”

  He seethed at my insouciant tone.

  “I shall call you Gon, then,” he snapped. The nostrils of his beak-like nose flared rapidly.

  I flicked my hand as if I could not be bothered either way. It was beneath me.

  “As you know, the God King sent me—“ he began.

  “I know nothing,” I interrupted.

  “What?”

  “You said ‘as you know’ as if I know what your business here is, but I’ve no idea why you’re here. I was told you desired an audience with me, and that you were sent to speak on behalf of Khronos. That is all I know. What is it that the God King wishes to ask of me?”

  Edron scowled, but he continued gamely on. “I have been sent to treat with you for peace.”

  “Peace!” I scoffed.

  “The God King has instructed me to tell you that he is most impressed with the society you have created here. For many years, he has observed you with his all-seeing Eye. Your kingdom is vital and strong, your people productive a
nd obedient. He says that it has inspired a change of heart in him. He has never before considered that mortal and immortal could live together as equals, but here, in Asharoth, you have shown him a new way. A better way, perhaps. It is his desire that we should make peace with one another. That our two kingdoms, Uroboros and Asharoth, should be sister states, capitols of the East and the West Dominions, sovereign but united. It is his desire that we defend one another from any outside threat that might arise in the future, and that we trade freely with one another, both in material goods and in ideas.”

  Oh, but it sounded so good! Khronos knew just how to bait a trap. I might have even fallen for it… once.

  Zenzele looked at me hard, reading my thoughts as only she could do. But she needn’t have worried. I had told her what I intended to do.

  I had to get those hostages away from the Uroborans!

  I pretended to consider his proposal, taking my time, making him wait. Finally, I said, “How do I know that I can trust you? Your words have a sweet smell, but so does shit-- as you well know. How do I know Khronos will keep his word if I decide to broker peace? I do not want war any more than your master does. I would like that our two kingdoms become sister states. But Khronos has broken his word to me before, and I am not so eager to stick my head in the crocodile’s mouth a second time, no matter how pretty the smile.”

  Would he buy it? Vampires are notoriously good at detecting deceit. On the other hand, I wasn’t really lying. I did desire peace.

  “You’ve seen, of course, the peace offering Khronos extends to you,” Edron said, flourishing an arm toward the Tanti. “He knows these people are precious to you. These six he returns to you now are proof, he hopes, of his sincerity. The rest shall be released to you, alive and unharmed, once we have finished negotiating a treaty.”

  A lie, of course. He did not know that Irema was there in Uroboros, that she had seen the Tanti beaten and crucified, and relayed that information to us through the link she shared with her sister.