My heart clenched painfully in my chest. If your heart has ever broken, truly broken, you know the pain I am speaking of. It is a very real pain, a terrible, deep, overriding pain, but I tried to ignore it, tried to push past it. There would be plenty of time later to regret all the decisions I had made, all the loved ones I had sacrificed. All of eternity, in fact. For the moment, I needed information.
“Tell me what is happening,” I said.
“The Uroborans are coming down from Fen’Dagher! So many of them, like angry hornets! Khronos is sending his warriors out to meet us. His men… they have taken some of the Tanti away, separated them, but the rest--! Irema, where is Meegan? Has she been spared? Where is my daughter?”
“Look at me!” I shouted.
Aioa recoiled from my shout, but her eyes focused on me. She looked at my face, which is what I had intended.
Speaking through her, using the link she shared with her sister, I addressed Irema: “Granddaughter, listen to me! We are coming! If you have made allies among the rebels, it is time for them to rise up! Give them the Blood, make as many blood drinkers as you can, convince them it is time to fight! We are coming, Irema!”
Before I could say anything else, Aioa let out a piercing shriek. It was the cry of all hope lost. “Meegan!” she wailed, and then she collapsed into my arms, sobbing inconsolably. “Oh, Meegan! Meegan!”
As she sobbed against my chest, saying her daughter’s name over and over, Vehnfear raised his head and howled.
10
Our journey across the vast Russian steppes was a grim one. We were haunted by the souls of the loved ones we had lost. None, I think, more so than Aioa.
Aioa lost contact with her sister when she collapsed, but not before she witnessed, through Irema’s eyes, the slaughter of the Tanti. Only a few, she said, had been spared. The rest the Uroborans slayed. She did not know what had been done with the survivors, only that they were taken away. Mothers separated from their children. Husbands from their wives. Brothers from sisters.
Most of the children they killed, including her daughter Meegan.
Her agony was a terrible weight upon my heart. It was soul crushing, for I felt responsible for their deaths. Every single one. But what else could I have done? I could not condemn all mankind for the welfare of so few. Not even my own mortal descendants!
But, ancestors, the pain! I felt I could hardly lift my feet from the ground. I was even afraid to raise my head, for I feared I would see their spirits standing along our path, staring at me in silent reprobation.
“You must not blame yourself,” Zenzele said, but it was hard not to convict myself with Aioa walking just a short distance away, sobbing wretchedly while Eris and Sunni tried to comfort her. To know that it was my actions, and no one else’s, that had provoked the God King to his murderous reprisal.
I had saved six. And Aioa said some others had been spared, though to what purpose I hardly dared imagine. Knowing Khronos, it would be awful.
Yes, I blamed myself. But I could not see that I’d had any other choice. Their fate was sealed the moment the God King had them.
The plains were seemingly endless, the rolling grasslands as broad as the sky was deep, each a revelation in its own way. Both seemed the physical manifestation of time. Perhaps that is what time is: the friction heat of the movement of physical matter through space. Or perhaps it is only an artifice, a mass delusion that all sentient beings share. Our perception of time seems terribly malleable, does it not? Slowing down and speeding up depending upon our state of mind. Delusions are that way, too, remaking themselves to consume the mind that hosts them. Or maybe it is time that is the constant, and we remake ourselves. In the end, it does not matter. Time passes, and that is all.
On the second night of our march, a light snow fell.
I felt it coming, that mass of cold air. When I arose at dusk, the sky, crisp and clear the night before, had clouded over. The heavens were gray and brooding, and the wind had a little more bite to it. We fed when the blood priests came around with their pots of donated blood-- cold and sticky but oh so delicious!—and then we continued on.
Sometime about the middle of the night, I felt a lightening in the atmosphere, as if some weight had been eased from my shoulders, and then tiny white flakes of snow began to drift down from the heavens.
Zenzele, who was enchanted by snow, turned to me and smiled. Her tightly curled black hair was already dusted with it, and her eyelashes, too. I smiled back, though the sight of snow does not excite me as it arouses her. There was not much snow in the part of Africa where she was born. I, on the other hand, born in the Swabian Alps of Germany, had had my fill of snow about the time the first curly hairs started sprouting from my chest. Still, she looked like a sugar-dusted angel that night, and her simple joy at the sight of the snow distracted me a little from my pain.
On the third night of our march, we encountered an enemy patrol.
Slavers, they were, come down from the north with a catch of hapless mortals. There were nine immortals in their band, and none of them Eternals. They wore elaborate armor and fearsome looking masks. Several of them were on horseback. Their captives numbered a little more than a dozen, and staggered along single file with their wrists and ankles bound to one another.
Judging by the relative good health of the hostages, their village must not lay very far away. They had not been beaten too severely either, so I assumed their people had a treaty with the Uroborans, and these captives were a tribute of some sort, or troublemakers they wished to be relieved of.
Being vampires, the slavers sensed us long before we came near, but they had been out of contact with Uroboros for a while and did not know who we were or the threat we posed to them.
Not until it was too late.
“That one is Oc’soetel,” Zenzele said, pointing to their leader. “I recognize the mask. Northern slavers.”
The slavers watched us approach, sitting very still upon their black horses. When finally they alarmed, and reined their mounts around to flee, their fate was already sealed. Our army engulfed the retreating slavers like an amoeba devouring a luckless paramecium. They fought back, of course, but none of them were particularly powerful blood drinkers, and only one of them possessed some aberrant power. That one, a stout middle-aged man when he was made, with a thick mane of curly red hair, had the ability to strike blind anyone who met his gaze. He was a big target, though, and our archers brought him down from well outside his range of influence. He screamed at us in defiance as he fell, flesh shriveling and then falling away to dust. Luckily, the effect of his wild talent was short-lived. By daybreak, the two blood drinkers he had blinded with his magic had begun to recover their sight, and by nightfall they were fully healed.
We released the mortal hostages. Only one of them had perished during the assault, struck in the throat by an arrow that had bounced off the armor of one of his captors. I expected a show of gratitude from the slaves, but the man who stepped forward spat in my face.
About three dozen of my soldiers lunged toward the man in outrage, meaning to tear him limb from limb.
I held up a restraining hand.
“You are free men again,” I said, wiping the spittle from my face. “We go to Fen’Dagher to make war on the God King. You may join us if you like.”
Rubbing his abraded wrists, the leader of the hostages glowered at me. “Dog fucking blood suckers,” he snarled. “Why don’t you suck my cock instead?”
Chuckling at his profanities—I have always been amused by vulgarity—I waved for our men to withdraw. “Return to your tribe then, if they will have you back,” I said. “And tell your chief the God King’s raiders will trouble your people no further.”
His retort was even more profane.
“His people are called the Vilst,” Zenzele said as I strode away. “They have always been… difficult slaves.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said.
The fourth night of our march passed without incident.
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On the fifth night, we found out what Khronos had done to the Tanti.
As I feared, it was not a pleasant thing.
11
We were somewhere in southern Ukraine by then, two or three days journey from Uroboros, and close enough to the Sea of Azov to smell the briny water. The Dnieper River, which was smaller back then, was a shimmering black ribbon just to the west of us. We planned to follow the river a little way, then turn our army south and head to Fen’Dagher. So far, apart from the slavers we had fought two nights ago, we had encountered no hostile forces. Khronos was making us come all the way to him, hoping, I’m sure, to wear us down before we launched our final assault. It didn’t surprise me. It was what I would have done had our roles been reversed.
Zenzele saw them first.
She reached out and clasped my shoulder-- to steady me, I think—but by that time I don’t think anything Khronos could do would ever shock or horrify me again. There comes a point in times of war when you have just seen so much awfulness that your soul becomes inured to it all. It is like your spirit grows a protective shell. Or perhaps it is more like scar tissue.
I saw the cruciform figures set out on the hill ahead of us, paused for a moment to let it sink in, and then continued marching doggedly ahead.
“Is it?” Zenzele whispered.
“Oh, I am certain of it,” I sighed.
I counted two, three, four of them set out along the ridge. Aioa let out a little shriek at the sight of them, but she did not break. She had cried herself out a couple nights ago.
We plodded up the ridge, the Dnieper at our backs. I stopped at the foot of the nearest one and looked up at the man. Flesh white. Drained of blood. He had been lashed to the beams with lengths of rope.
“They killed him before they hung him up,” I said.
Insects buzzed around the man’s bloated body, swarming in the yawning mouth, crawling over the bulging, sightless eyes.
“I’m surprised,” Zenzele said. “He usually likes to see them suffer.”
“He was afraid we’d find them before they died,” I said. “He didn’t want us to save them. Besides, it was not their suffering he desired. It was mine. He only did this to hurt me. To goad me into reckless anger.”
“His name was Olin,” Aioa said, gazing up at the crucified man. She stroked one of his feet sympathetically. “He was an arrow-maker. He was old enough to know you when you lived among the Tanti. Do you remember him, grandfather?”
I could not tell. His body was too bloated, his features distorted by the agonies he had suffered. But I did not wish to seem disrespectful so I nodded and said that I did. “We were not close,” I said, “but I remember him.”
Aioa nodded. “His arrows were very fine. They helped keep us fed when we were running from the slavers. He was a good man. A good father. He had many children.”
“He will be avenged,” I said. “They all will.”
She searched my face. Whatever she was looking for, she must have found it for she nodded and walked away.
“Let’s cut him down,” I said.
12
Before moving on, we cut down all four of the crucified men and gave them a proper burial.
As we performed this grisly task, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the creature that had made me a vampire. A ruthless fiend, he had crucified some of the Gray Stone People, our Neanderthal neighbors to the south, placing them in our path when we went in search of the monster’s lair. I suppose it was meant to frighten us away, those crucified figures. Bodies contorted in agony. Guts torn out and hanging. And they did frighten us. But I did not let my fear rule me, not then, when I was a mortal man, and I certainly wasn’t going to let fear turn me away now.
My maker.
I did not know his name. I have never learned his name. I know only that he was a Foul One. The Foul Ones were a clan from the icy regions to the north of our tribal lands. Filthy, degenerate creatures, they seemed more animal than man to us. They sharpened their teeth into fearsome fangs and adorned their bodies with the bones of the men and women they devoured. My people battled the depraved cannibals for generations. I am fairly certain that was the tribe that had produced my brutal maker, or one very like it.
I can still see him swooping down upon me in the moonlight, his feathered cloak spread out to resemble the wings of a carrion bird, eyes burning in their sockets like hot coals. He held me captive in a charnel pit, forced the Living Blood upon me, meaning to enslave me. But the Blood made me a powerful Eternal, and I destroyed my maker shortly after.
Just as I meant to destroy the God King.
They were very much alike, Khronos and my maker. Brutal and cunning. Insatiable and pitiless. There was a pleasing symmetry to this. My life had come full circle.
I do not think I’ll ever know why fate sees fit to cast me in the roll of savior. I’ve never fancied myself a warrior, much less a great one. I am more of a lover, I think. And a father. I’d much rather be entertaining some grandchild by the hearth, or easing my cock into the well-rounded backside of a lover—male or female, it matters not to me-- than wage war on my fellow man, regardless how just that battle might be. I do not understand why any man would rather fight than fuck.
Perhaps they are just really bad at fucking.
Khronos held some rather strange ideas when it came to sex. The culture he hailed from had been an exceptionally brutal one. Born at the advent of the last glacial maximum, the world he grew up in had been particularly poor, with little food and long, hard, unforgiving winters. His people had eaten the flesh of their dead, hunted and ate their Neanderthal neighbors. They did not even name their children their first year of life. The infant mortality rate at that time was just too terrible.
Their lives were hard. Only the strongest, the most cunning and cruel, could survive in such an unforgiving environment, and their customs towards sex were just as inhumane. Rape and the brutalization of their women was a common thing. The men often murdered their sexual rivals. Not a single aspect of his culture had been soft or forgiving in any way. And it had made a monster of him.
Violence aroused him because he was raised in an environment in which violence was necessary to the procreative act. Every competitor he killed improved his chances of mating and successfully rearing his young. He brutalized his mates for the very same reason. But times had changed. He was a dangerous anachronism now. If his influence were allowed to spread any further, mankind would become trapped in a hopeless death-spiral of self-parasitism. I had seen it. I had seen it in his Blood. I had seen it in his soul.
He had to be put down.
Now.
While there was still a chance of stopping him.
13
The following night, as we drew ever closer to Uroboros, the God King came to me.
It was near dawn. The sky was brightening at our backs, the clouds there red and purple, like banners of war. We had made only a little progress that night, as we had spent half the evening taking Tanti corpses down from crucifixes and burying them in the earth. There were fourteen. Men, women… even children. It was not hard work for immortals like us, but it was disheartening, and I had even wept a little at the sheer senselessness of it all.
Why?
The word echoed in my mind, like the tolling of a bell.
Why…?
Why must there be such cruelty, such misery in the world? Why so much hatred and violence? Why so much suffering?
I do not know to whom I was addressing my sorrows. I did not believe in gods. My people worshipped their ancestors, the only creators we knew. We did not, like the Neanderthals, believe we lived on the back of a giant bear named Doomhalde, who chased the moon, his lover, endlessly around the heavens. We did not believe in demons or hungry snake gods or invisible aristocrats who held court in the sky.
I suppose I was just crying out. I felt like an infant abandoned in the wilderness.
And then he came.
I imagine my misery call
ed out to him in some way, drew him to me, as the scent of blood attracts the shark.
Or the vampire.
I had just retired from overseeing the burial of the final Tanti victim we had come upon that night, and it was there.
The God King’s invisible Eye.
Humming with energies not even my acute senses could identify, it was vast and silent and utterly inexplicable, but it was there. I could feel it!
It was closer than it had ever been before. So close I could have reached out and touched it, if there were any substance to it. So suddenly did it appear that I took a step back in alarm, raising my right arm in a defensive gesture. I thought he meant to attack me in some fashion. Strike at me with some power not previously evinced.
But he did not attack. In fact, I did not even sense malice emanating from his invisible presence. Always before there came with the Eye a sense of hatred, of great rage or frustration. But not today.
He was merely… looking at me.
I lowered my arm and looked back.
I imagined, as I had in the temple, a great disembodied eye. Reptilian. Inhuman. I felt that it was just inches from me. I knew the others sensed it too, for they had paused in their labors and were gaping in our direction.
Zenzele started toward me, an expression of concern on her face, but I held a hand out to stop her.
I was curious what he would do.
“I know you are there,” I said, speaking in a conversational tone.
The Eye continued to stare at me.
“Why have you come?” I asked.
I do not know if he could have responded in any meaningful way, not in that disembodied form, but if he had the power he chose not to use it.
I leaned toward him, cautiously opening my mind to him.
And felt nothing. Just his awareness. His dispassionate observation.
“All things must pass,” I said, speaking to his invisible presence just as dispassionately. “Your time has come and gone. The world has moved on, as it must.”
The Oldest Living Vampire Unleashed Page 17