The Oldest Living Vampire Unleashed

by Joseph Duncan

  “And Uroboros?”

  “Destroyed,” I said. “Uroboros was founded upon a dormant volcano. About ten thousand years ago, Fen’Dagher violently erupted, along with several other volcanos in the Alpine volcanic belt. The eruptions were terribly violent. They darkened the sky with ash for months. All that remains of Fen’Dagher is a time-eroded crater at the bottom of the Black Sea. Even now, some twenty thousand years later, it gives me great satisfaction that the God King and all he built have been completely erased from the face of the earth.”

  “And what of the others?” Lukas asked.

  “Our war with the God King was terribly costly-- for both sides of the conflict. When it was over, only a few hundred blood drinkers remained. Mostly Asharothians. The Uroboran immortals were all but wiped out.”

  “And your friends? What happened to the twins?”

  “Eris exists to this day, worshipped by a sect of Shains called the Shvetembers in Southern India. Drago was destroyed about ten thousand years ago by the Eternal Baalt, who somehow managed to resurrect himself. I do not know the story of Baalt’s restoration, but he is the only Uroboran Eternal to be reborn as I was, his Divided body put back together again. He still preys upon his fellow blood drinkers. If you should ever hear that Baalt is in Germany or France or in the Americas, it would be well that you steer clear of that place, and if you are there already you should flee immediately, for Baalt has no mercy, and he is always hungry.

  “The twins survived the war, as did their husband Tapas. Irema, my darling granddaughter, who rescued me from that damnable wall, lived for nearly a thousand years before she succumbed to Time. My beloved Aioa lived a thousand more. Tapas, who was nearly an Eternal, outlived them both. He was my companion for a while, after my granddaughters perished, but eventually he grew tired of living, and offered his life to the Eternal Baalt. Many long-lived blood drinkers seek out Baalt when they are tired of this world. I myself have done so, though he refused me out of spite.

  “Tapas was a dear friend. I tried to talk him out of it, but he was so very weary of living by then. He wanted it to end.” I sighed, gazing down on the glimmering lights of Bad Wildbach. “It is a terrible thing to lose the ones you love, Lukas. For the unnaturally long-lived, it is a chronic condition. It sickens the soul. After a while, you just want the pain to stop.

  “So together we sought out Baalt. He had founded a religious order in the Carpathian Mountains, which lie in the country that is now called Romania, not far from the Black Sea where the God King once held power. I accompanied Tapas on his final pilgrimage.

  “Because of the antipathy that still burned between Baalt and myself, Tapas asked me to remain behind while he walked up to the monastery. I do not know what his final hours were like-- if he suffered, if Baalt made him beg-- but when it was finished the Uroboran sent a messenger to the village where I waited. One of his perverse cenobites. The monk came to my door, gave me a sneering bow, and said, ‘He is destroyed. Now you must leave as well.’ So I left. There was nothing else to hold me there.

  “I walked away from that tiny village alone, and feeling my solitude like a mark of strangeness. Death inscribes that mark on the hearts of all survivors, I think. And the more you love the ones you’ve lost, the more keenly you feel that mark. You become alien to your own soul, until time has soothed the pain somewhat. Even still, I rise sometimes and expect to see Tapas there waiting for me, tending to the fire, or Irema, or Aioa. Sometimes I dream and wake to find myself talking to Isaiah or Tacitus or Ada, or any one of the countless children or companions I have lost throughout the ages. Sometimes I think love is the most terrible emotion we are burdened with, for it pains us more than any other, yet what joy would there be in living were it not for love? It is a double-edged sword.”

  I glanced up at Lukas. “Is there anything else you wish to know? About the Vampire War or what happened after Khronos fell?”

  He thought about it for a moment but finally shook his head.

  I rose then and walked down the slope of the mountain a little way, giving him my back. I no longer worried about my fledgling’s treacherous nature. I had accomplished what I felt I must. I had confessed my sins. Guilt is like a festering boil. It must be lanced and drained to relieve the pain. And I had cut myself open for him-- and for you, dear reader. I was relieved.

  “The sky is beginning to lighten,” I said, gazing down into the valley where I was born. “It will be dawn soon. Time to finish this.”

  Once more I felt that prickling sensation, that unseen witness spying on us. I wondered who it was, and what our peeping Tom must be thinking of all this: two powerful immortals wandering around the mountainside in the dead of winter. Was he or she near enough to eavesdrop on our conversation? Would he try to interfere?

  I hoped not. I was so weary of fighting.

  Lukas had arisen. The snow crackled under his feet as he approached me. I could feel his tension. I heard him adjust his grip on the handle of the axe. Any second now, he meant to strike me down, and I would let him.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asked, his voice tinged with uncharacteristic uncertainty. I was mildly surprised. Perhaps I had had more of an influence on him than I’d thought.

  Looking down into the valley, I nodded.

  “All right then,” Lukas said.

  I heard the axe swoop up. It hovered in the air a moment, trembling, then came swishing down against my back.

  2

  The axe struck me in the shoulder, hitting me with enough force to drive me to my knees. I fell forward onto my palms and saw my blood slash out onto the snow, black ink on white paper. The axe struck me again in the middle of the back and I collapsed onto my stomach, face buried in the snow. I put my hands beneath my body and pushed myself over.

  “The heart,” I croaked, and Lukas moved astride me, one foot to either side.

  Already, the Strix was repairing the injuries. I could feel the Blood shifting to the wounds and stitching them closed, the pain beginning to dim.

  Not enough.

  Not nearly enough!

  Lukas swung the axe into my chest then, cleaving my sternum in two. He struck with enough force to completely embed the blade and had to wriggle the handle to and fro to free it from my body. When the blade finally did slide clear, squealing against the bones, my blood arced into the air, painting my murderous fledgling from his ankles to his breast.

  I felt cold winter air caress my heart and grabbed the edges of the wound before they could draw back together again, hooking my fingers into the meat. I must have looked like that fictional character Clark Kent when he rips open the front of his shirt to change into Superman, only it was flesh instead of shirt and tie, and there was no blue jumpsuit underneath.

  The pain was terrific. It was indescribable, really. But I persevered.

  With all my strength, I widened the wound, snapping back the fractured bones, exposing my black heart to the stars, to the killer standing over me.

  “Drink!” I gasped, as the blood spilled out across my chest. “You must do it! Quickly!”

  Lukas tossed the axe away and dropped down on top of me. Burying his face in my chest, he began to suck at the wound, devouring the Living Blood directly from my heart. I could feel his nose and chin inside of me, his teeth scraping against the organ. My heart lurched in my chest, recoiling from his touch like a timid commuter from a drunken hooligan. With each convulsion, my blood gushed into his mouth, each forceful expectoration splattering his cheeks and chest. The wound was still trying to close, but I would not be thwarted. I dug my fingers into the slick meat, pulling it open as wide as I could, even as the Strix worked to stitch me back together.

  There seemed an impossible amount of blood, more than any human body could reasonably contain. It just kept gushing and gushing. Yet I could tell that I was emptying out. I could feel my strength ebbing, my senses weakening, almost as if they were collapsing inwards, the sphere of my famed sensitivity shrinking by the second.
My fingers slipped from the edges of the wound. “Ancestors!” I gasped, my eyelids fluttering. Dark spots danced in my vision. I felt my arms, numb now, drop down at my sides.

  But Lukas seized the wound and held it open, slurping hungrily at it. His eyes were bright and glazed, the eyes of a lunatic. My blood slicked his entire face, black and glistening. My memories must be pouring into his mind, born on the surging currents of my blood, but if they were he was unfazed by them. He should have been paralyzed by the Sharing, stunned to immobility, but he just drove at me more hungrily, like a starved predator chomping on the carcass of its prey.

  “Take it,” I urged him. “Take it all!”

  How sexual that sounded, but vampirism is an erotic act in many ways. There is the desire and the chase, a penetration and then an exchange of bodily fluids. My mortal victims often die in a state of intense arousal, the men as hard as railroad spikes, the women weeping wet. I was rigid now as Lukas ravished me, not out of lust for my attacker but from the simple act of submitting to him, allowing him to have his way with me. The sensations were overpowering. I cried out as he thrust at me, digging deeper into my chest cavity, snapping at my heart with his teeth.

  He shifted back, face glazed, and grinned down at me. Grabbing my hair, he jerked my head to one side and plunged his fangs into my neck. He tore savagely through the arteries there, nearly ripping my head off in his eagerness.

  I thought of all the mortals I had fed upon so ferociously. This is what it feels like for them, I thought, and I was pleased that I should suffer in the same fashion, now, at the end. It was fitting. It was just. I wished it hurt more.

  “More!” Lukas snarled, smacking his lips.

  He scrambled around to the side of me and yanked me up, maneuvering my lax body as he would a life-size doll. Turning my head to the side, he bit into my neck again, this time on the other side, tearing through the flesh with his razor-sharp teeth, latching onto me like a leech.

  I raised my right arm as he continued to drain me. My flesh had shriveled completely to the bones, was becoming strangely translucent, like milky quartz. Beneath the surface of my skin, the dark threads of my veins shrank and faded from sight. There was a terrible pulling sensation in my chest-- my heart!-- and I was suddenly too weak even to hold up my arm anymore. I let it drop and gave myself over to death, surrendering to it in relief.

  At long last, I die!

  Eyya, Nyala, Brulde… my lovers, I return to you!

  Father, prepare a place for your son in the Ghost World.

  I come!

  At long last, I come!

  And then he was gone and I slumped onto my back. I felt perversely abandoned. I managed to raise up a little and saw that Lukas had stumbled away a short distance.

  My bespoke killer was doubled over, retching loudly. He had drunk all he could, all his belly would hold, and was vomiting into the frozen grass. Black blood on white snow, hissing as it oxidized.

  I reached out a trembling hand, meaning to call him back to me, to urge him on, and saw that my flesh had begun to fracture. Fascinated, I brought my hand closer to my eyes. I watched as the surface of my skin continued to spiderweb, hairline cracks zigging and zagging away from the joints, tiny pieces flaking and falling away from the bones.

  It had begun.

  My final dissolution.

  I was coming apart, crumbling to dust.

  For an instant: abject horror and disbelief.

  Even now, after so many millennia, a part of me did not wish to die, that old animal instinct for survival. A hysterical voice in my head cried out, “No, not yet!” But it was easy to push the thoughts down, to suppress the survival instinct that was, like all living creatures, hardwired in my brain.

  It was time for me to die.

  I relaxed onto the frozen earth, looking up at the sky. He would return and finish me. I needn’t call him back.

  I gazed up at the stars, white pinpricks of light in the dark expanse of the heavens. My people once believed the stars were the campfires of our deceased ancestors, as if the night sky were an inverted black plane suspended over the world of living men. I think it comforted us to believe that our dearly departed remained so close to us, just up there, on the other side of the world. It is still a comfort, though I know that it is not true.

  So many stars!

  All men look to the night sky in wonder, especially when they are young and the world is still a revelation to them, but that wonder is pale appreciation of the vastness, the splendor, the ultimate mystery of the universe our world tumbles through like a pebble cast through eternity.

  Our universe is a great pyrotechnic show of sizzling pinwheels and shooting bottle rockets and vast exploding fireworks. It only seems still and silent because we are so small and our time here so brief.

  A vampire’s senses can penetrate that vast outer darkness a little more deeply. For us, the night sky is dense and brilliant with stars, a milky glowing haze of winking lights. Yet even my preternatural senses, a hundred times more acute than the senses of a mortal man, can only perceive a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of one percent of all that lies beyond the thin skin of our atmosphere.

  I gaped up at the night sky, seeing it as if for the first time because it was the last, and wondering what mysteries waited beyond the veil of what little of the universe my finite senses could perceive.

  Lukas had finished vomiting my blood. Still crouched over, he turned and grinned at me, eyes and teeth gleaming in his gore streaked his face. He swayed a little, caught himself, then stumbled back in my direction.

  “I can feel you inside me,” he said haltingly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Your thoughts. Your memories. There’s so much! I can’t really…”

  I returned my gaze to the night sky as he fell to his knees beside me. He pushed my head to one side and lowered his mouth to my neck. I winced as his teeth ripped into my flesh. He was a brutal one, this child. No finesse. A crude lover who speared you all at once. He latched onto my neck and started sucking.

  I could no longer see the sky. That was a disappointment. I would have liked to gaze upon the stars as I perished. I had a suspicion they would move as my flesh gave up the spirit, that they would come together, condense into a blazing corridor of light. Instead, I stared down the icy slope of the mountain as he fed upon me, grunting and slurping like a wolf on the tattered belly of a lamb.

  So bare, the trees, winter bald and black.

  So this will be my final sight, I thought, but that was not so bad. And it had its own austere beauty, that skeletal woodland. A penitential purity. Perhaps it was all I deserved.

  That was when I saw them.

  3

  At first, I was not sure if they were real or just a figment of my imagination. I was dying, my vaunted senses fading as Lukas drained me of my Living Blood. But even in my weakened state I should have sensed them long before they drew so near.

  Perhaps they were not real, I thought. Perhaps, as the veil between this world and the next began to part, my mind had conjured them up, those whom I loved the most. Or perhaps I was so intent upon my self-destruction that I had overlooked their coming. I prayed they were a hallucination. For if they had come they surely meant to interfere, and I did not have the strength, either physically or spiritually, to resist them.

  At some silent signal, triggered perhaps by my recognition of them, they started up the mountain slope, moving swiftly through the dark wood. They flashed between the tree trunks, pale and silent as ghosts. Zenzele, my soul’s mate, and my beloved Apollonius. Sydney and a copper-headed fledgling. Glorious Justus and poor Eternal Agnes. And Nora, with her two English paramours, the bookseller John Worthy and the punk rocker Sam Coleridge. With all their good intentions, they came, and I was too weak to cry them off.

  But Lukas, his powers amplified by my Blood, had sensed them, too. His head jerked up, teeth bared, and he let out an animalistic snarl.

  “Stop!” Nora shouted, fingers splayed i
n his direction, and Lukas froze as he drew back to leap at them, his stout body trembling. She had seized control of his mind, paralyzed him with her telepathic powers.

  She would not be able to hold him indefinitely. He possessed all of my memories now, including the psychic disciplines I had developed over the millennia. But for the moment she had removed him from the equation-- long enough, I’m certain, for her compatriots to plead their case.

  Was it already too late? I did not know. Lukas had drained me nearly dry. My body felt as light and fragile as balsa wood. Lighter even than that. More insubstantial. My flesh was nearly translucent now, and fractured at my slightest movement.

  I turned my senses inwards, seeking out the answer, and found that, yes, I could still be brought back. If they fed me. If they forced their Blood upon me. I could still be restored.

  But I did not want to live!

  “Father, what have you done?” Apollonius said in a horrified voice, falling to his knees at my side.

  Oh, my handsome boy! Even in the dark, his golden curls shined. His skin was flawless alabaster, his eyes the blue of a summer afternoon. I should have known he would find me. He was the most stubborn man I’d ever known!

  “Do not touch him!” Zenzele shrieked, dropping down beside me. Her hands hovered like frightened birds, too fearful to alight.

  At Nora’s command, her lovers scooped Lukas up by the armpits and bore him quickly away. They lifted him as if he were a mannequin, his limbs rigid, though I saw that his eyes could still move. They twitched back and forth in their sockets like the eyes of a cornered beast, and his nostrils were flaring. His heels dug twin tracks in the snow as they dragged him away. Did they mean to destroy him now? But he was my salvation!