I’M NOT LETTING YOU HAVE MY BODY!
His psychic assault was agonizing, but I had endured worse. I have been ground to paste in the belly of a glacier. I have been rent limb from limb at least half a dozen times. I have been shot and stabbed and impaled and disemboweled, more times than I cared to recall. I had once even been blown up by a Nazi hand grenade. Lukas’s crude attempts to drive me from his consciousness were well within the limits of my tolerance for pain.
The only real question was how I was going to beat him.
His Living Blood was slowly absorbing my own. He was digesting me. I could feel it happening, feel myself diminishing. And when he finished digesting me, I would be in thrall to him, a dim specter floating in his horrible subconscious. I knew this from experience. I had absorbed countless personalities over the millennia. I’d just never been on this side of the equation before.
I searched frantically through my memories as I grappled with him, calling up all the vampires I’d Shared with through the ages. Surely one of them possessed the knowledge I required.
I tore myself from Lukas’s grasp and went to them. Dove down through the memories.
So many faces!
So many lives!
An endless corridor of them.
I flew from apparition to apparition, questioning them frantically. Do you know? Have you heard of it? But they all shook their heads… until finally there was one.
Just one.
A female blood drinker named Ani, with whom I had Shared some ten thousand years ago. Her maker, a great beast of a man named Ute, had become possessed when—
A blow to the midsection sent me reeling away.
It was a real blow, not some psychic attack. The impact sent our body crashing into the base of a nearby tree. As clumps of snow, dislodged from the branches overhead, thumped to the ground around us, Zenzele sprang from the shadows to deliver the coup de gras.
But Lukas was fast. He dodged Zenzele’s blow, vanishing in an eruption of twinkling snowflakes. Springing to his feet, Lukas whirled around to face her, body crouched, fingers curled into claws. They circled warily, glaring at one another as snow drifted around them in silent, graceful arcs.
The injuries he’d sustained from his collision with the tree had already healed. Gan was right. Lukas seemed to be absorbing my powers even as he absorbed my Living Blood. He might very well become a true immortal soon, a deathless Eternal, or very near to it. If that happened, few would have the power to oppose him, and little hope of destroying him unless they attacked him en masse.
“Why resist your fate, little man?” Zenzele purred, looking for an opening to attack. “You cannot escape my wrath. You’ve destroyed my heart’s true love. Honor demands retribution. You die here, tonight.”
“I only did what he asked me to do,” Lukas shot back. “He wanted to die. You should thank me, bitch.”
Paulo and Agnes joined Zenzele. Lukas drew back a pace, moving to keep them all in view. Agnes went to Justus and kneeled down beside him.
“He’s been blinded!” she cried, as Justus reached up to her with trembling hands. “The little beast tore out his eyes!”
“I killed Sid Vicious, too,” Lukas taunted them. “Ripped his head right off his neck!”
“You destroyed Sam?” Zenzele hissed, eyes signaling her rage.
“I don’t know. The one with the Mohawk,” Lukas smirked. “You should have seen the look on his face!”
Poor Nora!
While Lukas was distracted, I took the opportunity to return to my Shared memories, and to Ani’s recollections of her master Ute’s possession.
A brief companion and lover, Ani acquiesced to my search, graciously allowing me to experience her memories.
Ute and Ani were once the guardians of an ancient temple near what is now called Urfa in modern day Turkey. They call the temple Gobeklie Tepe now, but in that time, it was called the House of Many Moons. One evening, as they were performing a religious ritual, the Rite of the New Moon, they were beset by a powerful blood drinker. He attacked without warning, giving no explanation for his hostility. Ani and her master prevailed against the ancient blood drinker but only after a particularly long and vicious battle.
After decapitating their enigmatic foe, Ute had taken his Blood, hoping to discover why the immortal had attacked them. Within moments of drinking their vanquished foe’s Blood, Ute began to scream.
Clutching his stomach, he had vomited great torrents of blood onto the ground. Somehow their adversary had caused Ute to expel his own Living Blood, displacing his Strix and taking possession of his body.
Her possessed maker had enslaved Ani, kept her in bondage for several years, but never revealed to her how he had managed the feat. She knew only that it could be done—that it had been done—to her master.
The power is in the Blood, no doubt, she said to me. But that is all I know.
Perhaps their foe possessed the power to control the movements of his own Living Blood. I had seen it before. Khronos, during our battle in the bowels of Fen’Dagher, had attacked us with his own Living Blood. He had projected it from his body like spears of glistening darkness. I have never been able to control the Strix that dwelt within me, but I had Khronos’s memories. Perhaps I could take from them the secret of its doing. Perhaps I could expel Lukas’s Blood, just as Ute’s foe had done to him.
It was worth a try.
At some imperceptible signal (imperceptible to Lukas, at least), Zenzele and Paulo attacked simultaneously. Their movements were so fast they would have been invisible to the eyes of a mortal man, but Lukas was a powerful immortal, and possessed all thirty thousand years of my fighting experience. He parried each whistling blow that came in his direction, and somehow managed to catch Paulo’s arm and send him pinwheeling into the treetops. Zenzele saw an opening and pressed the attack, slashing at his neck, but Lukas parried the strike and delivered a tremendous two-legged kick to her stomach. Both fell back, Lukas onto his ass, Zenzele crashing down the slope of the mountain.
He should not be able to fight this proficiently, I thought, watching all of this from my space inside his head. The Blood imparted knowledge, but it did not impart muscle memory, it did not impart actual firsthand experience. The knowledge we gained from Sharing was much like book learning. You can read a book on Shaolin kung fu, but it won’t make you a kung fu master. But Lukas had assimilated all of my fighting techniques. He was battling my loved ones as if he had been doing it for thousands of years. My father was right. This was something new. Something dangerously new!
“Who’s next?” Lukas said mockingly, springing to his feet
“I reckon that would be me,” Sydney called out. He brandished his shiny pistols two-handed, like a gunfighter in a western movie, shoulders hunched, feet set far apart. “Let’s see just how good you really are,” he drawled, and then he unleashed a lightning fast volley of hot lead at his foe.
As the light from the gunfire strobed against the trees, Lukas pivoted and rolled and did an impressive backflip, dodging nearly every bullet. It was like being strapped into a crazy amusement park ride. Sydney tried to track his foe but was unable to keep up with the fiend’s blurred movements. When every chamber of both revolvers had been emptied, Sydney glared at his sibling and tossed aside the smoking guns.
Lukas rose from his crouch. The bullets that had found their mark popped from his flesh and dropped to the ground, one by one. A second later, the wounds had healed over.
Lukas grinned. “That all you got?”
Sydney raced across the clearing, tackling him across the midsection. Lukas met him with a joyous whoop and they tumbled down the mountainside, brawling like two drunks.
“Oh, I got more!” Sydney grunted, punching Lukas in the face. “I got plenty more! We’re gonna put you down like a mad dog.”
Lukas went for his eyes but Sydney boxed his hands aside and punched him in the face again, striking with enough force to crush a cinderblock.
“You ain’t getting my eyes, you dirty fighter,” Sydney snarled, and then he wailed as Lukas seized his balls.
Lukas bucked Sydney off and scrambled to his feet. His nose was flattened, his left eye misshapen. Sydney landed on his side and just laid there a moment, cupping his injured testicles in his hands. Lukas had crushed them to a pulp. The pain must have been exquisite.
Lukas twisted his nose into place with a grimace of pain, the bones crackling, then stalked toward his adversary. He drew back his foot to kick his injured foe in the head.
“Say goodnight, Gracie,” he said.
Before he could unleash the blow, however, Miriam leapt onto his back, screaming and clawing at his face like an angry cat.
“You stay away from him!” she cried. “Don’t you touch him!”
“Get off me, bitch!” Lukas snarled. He grabbed Miriam by the collar of her jacket and threw her forward over his shoulder. She landed with a bone-jarring thud and he stomped down savagely on her throat, crushing her neck.
Still standing on her throat, he bent down, grabbed a handful of her hair and ripped off her head. He examined the decapitated head for a moment, taking great satisfaction in her horrified expression, and then tossed it over his shoulder.
“No!” Sydney howled. He started to rise, forgetting his crushed testicles, and Lukas kicked him ferociously in the ribs, sending him rolling down the mountainside.
His foes vanquished, Lukas stumbled away. “Now,” he panted, “now maybe I can—URK!”
He doubled over, a great gout of blood erupting from his mouth.
The glistening black blood splashed onto the snow at his feet. He stood there gaping at it for a moment, and then he did it again.
“What the fu—URRGGHHH!”
Streamers of smoke rose from the puddles as the Living Blood he had vomited began to oxidize.
“What are you doing?” he gasped. He clutched at his belly, looking down at his body as if it had betrayed him.
And again, before he understood what I was doing, before he could mount a defense.
“No-ooaaAAUUUGGHH!” he screamed, blood boiling out of his mouth and nose. He fell to his knees and lurched forward onto his palms, geysering blood.
“You dirty bastard,” he choked. “You double-crossing cheat!”
I will not allow you to harm my tribe, I said inside his mind.
“You can’t do this,” he gasped. “You’re dead. You’re dead and gone!”
Blood and spirit, I retorted. Not dead. Not yet, anyway.
He squalled as I forced another gout of the Living Blood from his throat. I could feel myself spreading through his body, my Strix insinuating itself into his veins, forcing out more and more of his Blood, displacing him, replacing him, taking control.
His form felt foreign to me—as Yul’s flesh had felt when I commandeered his body-- but my Living Blood was already working on the cells, reordering them as if it were healing an injury, doing as it had done for thirty thousand years: returning its host to its original imprimatur.
Lukas howled as his flesh began to flow, as the bones of his skull shifted and popped. His howl came out wet and black as I forced more of the Strix from his body. He was weakening, fading, and I was growing stronger.
Apollonius attacked then, throwing himself upon Lukas. Lukas responded instinctively, fingers encircling his throat. Using his last reserves of strength, Lukas leapt up and wrapped his legs around my fledgling’s waist, meaning to tear his head off. Paulo fought back, grabbing him by the wrists, but a network of fine fissures spread around his neck.
!!!STOP!!!
Lukas’s muscles locked as Nora’s telepathic command thundered inside his skull.
Paulo took advantage of our momentary paralysis to fight his way free. He stumbled away, holding his neck so that his head did not snap off. Zenzele swept past him then, headed in our direction. There was death in her eyes, and in the cat-like set of her shoulders.
“No, Mother!” Nora called out behind her. She trembled with the effort of holding Lukas in thrall, the muscles in her neck and arms standing out like cables. “Please, stop! There is… there is something wrong with him. Something wrong with them!”
“Them?” Zenzele said, looking at the woman.
Nora tottered closer, eyes narrowed, searching our thoughts.
“There is another presence. Two minds fighting for supremacy.”
“What are you talking about?” Zenzele demanded, looking from Nora to Lukas, eyes slitted with suspicion.
“It is Gon!” Nora gasped. “He’s there. Inside the Blood. His thoughts. His spirit. He’s trying to take control of Lukas’s body. He calls it Blood Possession. And he’s very nearly done it!”
“What?”
“Blood Possession,” Nora said, and a frown creased her face as she probed my mind more deeply. She had plucked the words from my thoughts but she didn’t understand what they meant.
I opened my thoughts to her, lowered all my psychic barriers. This, I said, speaking to her mind-to-mind.
“Yes, yes, I see it now,” Nora said. “I understand.” And then to Zenzele: “Look at all the blood on the ground. That’s his blood! And look at his face. See how it changes?”
Zenzele kneeled beside me-- beside Lukas, I should say. She touched my quivering cheek as I struggled to expel the last of Lukas Jaeger’s Living Blood. “Is it true?” she said, looking beyond Lukas’s eyes, addressing me directly. “Do you still live, my love?”
Nora released her telepathic lock and I rolled over, retching loudly.
Just a little more!
Lukas howled inside my mind as the last of his Blood gushed out onto the snow. It was a child’s cry, the final vestige of his persona, the angry vengeful broken child he was at the core of his soul, where our wounds never heal and we never grow up.
It’s not fair! he screamed inside my head, and then he was gone, his psychic cry fading to nothingness.
I rolled weakly onto my hands and knees, form still in flux. I could feel my Blood reordering the cells of Lukas Jaeger’s body. It was like a cold fire shivering out from my belly. Bones stretching. Muscles contorting. Flesh flowing like putty. It was not as painful as my original transformation, but it was a close second.
I shuddered, panting as a mortal man might pant, head hanging down, eyes closed.
“Gon?” Zenzele whispered.
Paulo approached, still holding his throat. “Father?”
“It is him,” Nora assured him, placing a hand on his shoulder. They moved to stand beside Zenzele, looking down on me in wonder. “It is our maker, Paulo. He has taken the fiend’s body for his own. He came back from death to fight for our lives! See? Even now his ancient Blood remakes his fledgling’s body!”
Zenzele took my cheeks in her hands and lifted up my head. “Is it true?” she demanded. “Do you still live?”
I smiled contritely and nodded. “It is true, my heart,” I said. My voice was not exactly my own, but it was close—very, very close-- and Zenzele laughed in amazement. “It is your lover Gon. I live on.”
She helped me to my feet as the others gathered around, those who had survived: Sydney, Nora, her companion John Worthy, Agnes and Justus and my beloved Apollonius. They put their hands on me, touching me so that it might be real for them, this unprecedented resurrection. Already, Lukas’s face was taking on the familiar dimensions of my own original features. Already, his raven black hair had begun to turn auburn and twist itself into shoulder-length curls.
“Once more, I am reborn,” I said.
Dodecanese
1
It is unsettling to look in a mirror and see a stranger’s face staring back at you. I imagine that is how it must feel for you mortals, as the years etch ever deeper lines into your faces, as you gray, as the weight creeps on and gravity stretches everything south, turning plump cheeks to jiggling jowls, a taut belly to a bowlful of jelly. Or perhaps the changes are too gradual to alarm you.
It was quite sta
rtling for me.
Though the Living Blood remade Lukas’s body after my original form, the transformation was not total. My physical appearance remains a fusion of our two bodies. I am shorter and stockier now, no longer the tall, stately figure I had been before. I am more muscular, my hands larger and more crudely formed. My hair is shorter, darker, not nearly as curly. Most startling of all is my face. My eyes are larger and darker, my chin and brow more pronounced. My mouth is wider and my lips fuller. Very sensual now, my mouth. Even my fangs have changed. They are shorter and blunter, made to rip and tear, where before they were cat-sharp and elegant. It is not a terrible change, I have decided. Much of the original man still gazes back at me from the mirror. But I still jump a little when I chance by my reflection. I have to stop and stare, wondering how much of the original me remains in this new form.
But I do not want you to think that I am so self-centered, that my physical appearance is all that concerns me. It was several days before I permitted myself to contemplate this transformation. The battle of Bad Wildbach had claimed two of our number. Poor Miriam! Gone less than a week after becoming an immortal. And Sam Coleridge, Nora’s fiery anarchist, outlived by the cultural institutions he reviled so passionately. And my wild, beautiful, brilliant Justus, blinded by the creature I unleashed upon the world.
So much suffering, so much loss, and it was all my fault!
Sydney was inconsolable. He didn’t hate me, thank the ancestors. Could never hate me, he claimed. But we all knew my lapse in judgment was the cause of his fledgling’s demise. He was remote, couldn’t look me in the eyes. He departed for America shortly after we descended the mountain. I begged him to stay, to give me a chance to make amends, but he only laughed.
“And how you going to make amends for this?” he asked. “Miriam is dead and you’re still kickin’. But maybe that’s your punishment. To live and live and live while everyone around you dies. For the rest of time. To be honest, I can’t think of a worse punishment than that.”
I wept bitterly at his words. In shame. In horror at what I had done.
The Oldest Living Vampire Unleashed Page 26