The Oldest Living Vampire In Love (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 3)

by Joseph Duncan

  The men were discussing their long years of captivity, the cruelty and decadence of the Oombai. They told me of their prophecies, that the gods would free them from bondage and punish the wicked Oombai. And look, Paba said to the others, pointing to me with his pipe, you disparaged the gods of the Tanti, but who is scoffing now? Our God Thest has come, just as we prophesied. He has taken human form, delivered us from slavery, and punished those decadent Oombai, just as we told you would happen. He said this to the Grell and Pruss men sitting around the fire, and they peeked anxiously at me, wondering—no doubt—if the old man was speaking the truth. Was I the incarnate deity Thest, or just a blood drinker who had stolen the name of the Tanti god? They couldn’t make up their minds.

  One of the Pruss men was glowering at me. He was a stout fellow with a face like the knuckled root of an oak tree, his hair shorn to the scalp, as many of the Neirie had been shorn, their hair used for wigs or rope by the Oombai elite. He was dressed in only a ragged leather loincloth and his muscular body was crisscrossed with thick hypertrophic scars. In some places, scars overlapped other, older scars. He must have been a very defiant slave.

  When our eyes met, he did not look away, but sat up straighter and said, “I do not think he is a god, Paba. He looks no different than any of the other T’sukuru that came to the land of the Oombai demanding their tribute of blood.” He spoke in the Oombai tongue so that I would understand him, but also, I think, to disturb the other men.

  “Kuhl!” his Pruss companion hissed, embarrassed and a little afraid.

  The rebellious man crossed his arms and said, “Twice the Oombai sacrificed my woman to feed those damned T’sukuru leeches! First, Heda. Then, three summers later, they came and took my woman Gehena from the pens. Tore her from my very arms. She had just given birth to my son. They took the baby from her breast and bashed its head against the post. To punish me for fighting them.” Kuhl glared at me with unrepentant hatred. “Do you expect gratitude from me, false god? You are just a blood drinker who grew angry with the Oombai when they killed your little… pet!” He gestured to Ilio as he said “pet”.

  Kuhl rose and stomped away. His back was a nest of raised pink scars.

  “Forgive him, Thest, he was never one to hold his tongue,” Paba pleaded in Oombai. “His Oombai master whipped him every day.”

  “There is nothing to forgive,” I said. “The truth can never be offensive.”

  Paba looked confused and unhappy, as did the rest of the men gathered around the fire. They shifted around uncomfortably, embarrassed by Kuhl’s ill-mannered outburst. Some of them, I could tell, were also secretly wondering who they should believe—the hot-tempered Kuhl or the old Tanti zealot. Was I T’sukuru or the Tanti god of wind? Perhaps I was both. Who’s to say a god couldn’t take the form of a blood drinker instead of a man?

  I could see the thoughts running through their minds. I could see it in the way their eyes moved, the way their muscled ticked and bunched, the smell of their sweat.

  Before our conversation resumed, I noticed several approaching women. As I turned my head to look, the other men around the fire mirrored my movement. Ilio half-rose, a look of excitement on his face as Priss drew near. The women lowered themselves to their knees. Most of them carried long wooden trays upon which steaming venison wrapped in leaves had been arranged. Ilio’s female, however, was carrying two hollow gourds.

  The scent of fresh blood wafted from the gourds.

  The women spoke. Though I could not understand their words, they seemed very respectful of the men sitting with us. Not subservient. Just polite.

  Hot venison was distributed around the campfire, while Priss bowed low to Ilio and held out the gourds. She smiled as he tried to make conversation with her, fanning her eyelashes, but she did not respond to his words, and then she rose and hurried away with the other women.

  Ilio passed me one of the gourds. I didn’t have to look in it to know what it contained. It was the blood of the stag. They had hung it from a rack or a tree and drained the rest of the blood from its body before butchering it.

  The men around the fire had unwrapped their venison steaks, were carving into them hungrily with flint knifes. They stuffed the food into their mouths with nods of approval and much mmming and ahhhing.

  I shrugged at Ilio, then tipped the gourd up and swallowed a mouthful of the blood. It was warm. The Tanti women had heated it over a fire.

  I felt its heat slide down my throat, as rich and delicious as if I were sucking it straight from the vein. Pleasure rippled out from the core of my body as the blood suffused me. From the corner of my eye, I watched Ilio shiver as he followed my lead.

  Smiling and nodding at Paba in appreciation, I thought: Yes, perhaps this will work.

  14

  The Neirie moved on the next morning. When Ilio and I rose that evening, we hunted and brought them the meat of our kill, just as we had the night before. We shared a late meal with them and gossiped for an hour or two. I noticed that Kuhl was absent from the campfire, and the old man explained that the Pruss had parted with the main Neirie group that morning, going their separate way with little more than a few terse condemnations cast over their shoulders to mark the end of their journey together.

  Kuhl, the man who had been so rude the night before, could endure no further traffic with the Tanti and their blasphemous gods, he’d said, nor with the blood drinker who had so easily deceived their foolish leader. Paba told us this with an apologetic smile, but assured us that none of the Tanti shared the man’s convictions.

  “It is just as well,” the old man said. “The Pruss are always quick in speaking ill of others. The only time they show restraint is when they apologize for their bad behavior.”

  Ilio translated most of our conversation, as the Neirie refused to speak the Oombai tongue, but I was picking up their language fast. I could already understand many of the words they used, and had figured out how they ordered them in their speech.

  “We are at the western edge of the Tanti hunting grounds,” Paba said happily. “If we keep a steady pace, we should reach our village by tomorrow evening.”

  “You should send a runner ahead to tell your people that you are coming,” I suggested. “That way no one will be alarmed by the appearance of such a large group of strangers. It has been a long time since you were taken. They might not recognize you.”

  Paba nodded after Ilio translated. “That is wise,” he said. “We shall do it in the morning.” He laughed wistfully. “Would that we could all run home in the morning! Alas, so many of us are old and worn out by our years of captivity. Still, the skills we have learned may yet be of worth to our people. We have learned the art of herding plants. If we can offer our people nothing else, that is still a valuable thing. Our people may yet profit by our return, despite our poor health.”

  Ilio and I returned to our own camp shortly after and quietly enjoyed the rest of the night. We laid down to rest at dawn, sliding into a shallow cavity we had cleared beneath a jumble of fallen tree branches, the boy first, then I. “Good rest,” Ilio murmured, wriggling around until he’d found a comfortable position. I bid him good rest, and watched as life seemed to flee from his body.

  He went very still, his lips parted only the tiniest bit, the tips of his fangs showing. He quit breathing. His heart did not beat.

  I lay awake, watching the sky burst into flames. The light strengthened, crawled into our retreat inch by inch. I watched the sunlight climb across my hand, my inhuman white skin glinting, and then I shut my eyes and dreamed of virgin snow.

  I was a mortal again, slogging through snow to check the traps I’d put out the day before. It had snowed all night, covering the valley in a fluffy white blanket, but the sky had cleared by dawn, and the sunglare off all that glittering ice dazzled my eyes. Every time I blinked, I saw green afterimages. My breath steamed in the frigid winter air. My nose dripped. My cheeks stung.

  “Wait, Gon! I’m coming with you!” Brulde cried ou
t behind me.

  The snow went crunch-crunch-crunch! as Brulde hurried to catch up with me, high-stepping comically. I waited, sweating beneath all the layers of clothing I had put on. “I thought you were staying inside where it was warm?” I said, and he laughed, his curly blond hair whipping out from beneath his badger-skin cap.

  “They started cleaning,” he explained, and I nodded.

  “Ah-hah.”

  We continued on, walking side-by-side. Brulde said he hoped there would be a hare caught in one of our traps. He had been craving rabbit stew.

  That would be good, I was about to say, but someone seized my tunic by the shoulders before I could, and I felt myself being dragged from my shelter.

  I opened my eyes. Daggers of sunlight stabbed into them, blinding me. I hissed and tried to bring my hands up to shield them from the glare, but someone stepped upon my wrist and then a spear was plunged into my chest. Once, twice, three times, in rapid succession.

  “Die, T’sukuru leech!” a man howled furiously. I knew that voice! It was the Pruss named Kuhl, the one who had been so angry and rude the night before last.

  I rolled over, blind and in pain, and Kuhl’s spear came down through the back of my neck, plunging into the earth beneath me. The blow severed my spinal cord and feeling fled from my limbs. My body went numb below the neck. I couldn’t move.

  “Where is the little one?” a second man asked, his voice shrill.

  “Look underneath the deadfall. He’s probably in the back of their den.”

  “Yes, there he is!”

  “Is he awake?”

  “No.”

  “Then pull him out. We’ll deal with him after we take care of the sire.”

  “You pull him out! I’m not crawling in there!”

  “Coward!”

  I was confused, frantic. A part of my mind was still walking through the snow with my companion Brulde. Going to check our traps, our wives and children snug and warm at home. That muddled part of my mind mistook my sundazzled eyes for snowblindness, my paralysis for frostbite. Yet, I clearly remember thinking, The boy! I must save Ilio!

  A foot pressed down on the back of my skull, grinding my nose into the dirt. The spear was unceremoniously jerked from my neck, vertebrae scraping against the wood shaft as it withdrew. Above me, the Pruss named Kuhl said, “Get the bowl ready to catch its blood, Omak. We will drink after we’ve cut off their heads, then share our blood with all of our tribesmen. The ebu potashu will make us strong. No one will enslave our people again!”

  “I have the little one!”

  “So pull him out!”

  “Ugh! I’m trying! He’s awakened! He’s fighting—AIEE! He bit me!”

  “Get out of the way…!”

  “He BIT me!”

  “Let me see--!”

  “Spear him! Pin him down!”

  I could hear Ilio hissing, the sound of spears stabbing into the brushpile. My extremities began to tingle as the Strix repaired my severed spinal cord. The men who had tracked us to our lair were no longer paying attention to me. They were distracted with Ilio, trying to spear him in our shelter beneath the fallen tree branches.

  I blinked my eyes to clear them of blood and dirt. They had not yet adapted to the light, but I could not afford to wait. Now that I could move again, I had to fight back.

  I rolled onto my back and leapt to my feet, landing in a crouch. Three mortals were standing around the opening of our shelter, their forms blurry and indistinct to my sundazzled eyes. One was nursing a wounded forearm, while the other two were stabbing their spears into the dark opening of our shelter.

  “He’s trying to dig his way out the other end!” one of the men shouted. I recognized that voice. It was the one named Kuhl. “I’ll run around to the other side and spear him from there,” he said, and then he turned and saw me crouching behind him.

  His face was still too blurry for me to see his horrified expression in detail, but I could see well enough to tell that his mouth had dropped open in surprise and fear, that his eyes were bulging from their sockets.

  I lunged onto his body with a snarl.

  He fell back into the deadfall, yelling in dismay, and I pressed my mouth into the crook of his shoulder and did as much damage as quickly as I could. I chomped into his neck with my razor sharp teeth, his hot blood spurting onto my face.

  I bit as deep as I could, and then I wrenched my head back and forth, tearing through the muscle and tissue and veins. A fatal wound.

  Kuhl tried to speak, but I had ripped open his esophagus. The only sound he could make was a bubbly sucking noise. He slid to his rump, clutching his savaged throat. Blood pulsed from between his fingers, coursing down his chest.

  “AAAIIIEEE!” Kuhl’s companion cried out.

  It was the one Ilio had bitten.

  As I stood over his gurgling accomplice, watching the man bleed out, Ilio had grabbed the wounded man’s ankles and was pulling him under our shelter. The unnamed man screamed shrilly, clawing at the dirt and grass, but his efforts to save himself were in vain. Our attackers had lost the element of surprise. They were doomed.

  The wounded man grabbed ahold of one of the branches, trying to save himself, but he vanished beneath our shelter with a jerk. I heard Ilio snarl, and then the man’s screams fell silent.

  Only one left.

  He had fled.

  I licked Kuhl’s blood from my whiskers as I listened to the last one’s receding footfalls. He was running south through the forest, his feet swishing through the underbrush. It would be simple enough to follow.

  Surrendering to the thrill of the hunt, I scanned the forest canopy. The trees were large and close enough to pursue the retreating man through the treetops.

  I sprang into the nearest bough, then began to race after the one called Omak.

  I could hear him crashing through the forest below, lumbering through the undergrowth like a clumsy aurochs. His breath whooshed in and out of his lungs. His heart drummed: thud-thud-thud! I could smell his fear sweat, the sharp ammonia odor of urine. He had pissed himself in his panic.

  I flew from branch to branch. My eyes were growing accustomed to the light. Finally, I saw the man below. The one that Kuhl had called Omak.

  Omak was running across a clearing in the forest, a spear still clutched in one hand. He was shambling, at the edge of exhaustion, his body slick with sweat.

  I jumped down from the tree branches and pursued him across the open field, my body cutting a path through the chest-high grass and wildflowers. Omak looked back, saw me coming and made a mewling sound of despair. Our paths angled together, became one. At the last moment, he spun around and tried to throw his spear at me, but I batted it aside with my hand and leapt upon him.

  “Nooooo!” he wailed, holding me back with his forearm. I snapped my teeth, and he turned his head instinctively, squeezing his eyes shut. I pushed his arm aside and went for his jugular.

  Oh, the blood…!

  I drank from him leisurely then, amid the grass and wildflowers, and when my belly was full, I left him where he lay. I returned to our little shelter in the woods.

  “Ilio?” I called.

  “Yes, Father…?” The boy replied, rising from Kuhl’s throat. He was on his knees, feeding from the man. He was covered in mortal blood.

  “Ah… I just wanted to make sure you were safe,” I said.

  “Yes, I’m fine.” He pushed back his braided hair and returned to feeding from Kuhl’s savaged neck.

  I watched Ilio feed in the sun-dappled shade with a growing sense of unease. It wasn’t the violence that disturbed me, or the fact that we had glutted ourselves on mortal blood. Kuhl and his cohorts had tracked us to our lair. We had only killed them out of self-defense. No, what disturbed me was the motive behind Kuhl’s foolhardy attack.

  His hatred of the T’sukuru I could understand. He had lost two wives, sacrificed by the Oombai Elders as tribute to the eastern blood drinkers. Kuhl had made his feelings quite obvious
two nights ago in the Neirie camp. If he had only tried to kill us out of hatred for our kind, I would not feel so anxious as I watched Ilio feed from him. What bothered me was that he’d planned to drink our cursed blood.

  It had never occurred to me just how valuable our living blood might be to mortals, especially if they understood its nature. The Oombai had known. Their Elders had traded the blood of their slave stock for a dribble of the ebu potashu, the living black blood that animated our bodies. It had extended the life span of those old fiends, fending off the ravages of time—sickness, infirmity, senility. It had even amplified their senses to a degree. How much more of our blood, if I’d given them what they wanted, would it have taken to spark off the full vampiric transformation in their ancient bodies? Would my blood have made Kuhl and his cohorts immortals if they had somehow managed to kill us? Could our immortality be stolen in such a manner?

  He had spoken of sharing his transformed blood with his entire clan. I suddenly envisioned the chain reaction that would have surely followed, the vampiric curse spreading from mortal to mortal like a virulent contagion. First, a whole tribe of blood drinkers, then an entire region, then, after that, the world.

  But no, it wouldn’t be like that, I thought. That was not human nature. There would come a point when men used their vampiric powers to enslave their weaker mortal brothers. They would withhold the living blood from all but their fellows. They would subjugate the mortals who remained, put them in pens, keep them as food animals. Humanity would be divided, the weak living only to satisfy the hunger of their ravenous vampire masters. The whole world would be cast in the likeness of the wicked Oombai culture—decadent, depraved, inhuman.

  I thought of my simple mortal life, its joys, its pleasures, before I was made into this terrible thing that I am now. Such pure and simple happiness would be forever extinguished if the blood curse overran the world. Instead of love and friendship and the sweet joy of family, there would be only hardship and horror, pain and subjugation.

  It must never come to pass!