And there were certainly plenty to choose from. Patron gods, I mean. The Tanti had a god for everything, from the least little nature spirit—Tselbhe, the deity of small brooks and pools of water—to the most powerful-- Tul, Great Sky God and supreme ruler of the heavens and earth. They called their pantheon the Tessares, and I bore the name of their wind deity Thest.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t prescribe to the notion that the souls of men must be judged at death by gods. It seems to me to be a kind of faulty logic. If man was created flawed, then the onus of responsibility for those flaws would fall upon the maker, not the made, wouldn’t you agree? What God had any right to condemn His flawed creation for the very imperfections that He or She instilled in them? It would be like a sculptor dashing his sculptures to the floor, infuriated by his own inadequacies. Surely, a perfect being would be above such petty displays of self-indulgence. Who knows... Perhaps the gods are sadists.
All I can tell you is this: in my 30,000 years, I have never met a preternatural creature I might consider deserving of the title “god”. I have met vampires-- and even some rare humans—who have displayed exotic and impressive talents, but no transcendent beings.
Whatever the case, I had no compunctions about assuming the identity of the Tanti deity of wind so long as it greased their acceptance of me and my adopted son.
Lack of faith can be very liberating.
Not all of the Tanti accepted my divinity at face value. In fact, a good number of them were suspicious of me. I was accused—and rightly so—of being a charlatan, a deceiver, a T’sukuru trickster. Remember, unlike the modern era we live in now, vampires were known to mortals then. Reviled, feared like any other lethal predator, but known. We did not fully camouflage ourselves in the raiment of mortal superstition until much later in human history. If not for the accolades of the returning Tanti slaves, Ilio and I would have surely been turned away, perhaps even attacked. In the end, however, we were accepted. Grudgingly, objects of fear and distrust, but we were accepted… and we lived for the first time among mortal men and women.
2
And what a wonderful living it was! I thrived among the Tanti, my true nature known to them all. I was no longer a wraith, drifting through a timeless dream-existence. I felt like a seed that had put down roots. These were my people, my descendants, but it was more than simple kinship. They were an industrious and hearty race, and I was invigorated by them. All through the day and night, I could feel their life force coursing around me, through me, and I soaked it up like the leaf soaks up the light of the sun. Life among the Tanti was nothing like the furtive existence I endure now. It was almost like being a mortal man again.
Yes, I live among humans in this modern era. How could I not? You have spread across the face of the Earth. Yet, the denizens of this modern world no longer believe that vampires are real. You dress the Strigoi in mythological costume, thinking us no more real than dragons or unicorns or fairies. Or worse, make us over into pop culture icons. White sparkly boy toys.
Oh, I’m quite aware of the fervid fictions of the modern adolescent female! The handsome, ageless object of desire… androgynous, all but emasculated. I understand why the fantasy makes you weak in the knees. I assure you, however, most of my kind are far more likely to rip out a girl’s throat than accompany her to the prom! I’m probably the most civil immortal you’ll ever meet, and that’s not saying much. I’m just as bloodthirsty as the next.
This clandestine modern existence, all this hiding and creeping about… for nosferatu like me, it is like being imprisoned. We must conceal ourselves from the world, for our own protection and yours. Such secrecy wears on the spirit, a millstone grinding the heart to dust, but can you imagine the alternative? What would happen if some modern pharmaceutical company got a sample of our semi-sentient blood? What wars would be waged for the secret of our immortality! We would be hunted like animals, vivisected, turned screaming inside out.
If there is one law among my species, one universal rule that is adhered to by even the most incorrigible member of our secret society, it is this: we must never again be known to mortal man. We must ever remain the fitful shadow that trails mankind on his march through the endless ages. A boogeyman. A dark fantasy.
But the Tanti knew me. They knew of my nature. Some of them believed I was a god, some a vampire trickster, but most of them suspected I was a little bit of both, their wind god Thest, reincarnated in the body of a bloodsucking T’sukuru, and they were right.
They knew that I was not like them. They knew that I subsisted on blood. They had had dealings with the vampires of the east-- as recently as the winter before, when one of my kind appeared in the village and demanded a tribute of blood. Several of the Tanti had let open the veins in their wrists to appease the fiend, and he had passed on without harassing them further. My cold white flesh and aversion to sunlight was no mystery to them. They were only confused by my desire to live among them… and my congenial nature. The only T’sukuru they had ever met were arrogant and demanding.
After their initial distrust-- and when I didn’t go on a killing spree, sucking the blood out of all of my neighbors while they slept-- they thawed towards me and my vampire son Ilio. Their curiosity gradually overcame their natural wariness. They allowed me to join them in their everyday labors. I sat in their tool-making lines, helped haul in their catch when the fishing boats came in late from the lake. I bartered for supplies or new clothing or crafts with the meat we brought back when Ilio and I hunted. They spoke to me as if I were a mortal man. The fishermen even gave me a nickname. Shast’pa’ulm. It meant “snow white”… referring to the color of my flesh, of course, not the fairy tale character. The moniker had feminine connotations, so it was a little bit of a rub, but a good-natured one, and I was proud of it. It symbolized their trust in me.
3
Ilio and I had built a hut at the edge of the Tanti village, constructing it after the Tanti method of homebuilding, with a thatch roof made of reeds and rushes and wooden walls and a stone hearth built in the center of the floor. We had traded meat for woven rugs and hangings to make it comfortable, and there we lived as the summer season withered into autumn, and the belly of the Neirie woman Ilio had got with child continued to swell with new life.
Priss and her sister Lorn were taken in by their parents upon their return. It was a joyous reunion, certainly, although I’m sure it was tempered by the grief they all felt for the death of Aioa.
Priss was not condemned for being with child. The Tanti did not censure unwed women for getting impregnated. They viewed marriage as a contract, and since she was unwed, no commitments had been broken. Priss’s parents were a little taken aback that Ilio was the father, but only because it was strange that a vampire should mate with a mortal woman. They only became more confused when Priss tried to explain to them that Ilio had been mortal when she laid with him at the command of her Oombai master. Her mother and father were simple folk, and did not understand how mortals could become vampires. They believed the T’sukuru were a separate, predatory race—a misconception I did not intend to cure them of, not after the Pruss warrior Kuhl had tried to kill me for my blood.
Ilio declared his desire to be a father to the child, and husband to the slave girl Priss (if she would have him), soon after we arrived, but his attempts to court her were stymied by her family, who politely—but firmly—turned him away whenever he went to call on her.
“Be patient, Ilio,” I counseled him, when he threw himself about our lodge in frustration. “They do not disapprove of you. They are only hesitant because such a union is unknown to them. Give them time. Their hearts may yet warm to the idea.”
I knew this because I had eavesdropped on the conversations they’d had in their home.
My enhanced vampire hearing.
“And what if they do not? What if they intend to bar me from seeing my child forever?” Ilio cried.
“Then that is what they will do,” I said sympathetically.
“Be wise. Do not defy her father. You will only harden his will against you. You will turn the whole village against us if you try to force yourself upon her family. You know what a fearsome reputation our kind has among these mortals. Would you be like the blood drinkers of the east?”
“No, of course not,” he sighed, flopping down on his mat.
“If the girl Priss desires you for a husband, she will buzz at her father’s ear until he surrenders in annoyance. It is how these things work. I know this from experience.”
“You do?” he asked.
“When I sought to win the hand of my first wife, Eyya, her father was not very impressed with me.”
‘When you were a mortal man?”
“Yes.”
“How long did it take her to convince her father to accept you?”
“Oh… several seasons,” I answered, and the boy collapsed on his back with a howl.
4
Time passes quickly for mortal men, they say. How much more quickly, then, do you suppose it passes for an immortal? The season turned from autumn to winter in the blink of an eye—if you’ll pardon the cliché. Ilio announced that he wished to live on his own, so I helped him to construct his own thatch hut. He wanted to show Priss’s father that he was capable of providing for a human wife and child. And, I guess, he had begun to feel the need to strike out on his own.
I was cheerful and supportive, but it felt like someone had reached inside me and ripped out my guts. I’d always known the boy would one day leave the nest, but that day’s coming was much too soon for my liking, and I worried that he would get into trouble without my constant supervision. He was such an impulsive young man!
Finally, one evening, Priss’s father, accompanied by two of her male siblings, approached as we worked on the roof of the boy’s new dwelling. With our vampire strength and speed, the construction of the home had gone quickly. We were all but finished, really, just adding a last layer of thatching to further insulate the structure. The roof had leaked the previous night.
A light snow was falling as we scurried about the roof, securing bundles of dried reeds to the previous layer of thatching. We would be finished with it within the hour, and just in time for the first snow of the season. A rainstorm had lashed across the village the day before, and the temperature had dropped precipitously in its wake.
Our visitors’ torches whipped and crackled in the blowing wind as they marched across the village toward Ilio’s new hut. All three men were dressed in multiple layers of clothing, their breath spilling from their lips in puffs of white vapor.
I was surprised they would come to visit on such a cold dark night. The entire village had retired to their homes early because of the weather. The village shaman had predicted a fierce snowstorm. I’d heard this from some of the fisherman earlier that evening as I helped them haul in their catch, and it looked like the seer’s visions had proven correct. The sky was pitch black, thick clouds occluding both moon and stars. Even the jagged teeth of the Carpathians were veiled, a vague shape in the swirling dark.
We watched the men approach, sitting down to rest as spicules of icy snow whipped past. We had made a fire in the lodge’s stone hearth, and the aromatic smoke billowed from the chimney opening, keeping us warm, though the cold is not much of a bother to our kind.
“I would speak to the father of the young man named Ilio!” Priss’s father called up to us.
“Finish tying these bundles,” I said to Ilio as he glanced at me anxiously. He nodded and I leapt nimbly to the ground, startling the three Tanti men.
They fell back a step or two at my descent, then drew themselves up. They were not armed, I saw, though their torches could be used as weapons if the need arose.
“I know you,” I said genially. “You are the father of Priss. Your name is Valas.” I bowed as I greeted the heavyset man. The Tanti way of speaking was still strange to me, but I was fluent enough by then to need no translator.
The father bowed back and said, “I know you as well. Your name is… Thest.” It seemed to pain him a little to speak the name Thest. From what I could discern, he was a religious man and did not believe I was the literal deity, incarnate or otherwise. He had never spoken ill of Ilio or I when I was eavesdropping on his family, but I could tell he was not comfortable with my pretense of godhood.
His sons watched me with wary eyes, the wind plucking at the fur collars of their heavy winter coats. They were both stout men, with long hair and beards.
“I do not know how you can work on a night such as this,” Valas said after a pause, switching to a more casual form of speech. “And with so little clothing for warmth! Does your species not feel the cold?”
He was trying to be friendly. That was a good sign.
I smiled faintly and shook my head. “We feel the cold, but it does not tax us as it does your people,” I said. “And we can see in the dark.”
“Yes, your eyes flash in the torchlight like the eyes of a large cat. It is... somewhat disconcerting.”
“I apologize.”
“No need to apologize… Thest. Does the snake apologize for its bite? In all honesty, I have sometimes wondered what it would be like to have the strength of your people. It must be a wonder to leap great distances or snap the trunk of a tree in one’s bare hands.”
“All living creatures have their strengths and their weaknesses,” I replied. “I have long envied your people. But you have come to talk about my son, not exchange idle pleasantries in the cold. Won’t you accompany me to my lodge so that we may speak in comfort? I have a warm fire, and food and drink, if you desire.”
“That would be greatly welcome, Thest,” Priss’s father said, bowing formally to me. “I have grown old, and this cold makes my bones ache.”
“You are not old, Father,” one of his sons said, and Valas shushed him.
“Bid your boy to follow, if he has time to rest from his labors,” Valas said, and I waved for Ilio to join us.
5
Getting comfortable near the hearth, Valas surveyed my lodge. “Your home is very well made. Very warm.” He had shrugged off his heavy outer coat and gloves, and was warming his hands by the fire. His sons had done the same. I was heating water in a wicker bowl across the fire from them, sprinkling in dried mushrooms and herbs. Ilio watched nearby.
“I constructed it in the Tanti way,” I said. “It is a very sturdy design.”
“The T’sukuru of the east do not build their homes in the same manner?” Valas asked.
“As I have told you all, I am not of that tribe,” I said.
Valas smiled. “Forgive me. I am old. Sometimes I forget. Where did you say you are from again?”
My water was beginning to steam, and I leaned over the bowl to smell it. The scent was familiar and pleasing. I had felt a thrill of nostalgia when I found the leaves and fungi I needed to make this concoction, but I had not yet had mortal guests and thus the need to prepare it for anyone. Vampires can eat and drink like any human, but it literally runs right through us… explosively so, at times.
I stirred the liquid with a wooden spoon. The infusion needed to steep a few more minutes, but it would be done soon.
“I was born in a valley far north of these lands,” I said, sitting back. “My people were the ancestors of the Tanti, before the great cold came and covered the world in ice. When the ice devoured our valley home, your forefathers fled to the south. Out of loneliness, I sacrificed my body into the jaws of a glacier and found myself reborn, far from the lands from which I was born.”
It was the same story I’d told the rest of the Tanti when I was questioned about my origins. I had left quite a few details out of the explanation, but I would not soon forget the ambitious Kuhl. He had tried to kill me and my adopted son, planning to drink our blood and make himself immortal. I decided then that I would never reveal to mortals the secret of our living blood. I had explained the need for discretion to Ilio, and he had seen the danger and agreed to keep our secret. He
glanced at me furtively as I explained to the man where I was from, but he did not add anything to my tale. The boy sat next to me, staring anxiously into the fire.
The old man squinted at me. “You say you sacrificed yourself out of loneliness. Why did you not accompany our forefathers when they fled from the devouring ice?”
“I gave myself to the gods so that our forefathers could escape,” I answered smoothly.
That was a pretty big lie, but it could not be helped.
“And you emerged thus changed?”
I shrugged. “I do not understand the workings of the transformation, or the reasons the gods must have had for it. I do not remember anything of the time I spent in the womb of the ice, nor can I tell you of the afterlife. I am what I am. What you see is all that there is. I was once a man like you. My people called me Thest. I died and then I was reborn.”
Valas nodded, accepting my answers. “A miracle and a mystery,” he said, “but life so often comes that way, does it not? Like twin children born with their bodies co-mingled. Mortal men also remember not the womb. I suppose it is fitting, though you certainly seem to have taken after your mother with that white and icy skin!”
He meant the glacier, I realized. He and his sons laughed.
My decoction had steeped long enough. I took my cooking bowl from the fire and poured the steaming tea into several cups. The Tanti used short, deep bowls of polished wood for drinking. I passed the steaming bowls around the fire.
The Oldest Living Vampire In Love (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 3) Page 17