Chuckling under my breath, I hopped to the thatch roof of my hut. With my penis pointing the way, I ran lightly across the roof and leapt to a nearby tree.
10
I fed upon a mountain lion that evening.
Like me, the great cat was hunting for her sustenance in the moonless wilds. A beautiful creature-- sleek, powerful-- but the Hunger is blind to aesthetics. It knows only Prey and Not-Prey. I leapt upon her tawny form from the canopy of the forest and dispatched her with a quick jerk, snapping the predator’s neck before she even realized she had become the hunted. I tore into her fuzzy throat, slicing through the big veins in her neck with my teeth, and gorged on her pungent blood.
I released the reins of my control, slurping, grunting, snarling. The Hunger had been clamoring at my thoughts all day, throughout Ilio’s wedding ceremony and the rowdy feast that followed. I drank until I felt near to bursting, and then I slung the warm carcass across my shoulders and hiked leisurely back to the Tanti settlement, my stomach sloshing.
The animal’s flesh had no value as food—the Tanti did not eat the flesh of predatory animals-- but its pelt, as well as its teeth and bones and some of its organs, would make good barter.
Back at the village, I suspended the carcass from a tree behind my hut, hanging it so that it would be out of reach for any scavengers that might be attracted by the smell, and then I walked down to the lake to clean the blood and dirt off of my body.
As I splashed myself, standing thigh deep in the bracing water, my thoughts returned to the mysterious woman in my dream.
As if my musings had summoned her spirit, I felt the cold caress of her fingertips on my biceps, the firm pressure of her breasts upon my back. It was real enough to make me spin around, but there were no phantoms wading in the lake behind me. The beach beyond was dark and deserted, the village silent as a tomb.
I saw that my erection had returned with a fury, all the little veins in it standing out like braided cords. I scowled down at the protruding organ, my previous amusement curdling.
I certainly hope this does not become a common occurrence, I thought. It would be a terrible inconvenience!
What strange malady has afflicted me? I wondered. This was not a natural thing! I stood in the icy water and reached out with my vampire senses, sending them into the moonless night like wavering antennae. I do not know what I was searching for exactly. A ghost? A lurking prankster? To be honest, I did not expect to find anything with my mental probes, and I cannot begin to describe to you just how shocked I was when I sensed a nearby presence.
It was a vague sensation, directionless, but it was most definitely feminine. Its femaleness made itself evident to me through a flurry of impressions, almost abstract in their fundamental nature: the image of a body, modest curves, dark skin, an identity, fleeting memories.
It recoiled in surprise and confusion as if it had felt the touch of my consciousness as well. Our thoughts brushed briefly, and then the presence was gone.
I stood in the icy lake, bewildered.
What was this strange presence? Was it a real person? A spirit? And how had our thoughts touched thusly? Was this some strange new power, like Ilio’s ability to perceive the fading thoughts of his human victims? If so, what had triggered it? I had never sensed another’s presence in such an unusual manner!
I searched again with my preternatural senses, but my efforts were in vain. Whatever it was, whoever it was, the presence had withdrawn.
I am going mad! I thought.
No, I reasoned with myself. You are alone again, after devoting yourself to the boy for many seasons, and anxious of your new solitude. Dreams have lingered in your thoughts, fueled by fear of loneliness. Nothing more.
Put your worries aside, old bloodsucker, I thought. You need never again go mad out of loneliness. Ilio is but a stone’s throw from your door, and you are surrounded by mortals who know you. Perhaps they may even come to love you, if you can avoid fouling your own bed for a change.
At least the beast had gone back to sleep, I saw. My organ had dwindled along with the presence, dangling limply now between my thighs.
I finished cleaning myself and slipped through the dark avenues of the village, a wraith, a bone-white interloper. I did not even rouse the dogs to barking.
Outside Ilio’s lodge, I paused and listened for a moment. I felt like an intruder, loitering at his door in the dark, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to reassure myself the two were still okay.
Had the boy hunted tonight? I wondered. Was he being careful of his fragile mortal bride? I prayed to my ancestors that I had trained him well enough to resist temptation, that his new bride, Priss, would never have to suffer the cruel sting of our rapacious appetite. The boy would be devastated if he hurt his young wife. The Tanti would despise us. They would hound us from the village, and rightly so. But if tragedy came of this experiment, the fault lay squarely on me. Out of selfishness, out of my need for community, I had placed every one of these mortals in danger.
I listened, but for the soft sigh of the mortal woman’s breathing, the hut was silent.
Perhaps the boy was hunting.
Without me.
I sighed and continued home.
11
Inside, I clothed myself and built up my fire, then tried to find something to occupy my mind. I was restless and melancholy, and more than a little bored.
What would I do with myself now that the boy was grown?
That was my conundrum for the next couple of weeks. When I was not worrying that Ilio would murder his new bride, I looked for something to keep me busy. I loitered at the lake, aiding the fishermen with their labors, sometimes even venturing out in the daylight to help them, though the sunlight flashing off the waves was like thorns stabbing into my eyes. I looked forward to Valas’s evening visits, and even called upon him at his home when he did not show up for his nightly gossip and framash. I befriended Priss’s family, ingratiating myself to them by bringing them the remains of my nightly feeding. When Ilio came to call, joining me to hunt after his bride had gone to sleep, I hung on his every word.
For a while I sent my thoughts out nearly every night, hoping to encounter the ghostly presence again. I had decided that I’d sensed another of my kind that evening at the lake, that our spirits had briefly entwined, drawn together perhaps by mutual loneliness. The idea of finding a female of my kind restoked my interest in the vampires of the east, but the time was not yet right to set off on a new adventure. I was not quite ready to give up the comforts I enjoyed living among the Tanti. Though I tried many nights to sense the spirit of the mysterious siren, my efforts were in vain, and I finally began to think that I had imagined her completely.
The unseasonable warm spell broke shortly after the wedding. Another snowstorm sprang up over the Carpathians to blanket the village in glittering white. The knee-deep ice and snow brought all activity in the little settlement to a sudden halt, and loneliness and boredom plagued me even more fiercely than before. Valas, who hated getting out in the cold, visited less often, so I took up whittling, and crafted little toys for my adopted son’s children.
One of the toys, the likeness of a plump Tanti woman, was recovered in 1957 during an archeological dig and is on display in a natural history museum in France. Can you imagine my surprise when I saw a news article about the find-- and recognized my handiwork-- some 22,000 years later? The archeologist who uncovered the relic opined that it was some type of religious fertility idol, but it wasn’t. It was just a little doll that I had carved for one of my grandchildren.
12
Priss went into labor after the snowstorm passed, her water breaking as she squatted at the hearth preparing her morning meal. I had gone to my bed shortly after the sun winked over the rim of the world that morning, and was fast asleep when Ilio flew across the village to summon Priss’s mother and sister to his wife’s side. I was dead to the world as Ilio and his excited in-laws rushed to the young ones’ home, or else
I would have heard their babbling and gone to check on her as well. As we’d discussed, after seeing that his wife was well attended, and making sure she was in good spirits, he retreated to my hut to await the birth of his children.
“Wake up, Thest! It is time! The babies are coming!” he cried, and I rolled wearily from my furs.
“It is time?” I asked groggily, stumbling to my feet, then his words sunk in and I smiled in excitement, clasping his arms. “It is time, Ilio! Your children come!”
But he was not so enthusiastic. He paced around my hut all through the morning, growing more and more pessimistic. By afternoon I was checking the floorboards, sure he had worn them smooth. As his wife struggled to deliver the twins, he fretted and despaired, certain of calamity. The boy’s lodge was near to mine and we could hear her every gasp. Ilio froze in his steps each time she cried out in pain, his eyes wide, his lips twisted down, then turned to me for reassurance.
“All new life comes into this world in blood and agony, Ilio,” I told him. “Her pain will be forgotten when she holds her babies to her breast.”
I did my best to soothe him, but my words fell on love-deafened ears.
“What if she dies, Thest?” he moaned. “I do not wish to live without her!”
“She isn’t going to die, Ilio,” I said. “Come. Sit by the fire. Try to calm yourself.”
“I cannot!” he wailed, his eyes full of imagined horrors. “Oh! Did you hear that? I think something’s gone wrong! Maybe I should go over there!“
“That would not be wise. The blood—“
“But if something bad happens, I could save her. I could heal her with the ebu potashu. I could make her like us.” He ran his fingers through his hair, tugging at his locks. “Or perhaps you could do it, Thest. I don’t know if my blood is strong enough, but yours is. I know it is! You snatched me from the very jaws of death!”
I quailed inwardly at the thought, but if it came down to it, I would do it. I would make her a blood drinker if it meant preserving her existence.
For Ilio.
What terrible crimes we are willing to commit out of love, no? Or was this selfishness too?
But his fears were groundless. Priss birthed both babies without undue injury, and though her labor was difficult, our resolve to safeguard her life was not put to the test. We heard the cries of Ilio’s babies shortly after nightfall. At the sound of their bawling-- first one, then minutes later, the second-- Ilio collapsed to the floor in relief, weeping black tears into his hands.
Yorda came to summon us some time later.
“Come, Ilio,” she said, her face lined with exhaustion. “Your daughters await their papa.” She looked at me then with a weary smile, strands of gray hair clinging to her round, careworn face. “You too, grandfather.”
Yorda and her daughters had cleaned Priss and the babies and disposed of all the soiled linens. The smell of blood and amniotic fluid still lingered in Ilio’s home, and it gave us pause at the threshold, but the odor was not overpowering. We were able to ignore it.
Priss lay propped up near the hearth. Her face was gaunt and there were dark crescents beneath her eyes, but she smiled at us as we entered. Yorda had piled clean furs upon her and wrapped both babies, one of which was suckling at the young woman’s breast. Priss’s sibling was sitting beside the new mother, cradling the second of the pair.
“Come see, Ilio,” Priss sighed. “We have two daughters.”
“Are you well?” Ilio asked, rushing to her side.
“Tired,” she said.
He kneeled beside her and embraced her, then looked to the baby feeding at her breast. Black tears glittered at his eyelashes, threatening to spill down his cheeks. He scrubbed them away, grinning broadly (fangs showing, but no one even noticed, all eyes upon the babes). His fingers hovered at the edge of the child’s swaddling, afraid to touch the fragile creature.
“I’d like to name this one Irema,” Priss said, stroking the top of the baby’s fuzzy head. Irema was the name of Priss’s birth mother, who had died many years ago.
I glanced toward Yorda, but she didn’t look upset. Priss’s mother, Irema, had been Yorda’s eldest sister. The Tanti often married the siblings of a deceased mate.
“Yes, of course, whatever you want,” Ilio babbled.
“Lorn is holding Little Aioa.”
“Aioa and Irema,” Ilio said and laughed joyously.
I sidled forward and peeked at the two babies. “They are beautiful,” I said. “They have your dark hair and skin, Ilio.”
“Yes, they do!” he said, laughing softly.
Lorn approached me with Little Aioa. “Would you like to hold your grandchild, Thest?”
“I’m afraid my cold flesh will upset the child,” I objected, but Lorn pressed the tiny bundle into my arms.
“There… See? She likes you,” Lorn said, smiling up at me.
I held the child as carefully as possible, afraid even to twitch. I must make the most delicate gestures, I thought, more frightened than I had been in seven thousand years. Cautiously—oh, so cautiously!—I touched the child’s plump cheek with a fingertip. Rather than cry out at my icy touch, Little Aioa seemed to find it pleasant. She turned her face toward my cool caress and made a suckling motion with her perfect little coral lips.
I was instantly, madly, in love!
“I think she’s hungry,” Lorn said, caressing my back as she peered into the baby’s swaddling.
“I’m sorry, Little One, I have no milk to give you,” I said, nearly swooning in my affection for the tiny thing.
This helpless, beautiful creature was a descendant of my people—a descendant of the children I had made with my wife Nyala; I was certain of it!—and sealed the bond between my adopted son and I. I was joined now to all of them by ties of blood kinship.
The thought made me dizzy with happiness.
Such an unlikely wonder could only have been wrought by the scheming of the ancestors, I thought. I glanced toward the heavens, thanking my forefathers for their generosity. I had sacrificed much to safeguard my people. I had lost even my humanity. But this moment… these tiny creatures… were all the recompense I needed to put paid to all that I had lost. To have a family again! To have a life, after so many long years of suffering and solitude! It was all that I could ask for. It was more than I deserved. I was magnificently happy in that bright shining moment. Perfectly content. My life had come full circle, bringing me back to joy.
It would only last three cycles of the seasons.
The Vampire Thief
1
Do you know what it is to love?
When you are young, and if your parents are kind, you know love as a child knows it: uncomplicated, unconditional, all-encompassing. Love, for a child, is like a primary color, bright and without nuance. Mama hugs you and tends to your boo-boos, Papa plays with you and protects you from harm. They are your world.
But it is a needy love. A helpless love.
Later in childhood, as you grow older, love for self develops. You chafe at the boundaries of your parents’ safekeeping. You wriggle from their arms, seek out the world on your own terms, exploring, testing, tasting, thinking you are the first person in the world to discover this thing or invent that game. You take great pride in your accomplishments. “Look what I made, Mama!” you cry, holding up your pie of mud and twigs. “Watch me throw this rock, Papa! See how far I can throw it?” But it is a selfish love. This love sees only itself, knows only its own needs. It is egotistic. Narcissistic.
As you mature, so does your love. It is flourishing, growing more complex. There are gradations in its coloration now. Subtle shadow if your path has crossed with tragedy. Patches blanched by violence or betrayal. Wearying parents teach you empathy. Perhaps one of them sickens. You must care for them. These are lessons in compassion. Lessons in self-sacrifice. It is still a simple love. It is still a selfish love from time to time, but it is evolving, transforming—perhaps into something truly magnificent.
When the bud of youth gives bloom to passionate love, it is once more all-encompassing, dizzying in its heat, reckless in its hunger. It is the enslaving love, binding you by the shackles of carnal desire. You become a driven thing, searching desperately for fertile soils in which to sow your seed, or flinging wide your bloom to tempt the passing bee, obsessed, possessed, by the overriding, undeniable prerogative of all living things: to be fruitful and multiply, to increase the number of your kind.
And when those seeds burst forth with new life--
Love achieves its crowning glory. Selfless love, the love of mother and father for child-- unconditional, fiercely protective. This is the love that sacrifices, that leaps upon the jaws of savage beast, that starves so that the children can all eat, that toils without rest, that treks to any length, even to hell and back. This is the most profound love, and in its fading days, as blossoms wither and fall away from stem, crinkled, singed by wind and sun, it becomes the most beautiful love of all.
In the seven thousand years I had lived thus far, I’d known all loves but one. I was a baby, and knew the helpless love of a child. I was a reckless boy, and knew the rebellious love of self. I knew passionate love. Oh, yes, I was a lover! When I was a mortal man, I was a dynamo of lust. My libido was so fervid it is almost a point of embarrassment to me now, but that passion was nothing in comparison to the love I felt for my children. That love did not wane when my humanity was stolen from me. It only became tragic. I pined for my mortal family in the early days of my immortality, but I could not trust myself to venture too near to them. I was a ravening monster, a bloodthirsty beast. And so I haunted them, watching over my children from afar, and then my children’s children, and their children’s children. But it was only in Ilio’s daughters that I was able to experience the joy of being a grandfather.
The Oldest Living Vampire In Love (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 3) Page 20