Fifteen to twenty days.
“Your eyes flash with anger when I mention the slaves,” she said. “I saw pity in your gaze when I inspected them earlier. Are you truly so fond of mortals?”
“You were a mortal once,” I replied.
She scowled. “I was also a slave once. What does that matter now?”
I wanted to ask her how she could be so callous. Did she not have a mortal family at some point in her life? Was she not loved?
Before I could give voice to my thoughts, however, the other blood drinkers laughed uproariously. Judging by the way the big one was gesticulating—swinging his big stone hammer, which he’d brought inside the tent—he was recounting our battle in the forest. The giant—Zenzele had called him Bhorg—pointed at me and grinned, his teeth big and square, with long and wickedly curved fangs. Palifver glanced in our direction. His laughter was shrill with hatred.
“They don’t believe that you will honor our bargain,” Zenzele said.
I glanced at her guiltily.
Maybe I won’t, I thought.
“I told Palifver what I promised you. That I would spare the Tanti in return for your submission,” she said, staring into my eyes intently, as if her words had some hidden meaning. “I sent Hettut to spy on them tonight. He was only supposed to count their numbers, but he is… easily tempted. I had planned to raid the village at nightfall tomorrow. Since the fall of the Oombai, we have been forced to raid the villages of the Western Dominions ourselves. It was simpler before, when we bartered with the Oombai for our slaves. You have caused us quite a bit of aggravation.”
I absorbed what she had just confessed to me, wondering at the kindness implied by her words. She had lied to her second-in-command about the terms of my surrender. She knew that I cared for the Tanti, but why be merciful now? I was defeated.
And then I thought of my beloved Tanti. I imagined them bound and shivering in the cold. I thought of my Irema and Aioa, Valas and Yorda and their whole extended family, all their sons and daughters and grandchildren. I thought of the fishermen, the huntsmen, the craftsmen, and their wives. Good, dutiful, cheerful women. I pictured the village destroyed, the streets full of the dead, my Tanti tribesmen conquered, and all the tattered survivors marched away to Uroboros.
And what could they look forward to if they survived the arduous trek?
To be enslaved?
Devoured?
“I will honor our bargain,” I said gravely. “Spare the Tanti, Zenzele, and I am yours. Whatever you will do with me.”
4
In one night, I had met more of my fellow blood drinkers than I had in the entirety of my immortal existence, and I hated them.
While the storm raged outside and their captives huddled in the cold, the blood drinkers relaxed in warmth and luxury. Zenzele sat apart from the male members of the vampire raiding party. She did not partake of their revels, though she did not act as if she took offense at their behavior either.
After their domestic slaves had attended to the T’sukuru raiders, they made the two little men battle, and placed wagers on who would be the victor. Zenzele watched without expression as the two slaves wrestled, pummeling one another with their fists until both were bloody and one lay on the ground unconscious.
The men roared their approval (or dismay) at the outcome of the contest and then snatched up the little mortal who had won, biting him on the wrists and drinking his blood. He yelped as their teeth sliced through his flesh, but he did not try to escape them. He squeezed his eyes shut as they jerked him back and forth. Finally, bled nearly white, the servant’s eyes rolled back in his skull and he went limp. They passed him back and forth a while longer, slurping and grunting as they sucked at his dripping wounds, then they discarded him near the fire beside his battered fellow.
Zenzele glanced at me, noting the strained look on my face. The smell of the blood was tormenting me. “Do you wish to feed?” she asked, and I shook my head no. But it was an effort.
The flap of the tent flew open then, letting in a swirl of icy snow. Zenzele’s wolf trotted in, tongue lolling, followed by the final member of the group I was to meet that night.
“Goro!” the others shouted as the blood drinker strode inside.
He was a short, stout man, dressed in furs, with a large nose, a prominent brow and a receding chin. I recognized the newcomer’s race immediately. The blood drinker was a Fat Hand-- a Neanderthal vampire!
A mortal female hung limp in his arms.
The Neanderthal placed the woman on the ground, then stood upright and shook the snow from his parka, grinning at his companions. He said something—probably some remark about the weather—and the other men laughed.
Intrigued, I examined the blood drinker more closely.
Like all vampires, the Neanderthal blood drinker had glossy stone-like flesh. There were tribal scars on his face, designs typical of his race: concentric circles on his cheeks, dots running across his forehead, just above his eyebrows. The tribal scars must have been cut into his flesh when he was a mortal, during some sort of manhood rite, because vampires do not scar visibly when injured. He had large, glimmering brown eyes, a great mane of shaggy red hair and freckles. In all ways but one, he looked like any other human blood drinker. The only thing that set him apart was his fangs. He had prominent lower fangs. You could almost call them tusks.
Zenzele paid little attention to the Neanderthal. Her pet wolf had leapt into her lap, and she hugged him, laughing without reservation as he lapped at her face. The canine’s thick pelt was wet and dusted with ice. His tail swooped back and forth in excitement, spattering us with flecks of melting snow.
“Down, Vehnfear!” she gasped. “Down!”
I could see it took an effort for the animal to restrain himself, and I smiled, remembering the dogs I’d played with as a boy. You have not truly known unconditional love until you are loved by a canine.
The wolf settled beside her, hind legs crooked to one side. He looked around the tent with a human-like expression of happiness, tongue hanging out, tail thumping the mat beneath him. These blood drinkers are his pack, I thought, and I realized something else: this creature was highly intelligent. I could see it in his eyes. The glimmer of self-awareness. The living blood had amplified the animal’s intellect.
Once the Neanderthal had gotten settled in, he conferred with Zenzele. They talked for several minutes, and then he retired to the other side of the tent with the others. They roused the female he had captured, who immediately began to scream, then ripped off her garments and had their way with her-- all but Hettut, who had gone to sleep. Her desperate struggling only incensed the vampires. They broke her bones in their enthusiasm. They bled her as they fucked her. When it was his turn, Palifver leered at my mistress, cock in hand, but Zenzele would not meet his gaze. He frowned, glanced toward me, then shoved himself brutally inside the woman, making her shriek.
It was only during the woman’s rape that Zenzele betrayed her revulsion for their cruelty. As the male blood drinkers took turns assaulting the woman, Zenzele’s lips curled back in disgust, and Vehnfear, sensing his mistress’s mood, snarled softly.
I sat, staring down at my hands as the woman cried out. Would that I could have saved her, but I could not. For love of my son, for love of my people, I could not intercede.
And then it was over. They tired of their sport and began to bite into her flesh in earnest, and within moments of that she was dead.
Naked, his chest and groin smeared with mortal blood, Bhorg dragged the corpse to the tent flap and tossed it outside in the snow.
Seeing the swirling gray light outside, Zenzele said, “It is dawn. Time to sleep, beautiful one.”
I lay back where she indicated, then tucked some rolled up furs beneath my head and covered my body. The furs smelled like wet dog, but the odor was not wholly unpleasant. My beautiful captor watched me for a little while, hands on her knees, her expression inscrutable, and then she lay down nearby. She
stared up at the roof of the tent for several minutes, listening to the snow hiss against the leather canopy, then she turned on her side away from me.
Vehnfear whined, and she reached back to caress him. She curled her fingers in the wolf’s plush fur, scratching the back of his neck. He lapped her hand, then laid his head down between his paws.
On the other side of the tent, Palifver laughed cruelly.
I closed my eyes.
5
“Wake!” Zenzele exclaimed, and then she smacked me with some sort of braided leather strap.
I lurched, my cheek stinging where she had struck me. I was disoriented, unsure where I was or how I had gotten there, then it all came rushing back. I was not home in my lodge in the Tanti village, as I had been dreaming. I was in the camp of the vampire slavers. I was a slave, sworn to the blood drinker who had vanquished me. The life that I had enjoyed the last three years was gone now. Lost in a single disastrous defeat.
My mistress stood over me, glaring. “You are the last to rise,” she said. “Are you going to be a lazy servant?”
“No, no,” I mumbled, and I started to sit up.
“I did not tell you to stand,” she said, pushing me back down with one of her bare feet. She glanced around the tent, making sure that we were alone, then used her toe to push the covers off my body.
I lay staring up at her, uncertain what she wanted of me, but I need not have worried what I should do to please her. Hers was the dominant role. She intended to take what she desired from me.
Her toe slid up my inner thigh and caught against the fabric of my loincloth. She wriggled the tip of her toe beneath the edge of it and pushed it aside.
“Make it hard,” she commanded, gazing down at my organ, and her sensuous lips quirked up a little at the corners.
“Well?” she said after a moment.
She sighed as if with annoyance and then used the silky pad of her foot to stroke the belly of my cock. It leapt quickly to attention. I gulped, then grasped ahold of my bedding as she stepped across my thighs and squatted down over me. She took hold of my organ and stood it upright, then lowered her body upon it.
I groaned.
“Quiet,” she hissed.
The opening of her organ was tight. I would have said unnaturally tight if she were a mortal woman, but I had never coupled with a female vampire. Perhaps they were all this resistant to intrusion. I tried to peek between her thighs, but she was still dressed in the red tunic she had put on the night before. Her genitals were hidden from my sight. Still, I could feel that there was something abnormal about her organ. Her vulva was too smooth. The opening too small.
She pressed down, making a soft sound of effort, and then her body enveloped me all at once. She sank down upon me, cold and silky, swallowed me to the hilt.
She closed her eyes and rocked her hips, riding me as she’d ridden her beast the previous night-- the creature she’d called a “horse”. I moved to caress her thighs and she smacked my hands away, and then she leaned forward and settled her palms upon my chest.
Head down, eyes squeezed shut, she impaled herself on me again and again. Her movements grew increasingly forceful as if she sought to do violence to herself, and then she groaned, and I felt the walls of her pussy begin to rhythmically convulse. She dug her nails into the flesh of my chest, her arms and legs twitching, and then she opened her eyes and looked down at me.
“Cum inside me,” she commanded. She ground her groin upon me, wriggling her lower body back and forth. “Do it now! Like a mortal man!” she hissed.
I arched my head back, jaw dropping open, and she clamped her palm over my mouth.
“Do it!”
I howled into her palm as I exploded inside her, but she didn’t stop, she kept twisting her organ around and around, and the pleasure surged with each rotation, wave after dizzying wave. I dreamed--! I dreamed of you! I thought incoherently. The words echoed inside my skull, sounding over and over. The lake. Ours souls entwined in chilly starlight. I dreamed of you. I dreamed of you.
And then she ducked her head down and put her lips to mine, her mouth as cold as ice, but it was soft, too. Yielding. Our fangs scraped lightly together. Her tongue flicked out, and she tasted what she’d kissed.
“I dreamed of you,” she whispered, and then she rose, my cock sliding out of her abruptly. I yelped, startled by her brusqueness. I did not want to be released so quickly, but she was finished with me.
“Do not speak of this with any of the others,” she said over her shoulder. “You are woefully ignorant of the troubles you have caused.”
6
In a slave culture, it is not unusual for a bondman to be used for his or her master’s sexual gratification, and so I cautioned myself not to see more in her actions than she actually intended. She was desirous, and she had used me for her satisfaction. And yet she had brushed her lips to mine, and she’d confessed that she had dreamed of me, and that had a profound significance to me. I could not stop thinking of it. I also could not bring myself to feel offended by her use of me, though intellectually I knew I should.
We changed quietly into outside clothes.
She had produced new garments for me to wear, borrowing them from one of the other men. The new clothes lay folded near the stone hearth. I dressed, and then she bid me to assist her with some of the straps of her breast and shoulder plating.
As I fumbled with the ties, I inclined my nose to her nape and breathed in her scent.
“Stop that!” she snapped, elbowing me in the stomach. I chuckled, falling back a step, and she turned suddenly and began to whip me with her leather strap. Two, three times, she brought it down across my shoulder and chest, her lips peeled back in fury. “Don’t you understand?” she hissed at me.
I retreated from her, stunned, raising my hands to ward off her blows.
She stared at me in disbelief for a moment, and then she snarled, “You are a fool!”
She turned abruptly and stalked away, ducking through the flap of the tent.
Her flurry of blows had not harmed me, of course, but I was duly chastised nonetheless. She was right. There was much about the culture of these vampires I was ignorant of. I had taken a very tiny liberty of her to my way of thinking, drawing close to her, smelling her hair. But I had laughed when she commanded me to stop. Perhaps my lack of respect was the reason for her violent reaction. Perhaps sexual relationships were frowned upon among the blood drinkers of the east. She might even be bound to another, and our coupling an illicit affair! There was too much I did not know, too many lives dependent on my actions.
You are behaving like a fool! I thought, rubbing my stinging chest, and with that I followed her outside, and into the glittering white world that awaited.
7
The atmosphere had an amazing clarity. The storm had passed and the stars were out in a glorious abundance. The moon perched upon the distant Carpathians, and the image of it was so clear, the illusion of its nearness so perfect, that I imagined I could reach out and grasp it, pluck it down from the heavens like some pale fruit and take a bite of it.
The slave traders rushed about as I walked to the center of the camp. They were too busy at their labors to give me any thought. Some of them were tearing down shelters. Others were piling gear upon the backs of their riding beasts. Two of the slave-tenders were ladling food and drink into the mouths of the slaves. The captives of the blood drinkers had been lined up in preparation for their march to Uroboros, and as the slave-tenders moved quickly through their ranks, they groaned and slurped at the nourishment the men splashed impatiently into their mouths. Some of them pleaded for more and sobbed when their appeals went unanswered. The sight of the mortals, so desperate and exhausted, tore at my heart. Finally, I could watch no longer. I turned around, taking in all the activity, and I thought how easy it would be to slip away in the chaos.
I knew I would not do such a thing. So far, Zenzele had kept her promise to spare the Tanti. The blood drinkers gav
e no sign of mounting a raiding party upon my people. The thought of escape only came because it was evident, but I had no intention of acting upon it.
The groans of the slaves drew my attention again. Something about their moaning sounded out-of-place. It was not a sound that despairing men might make, rather something more akin to carnal pleasure.
I observed the slave-tenders feeding the prisoners.
Both of them were large and powerfully muscled, with crude features and dim, pitiless eyes. Each bore a bulging sack from a strap around the shoulder, which they dipped from as they moved from slave to slave. Every prisoner received a hasty splash of gruel and a dipper of water as the slave-tenders moved along the ranks. The captives gulped down the water without any unusual behavior, but when the man with the feedbag came around, all the mortals made the same curious expression. They gobbled the swill down greedily when the wooden ladle pressed to their lips, and then their eyes rolled back in their heads and a shiver passed through their bodies. It was a convulsion of orgasmic bliss, out of all proportion to the meager amount of food they had received.
What, I wondered, was in that gruel?
Scowling, I moved a little closer, and then I smelled it.
Blood.
It was not the coppery tang of mortal blood. I would have noticed that immediately. It was the tarry scent of vampire blood, the ebu potashu, the living black blood.
And they were feeding it to their mortal captives!
“Thest!”
Zenzele approached from the other side of the camp, stalking toward me purposefully. She frowned when I did not scurry immediately to her summons.
“I see I am going to have to train you to be a proper attendant,” she threatened.
“You feed it to them,” I said.
The Oldest Living Vampire In Love (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 3) Page 25