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

by Joseph Duncan

  I started to protest but she shushed me.

  “Like you, I was ignorant of our place in this world,” she said. “I was enslaved by a loveless blood god. My mortal life was stolen from me. I suffered as you suffer for the lives I took to satisfy my appetite. But Khronos showed me a higher path. He freed me from my cruel maker. He gave me a purpose to live for and peace in my soul, and so I serve him, and he has rewarded me for my allegiance. Because I have affection for you, I will teach you our ways. I will plead your case to my god king, but if he sees fit to destroy you, I will not defy him. I cannot. I might be able to protect you from the others, but I cannot shield you from Khronos if he finds you objectionable. He is too powerful.”

  I nodded as if I understood, as if I agreed, but I thought to myself: she is not free. She has merely traded one oppressor for another.

  2

  Zenzele said that Khronos would spare me if I surrendered to him, if I adopted his philosophies as my own, but her promise was no solace to me. My people had understood the nature of the world. The cycle of life and death was a cruel and beautiful thing, but the thought of this new role I would have to assume if I wished to be accepted by their god king did not sit well with me. Yes, I was a predator. Even when I was a mortal man, I had killed to feed my belly. Legions of rabbits and deer and fish had perished to sustain my family, and I’d given very little thought to their sacrifice. I had honored their spirits, of course, as our elders taught us to, but it had never disturbed me as Zenzele’s words disturbed me now. Men suffer-- in ways that animals do not-- when the life-spirit flees from their bodies. I had seen it with my own eyes too many times: their pain, their fear, their regrets. All too often I had been the cause of that suffering. Yet it was a rare thing when I did not suffer with them, even as they died. If I were to become like her, some kind of god of death... I did not believe that I could bear such pain. To kill and kill and kill… and for all eternity!

  I could not!

  “You are uncharacteristically silent,” Zenzele said as she strode beside me through the wilderness. I knew without looking that she was worried.

  The goddess of death… fretting over me!

  I did not speak for several minutes. I listened to the snow crunch beneath my feet. Finally, I sighed. “Is there no way for our kind to truly die?” I asked.

  “No,” she answered. “Not the eternal ones. Not that I have ever seen. But why would you ask that?”

  “I think that I would rather die than live forever as you have chosen to live,” I said.

  I expected my reply to anger her, but she answered thoughtfully, “You only believe that because you are still attached to your mortal life. You have never lived among your own kind. Your heart is still the heart of a mortal man.”

  “I would have it no other way.”

  “You believe that now, but it will not always be so. I tell you this because I was once like you.” She laughed softly. “I would not feed from mortals. I drank the blood of lions and hyenas. Only predators, I promised myself. If I do this, my conscience will be clear.”

  She stopped, and I turned to look at her.

  “But do you not see the error of that reasoning?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Men are predators!” she exclaimed.

  She smiled at me, her tiny fangs bright and white in the dark.

  “Tell me: how many men have you spied in your lifetime grazing on a field of clover?”

  Despite my dark mood, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the image. “None.”

  “And how many times have you seen mortal men kill other living creatures? Even one another, often for no discernible reason, only that they feel compelled to do it. To kill their own kind. Because it gives them pleasure to kill.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to answer that. She was right. And yet, there was something morally repugnant about her philosophy. These vampires piled an even greater evil upon man’s wickedness and bowed down in worship of it. They called it good. Holy. There was nothing sacred about it, though! It was just more killing, more suffering.

  “And so their wickedness gives us license to be even more depraved?” I asked. “To be crueler, more brutal? To kill and enslave and pillage and rape?”

  “We deal with them in the manner they are accustomed,” she retorted.

  “Why wallow in filth? Men can be good. They can be noble and loving and fine, and so can we. We have the power to be finer! We can guide them to greater things.”

  “To what end?” she snapped. I could see that I was angering her now, but I couldn’t hold my tongue.

  “We can live among them!” I said. “I have done so without harming a single one of them. We can help one another to grow in wisdom and understanding and love.”

  “You give them more credit than they deserve. Watch them spread across the world unchecked? They would devour it like a disease.”

  “The same could be said for us.”

  “That is why we have the laws.”

  “Laws are easily broken. Usually by the very men who make them.”

  Her body trembled with rage, and then she sighed. Her shoulders fell and she shook her head. “You are a stubborn man,” she said.

  I could not see the humor in our impasse. I wanted her to recognize the truth as I beheld it, that her way was only a cycle of misery, and the philosophy of the Potashu T’sukuru a flimsy justification for self-indulgence.

  “I will lead you to the true path,” she said.

  I shook my head. “I do not think so.”

  “Then Khronos will destroy you.”

  “I will deceive him.”

  “You cannot. He will see the lie in your blood.”

  “How?”

  “See? You are like a willful child who presumes he knows all there is to know! You know nothing! When Khronos summons you to his court, he will partake of your Eloa. He will experience your life as if he has lived it himself. He will know your thoughts as if it is he who thinks them. You can hide nothing from him. Yahi! Have you never shared with another blood god? Not even the one you made?”

  I shook my head. I was not certain I knew what she meant. Not entirely.

  “What about the mortals you have killed? You never feel their thoughts as their lifeblood pulses inside you?”

  “Sometimes, like a fading echo. My vampire child Ilio has more of a talent for that than I.”

  “When you share with another blood drinker, it is different. It is more intense, the sharing deeper and more intimate, but not all T’sukuru are adept at it. It is like everything else we can do. Our strengths and weaknesses vary. But this is why we say ‘the soul is the blood’.”

  I absorbed that, wrestling with my distaste at the idea-- my thoughts are my own!-- then I asked, “Why then did I not know my maker’s thoughts when he changed me?”

  Zenzele shrugged. “Because you were still a mortal man.”

  “I am doomed then,” I said, and I wondered what it would feel like to have my body pulled to pieces. My limbs torn from my torso. My head ripped from my shoulders. Would I still be aware of my surroundings, or would the pain drive me to madness?

  And then what?

  An eternity of pain and madness.

  I could flee, but I would be abandoning all whom I claimed to love. Ilio, my beautiful babies, Aioa and Irema, Priss and Valas… Everyone!

  No! Better an eternity of torment than allow any of them to come to harm!

  Zenzele saw my suffering, and a terrible expression of pity came into her eyes. “Here, beautiful one, let me show you,” she said softly. She stepped near to me and turned her chin to her shoulder, exposing her neck to my teeth. “Perhaps where words have failed, my life can persuade you to our cause.”

  “What must I do?” I asked, frightened suddenly of what I might see inside her soul.

  “Just bite me and drink my blood,” she said. “That is all that you have to do. The blood will do the rest.”

  “I do not wish to
harm you.”

  “My flesh will heal before you get more than a mouthful.”

  “I do not know that I wish to be persuaded to your philosophy.”

  “Perhaps it will be enough for Khronos simply that you try.”

  I pulled her to me and placed my lips upon her neck. “I’ve never drunk the blood of another vampire,” I said, and my breath on her smooth skin teased a ripple of gooseflesh from her.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered.

  Her hand slid around my waist, then rose up beneath my arm. Her delicate fingers slid into my auburn mane, and then she pressed my face more firmly to her neck, a lover’s embrace.

  “It will seem like a lifetime to you, but for me: a moment of pain,” she said. “And then we will hunt.”

  I curled my lips back from my fangs and bit into her flesh.

  Her fingers tightened in my hair as she cried out, and then her blood-- her black, icy blood-- spurted into my mouth, and my entire body convulsed as if I had been struck by a bolt of lightning.

  Her blood washed across my tongue, tingling, and then I swallowed, and it was like swallowing ice, and then it was inside me, she was inside me, and I could feel my own immortal blood coiling around her’s. My stomach lurched as if our blood was warring.

  Pain!

  My knees buckled. Bursts of light flashed in my eyes—red, blue, green. Voices, like peals of thunder, rattled in my brain. I felt heat on my flesh, smelled dust and grass and mortal sweat.

  I fell against Zenzele, my arms and legs twitching helplessly. She held me easily, our limbs entwined even as the essence of our souls entwined inside me. She put her lips to my face, to my forehead and cheek and mouth, kissing me all over, fast and light, and I could not tell where one ended and the other one began.

  We were one.

  We were Zenzele.

  Rolling my eyes toward the heavens, I behold a sweltering sun.

  3

  “Zenzele!” Mother calls, her voice ringing out in the oppressive heat of the savannah.

  I am squatting beside a crude shelter I have made of sticks and leaves. A hawk blinks at me from the opening, his eyes shiny and round like lithops seeds. I have named him Ombo, which means fly, though he can no longer fly. I found him flopping in the grass a short distance from our hut several days ago, his wing broken, and I have been tending to him ever since.

  I jiggle the earthworm I have brought for him to eat, holding the wriggling creature between my thumb and forefinger. “Here, take it,” I say, and Ombo cocks his head to one side, but he does not come forward and take the meal.

  “Zenzele!” Mother shrieks, and I twitch the worm at the hawk impatiently. Mother is calling, and she punishes me when I do not answer quickly enough to suit her. She carries a little green switch with her everywhere she goes, and she swipes it across the back of my legs when I am slow. Not enough to cut into the skin, but it stings! Oh, how it stings! With nine children, and another on the way, Mother has no patience for dawdlers.

  “I am coming!” I yell, and I rise from the grass like a gazelle, neck craning. I throw down the worm and wipe my fingers on my skirt. The earthworm twists in the dirt in front of the little hut I have made for Ombo, and the bird finally pops his head out of the shelter and seizes the worm in his beak. Satisfied, I run home. The shadow of my long legs—all knees and scabs—scissor back and forth on the dusty ground.

  “Yes, Mother?” I pant.

  Mother stands in the doorway of our home, a hut made of grass and sticks and mud. Our house sits beneath a great acacia tree. It is much cooler in the shade.

  My little sister, Waceera, ogles me from Mother’s hip, chewing on her chubby fist. She has been fussy today. Teething, Mother says. My little brother, Mtundu, peeks at me from behind my mother’s legs.

  “Help Zawadi carry this food down to your father,” Mother says.

  Zawadi is just inside the entrance of our hut, arranging food upon two platters-- cooked vegetables and fruit and the seared flesh of an antelope. The smell of it makes my mouth water.

  “Where is he?” I ask.

  “He is down by the river,” Mother answers, hitching Waceera up on her hip. “Bobangi has returned to ask for your sister again.”

  Bobangi has come again? I think, with a mixture of amusement and contempt.

  He is a male from a nearby village, a people who call themselves the Msanaa. He has already come to visit us several times this season, hoping to persuade Father to let him marry my eldest sister.

  Not yet, Father always tells him. Mother and Father hope that Bobangi will get frustrated and forget my sister. Bobangi is too old for her, Father says. Not only that, Bobangi already has two wives. Patanisha would be the lowest ranking wife if she were to marry the Msanaa. His older wives were sure to be jealous. But Bobangi is persistent. He does not give up on Patanisha.

  We are Msanaa, too, only we do not live among our kind. They are a fierce people, always eager to make war with other tribes, or so Mother says, and that is why Father is not more firm with Bobangi. He is afraid to say no. He only tries to delay the man, hoping to give Patanisha a little more time to grow up.

  The thought of seeing the Msanaa men is exciting, like poking a snake with a stick. The Msanaa men are dangerous, Mother says, but I think that I would like to have a fierce husband someday, a mate like one of the Msanaa men who sometimes comes to visit with Bobangi, instead of a man like my father, who is quiet and thoughtful and indulgent.

  Mother and Father say I am too young to think of husbands, but I will be a woman soon. Already, my breasts have begun to bud. Soon, my uke will bleed, and I will be old enough to bear children.

  Bobangi has come to visit many times, but sometimes he brings others with him—his sons, his brothers, his cousins. Perhaps I will catch the eye of one of them, and he will come back to ask Father for me as well. I would like to be married. I would like to have many children.

  “Ma! I want to go with Zenzele,” Mtundu says.

  “No, Mtundu, you are too little,” I reply.

  He pleads with Mother to go, but she just swipes at him with her free hand. “You heard your sister!” Mother snaps, and Mtundu runs to his bedding on the far side of the hut. He is crying loudly, but it is only pretend tears. He thinks he will get his way if he cries. He usually does.

  But not today. Mother is nervous. She does not like Bobangi, who walks upon the earth like it is an enemy that he has conquered. She lived in the village of the Msanaa when she was a girl—long, long ago!-- but she has grown accustomed to my father’s peaceful ways. I think my father is the only man she is not afraid of.

  Zawadi rises and hands me a basket of food. “Here, carry this one,” my sister says. “Don’t drop it.”

  “I won’t drop it!” I say indignantly.

  Zawadi is always so bossy!

  “Do not tarry, or make eyes at any of the men,” Mother cautions us. Waceera watches us solemnly, then begins to feed from Mother’s breast. Mother winces as Waceera’s new teeth nip her tender nipple.

  “Don’t bite, Waceera!” Mother scolds the baby.

  Holding our baskets, Zawadi and I laugh, and baby Waceera releases Mother’s teat to laugh along with us, her little white teeth shining.

  We promise not to dally, or flash our eyes at any of the men, and then we march down the path to the big rock by the river, the place where Father goes to talk business when other men come to visit.

  “Don’t make eyes at any of the men!” I say in a high-pitched voice, swinging my hips back and forth.

  “Don’t shake your poo-maker at them either,” Zawadi teases, and we both laugh.

  We march down the path, both of us swinging our poo-makers back and forth in an exaggerated manner, giggling and bumping against one another. I drop some food off my platter-- whoops! Wiping the dirt off it, I put it back with the rest, and then we laugh about that, too, because the meat fell into some animal dung.

  “Let’s give that one to Bobangi,” Zawa
di whispers conspiratorially, and I nod.

  “Yes! Bobangi gets the poo-poo!” I snort.

  I have to wipe the tears from my eyes, I am giggling so hard.

  As we near the river, we compose ourselves. Here, near the water, the short grass and gangly bushes give way to a thicket of tall elephant grass. Elephant grass is dangerous. It is high and dense, and hides all sorts of dangerous predators—snakes and lions and black-backed jackals. It is probably safe because there are zebra and antelope grazing fearlessly not too far away. The dogs that guard our home will usually start barking when predators come near as well, but still, we are cautious.

  Zawadi begins to sing in a loud voice and steps into the elephant grass, following the path that Father and our visitors made through the dense growth earlier. I follow, joining her in song. Most predators will run away from people, so long as you are loud and bold and do not act afraid.

  Most of them.

  We make our way through the grass, singing loudly. Up ahead, we can hear our father. Father says, “No. No. I told you, Bobangi. When the dry season comes next year. She will be old enough then, and she will make a better wife for you. She is still too much of a child. She likes to play, and is lazy with her duties.”

  Father falls silent as we come out onto the bank of the river.

  The river is just a narrow rill here at the end of the dry season. Soon the rains will come, and the river will swell, but for now the waterway is narrow and muddy, and the earthen banks are hard and scaled, like the skin of crocodiles.

  Father is sitting in his favorite place at the foot of a large gray boulder. There is a smooth, square shelf at the base of the rock. Father sometimes jokes that the spirits made that rock specifically for his butt. It is a cool and shady spot, thanks to the thorny acacia that crowd along the bank of the river. Father often comes here to watch the animals graze on the savannah. It is a peaceful place, like his heart, with a view that stretches for days and days… all the way to the great blue hills, where the savannah ends and the desert begins.