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

by Joseph Duncan

  The makaya duni, Father calls those giant hills.

  The edge of the world.

  Sitting with Father are three other men. Bobangi I know, but I have never seen the other men before.

  One of them is a young warrior, his body lean and wiry with muscle. He has a fierce countenance with a great number of intricate scars etched into his cheeks and chest. I feel a thrill of excitement as I take in his stern features. He has large glaring eyes and flared nostrils, a broad mouth and full lips. He sees me staring at him and grins, sliding his hand up and down the shaft of his spear. I drop my eyes, my cheeks burning with embarrassment.

  “What are you doing here?” Father asks sharply. I jump to attention. He is looking back and forth from us to the men who have come to visit.

  His normally placid expression is tense today, and I wonder why he is so nervous. He cannot be afraid of Bobangi. Bobangi comes all the time to beg for Patanisha. Perhaps he is troubled by the handsome young newcomer, or the other man who has accompanied Bobangi, the old one with the wooden discs inserted in his earlobes.

  “Mother sends food for our honored guests,” Zawadi says, repeating what Mother has told her to say. “Their journey home will be less wearisome with their bellies full.”

  “Put it down here and leave us,” Father commands, his voice curt. “We are discussing important business.”

  As I kneel and place the basket of food on the ground, our guests sigh in appreciation. The smell is rich and good. My belly gurgles hungrily. I turn the platter a little so that the meat that fell in the poo is nearest to Bobangi.

  “Your wife is a gracious host,” the old man with the ear discs says to my father, reaching for a piece of fruit.

  I rise beside Zawadi and we share a secretive smile, then I catch the young warrior staring at me again. He is naked but for wood hoops around his wrists and ankles and a decorative sash worked with bone and bright blue stones. His eyes rove up and down my body.

  Feeling bold, I stare back at him, admiring his lean, strong physique, his shiny dark skin and elegant body markings. I wonder what his name is and what tribe he belongs to, but it would be impertinent of me to ask. It would embarrass my father.

  I would be happy if a man like him wanted me for a wife, I think. I wonder what it would feel like to have him lay upon me, as Father lays upon Mother. To have the dark, furry organ that hangs between his thighs sliding in and out of my uke. It must be pleasurable. Mother lets Father lay on top of her nearly every night.

  Father dismisses us and we scurry away through the thicket. As we retreat, I hear the men resume their conversation, but I cannot understand what they are saying over the rattling of the elephant grass. It sounds like Father is shouting though-- which is a very unusual thing for him to do. It makes me feel a little nervous, but men are strange. They are moved by passions that are mysterious to me.

  Father should let Bobangi have Patanisha this season, I think. She is already a woman. With Patanisha gone, there would be more food for everyone, and I would be second eldest sister. Also, she is lazy and bossy. All she ever does is lie around and shout orders at all the other children.

  Ah, well… it is none of my concern. I will be grown up soon enough, and then I will be the one who gives all the orders!

  4

  “How do I describe what it is like to devour another person’s life?” I said to Lukas, sitting at my dining room table in my apartment in modern day Liege. I watched my protégé mash out his cigarette in an ashtray. He was very thorough about putting out the embers. He twisted the cigarette back and forth, grinding it until the paper turned to shreds and all its insides spilled out into the glass bowl.

  He immediately lit another, and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke.

  “Isn’t that kind of your bag?” he smirked. “Devouring lives, I mean. It shouldn’t be so hard for you to describe.”

  I watched tendrils of smoke curl into the air, watched them rise, dissipate. An almost imperceptible haze of nicotine and tar hovered ghostlike just a couple inches below the ceiling of the room.

  Smoke always makes me think of spirits. The association between smoke and spirits is pretty universal. It’s why men so often incorporate incense into their religious rituals, but ghosts are rarely anything more than memories or an active imagination. It is our pasts which haunt us. More often than the spirits of those who have pierced the veil.

  I said these things to Lukas, who accepted them without comment, and then I sat staring thoughtfully out my dining room window.

  “The sharing is not always so intense,” I finally went on, “but with Zenzele, it was as if I were there. I was aware of myself, but only in a distant, dream-like sort of way. As her life unfolded in my mind, I often forgot myself for great stretches of time. Her mother and father were my mother and father. The love she felt for her brothers and sisters was a love that I felt for all of her siblings. That little isolated hut on the African savannah was my home. My home… and when she was stolen away from it shortly after, it was my heart that broke.”

  “It must be strange having a woman’s memories rattling around inside your skull,” Lukas leered. “Tell me, Drac, what was it like having your first period?”

  He always retreated to crude humor when I spoke to him of emotional matters, belittling such things as soon as I related them to him.

  He has no finer feelings, I thought. Either he was born without them, or they had atrophied from lack of use.

  I didn’t let his vulgarity annoy me, however. His emotional retardation played an important part in my schemes.

  In fact, I pitied him. How gray and cold this world must be for him! A hopeless, joyless ghetto soul, his childhood dreams rotting in the gutters like dead hobos, killed just for the fun of it.

  “The sharing has a simple biological function,” I said, changing the subject.

  Lukas cocked his head attentively, still smiling. “And what is that?”

  “Self-preservation.”

  Lukas’s forehead furrowed. I could see in his eyes that he did not understand.

  “The symbiotic organism which resides inside our veins has little in the way of natural defenses, aside from the powers it grants to the mortals that it bonds with,” I explained. “The sharing is a way for the Strix to protect itself from the depredations of a more powerful blood drinker. The living blood has no physical means of defending itself, so it attacks the mind of a violent aggressor with a barrage of memories. It is a psychic attack, intended to stun an assailant. Often an aggressor cannot carry through with his assault—even if he or she should recover swiftly enough—because the sharing forges a powerful emotional bond between the two. It would be like tearing out your own heart.”

  Lukas nodded. “Ah! I see… Cool!”

  Talk of violence always got him excited.

  “It is an aspect of our biology, however, which can be exploited to various ends. It is a self-defense mechanism, but it can also be used to transfer information very rapidly. To forge a more intimate bond with a companion. To search the mind of another blood drinker for the truth, if you believe that he is lying to you. What else…? Ah, yes, languages! When I recovered from my stupor, I found that I was fluent in all the tongues that Zenzele could speak, just as Ilio had learned the language of his mortal Tanti victim.”

  “Can it be overcome? This self-preservation mechanism?” Lukas asked.

  “Oh, certainly! As I said, the psychic assault is not always so intense. It depends on how powerful the vampire is. Physically, the little ones can be overwhelmed quite easily by a vampire like myself, while a true immortal’s blood will make one fall into a stupor, especially if that immortal has lived a long time. But psychologically, to kill another vampire like that—it is a ghastly affair! To watch their flesh shrivel to dust even as their soul merges with your own. It is nearly impossible to do such a thing! A strigoi must be exceptionally cruel to kill in such a manner.”

  “Did your vampire child Ilio relive your memories
?” Lukas asked. “I remember you said you tried to strengthen him by giving him more of your blood once.”

  “No. Expelling the Strix purposefully does not trigger the self-preservation response. It is how we reproduce.”

  “So I won’t relive 30,000 years of your life when you change me.”

  I chuckled. “No. It never happens during the transformation.”

  Lukas shuddered. “That’s a relief! No offense, Drac, but one life is plenty enough for me.”

  “It is a terrible and beautiful thing,” I agreed. “There can be no lies between two who have shared so completely. Every thought, every vile and venial act, is relived by the recipient of the blood. Every moment of horror. Every illicit desire.”

  I thought of the memories I held inside my mind. The memories of the ones I had shared with over the millennia. My beloved Zenzele. Apollonius. Sweet, fragile Julia, who died when Vesuvius erupted. There were half a dozen more, all dear to me. All but one. They floated in the deeper recesses of my mind like faintly glowing pearls. If I wanted, I could dive down to them, retrieve them from the dark waters they drift in, but I never do it. The pain of remembering them is nigh unbearable.

  “Yet, love is the only thing that comes of it in the end,” I said after a moment of reflection. “Love. Without exception.”

  5

  “I want to go with you, ‘Zele!” Mtundu pipes.

  Mother has told me to gather wood for the fire. Father and my brothers have gone hunting, and Patanisha and Zawadi are helping Mother look after the young ones.

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

  Mother’s eyes flick in my direction. She is grinding seeds between two stones to make meal, her forehead beaded with sweat. “Oh, take him with you!” she grunts. “He is getting old enough to help out around here. Show him how to do it.” She wipes her brow with the back of her hand, then returns to grinding the seeds.

  Mtundu grins at me, and I sigh.

  “All right, but if he gets eaten by a jackal, it’s not my fault!”

  Mother flaps a hand at me dismissively. I take hold of Mtundu’s arm and start walking from the hut. We leave the shade of the acacia tree and my skin tightens in the heat. In the distance, zebras are grazing on the dry grass, tails whipping back and forth. Their image ripples like a reflection on the surface of a pool. Overhead, the sky is pale blue, with just a couple puffs of clouds easing down some high current of wind.

  But Mtundu looks nervous now. “I don’t want to get eaten by a jackal!” he says very seriously. He glances back at Mother, his eyes large and frightened.

  “I was only joking,” I say soothingly. “I won’t let a jackal eat you.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise. You better do what I tell you, though.”

  “I will, ‘Zele!”

  I look down at him and I feel my heart melt. He is such a beautiful little boy, even if he is a spoiled brat. He has large soulful eyes with long lashes, a nose like a little brown stone and bright perfect teeth. When I have children of my own someday, I hope they are as pretty as Mtundu!

  I yell for the dogs as we walk away from the hut, but the dogs do not come-- not when Mother is cooking.

  That’s fine, you lazy hyenas, I think. Just don’t come sniffing around me for scraps tonight!

  It is another hot and dusty day. The dark clouds that gathered in the sky yesterday, after Bobangi came to visit, have moved on without weeping a single drop of rain, but that is normal for this time of year. It is the dry season. In the dry season, there is fire more than there is rain. The clouds come, but all that falls from them is lightning, which sets the dry grass aflame. In the dry season, we must always keep watch for smoke. More than once, we have had to abandon our home and flee to the big river that lies to the west.

  We stroll away from home, Mtundu and I, but before we gather sticks, I stop and see if Ombo has returned. My hawk was not inside his little shelter when I checked on him this morning. I squat down and look inside, but the little hut of sticks and grass is still empty. There is no sign of him but for a couple errant feathers. I guess something has eaten him during the night. With a sigh, I rise up. I tug Mtundu’s hand. “Come,” I say to him, and he stumbles after me, asking what I was looking for in the little shelter.

  I teach him how to gather sticks for Mother. I teach him how to watch for predators. I point out the different creatures that are grazing nearby and teach him the name of each of the different animals. I tell him which of the animals are dangerous to people, even though they do not hunt us for food. “Be especially careful of that one and that one,” I say, and then I have to lift him up onto my shoulder so that he can see the elephants marching in the distance, and closer by, a lone rhinoceros. “They are very far away, so we are safe, but you must always be mindful of those two. They do not like people, especially if they have babies with them, or if it is their mating season.”

  “But who is that man?” Mtundu asks, pointing.

  I set him down quickly and rise up on my tiptoes to see what man he is speaking of.

  Is it Father? I wonder, squinting toward the distant figure. I shade my eyes with my hand, but I cannot tell if the loping man is our father or not. He is too far away, and his image wavers in the heat. I can only see that it is a male, and that he is dark and slim, like Father.

  “I think it is Father,” I say, but I frown. I cannot tell for sure.

  “I want Papa!” Mtundu cries excitedly. “Let’s go see Papa!”

  “Hush! He is too far away! Besides, he is hunting, and Mother wants us to gather wood. Do you want Mother to whip us when we get back?”

  “No!”

  “Well, she will if we do not do as she has told us. Here, carry these.”

  We return to our chore, walking toward the big acacias to the north. There, at the foot of the towering trees, I show him how to weave the bigger sticks together to make a travois, which will allow us to carry much more wood than our arms alone could bear. “You’re doing good, Mtundu! Just don’t pile too many on it,” I tell him. “It will be too heavy to drag home.”

  “Yes, ‘Zele,” Mtundu says happily. My praise has puffed his chest with pride. He scampers toward another fallen branch, and I scan the horizon to the south, checking on the figure Mtundu had spotted earlier. For some reason, I am filled with a sense of foreboding. It is like the premonitions I sometimes have. The dreams that come true. Once I dreamed that the grassland was burning, and the next day we had to flee to the river. Another time I dreamed of lions, and a few days later, my brother Wahi was killed by a lioness.

  Last night I dreamed that I had gotten lost, and I couldn’t find my way back home.

  I see buffalo and zebra, antelope and giraffe. In the distance, the elephants are still marching east. They are just tiny gray spots on the horizon. The lone rhinoceros watches me back, twitching an ear. There is no man.

  Mtundu squeals in fear and I rush to him, my heart leaping into my throat.

  He wraps his arms around me and points to the stick he’s just thrown down. His eyes are big and round.

  I laugh.

  “It is just a rhinoceros beetle,” I say to him.

  The big black beetle is trundling across the dirt away from the stick. Mtundu must have seen it on the limb after picking it up.

  “It looks ferocious, but it cannot hurt you,” I say.

  I tell him to go pick it up, and he clutches me even tighter, shaking his head no. “Look, I’ll show you,” I say, prying his arms from around my legs. I walk to the beetle and squat down. Clasping it by its thick abdomen, I pluck the insect from the ground. Its legs continue to waver as I bring it back for Mtundu to look at.

  Mtundu shies away, but I say, “Don’t be scared! It cannot bite you! It is just a beetle.”

  He looks from me to the beetle, and then he inches forward.

  “It won’t bite?” he asks, blinking rapidly.

  “No.”

  I turn the insect around i
n my fingertips so he can examine it. Its shell is black, with a glossy green sheen. A large horn curves forward from its thorax. It is a fierce-looking creature, but no more dangerous than a butterfly, and quite helpless in my grasp. If I wanted, I could throw it down and squash the life from its body beneath my heel, but I would not do such a cruel thing.

  Mtundu fetches a little stick and extends it tremblingly toward the insect’s wriggling legs. The beetle grasps ahold of the stick, and Mtundu flinches. He pulls the stick away, then holds it near again. Again, the beetle grasps ahold of it. Finally, Mtundu laughs.

  “I want to take it home and play with it!” he says.

  “All right, but only if you carry it,” I tell him. “I have to drag the travois.”

  He begins to nod, still smiling, and that is when he looks to the south and his smile vanishes from his lips. His eyes widen and his body stiffens, and I twist around, looking in the direction he is looking, knowing that it is something bad, and there is the slim dark man again, only he is much nearer now, near enough that I can see he is not my father, and he is running toward us-- running so quickly!

  It is the man who came with Bobangi yesterday, the young warrior who stroked his spear as he stared at me. I thought he was handsome yesterday, when we delivered Mother’s peace bribe to the men down by the river, but I do not think he is handsome anymore. He is only scary now as he lopes toward us with his spear in his hands. I couldn’t have been more frightened if I had turned to see a cheetah racing toward us.

  “Run! Run!” I cry to Mtundu, but he is too scared to move, so I grab him by the wrist and begin to haul him after me.

  It is like dragging a block of stone. Mtundu begins to cry shrilly as I pull him behind me, and then he falls and I am dragging him, his little brown legs leaving twin trails in the dust.

  I can hear the warrior’s footfalls growing louder and louder behind us—even over Mtundu’s keening—and then he is right behind us, and his open palm collides into my back, and I go sprawling forward into the dirt.