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

by Joseph Duncan

  Her door hanging was swept to one side and a wizened blood drinker ducked into the chamber. “Zenzele,” he croaked.

  “Master Edron!” Zenzele jumped to her feet and bowed low.

  The creature was dressed in flowing robes and a large headdress, a pipe-shaped hat draped with painted wooden chits. The little wooden tablets chattered against one another when the man moved. There were several warriors in the corridor outside, and a handful of curious spectators.

  Vehnfear snarled, and Zenzele stroked the beast to silence him.

  “You have been summoned to the court of the god king,” Edron said. He nodded to the wolf almost imperceptibly, acknowledging the animal’s intelligence, which surprised me. I could feel the T’sukuru’s power emanating from him like the wind off an ice floe. An Eternal! Cold silver eyes flicked in my direction and the ancient blood drinker’s lips narrowed. “Khronos wishes to examine the stray you have returned from the Western Dominions with,” he said.

  “Of course,” Zenzele nodded.

  I bowed, and the Clan Master turned with a swish of his robes, leading us into the corridor with no further comment.

  “Stay!” Zenzele hissed at Vehnfear, pointing her finger at him.

  The wolf settled back down with a surly huff.

  Edron’s guards fell into step behind us as the god king’s majordomo led us through the winding corridors of the Fen.

  The vampire city had seemed all but deserted when we arrived at dawn, its inhabitants bedded down for the day, but it was early evening now, and the underground city was buzzing with activity.

  Blood drinkers of all shapes and sizes moved busily through the subterranean chambers. If we came upon them in the corridors, they flattened themselves against the gray stone walls to let us pass, bowing obsequiously to the Clan Master, but for the most part, the denizens of the Fen paid little attention to our group. This was a city, and they had their own lives to concern themselves with. They were artisans and craftsmen, soldiers and whores. They were priests and penitents, courtiers and clowns. Few gave me even a second glance, and then only because I was in the company of a Master.

  I was a tourist in hell.

  I knew I was probably marching to my doom, but I could not rein in my natural curiosity. I had heard of the vampires of the east-- the great city of the blood drinkers-- from the moment I ended my self-imposed isolation, and I had wanted to see it. Now I was here, and though I found it to be a loathsome place, it was still impressive. It was still a wonder. Throngs of immortals moved about its vast chambers, their dress exotic and rich. Many of the chambers were brightly painted, and in a much more sophisticated manner than the mortal cave paintings of the period. There was a great glittering falls, the water tumbling from a chink in the roof so high up it was almost lost in the distance. Around the falls, man-made bridges circled so that the immortals could enjoy the sight up close. There were tapestries and statuary, monuments and altars. There were things I could not, in my ignorance, even figure out the intent of. Complex wood and stone objects that moved of their own accord, making monotonous clacking sounds. Troughs of flowing water that turned creaking wooden paddles. I was, by turns, amazed, intrigued, amused and even frightened.

  Yet, as we moved deeper into the mountain, the inhabitants of the vampire city grew more perverse. In a vast cavern whose roof was open to the stars, some religious ceremony was being held. I watched as ecstatic mortals paid tribute to their vampire masters, slashing open their wrists and aiming the spurting wounds toward large and ornately carved wooden bowls. Blood drinkers in priestly robes slurped from the bowls ravenously, their garments dripping with the scarlet fluid. Further down, in a chamber that billowed with hissing steam, we encountered a great orgy, mortal and immortal alike, fucking and feeding. They coiled and writhed, a collective mound of twitching flesh. The air was thick with the smell of semen and sweat and hot human blood. The pools they copulated in bubbled and splashed with hot gases that had passed up from the belly of the earth. We crossed a stinking abattoir where mortals hung by their ankles like game, to be butchered and bled into crusty stone vats. The immortals working here hardly even looked up as we passed through the center of the workroom. In another chamber, vampire aristocrats lazed about shallow pools of human blood, gossiping idly. The blood clung to their flesh, dark, half-congealed, like clots. It was finally too much for me to bear. My thoughts reeled drunkenly at the nightmarish sights, the putrescent stench, of this pit of vipers. I had to lower my eyes, withdraw into my inner being.

  I have always had a self-indulgent nature, and I’m ashamed to say that all this debauchery tempted me. I feared I could lose my soul in this place-- and not even notice that I’d lost it. That, to me, was the crowning horror.

  That I could be one of them.

  That it would be so easy.

  We descended, and descended yet further, until finally we came to the royal chamber, the great court of the god king Khronos.

  There, in the deepest pits of Fen’Dagher, I was brought before the father of us all.

  The First One.

  The original Oldest Living Vampire.

  8

  He was much shorter than I expected him to be.

  Of course, I had only seen him through Zenzele’s eyes until that moment, and so he had appeared taller in my imagination. His stature had little effect on the sense of power that radiated from him, however. It was like a high-powered radio signal, if you’ll forgive one more anachronistic lapse, a humming field of energy in which his personality was embedded, transmitted to all who stood in his presence.

  He had a broad, heavily muscled physique, but more than that, he looked dense, as if his body were composed entirely of stone. His flesh was white, the purest white you can imagine, and shot through with curling threads of blue-- his veins. He was bald, with crude, primitive-looking features: a heavy brow, a flat broken nose, full lips and a bony, jutting chin. A deep furrow angled from his left eye to his jawline, and another marred the broad flat plane of his forehead: scars he must have received when he was a mortal man. Countless smaller scars pitted the surface of his skull, his torso, his arms. He was attired in simple garb: leggings, boots, a plaited chest-piece. His arms and shoulders were tattooed. The feature I found most disturbing, however, was his eyes. They were black.

  Blank, glimmering, soulless black.

  Edron led us to the center of the chamber, then gestured for us to kneel. All along the perimeter of the court, gaunt white blood drinkers stood in attendance. They stared, a few whispering among themselves, but most were silent, grim. The only sound in the chamber were our footfalls and the crackle of the torches that lined the walls above the heads of the god king’s courtiers.

  Palifver stood among them, Hettut at his side. He stared at me with a tiny, cruel smile, his eyes sizzling with jealousy.

  I met his hot stare with ice, then turned my attention to Khronos.

  “Zenzele, my lord, and the stray from the Western Dominions,” the majordomo announced. He bowed and backed away.

  “Zenzele, my love,” Khronos said with obvious pleasure. Smiling, he rose from his throne of basalt and bone.

  The floor of his reception chamber was made of volcanic stone. The igneous rock had formed a polygonal pattern when it cooled ages before, and the ancient blood drinker stepped gracefully from section to section as he approached. His shadow, multiplied by the torches, leapt and capered on the walls.

  “Khronos,” Zenzele bowed.

  The god king of the vampires appraised me as he drew near. I found his black gaze disconcerting, but I tried not to betray my fear.

  “Palifver says that you’ve brought us a stray,” Khronos said. “An untamed blood drinker from the northern wastes. We hope that you have wet-trained the beast.”

  Some of the creature’s sycophants tittered. Their voices echoed off the walls of the royal chamber like a flurry of bat wings.

  “I’m certain Palifver has said... a great many things,” Zenzele rep
lied.

  “Do not concern yourself overly much,” Khronos reassured her. “I am not so ancient that I have forgotten how spurned love can poison the tongue.”

  With one last nimble hop, he stood before Zenzele. He held out his hands. His fingers were very long, very white, and sported long, thick, black nails. Zenzele put her fingers in his palms, and those pallid claws curled around them.

  He grinned down at her, his teeth sharp and yellow, like old ivory.

  “You have been gone too long, my beautiful Zenzele,” he said. “The Fen is much too drab in your absence.”

  “I am glad to be home.”

  “Yes… home,” he sighed. He seemed lost in thought for a moment, and then he turned to address me. “Perhaps, someday, you will consider Uroboros your home as well.”

  He grinned at me, waiting for a response.

  “Perhaps,” I said carefully.

  “Good! Good!” he cried. “Tell me, stranger… what is your name?”

  “Thest,” I answered.

  “Thest,” he repeated. His jaw worked as if he were chewing the word. He turned suddenly to Zenzele. “Thest is a name used by one of the mortal tribes in the Western Dominions, is it not?”

  “Yes, Khronos.”

  “It is not a common name,” he ruminated. His eyelids fluttered, and then he made a face as if to say “ah-hah!”

  “Thest is the name of one of the Tanti’s deities!” He laughed at the expression of surprise on my face. “Of course I know the Tanti! I was old when the Tanti came down from the north, before they even called themselves the Tanti, when the world was gripped in fists of ice and snow and giant beasts still roamed the land!”

  He looked at me with sudden intensity, and I felt his eyes boring into my skull. I imagined I could hear his thoughts in my mind—low, grinding, alien thoughts. Incomprehensible.

  “But you are old, too,” he said softly. He released Zenzele’s hands to approach me, and I was nearly overwhelmed by a desire to retreat from him. It took all of my willpower to stay there on my knees. I wanted to scramble across the floor like a frightened child.

  “Not as old as I am, but very old,” he said, his eyebrows drawing together. “From before the Time of Ice, I would think. And yet, you are still very much the mortal man you once were. Interesting…”

  He circled around me as he spoke. As he did, I felt that he was examining me with more than just his eyes. I had the notion that he was looking inside me, into my past, possibly even my future, with senses not much different from the strange intuition that Zenzele commanded, only more powerful, more piercing.

  Several more blood drinkers entered the royal chamber. Bhorg, Tribtoc and Goro, among others, slipped as unobtrusively as possible through the main entrance. The courtiers made room for them along the perimeter of the chamber.

  “Palifver said that you surrendered to Zenzele to protect the life of a T’sukuru child. He said the two of you had been living among a tribe of mortal men. The Tanti, I presume.”

  “Yes,” I answered, turning my head to keep sight of the creature.

  “Did they worship you, these Tanti?” he asked. “Is that why you took the name of one of their deities?”

  “No. I lived as one of them.”

  “They knew what you were, and they accepted you?”

  “Yes.”

  That caused a bit of a stir among the king’s court. The god king’s audience murmured in surprise and consternation.

  “You are no longer a mortal man,” Khronos said with a strange sort of pity in his voice, as if he were speaking to a child.

  “I have begun to teach him our ways,” Zenzele spoke up nervously. “He was forced to destroy his maker shortly after he was given the Blood. He has lived among mortal men all of his life. He is ignorant, yes, and stubborn, but I would like to take him into my House. I would like to give him the same opportunities that you have given to me.”

  “You feel an affinity with him,” Khronos said to her. “You were also a stray.”

  “Yes, Lord,” Zenzele said.

  “Do you love him?”

  I saw Palifver’s head jerk up at that. His eyes narrowed. His fingers curled into fists.

  Zenzele looked stricken. “I… am drawn to him,” she said haltingly. She glanced toward me, then stuttered, “Yes… I feel… a strong affection for him.”

  “You have Shared?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he knows,” Khronos said. His eyes twitched back toward me. “We will have your blood now, wild man from the north. Let us look into your soul.”

  9

  Just a drop of my vampire blood, and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. I watched his pallid eyelids flutter, a rapid burst of motion, like the wings of a moth. His black tongue snaked out, slid across his lips. Then he opened his eyes and fixed me with his soulless gaze.

  “A god of corruption, am I?” he hissed, echoing my unspoken thoughts.

  Zenzele flashed a look of horror at me. Horror and despair.

  “You would see mortal men rule this world in our stead?” he asked, though it was more of an accusation than a question. “You would serve them over us? Forsaking your own kind?”

  “Yes!” I answered. What was the point of lying? He had tasted my blood, and through the blood: my soul.

  “Mortals are weak, simple-minded, crude.”

  “Yes.”

  “Their lives are so brief. Better to spend your devotion on mayflies.”

  Zenzele opened her mouth to plead my case, but Khronos motioned for her to be silent.

  “There is only one difference between mortal and immortal men,” I said.

  “And what is that?” Khronos asked.

  “Their kings die!” I cried, and then I threw myself at him.

  It was a desperate act. I knew that he’d found my soul offensive. Even more damning, I was glad. I wanted no part of his kingdom of filth. I had gambled my life on the slim chance that I might curry his favor, and by extension, protect my beloved Tanti, but I had lost. The only thing I could hope for now was to destroy the creature that threatened the lives of my beloved.

  But how do you kill that which is unkillable?

  “Gon, no--!” Zenzele shouted as I launched myself at the god king.

  Khronos was close. I crossed the space to him in the blink of an eye. As the king’s council rushed in to stop me, I seized Khronos’s head. I could feel the terrible power pouring from his body, a palpable force, even more dreadful at this intimate distance. He was an Eternal, and so much more, but I had no recourse. I thought to tear his head from his shoulders and crush it beneath my heel. Perhaps surprise would give me the moment I needed to deliver the fatal blow, though I doubted even such a catastrophic injury could kill the fiend.

  But their god king was fast. He threw me off as quickly as I laid hands on him.

  As Khronos flung me to the floor, my nails raked across the flesh of his face, digging several grooves in his cold white skin. The black blood welled up out of the tissue to stitch the wounds back together almost instantly, and I brought my fingers to my mouth, hoping some of his Strix was imbedded in my fingernails. Perhaps I could divine some secret from his blood, something that might help me to vanquish the monster.

  “You… DARE--!” Khronos thundered, outraged.

  I tasted his blood on my nails, and then the whipstrike of his persona. His thoughts and emotions and memories flooded into my mind.

  The force of the god king’s psyche caught me off guard, and for a moment I was possessed. Alien images filled my vision: a world, a universe, foreign to our own, a nightmarish realm where even the fundamental laws that governed reality were antithetical to man’s reason. There, all life was parasitic in nature, and the heavens were not some vast repository of far flung stars, but filled with a kind of living soup, an organic miasma. Coupled with these visions were the god king’s human recollections, almost as impenetrable. I saw the warrior race that gave birth to him. I witnessed their nev
er-ending battles. Grinding, unceasing warfare, even when he was a child. I saw him walking through fields of battle, crushing the skulls of his people’s fallen foes, a boy with a large stone in his hands. I saw him as a young man, fighting with spear and blade. I saw his first kill, his first battlefield rape. I saw vast fields of war-torn corpses, the earth run red with blood while vultures feasted on the flesh of the dead and the dying. And then an Event. A terrific calamity. The long foretold Armageddon of his race’s mythology. There was a flash in the heavens, so bright it turned the night to day. The ground trembled. Their forests were laid to waste. The god king set forth with a band of warriors to seek out the cause of the destruction. He found it. He found it and returned to his people a monster. But it was all too much for me, this terrible genesis, this fusion of man and not-man. It was as if I were seeing through the eyes of two separate beings, hearing two voices shouting in my skull at once, and I could do ought but reject them both, pushing them both away in an instinctive attempt to preserve my own sanity.

  But before the visions faded, I saw his ambition, or perhaps the ambition of the alien thing that was coupled to his soul: to remake the world in his image, and that was perhaps the most nightmarish revelation of all.

  “Bring me his head!” Khronos roared, and I was seized by several hissing blood drinkers. They had surrounded me while I was in the spell of his blood. They wrenched me violently in one direction, then another, cursing and snarling. In a moment they would coordinate their assault and tear me limb from limb.

  “No!” Zenzele shouted. I saw her rise, and then she blurred across the chamber. An instant later, she was snatching a spear from a distracted soldier’s hands.

  “Wait!” Khronos said, stepping toward me with a grin. “I will do it myself!”

  I lunged at him, but my captors held me back. They forced me to my knees as the god king approached.

  He took my temples between his hands, his nails sinking into my flesh. “Your head shall adorn my cock,” he spat.