“That is why we must defeat him,” I said. “That is why I must raise an army against him, and why we must find some way to destroy him.”
The Orda did not seem much impressed by my vision. I think the fates had treated them so unkindly that they did not care that the world was consumed. Or perhaps the vision was too grand for their minds to encompass. I spoke of a world consumed, yet they had lived their entire lives—their brief hard lives—on but one tiny and barren portion of it. The steppe was the world to them, and desolate as it was, its destruction did not seem to be much of a loss.
What they wanted was immortality, and they were willing to do my bidding for a chance at it.
That was enough for me.
They did not sleep with us in the cave that night, but who could blame them? I would not have tempted fate that way if I had been a mortal man. When they retired, they made camp a little way down the river from us.
We accompanied them to their campsite, helped them to make a fire. They were quite impressed by my fire-making skills, shouting in surprise when I rubbed two sticks together fast enough to combust them. It is an easy trick for an immortal, but I quite like it. I get a child-like thrill from the squeal of the wood, the billowing smoke and great burst of flame.
“Bathe yourselves in the river today,” I told them before we departed. “If it is your way to fuck before battle, or to celebrate endings and beginnings, then fuck, for it will be the last time you will couple as mortal men.” I told them to trim their hair and nails and explained why, and gave them one last chance to reconsider. “Tomorrow evening we will give you the living blood,” I said. “The transformation will be painful, and the outcome is never certain. If the ebu potashu finds you wanting, it will devour you from the inside, as the spider devours its prey. We know not why it does this, or why it finds one man lacking and makes another into a god, but you should know this. If you decide to live out your lives as mortal men, to forsake our offer to you, then leave at first light. We will not pursue you.”
They regarded us with wide, somber eyes. Finally, Hammon spoke, “Thank you, Gon. You are an honorable man. We will do these things you say. And we will give your words great thought tonight, though I do not believe any of my men will want to leave when morning comes.”
I nodded, and the three of us departed.
Bhorg returned to the cave, tired from his journey. Zenzele and I climbed a nearby promontory and watched the Orda from afar.
They sat around their fire for a little while, discussing the three of us. I was pleased that their impression of us was favorable, though all of them admitted to being uneasy in our presence. They also seemed to have no reservations about taking the living blood. They were excited by the prospect of immortality, of having our strength and strange powers.
“Do you think they will be good warriors?” Zenzele asked.
“I do not know,” I replied. “They may fight with us. They may abandon us. I do not think they will betray us. They revere loyalty and honesty. We will just have to wait and see, I suppose.”
We watched as the men bedded for the night. Eris went to the river and bathed, and then each member of the group took turns lying upon him before retiring to their furs to sleep. All except Hammon, who sat staring into the fire, lost in thought. When he had performed his duties, Eris went and sat beside the leader of their band for a little while. Their voices were faint, but I could understand them.
Eris urged Hammon to take his pleasure of him. “It will be the last time we have the chance to lie together while we are living men,” he said. “I would like to know you before it is too late.”
Hammon declined, saying that he had sworn to honor his wife’s memory until his dying day, and he meant to keep that vow. He said it gently but firmly.
“You may never die, Hammon,” Eris said. “Tomorrow, we become gods, never to know the embrace of death as living men know it. Do you intend to keep your vow through all of eternity?”
“Their living blood may devour us from within,” Hammon replied. “You heard what their leader said. The ebu potashu may find us lacking and destroy us.”
“And you would prefer that?”
“Of course not.”
“Then come, lie with me.”
“I told you I will not. How many times must I refuse you, Eris? Go to bed.”
The two-natured man rose and walked quietly to his furs. I watched him curl up in them. He gazed at Hammon’s back for several minutes before dozing.
“We will have to make many more if we ever hope to defeat Khronos,” Zenzele said thoughtfully.
“Yes,” I nodded. “But we will raise them up to be good children. To be the guardians of mortal man.”
“It will not be easy,” Zenzele said. “It will be like training a lioness to nurse a baby impala. It seems unnatural to me, this reverence you have for the very creatures we must feed upon.”
“Can the predator not love its prey, Zenzele?” I mused. “Yes, nature is cruel, but even in nature there is room for love. The problem is balance. The lion kills, yes, but only the weak and the sick. It does not strive to devour them all. It takes only what nourishment it needs to survive. It lives in balance with the world, taking from it temporarily, and returning to the earth when its life is finished.”
“As I lived once, before I was stolen from my family,” Zenzele said softly. “Before I was seduced by Khronos.”
I put my arm around her, pulled her close to me. “I was just as tempted when I walked among your people. The ways of the God King are powerfully seductive. But the living blood is not of this world, and we must find a way that is sensible for both our kinds. What will Khronos do when he had devoured all living things?”
Hammon finally rose. He walked a little way from the campsite and pissed, then went to the river and drank before retiring to his bed.
Zenzele and I retired, too.
11
I woke to the smell of mortal blood, and my stomach twisted on itself, cramping painfully. Vehnfear snarled and I placed my hand on the animal’s back to restrain him. I sat up as Zenzele stirred beside me. At the mouth of our refuge, Hammon and his brother stood anxiously.
“The sun has fallen below the mountain peaks, Gon,” Hammon said. “We are ready.”
“Return to your camp,” I told him, holding my body very still, for it wished to fly at the mortal and drain him of his blood. “We must feed, and then we will give you the living blood.”
Hammon hesitated, staring at the growling wolf beside me, then nodded and withdrew.
“It is better if we don’t feed before we give them the blood,” Zenzele said. She stretched her arms and curved her back. “The blood will be purer. It will not pain them as badly.”
Bhorg groaned and climbed to his feet. He shook his head, then looked around the cavern fuzzily. “Goro has not returned,” he observed.
“He is looking for his people again,” I said.
“I think he will be looking for a long time,” Bhorg replied, not unkindly.
“I’m afraid so,” I said, rising. I sighed as a mortal man might sigh. “Well, I suppose we should go make them into gods.”
“I can give them the blood if you would prefer to feed first,” Zenzele offered.
“No, I can manage. We should all participate in this. You too, Bhorg. We will have to make many blood drinkers before we wage our war on Khronos. Best that we get accustomed to it.”
“I said once that I would never make another one of us,” Zenzele confessed.
“As have I,” I told her, cupping her cheek in my hand. “But the need is too great. I am sure it will not be the only vow we break in the days to come, but it is for the greater good.”
Vehnfear trotted away when we exited the cave. He paused to look back at us, expecting us to accompany him, tongue hanging out and tail wagging, but Zenzele told him to go on, and he loped away in search of his nightly meal.
We walked side-by-side along the meandering river, steppin
g lightly upon its smooth round rocks with our bare feet. It was a brisk evening, the air chilly but not uncomfortable. The sun had dropped below the mountain peaks in the west, but its light was still in the sky, only a few stars winking visibly in the firmament.
Hammon hailed us as we approached. He rose, as did the rest of his companions.
They looked scared, but they should be. The scent of their fear, mixed with the odor of their blood, roused the demon inside of me so that it felt like my stomach was trying to claw its way out of me to get to them.
“Are you ready?” I asked as we drew near.
“We have prepared ourselves,” Hammon nodded. “We bathed in the river, and trimmed the hair of our bodies.”
“You should disrobe,” Zenzele told them. “You will soil yourselves like children when the living blood changes you.”
Hammon nodded with an uneasy grin, both amused and repulsed by the thought of soiling himself. “You heard the man,” he said to his companions, loosening the lacings of his parka-like upper garment. Grumbling, the others followed suit.
The Orda were uncomfortable being naked, I observed. All but Hammon and Morgruss stood holding their privates in their hands after they had disrobed. Eris stood covering his groin and chest like a woman might do, though he had no breasts to speak of.
They stood shivering as they waited for us, and a fantasy raced through my mind of throwing myself upon them, taking them down as the wolf takes down the buck, and feeding upon them. I could practically taste their blood on my tongue, feel my eyeteeth rending their flesh.
No!
I shook it off, shivering a little myself, but not from the cold.
Zenzele had asked, when we lay down to rest that morning, whether we should observe the ritual offering of blood, as it was done in Uroboros. I told her we would not. I did not want to tempt myself with their blood, and I certainly was not comfortable accepting sacrifice from mortal men.
“We are not gods, Zenzele,” I had said.
“You may have to pretend before you have your army, my love,” had been Zenzele’s enigmatic reply.
They were brave looking men, if not attractive. Clean, hair trimmed and styled in the Orda fashion—hair braided on the sides, then pulled around to the back and fixed with thongs so that it held the rest in place. Their bodies were thin, almost bony, but muscular. Even Stine and Morgruss, who were husky men, showed obvious signs of malnutrition. I felt ashamed of myself, tempting such desperate men with immortality, but it had to be done.
We had them lay out their bedding side by side, instructed them to lie down.
“I want the Mother to give me the blood,” Eris spoke up, a nervous smile teasing the corners of his lips. He had shaved the hair from his face and looked very feminine that evening, or like a very beautiful young man.
Zenzele smiled and nodded at him, crossing the group to stand beside him.
Bhorg moved to kneel between Morgruss and Stine, the men he felt most comfortable around.
That left me with Hammon and his brother.
I kneeled down at Hammon’s head. He looked up at me, eyebrows arched.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
His throat convulsed, but he nodded.
I glanced toward the heavens. The sky was growing darker by the moment, a bruised purple color now, the stars brighter and more abundant. I prayed to my ancestors, who dwelled among those stars, to forgive me for what I was about to do.
I do this for our mortal descendants, I said soundlessly to them. I do this for our children, and our children’s children. I do this to preserve the People, no matter where they go, no matter what they call themselves.
“Open your mouth,” I told him, and when he obeyed, I placed my lips over his, forming a seal, and brought the living blood up from my stomach.
His eyes flashed open, and he threw his hands up to push me away. Might as well push away the mountains. I held my mouth over his as he lurched beneath me, hearing the others choke and cry out in pain. When the living blood was inside him, I moved quickly to his brother, Neolas, and repeated the procedure. The first time was painful for me, a ripping sensation in my stomach, like someone had pulled my bowels out through my throat, but the second time was even worse, the pain more intense, and I felt a wave of dizziness wash over my thoughts.
I fell back, weakened, my senses reeling, while Hammon and Neolas thrashed and grunted.
Bhorg tottered away, clutching his stomach in pain.
“Gon? Can you stand?” Zenzele asked.
I felt her fingers on my shoulder. Nodded. Concentrating on her touch, I swam through the waves of faintness and clambered to my feet.
“It is done,” I gasped.
“Yes,” Zenzele said, looking toward Eris anxiously. The beautiful young man was writhing. “Motheeerrrr!” he screamed, his voice shrill. Already, his flesh was beginning to blanch.
“You’ve killed me, damn you!” Hammon shouted, staring up at me in rage and terror. Every muscle in his body was standing out. His eyes glittered like jewels. His eyeteeth had already grown noticeably longer and sharper. He held out his hand and gaped at it, watched as the color drain from his flesh.
The Orda raged and howled and writhed like wounded men on a battlefield. Their birthing pangs were terrible to behold. Several of them voided their bowels and vomited, the contents of their intestines forcibly ejected by the black blood. The sickly sweet smell of shit and bile made me retreat a step or two.
“Do we die, brother?” Neolas cried. He reached for his sibling, hand trembling. “Do we die or do we live?”
“Mother!” Eris screamed again. “Motherrr!”
And then Stine, who had been suffering silently the entire time, his bulging eyes locked to the heavens, opened his mouth and let out the loudest shriek of all.
The living blood consumed him.
12
Though I had Zenzele’s memories of such occurrences in my mind, it is not the same as witnessing it yourself. Shared memories are like snatches of dreams, nebulous and retreating if not focused on with great concentration. The reality was much more horrifying.
Stine screamed so loudly that I thought his throat would rupture. He thrashed on the earth, his body contorting violently. I went to aid him, but Zenzele grabbed my upper arm, shaking her head urgently at me, her eyes flashing a warning.
“You should not go near to him,” she said. “It is dangerous for blood drinkers when the ebu potashu is devouring an initiate. The blood within you may be stirred to consume you as well. I have seen it happen.”
Yes, I saw it in my Shared memories. A chain reaction of auto-cannibalism, first the initiate, then the one who had made him, and the vampire standing beside him, and the one beside him. I saw how they writhed, the flesh withering to their bones, eyes falling into their sockets, the living blood consuming its hosts until all that left was dust and bones, and tendrils of black smoke curling up from the remains.
“Who is that?” Hammon demanded, blinded by his own agonies. “Who cries out so terribly?”
We did not answer him. We could only stand at a distance and watch as the living blood drained the nomad called Stine of all his vitality, as his mortal body shivered to a husk, as his flesh peeled from his bones like birch bark and then fell to ash upon his bedding with startling rapidity. Tendrils of the black organism wriggled among the bones like quivering leeches, and then they too sizzled and fell to granules, lifting away from the remains on the next errant breeze to blow across them.
The first casualty in my war against the God King.
“Oh…! Oh, Mother,” Eris said wonderingly.
He had arisen while we were watching Stine’s death throes.
The hermaphrodite stood looking down at his hands, his flesh white as dolomite in the light of the gibbous moon. His hair had come free and flowed black and shining across his chest. The two-natured being was exquisitely transformed, his flesh almost luminescent, his eyes glittering. He smiled, exposing a pair of
fine, narrow, wickedly curved eyeteeth.
“I feel so strong,” he breathed.
The hermaphrodite had been made an Eternal.
13
The others did not fare so well as the hermaphrodite, though none of them shared the grisly fate of poor Stine. Hammon was made into a powerful blood drinker (probably near to your strength, Lukas). His brother, Neolas, a lesser but impressive fiend. The one named Morgruss was middling in strength but looked very… enduring, I suppose you could say. Obdurate. Dense, like granite. The skinny one named Petra was hardly more than human, his fangs small and blunt, his flesh plump and soft. He would live only a few generations, I reckoned, if he were not killed by some other, stronger blood drinker first (and he was).
Petra was the last to rise from his transformative agonies. This was near to dawn, as the rest of us sat nearby, waiting for the living blood to finish transforming his flesh.
Panting, limbs weak, he stumbled from his bedding, clutching his stomach. “Is it done?” he asked. “Have I been made into a blood god?” And then he soiled himself. Rank, runny feces spattered the ground between his feet.
“A god of excrement, perhaps,” Hammon said, curling his nose at the odor. “Go bathe yourself in the river, Petra, as did we all. Wash away that mortal stench.”
The others laughed as he stumbled away.
I should note, as well, that there was a very curious thing about Morgruss. His eyeteeth had come in differently than the rest of us. They had sprouted from his lower jaw, like tusks.
As far as I knew, only Neanderthals were fanged in such a manner. Morgruss must have had a Fat Hand ancestor. I thought Goro would be quite intrigued when he returned, if he still had not found any of his kind.
If he returned…!
It was possible he would not. He was not as devoted to Zenzele as Bhorg and I were.
And now Eris, I noted.
The hermaphrodite sat near to Zenzele. The two had been conversing most of the night, speaking in low voices, their conversation punctuated with soft laughter. Eris was quite taken with my beloved. His eyes returned again and again to her face, like a hummingbird to a flower. He insisted on calling her Mother, the name of their creator goddess. Each time he called her Mother was a declaration of devotion, but I was not jealous. It was not a romantic love. I think he saw in Zenzele-- a powerful and self-possessed woman-- a kindred spirit, someone to model himself on.
The Oldest Living Vampire Betrayed (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 4) Page 14