The Oldest Living Vampire Betrayed (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 4)

by Joseph Duncan

  In Uroboros, all living men bowed to the blood gods.

  Torches flickered along the battlements of the defensive wall. Mortal guards patrolled the city from its heights, marching along the elevated wall walk with bows and spears. The gate was a narrow throat guarded by low caste blood drinkers, easy to defend. It suddenly occurred to me that Khronos had constructed the wall for fear of attack, for fear of me and my army, and I smiled in satisfaction. It pleased me that he should know fear. That I, in some small way, had made him suffer. It made me feel somewhat better about the pains I was soon to endure.

  I knew pain. I have lived with pain from the moment I was made a vampire. The hunger for blood is a constant, gnawing ache, relieved only momentarily by its satisfaction. And thanks to Zenzele’s training, I knew what it was to have my limbs torn from my body. I have thrown myself from great heights. I have been crushed to pulp in the crevasse of a glacier. I should not be frightened at the prospect of confronting the God King, and yet I was, and that fear troubled me.

  I think I was afraid he would break me. That I would not be able to endure the torments he had planned for me. That I would go mad. Or surrender to him utterly. My body could not be destroyed, but what of my mind? What of my soul? Was my spirit as resilient as my flesh?

  Please, ancestors, give me strength, I prayed. Help me to win the freedom of those I love, of Ilio, and of our mortal descendants. And help me to endure the pain that’s coming. Allow me that victory, even in defeat. The God King must not break my spirit!

  One of the blood drinkers guarding the passage through the wall stepped forward to challenge me. He was short and thin with a wild bird’s nest of hair on his head and ugly, misshapen features. He gripped one of the strange weapons I had seen during the God King’s assault on Asharoth, a staff with a long blade on the end. The blade was crudely shaped, but of a material I had never seen before. It glinted like a fluid, but it was firm, and had a very keen edge.

  “I don’t know you!” the guard snarled. “Who are you? And what business have you in Uroboros?”

  He bared his fangs when he spoke. I think he meant to intimidate me. Behind him, about halfway down the passage, two of his fellow guards were molesting a female slave. One was raping her as the other fed noisily from her wrist. She moaned as the two blood drinkers had their way with her. She seemed hardly more than a skeleton, her eyes and cheeks sunken, her flesh stretched taut across the bone.

  “I am here at the bidding of your God King,” I said. “I am the blood drinker called Gon.”

  “Gon?” he repeated with a frown, and then his jaw dropped. “Gon!”

  The gatekeeper’s shock was almost comical. I had to restrain a chuckle as the ugly little man simultaneously yelled for assistance and brought his weapon to bear on me. Its pointy tip trembled an inch or two before my nose.

  I examined the strange material of the blade as his fellow guards forsook their entertainment and scurried to his aid. I reached out to touch the glinting material, ran my thumb across its edge. It was as sharp as the finest knapped flint, slicing easily through the pad of my thumb.

  It was some type of metal, of course, though I did not know it at the time. The Uroborans had recently discovered metallurgy, though they were only crudely able to shape the novel material. I suppose they had discovered the art while investigating a magmatic flow deep in the belly of the volcano. This, in a time when mortal man had not yet invented the wheel, but Uroboros was highly advanced, a byproduct of their extremely long lives. Knowledge was not lost nearly so often among near-immortals as it was in the mortal world. Before the written word, mortality was the limiting factor of human advancement.

  The gatekeeper saw me examining his weapon and poked it at me threateningly. “Mind your hands!” he glowered, and I showed him my palms.

  I waited as he communicated my identity to his fellow gatekeepers. One bladed staff became three as they tried to decide what to do with me. All at once they wanted to know what my intentions were, how did they know I was really the wild blood god called Gon, and did I know what the God King was going to do to me when he got his hands on me?

  “I need not prove myself to the likes of you,” I said. “I have come to surrender myself to your master. Now step aside. I am sure your God King would not want his triumph impeded.”

  My haughty reply—and precedent reputation—was enough to make the gatekeepers give way, but they followed close behind as I traversed the wall, as I finished my journey and entered the city of the blood gods.

  I only faltered once. I stopped, just inside the God King’s great wall, as if I had collided with an invisible door.

  It was the smell, the indescribable stench of the Shol. It rocked me back on my heels, and I had to push down the nausea and revulsion that constricted my throat, that made my thoughts swim dizzily in my skull. The smell of human waste and blood, rotting and burning and diseased mortal flesh, was almost more than I could bear. I almost asked my anxious new escort how they could stand, with their amplified senses, to live in the midst of such sickening odors. Could they not smell it? But I suppose they were used to it.

  I held my tongue. I did not want them to mistake my revulsion for weakness, but I wondered to what horrors man could become accustomed before his spirit said, No more! This is unendurable!

  I closed my eyes, battened down my senses, and continued on.

  Just within the wall was a district of low, crude lodgings. It was a dark labyrinth through which the lowest of the low scurried like human vermin. The ground beneath my feet was sticky and wet. I could hear mortals keeping pace with me in the shadows, moving furtively just out of sight. I could feel their eyes on me, hot with hate and desperation. My immortal escort edged closer to me, and to one another, as I navigated the confusing maze of lightless hovels. They were obviously wary of the mortals pacing alongside us-- which bode well for Zenzele, I thought, should she ever attack the city.

  They will turn on their masters, I thought. Their misery has become so great that they no longer fear death.

  As if to support my observation, a trio of mortals rushed at my guards from the darkness. They were armed with crude blades and the valor of utter hopelessness. The roared as they charged, their bulging eyes empty of reason. The blood drinkers who had been following me spun in their direction, hissing like cats.

  The skirmish was short-lived. The mortals were dead within moments, cut down by the blood drinkers’ strange new weapons. Several more guards came running, drawn by the screams of the dying men, the smell of freshly spilled mortal blood.

  One of the gatekeepers who had accompanied me from the wall lost control of his bloodthirst and dropped down to his knees to feed from his twitching opponent.

  I turned away in disgust and continued on my way.

  Past the labyrinth of mortal dwellings was an open area studded with crucified and impaled human bodies—insurgents and troublemakers, I am sure. There were hundreds of them, dying or dead and in various states of decomposition, hanging from frames of wooden timbers or skewered upon pikes.

  I passed a group of blood drinkers hard at work in this forest of death. Two blood drinkers had taken a man’s legs up by the ankles and were dragging him upon a sharpened pole that had been laid flat on the ground. The mortal thrashed and screamed as the spike slid into his bowels while his executioners laughed and made mock of him. They did it slow so that he would suffer, and then they stood the pole up and slid the base of it into a posthole that had been dug into the ground. The dying mortal screamed unceasingly as he sagged down the pike. His shrill cries stopped only when the sharp end of the pole burst out through the crook of his shoulder.

  A huddle of condemned men pleaded for their lives nearby. There was a pile of sharpened poles lying at their feet, and little hope of reprieve. If I thought I could have done anything to help the doomed men I would have tried, but there was an ever-increasing number of t’sukuru guards close at my back, and I knew they would attack me if I dared to
interfere. They were content to follow so long as I behaved myself, and that was what I meant to do.

  For Ilio, and for the Tanti.

  Where are the Tanti? I wondered.

  I hardened my heart and let down the shutters I had placed upon my senses, letting into my mind the full scope of my heightened perceptions. I am sure I wavered for a moment as I strode past the charnel pits. It was all I could do to stay on my feet as I searched for the scent of my mortal descendants. The smell of all those dead bodies, congealed into a solid mass of rotting flesh, was nearly overwhelming, but I persevered. It had been twenty years since I lived among the descendants of my own mortal offspring, but I was certain I would recognize their scent—if they were truly captives here in Uroboros, as the God King had claimed.

  Not here, I thought. Not here!

  He had Ilio. I had seen it in Palifver’s memories. But he had lied about my mortal descendants. I was fairly certain of it.

  It gave me no hope, offered no prospect of escaping the fate I had chosen for myself, but it was a great relief. My legs felt weak.

  The Tanti still eluded him!

  One of the blood drinkers who followed me—the gatekeeper I’d confronted on my arrival—prodded my back with his weapon. “That way!” he barked, and nodded toward a wooden bridge that angled up to the Arth, the district of the high caste Uroboran mortals.

  My entourage was growing at an impressive rate. Blood drinkers had formed around me like iron shavings around a magnet. Perhaps they thought to curry favor with the God King. Perhaps they hoped to make it appear as if they had captured me themselves. I would make it known that I had surrendered of my own free will. None would benefit from my capitulation.

  I circled around a blood-soaked arena, ignoring the howling crowds, the combatants fighting to the death in the leaping torchlight, and went to meet my fate.

  5

  The Fen was silent as a tomb as I marched through the subterranean warren of the immortal Uroborans. One of the guards from below must have preceded me, raced up the mountain to herald my arrival, for the winding passages of the underground city were a gauntlet of silent blood drinkers, their faces white and drawn, their eyes glittering with revulsion. I was the sworn enemy of their monarch, and they hated me.

  The passages throbbed with the footfalls of my escort, but a scabrous rustling was the only other sound that accompanied me to the God King’s throne room, the frail whisper of their garments as the t’sukuru shifted to watch me pass. It sounded to me like the rustle of bat wings.

  I was somewhat disconcerted by their silence—no, that is a lie; I was extremely disconcerted.

  I had expected them to taunt me, to cast stones and aspersions, to spit in my face, but they did none of those things. They just stood there and watched me stride by, but that was somehow more horrible than all the terrible visions my imagination had manufactured. It made them seem so much more inhuman.

  I did my best to navigate the winding passages of the underground city, but the Fen was like a termite’s nest. When I hesitated, lost in some passage or echoing hub, the gatekeeper pointed with his staff in the direction I should go.

  I hoped to project an air of dignity and fearlessness as I went to surrender myself to the God King, but inside I was quaking. I was utterly terrified. I have never done well with pain or discomfort. I very rarely even denied myself the satisfaction of my desires. At heart I am and have always been a hedonist, and so it took every bit of my courage to march on, to go and meet my fate, to cede my life to my enemy.

  Here and there I spotted a face I recognized from before. Cold. Watchful. Ugly with loathing. As I drew near to the God King’s throne room, a mortal on a leash pointed and laughed at me. It was a female, her naked body caked with filth and dried blood. She laughed and pointed a wavering finger at me, and her master jerked back on her leash to silence her.

  “Usurper!” a blood drinker whispered, and then they all took it up, and their hissing condemnation accompanied me into the throne room: “Usurper! Usurper!”

  The gatekeeper prodded me forward, the tip of his spear stabbing into my spine.

  “Go and meet your fate, traitor!” he snarled.

  I stumbled into the God King’s chambers.

  Khronos waited.

  6

  “Did you really believe you could defeat me?” Khronos asked softly, a faint smile on his lips. He slouched casually upon a throne adorned with metal shards. A ruff of glinting petals, beaten flat and polished, shimmered about his neck and shoulders. But for his ruff and gauntlets, and a pair of knee-high leather and bone-plaited boots, he was naked. Insultingly so. “Usurp my throne? Take what is mine?” He leaned forward when I did not answer immediately, the veins in his bald scalp standing out, his metal ruff chattering. “Well, did you?” he snarled.

  I stood before him in his cavernous throne room, chin thrust out, surrounded by all his courtiers, his Clan Masters and House Mothers and Fathers, his sycophants and personal guards. I regarded him with what I hoped was a fearless expression, my hands clasped behind my back. I did not speak save to utter one word:

  “Ilio.”

  He sat back with a satisfied grin, his eyes glittering. “I have your boy,” he said. “He is being brought here as we speak.”

  I did not respond. I did not move. I only stared the God King in the eyes, waiting for him to bring my son.

  Khronos was too restless to endure the silence. Too excited. He shifted on his throne and said, “Your rebellion was doomed from the beginning, you know. You possess a weakness that I do not. You love, Gon of the River People, and because you love you are vulnerable. Did you not foresee this eventuality? Or is your heart so swelled with mortal sentiment that you cannot see the world as it truly is?”

  I waited in silence.

  The God King flew up from his seat and shouted, “You will speak or I will make him suffer!”

  “You lied,” I said evenly. “You said that you had taken the Tanti captive.”

  He laughed, but he returned to his seat. “Yes, I lied. I sent several raiding parties to capture them, but they had fled in all directions. Oh, I took a few of them, the ones who did not flee far or fast enough to elude my slavers, but most of them escaped.” His eyes narrowed. “Would you have come if you thought Ilio was the only one I had taken?”

  I considered it a moment.

  “Yes.”

  The God King laughed. “I thought as much. I have your memories. They are here, in my mind, remember? But I could not quite believe that you’d be so easily manipulated. You are truly pathetic.”

  “How did you capture my son?” I asked. It didn’t matter. I only sought to keep him occupied.

  “We didn’t,” he answered. “Oh, I sent my raiders after your son, and your precious Tanti, as soon as you escaped from me, but he is a good boy. He obeyed you, and fled with your mortal descendants the instant he returned from your battle with Zenzele. They vanished like mist in the sunlight. No, your boy came to us. He came seeking his father. He did not know what had transpired between us, and his woman was dying.”

  “Priss?”

  “Yes. Lovely young blood drinker. Very tasty. Pity she was made so poorly. She had only been a blood drinker for a few years when the ebu potashu began to devour her from within. I tried to save her with my blood, but it only hastened her demise.”

  I frowned. “Why would you try to save her?”

  “Because I took pity on her. I took pity on both of them. I am not incapable of finer feelings, Gon. Gon of the River People. I have sympathy. I can be generous.”

  I scoffed.

  “But it is true,” he said. “Ask your boy.”

  He gestured toward a side passage and Ilio strode into the chamber. The boy was garbed in the raiment of a high caste Uroboran. Padded leather boots and gauntlets. A flowing tunic. A ruff of flouncing feathers. I had expected him to be dragged into the throne room on a leash, naked and broken, but he strode in like a prince, his head thrown bac
k, and his eyes… his eyes burned with hatred when they fell upon me.

  “Ilio,” I said, reaching out to him.

  “Do not call me son,” he said preemptively, and he went and kneeled down at the feet of Khronos. He placed his hands upon the God King’s knees and glared at me. “Do not ever call me son again, you traitor.”

  My thoughts were spinning. I felt shattered. The God King had broken him, twisted his mind!

  “What are you saying, Ilio? Why do you look at me with such revulsion?”

  I could have wept. No pain is so great as the hatred of a beloved child.

  “He hates you because he knows the truth,” the God King said. “The truth of your deceitfulness.” He grinned as he spoke, devouring my pain and confusion with the same relish he devoured mortal blood.

  “What do you mean?” I pled.

  “I know it was you,” Ilio hissed. “You are the monster that fed upon my people in the grasslands. I thought that you had saved me, but you were the very beast that killed all of my tribesmen. My uncles, my cousins, you devoured them all, and then you took me as your son, and made me an immortal. It is because of you the Denghoi are all gone. You and your Eternal bitch.” He was trembling with rage, his eyes burning, his muscles twitching. It was all he could do to restrain himself from leaping at me.

  “How could I tell you the truth, Ilio?” I countered, black blood beading at my eyes. “I was a mindless animal when the Denghoi came upon me. Ground to meal in the belly of a glacier. I had no human reason, only the hunger, and after the blood of your tribesmen restored me, I was horrified by what I had done to them. I sought to make amends by taking you as my son, rearing you, protecting you. I came to love you. Love you like you were my own child. That’s why I could never bring myself to confess what I had done to your people, what I had done to you. I couldn’t bear the thought of your hatred.”