Bachiyr Omnibus

by David McAfee

  “You think the two are connected?”

  “I’m not sure, but Jarek had been acting very strange the last few months, especially around Caelina. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn there was something going on between them.”

  “Shhh,” said the first voice. “You should not say such things about the dead.”

  “Why not? It make sense…”

  Jarek stopped listening. So, the other guards thought he was fucking the captain’s wife. He had to stifle a laugh. If only they knew the truth. Their gossip would have been true not too long ago, but Caelina had broken off the affair over her feelings of guilt. Jarek had never entertained any notion of a long term affair, anyway. Caelina, while certainly a beautiful specimen—and as good in bed as any well-trained Roman whore—was far too strong willed to keep around for very long. Still, she would make an excellent meal.

  First, he had to get out of his house.

  Another pang hit him, almost doubling him over, and reminded him that he had a bigger problem than just leaving the house. He needed to feed. But how could he do that if he couldn’t get out of his own home? The two armed guards out front would see him and…

  …and why in the Abyss was he afraid of two armed guards?

  Jarek’s smile stretched to cover the lower half of his face. Two human guards would be no match for him now. As a Bachiyr, he could overpower them and drain their blood faster than most humans could empty their bladders. But he couldn’t do it in the street. The potential for reinforcements was too great. He needed them to come inside. That should be easy enough to accomplish.

  Jarek looked around his main room and spotted just the thing: a clay urn that he used to hold figs and dates after a trip to the market. It was empty now, as Jarek had not gone to the market for some time. He grabbed it and stepped back into his bedchamber, not wanting to be too close to the front door. Once there, he smashed the urn against the wall and crouched behind the doorway to wait.

  “What was that?” The voices were faint, but he could hear them.

  “I’m not sure, but it came from inside the house.”

  “How could someone have gotten in there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should we go look?”

  “It was probably a rat.”

  Damn them. It wasn’t a rat. Do your job!

  “I’m going to look, anyway. You stay here.”

  “All right. But you are wasting your time.”

  “I’ll just be a moment.”

  The door opened with a light creak. Jarek had never oiled it, as the sound served as a nice warning if someone entered his home. His wife had complained numerous times, informing him that he was paranoid, but once again the squeaky door had served its purpose. As had she.

  Jarek waited in the back room, knowing the soldier would make his way there eventually. He’d made certain that several pieces of the urn were visible from the front room.

  “Ah,” said the soldier. “So that’s what it was.”

  Footsteps approached. Jarek tensed. He marveled at how calm he felt. Just yesterday, his heart would have been beating like mad in this situation, and he would have had to work to control his breathing. But now? He waited in easy silence, devoid of a beating heart or lungs that needed anything so mundane as air.

  And when the soldier entered the room and reached down to pick up a piece of the urn, Jarek pounced on him.

  The man never saw his death coming. Jarek attacked him from behind, placing one hand over the soldier’s mouth and using his other to grab the man around the waist. Aided by the increased speed and strength of his new race, Jarek wrenched the man’s head to the side and plunged his teeth into the flesh of the soldier’s neck before his victim could even react.

  Once he recovered from the initial shock of the attack, the soldier, no novice to fighting, reached behind him and tried to grab Jarek’s arms. Jarek recognized the technique as a move designed to shift a victim’s weight into a favorable position, using the hips to knock an attacker off balance, and hopefully, dislodge them. Jarek was far too strong for that, of course, and the soldier only succeeded in speeding up his own heart rate. This, in turn, pumped blood into Jarek’s mouth all the faster. He could not stifle the moan that escaped his throat.

  Gods, the man’s blood tasted good! Great, even. It was like drinking pure, raw power. It felt as though the secret of life itself poured from the man’s torn flesh and into Jarek’s mouth. Jarek had previously learned about the inherent strength of blood from drinking what Theron brought him, but this was so much more potent. It was power on an entirely different plane of existence. An eagle compared to a bottle fly.

  Jarek was no longer human. He was not even Bachiyr. He had become a god!

  All too soon it was over, and the soldier’s lifeless body slumped in his grasp. Jarek tossed it aside, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

  It wasn’t enough. He needed more. Fortunately, more would soon walk through the door.

  He smiled when he again heard the sound of his squeaking front door.

  “Aris?” a voice called from the main room. “Aris? Are you all right?”

  Aris’s partner stepped into the house, and Jarek had his meal. He stepped into the room and walked toward the guard, who froze.

  “You?” the guard said, his eyes wide as hen’s eggs. “But…but you’re dead.”

  “So are you,” Jarek replied, and launched himself at the guard.

  This soldier was quicker to react than the last, and he managed to get his sword out and up before Jarek reached him. He aimed a strike for Jarek’s gut, but the blow seemed slow and clumsy, and Jarek dodged easily to the side. He stepped into the man’s reach and clamped his hand around the other’s sword arm, squeezing until he felt the satisfying crunch of bone beneath his fingers.

  The man cried out in pain, and Jarek drove his forehead into his face to silence him.

  The unfortunate soldier’s legs buckled, and he slumped, dazed, into Jarek’s arms.

  This time, Jarek took the time to savor the blood as it flowed into him, bringing life and strength greater than any he’d ever known. He could hear the man’s heart as it slowed, then stopped. He heard the lungs cease to function, and the scratch of the man’s twitching fingers on Jarek’s rough pants as the final few twitches of life escaped him. Outside, he heard the conversations of people in their homes. The wind blew across the blades of grass in the empty lot down the street, and the sound reached his ears as easily as if he was laying there in the field. The air felt cool and calm on his skin, and every nerve in his body burned with energy. He’d never felt stronger or more alive, and the irony was that he’d had to die in order to feel this way.

  No wonder Theron always seemed so confident and smug. The Bachiyr were the epitome of predation. The strongest, the fastest, the best suited for survival. And now Jarek had joined them. If he had known it would be like this, he would have tried get Theron to turn him sooner. Why had he waited so long?

  Theron.

  The Bachiyr was likely hiding out in his cave right now and could not yet know that Jarek would be his lackey no longer. He imagined the surprised look on Theron’s face when the bastard learned that Jarek had joined the ranks of the Bachiyr.

  What would Theron’s blood taste like?

  The question came, unbidden, to his mind, but once it was there he found he could not make it go away. If human blood was so potent, would Bachiyr blood be any stronger? It seemed likely. And Theron’s blood should be stronger still, since he was so old.

  Jarek walked to his secret storage place under the floor and lifted the carpet. There, like always, was the door to the place where he kept his store of Bachiyr blood. He lifted the lid and pulled one of the small vials from the dark recess under the floor. The blood looked dark through the glass, and Jarek grew excited. He pulled the stopper from the vial and brought it to his lips.

  The smell of the blood in the vial hit him before he could drink it, and he wrin
kled his nose. This blood, which only yesterday had invigorated him beyond his imagination, now smelled different. Tainted. Spoiled, even. Like milk that had lain outside for too long. Had it always smelled like that? Or was this the product of his new senses?

  Jarek tossed the vial aside, not daring to drink it.

  He grabbed another vial and pulled out the stopper, only to find it, too, smelled rotten.

  What is this? he thought. Was his entire supply ruined?

  Then he realized the problem: the blood in the vials was old. Dead. It would help a human, but could do nothing for a Bachiyr. He needed fresh blood, right from the source, and there was only one place nearby where he could find fresh Bachiyr blood.

  Jarek stepped out of his house and turned toward Vesuvius, which loomed large and imposing in the moonlight.

  Maybe he would pay Theron a visit tonight.

  ***

  Taras awoke in a small stone chamber. His entire body ached, the pain was a welcome distraction from the buzzing inside his head. He looked around, his normally keen eyesight blurry and weak, and tried to remember how he’d gotten here. The last thing he remembered was running from Ramah, trying to lead him away from the woman in the street. Then he hit a wall, and then…

  Theron!

  Taras jumped to his feet, but they buckled under his weight and he fell face first to the stone floor. By the gods, he was weak. Almost as weak as a human. He raised his hand and squinted at his forearm in the dim light. His flesh seemed thin, wasted. Even empty, as though his arm were an inflated bladder with a bone rattling around inside it. And his eyesight had dulled considerably. He should not have so much trouble seeing clearly in the dim light of the chamber, yet even with his arm mere inches from his face, he hard to work to see how wasted and thin it was. What in the name of the Abyss had happened to him?

  “He calls it ‘Esh,’ a female voice behind him said.

  Taras’s first thought was Baella. He spun to face her and was immediately sorry. His head swam with the sudden movement, and a wave of dizziness drove him the rest of the way to the floor. If he’d been human, he might have retched, but those days were long behind him. He lay on the floor and tried to calm the sudden wave of vertigo. After a moment, he was able to regain his senses and have a look around.

  She stood back and to his left, watching him with the reddish gaze of a fellow Bachiyr. Even with his weakened eyes, he knew immediately she was not Baella. Baella was strong and dark, beautiful and deadly, the very picture of dangerous allure. This woman, though obviously Bachiyr, looked sick. She stood, wafer-thin, leaning against the stone wall of the cavern for support. Her singed, dirty clothes hung from her body like sheets draped over a pile of sticks. Her skin sagged, as though she’d recently lost a great deal of weight. She looked like she hadn’t fed in weeks, and her body was covered with scratches, burns, and scars. Her ill-fitting clothing was tattered almost to the point of immodesty, but if she knew or cared about such things, she gave no outward indication. Taras had seen plague victims who looked healthier than she did.

  “Stay still,” she said. “It helps.”

  Taras would have liked to stand up and face her, but all he could do was lay on the stone and whimper. Just what had Theron done to him?

  Esh, the woman called it. Taras though that was the Judean word for Burn.

  But what did Theron burn? And how?

  “It feels like he burned my insides,” Taras muttered to himself.

  “That’s a fair assessment,” she said. “He heated the blood inside your body until the moisture turned to steam.”

  “My blood?” It seemed impossible, but he had only to look at his own flesh to know the truth. “But…how?”

  “If I knew that,” she replied, “I would not still be here.”

  “I gather that he has used it on you, as well?”

  She nodded. “I don’t know how he does it, but I do know he needs a sample of the victim’s blood in order for it to work. He must have taken some of yours.”

  Taras thought back to the previous night and remembered Theron kneeling beside him, collecting a small vial of his blood. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but now…

  “He did,” Taras said. “In a little vial.”

  The woman sighed. “Then you are finished.”

  Taras’s head had cleared enough for him to try sitting up. He did so, and turned to face the woman. Now that he had a better view, he could see that his initial impression was correct. This Bachiyr was very near death. She would need to feed soon. Not that he cared what happened to her. She was Bachiyr, which made her a killer.

  Except…it was hard not to feel sorry for her. She looked so fragile. Like she might break if he touched her. What was she doing here? Why would Theron want to keep her as his prisoner? Why had he used his Esh on her? What else had he done to her? Was she like Taras, a product of Theron’s carelessness?

  “Who are you?” he asked, trying to rise to his feet.

  “My name is Galle,” she said. “You must be Taras.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “He speaks of you often,” she said. “Most of the time, he talks about how much he’d like to kill you.”

  Taras might have known. “He appears to have gotten his chance.”

  Except Taras wasn’t dead. He was a prisoner, which was strange, indeed. Given their history, Theron should have killed him. Why hadn’t he?

  Killing you would bring me a great deal of pleasure, true, but it would also be a waste of a valuable opportunity. I have a use for you.

  Theron’s words came back to him with the force of a punch to the gut. Taras didn’t know what that use might be, but he was certain that he did not want to find out.

  “When was the last time he came to check on us?” Taras asked.

  “He has not been back since he and that woman brought you in.”

  That made sense. It was just before dawn when Theron had captured him. He would have needed to sleep. But now that Taras was awake, he could assume that dusk had fallen, which meant Theron would be along soon enough.

  Wait. Woman? Did she say woman?

  “What woman?” he asked.

  “Her name is Baella,” Galle replied. Her expression hardened. “She arrived a few hours before you did. The two of them tried to make me…they tried to get me to…” Galle looked away. If Taras hadn’t known she was Bachiyr, he would have thought she was crying.

  “Yes?” Taras asked. “They tried to get you to what?”

  “To feed.”

  “Feed? On who?” Taras looked around, trying to find a source of blood and not seeing one. Not that he could have fed, anyway. Unless Theron had left them in a room with a bandit or murderer, which didn’t seem very likely.

  Galle pointed toward a spot near the wall. “On her.”

  Taras hadn’t even noticed it, but now that his attention was drawn there, he could see the faint shape of a child underneath a pile of blankets on the far side of the room. The child slept, her light breathing should have been immediately noticeable to Taras, but in his weakened state she’d gone unnoticed until now. A little girl. To judge by her size, she couldn’t have been more than eight years old. The realization struck Taras like a hammer to the back of the head.

  “So,” he whispered. His fists clenched beside him. His vision sharpened to a fine point, focusing on the tiny child who Theron had so callously sentenced to death. “She was telling the truth, after all.”

  “Who?”

  “Baella,” he replied, finally finding the strength to get to his feet. He rose on unsteady legs and brushed the dirt and dust from his breeches. “The dark woman. She came to me in Spain a fortnight ago and told me Theron was in Pompeii, murdering children. It is not typical for her to be truthful, but in this case, it seems she was.”

  Galle’s shoulders slumped, and she hung her head in her hands. Taras was surprised to hear a sob escape the woman’s lips. He’d never seen a Bachiyr cry before. He hadn’t
even thought it was possible.

  “Galle?”

  “She wasn’t telling the truth,” Galle sobbed. “At least, not the whole truth. She lied to you, probably in order to get you here, and it’s my fault.”

  “Your fault?”

  “Yes.” Galle looked up from her hands, and Taras saw the shiny red streaks from her eyes. Galle was crying, but her tears were made of blood rather than water.

  “Theron is not the one killing children,” she said. “I am.”

  ***

  “That seems like it would be very useful,” Baella said, truly impressed. Theron had just told her about his newest psalm, which he called Esh, the Hebrew word for Burn. She knew better than to ask him how it worked, and he would be foolish to tell her. But if she could get a demonstration, then she would be able to figure it out on her own, a fact that Theron undoubtedly knew. She sensed a bargain coming.

  “Indeed,” Theron replied. “It’s quite effective for subduing other Bachiyr. Several Enforcers arrived in Pompeii last summer. They were looking for me, and I let them find me, although I’m certain they would have preferred not to.”

  “I can imagine,” Baella said. She knew all about the deaths of the four Enforcers who’d come to Pompeii last year. According to her sources, their deaths had been agonizing and slow. She wondered how much the Council of Thirteen knew about their missing Enforcers. That bit of information could come in handy someday.

  Their conversation was interrupted by a brief but strong tremor in the mountain. It lasted for perhaps a count of thirty, during which time Theron stared at the walls as if they had betrayed him. A few stones fell from new cracks in the ceiling, and a cloud of dust rose from the floor, and she caught a faint whiff of sulfur, but those were the only ill effects that she could detect. On the surface, anyway. Beneath their feet, however, Baella felt the world stirring.

  It would not be long.

  “What effect does it have on humans?” she asked once the shaking subsided.

  “What makes you think I’ve tested it on humans?” Theron replied.

  She stared at him, not even bothering to answer.