The First

by Michael Santana

  One summer in the early 18th century it almost all came to an end. We were on the run, with the bounty hunters and Pope’s Battalion only a day behind us. They had smoked us out and were now driving us in the direction they had preplanned. In each village or town, more men would be waiting to join in on the hunt. It was while being chased through Italy that we unknowingly encroached on the hunting grounds of another.

  Vampires are territorial creatures, and like animals, will mark their grounds. They leave little warnings, letting others of their kind know they are trespassing. I have never paid much notice to these as I had only glimpsed others while passing through. Sometimes they would be like a little wisp in the night, and others just shadows that came and went. One moment I would think I saw something or felt as if someone were watching me only to turn and see no one there. I could have easily caught them if I had a mind to. I just didn’t care.

  Considering, we were being hunted; I also didn’t care about trespassing or transgressing. Luckily, heavy rains over the past few days had given us a slight breather from the Pope’s men. We found a church in a little town in the mountains of Italy, very secluded and perfect for stopping for a rest. Remarkably enough we stopped in the only town not filled with the Pope’s men. It was just after nightfall when we knocked on the door. A young man of about twenty answered. He had sandy hair and green eyes, which was very uncommon not just for the town but for the country as a whole. He looked frail like he hadn’t had a meal in a while.

  Even in his assistant priest’s robes, he still looked like nothing more than a boy. His face, pocked with scars from either acne or some other childhood ailment, sunk deep in his face until it appeared moonlike.

  At first, he seemed startled by our presence, as he stood in silence blocking the entryway, then after examining my robes and the habit of the sister he moved aside to let us pass. “Welcome Father,” he said bobbing his head. “Sister,” he said to Manuela.

  He flushed when she smiled at him and touched his hand.

  “The father is in the sacristy. Is he expecting you? He never told me he was expecting company.”

  “He probably isn’t expecting us. We may have beaten the letter.” I said laughing.

  “The letter?” the young man said.

  “Yes, the letter announcing our arrival.” Manuela replied.

  “Of course, the letter” he repeated.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “At this late hour, it’s usually just the two of us.” He remarked.

  We nodded our understanding and followed the young man back through the nave of the church. Crossing the sanctuary, I imagined the parish full of people. They flocked here to worship the man in the guise of a messenger of the all-powerful. The power the priest holds is a delicate but dangerous one. He holds you in his grasp using your own fear of mortality against you.

  The idea of eternal damnation is a scary one even for one such as me. If I were to die somehow, which religion’s law would I be subject? Who would claim jurisdiction over my eternal soul? I wondered, would I be judged good or evil?

  His eyes kept sneaking glances in Manuela’s direction. They seemed to follow the bounce and sway of her breasts as she walked. This supposed holy man was having very sinful thoughts. We both could hear the pace his heartbeat had taken while watching her. A little smile passed between us.

  The room the priest occupied was in the very back of the church, usually used to prepare sermons and other priestly duties. I planned on it being a tomb for the two priests.

  He turned over his shoulder and looked in our direction as we entered the room. His round pasty face turned red at the sight of us. Manuela had noticed this too. Something about us sparked something in him, and he pulled the crucifix from the wall holding it in his outstretched arms. The assistant priest ran to the scared old man and stood beside him. With shaking hands, the younger too thrust out his crucifix in defiance.

  I looked to Manuela whose head, slightly cocked to the side. She smiled as she slowly reached out her arms and ran her fingers down the sides of the crucified Christ.

  Only in the Catholic Church have I run into so many that have known of our existence. Yet even with all their knowledge, they still instinctively reach for their talismans and other relics of faith and are surprised to see that they do not protect them.

  “It is gorgeous.” She said to the older man.

  “Father I thought….. but he was wearing vestments.” The younger priest said to his elder. “Hush Adrian,” the old man said. “I will handle this.”

  Looking into the old man’s face, I saw something strange. It wasn’t terror we were seeing, it was anger. They weren’t scared. They were mad. That is why the man’s face had flushed so.

  I probably would have continued to be amused if not for what happened next. As Manuela moved in on the little one, the old man said something that stopped her in her tracks.

  “No, we made a bargain with Manzili. We pay his tithing. You may not be here. This is Holy Ground.” He shouted.

  At the mention of my name, Manuela stopped as if struck. I must admit I was a little stunned myself and just stood there staring at the pair.

  “What did you just say?” I asked incredulously.

  “Your master, the master of all of you damnations, has made a pact with this parish. We pay his tithing, and we are not to be harmed.”

  “My master, what did you say his name was?” I asked.

  “Manzili, he from which all came,” he said once again with more authority.

  “And this Manzili, you are under his protection?” I asked.

  “I am under the protection of God. This is his house. None of your kind can enter.” He exclaimed fiercely.

  I looked to Manuela and then back at the old man waiting for the realization to hit him. That not only can we, but we had, entered his holy house. It took a few moments but then the sandy-haired one named Adrian, spoke up.

  “Father they have entered. They stand here before us. How can that be Father? How can that be?” He said starting to weep. “The Lord has forsaken this house for the pact we have made. He no longer shines his grace upon it. Demons now walk the halls.” He ranted.

  “Be silent, child,” Manuela said to the young man. His lips shut tightly as if her hand had reached out and done it manually.

  “This Manzili, you say he is the first?” She asked, eyeing me with mock suspicion. I smiled at this, and she immediately smiled back. It seemed while I had taken on persona after persona in my travels, someone had taken mine.

  “Yes, yes,” he repeated. He is the oldest. He is the first. He has massacred whole villages and left them to look as if a plague had hit them. Whole armies have bowed to his will. As long as we pay our tithing of a monthly sacrifice and send him some gold for his blessings, he will not destroy our village.

  “I know nothing of a bargain made, and do not feel compelled to honor it,” Manuela said pulling off her cloak.

  “Stay your hand, please.” The old man said. “I have young ones you can feed on. You don’t want my old tired blood. Please,” he said.

  He looked toward the younger man and nodded. The younger man’s eyes showed alarm but not defiance as he stepped closer to the desk and reached for the floor.

  The trapdoor by his desk barely made a noise as he lifted it. Looking toward the father, he grabbed a lantern off a table near the desk. Manuela followed the young man into the cellar under the sacristy. The old man and I followed them.

  The room under spanned the length and width of the church. Cages lined the walls, and their rows filled the room. There were probably fifty in all. Inside the cages, children were displayed like animals in a zoo. Their ages ranged from the very young to the mid-teens. All looked well fed and cared for.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “It’s where we keep them.” The
old priest replied.

  “I see that, but who are they? I asked.

  “Runaways, strays, some are orphans. Take whichever ones you want.” He responded. “Which would you like my dear?” I asked Manuela.

  “Something fresh and fearful” she responded baring her fangs.

  She scoured the cages carefully looking inside at each one of its inhabitants. Up and down the rows she went, laughing as the children buried themselves in the bars furthest away from her. She pointed at a young man of about thirteen.

  “I’ll take this one,” she said like a child at the fair, who had just won their choice of prizes. “And bring his little friend for Manz…….Alejandro,” she said catching herself.

  The young woman, who I assume from the resemblance, was his sister, screamed as the younger priest brandished a knife and removed her from the cage. Manacles were placed on her wrist, while the older priest removed, the younger boy.

  “We will prepare them for you,” the older man said. He poured wine into their mouths, and they were made to drink.

  They stripped and bathed them both. The wine they forced them to drink made them very manageable. They lifted and lowered their arms and legs as they washed them, so all spots were clean. After they cleaned and dried them, scented oils were dabbed on the neck, wrist, and thighs. They presented them to us adorned in white robes and half-unconscious. Manuela brushed the young boy’s hair away from his neck.

  The two priests stared anxiously when she bore her fangs and prepared to feed. The old man’s knuckles cracked as he wrung his hands in anticipation.

  “Does Manzili know you are on his land?” The old man asked.

  Manuela followed her ritual by making the sign of the cross. I stopped her as she pulled the young man to her and she growled at me. Vampires, like a wild beast, do not like when their meal is disturbed or taken from them.

  “Dearest, if the wine is drugged, so is the blood.” I explained.

  I had learned the dangers of this after feeding on an opium fiend many years earlier. I awoke in the restrained care of four witches who had wanted to be my eternal brides. Love hath no fury like a witch scorned. I barely made it out of that situation with my skin intact.

  Still, the occasional drunk or drug user will pass his inebriation on to me. Its effects will vary with the drug. I am sure it mirrors whatever its intended use, just magnified tenfold. A vampire not in control of his faculties is either very dangerous or in danger depending on the drug.

  “If we were to drink from these children we would be in the same state as them.” I continued. She looked from me to the boy, then to the two priests and back to me. “Poison?” She asked.

  “Most likely just something to make us sleep since the children have not died.” I replied. I advanced on the older priest, and he started babbling.

  “Manzili told us, that if any of your kind were to come into the village, we were to send the children out for you to feed on. We were to bring you back here then call for him.” The younger priest exclaimed.

  “Call for him? “ I asked. “How do you call for him?”

  “Three tolls of the bell” he responded.

  “Then you should ring the bell. I would like to meet our host.” I said.

  “I can ring the bell,” Manuela growled. “Why do we need these two?”

  I understood her anger and frustration. These two had almost swayed us into entrapment. “The older one knows more, but the younger is more eager to tell,” I said. “Choose one, the other will tell us all we need.”

  The ever-familiar sign of the cross was absent, as she first grabbed the younger before tossing him aside for, the older. The gray-haired man’s heart was pounding when she seized him. “Manz….. Alejandro will you feed?” she offered, tilting the old man’s throat my way. “Not just yet,” I said. “I have questions for young Adrian.”

  “Tell me more about this Manzili,” I demanded.

  “He is a Moor like you, but a little darker I believe. A very powerful and cruel master, who came here about thirty years ago. The last priest, Father Marino made the original pact with him when Father De Luca,” he said pointing at the almost dead priest “was still an assistant.

  “Every month he demanded a tithing of children be paid. One, sometimes two or three, depending on what is wanted. After the first six months, the elders devised a plan to save their own children. They sent out squads to kidnap the children of neighboring towns and villages. These they sacrificed in place of their own. Because of this, Manzili has fed on the nearby villages, but never here. Every now and then, he will send word with one of the other vampires, that we need to send someone up for a blessing. When they return from his blessing, they are weak and listless. Most are very near death but thankfully, alive. The other vampires that came through, either joined him or died at his hand. Four others reside with him now, all as cruel as he is and almost as strong.”

  Adrian hadn’t stopped speaking since he started. The words, like a river, just ran and ran. I am sure this is because he thought that the end of his tale was also the end for him.

  The fact that someone had stolen my identity didn’t sit well with me. I was starting to become very angry. Too many people knew of my existence. One brazen enough to use my name had made himself a god in this small mountain village.

  “Ring the bell Adrian, it is time I meet Manzili.” I told him.

  Manuela stood over the dead, kidnapper priest, and looked in my direction.

  “What are we going to do?” She asked with blood dripping down her chin.

  “I am going to meet The Faux First.” I told her.

  “You would just leave me here? And your fool enough to think I would stay?” she said cleaning off her bloody hands with water from a pitcher that was on his writing table.

  Three bells tolled loudly through the church. Adrian returned a few moments later nervous and skittish.

  “Bring me one from downstairs,” I said. “If I even smell a hint of wine or drug, I will rip you open from navel to neck.”

  “Which one would you like?” He asked.

  “Make it an older one. Bring me one with spirit and a lot of blood in him. Remember if you try anything, if I can’t kill you, she will.”

  A large boy of about seventeen was brought before me at knifepoint. Without pomp and circumstance, I was on him feeding. Tearing at the throat like a dog with fresh steak, I drank. His body flopped around like a fish out of the water as I pulled his blood from him. A tiny gasp escaped from Adrian as blood arced from the twitching boy’s neck as I pulled away.

  “Why haven’t they come in?” Manuela asked before answering her own question. “They can’t enter the church, can they?”

  I lifted the older priest up and tore his head from his shoulders. The sound of his flesh ripping reminded me of when my father skinned the fish he caught. I used my nails to detach any stubborn sinews of muscle or flesh.

  “I should come also,” Manuela said.

  “You should stay and make sure that Adrian comes to no harm.”

  They both looked at me questioning.

  “You may watch from the windows if you wish, but this I have to do on my own.” “Watch from the windows, are you mad?”

  “Someone has done the unthinkable, the unimaginable. I do not understand why it matters to me, but it does. I alone endured the Egyptian bastard. I am the one that they forced to drink the elixir. It was my soul that they bound and my body that was dying. I will meet the one that says my story is his.”

  Chapter 13

  The door splintered, then exploded outward, sending shards in all directions. They stepped back as I exited the church. The crucifix bounced off my chest as I walked down creaking steps. Their eyes widened in amazement as the crucified man, dangling from my neck, seemed to come to life in the glow of the moonlight. Seeing me come out of the church was one
thing, but the trinket that caused them such affliction around my neck was another.

  The four stood in front arrogantly, while he judged the situation. They were young and ignorant of who stood before them. The one thing, often forgotten, is that we are not all created equal. Our power comes over time. The longer we live, the more powerful we become. These four were staring at the very oldest of their kind, and they acted as if I were a newborn. I wondered how many times this show of force had scared others into submission.

  “Where is De Lu…?” one of the brats started to ask in a thick Germanic accent.

  He was young, maybe two centuries old. His words cut off, as the answer to his question came, bouncing on the ground in front of him. The dead grey eyes stared up at him accusingly. His clothing confirmed what I had already deduced by his blonde hair and blue eyes, he was Gallic. “You dare?” he screamed at me.

  “I do.” I replied.

  His eyes flared, and his mouth opened into a snarl as he hurtled himself hands and nails extended at me. The others with him howled their approval.

  The howls stopped abruptly when my left hand flashed out and caught him by his throat. His outstretched hands swiped the air trying to shred my flesh. He snarled and drooled as my grip tightened around him.

  I drew my right hand back and punched forward. His ribcage shattered as my hand continued through him and out his back, holding his spine in it. One quick yank up and the vertebrae tore through the already damaged flesh until I held his body-less head in my hand. This one, I tossed next to the head of the priest.

  It was at this moment he stepped forward. His regal red robes trailed behind him on the ground. His charcoal colored skin was almost invisible in the shadow. The rings he wore flashed brightly in the moonlight. They shimmered as he lifted his hand to point to the fallen vampire’s head. His mouth slowly upturned into a smile. To be honest, I really could have done a lot worse in an impersonator. The eyes were almost identical to mine. The skin tone was darker, but that didn’t take away from the remarkable affinity we shared. He didn’t have the muscularity of my physique earned from many years of hard labor and heavy lifting. However, outside of that, and his curly hair, he could have been me. My shaved head was the only major difference.