"Hey, lycan, you're late," I said, hoping to hide my nervousness with a light-heartened tone. Greylord came out of the bushes advancing quickly, stooped over with his fore paws almost touching the ground and his body covered with the thick grey fur that characterizes him. Their gait is something that has always provoked disgust in me. When he came just a few steps away from me, he straightened up, towering almost two feet over me, and stared at me with his fangs uncovered, as thin as needles apart from the big, protruding, powerful canines. I assure you, it's not comforting when a beast of such dimensions looks at you like that, not even when, up to about five minutes before, you had sworn that that beast would have been happy to see you.
"Greylord..." I mumbled.
At least I think I did, anyway. It might have been just a thought stronger than others. He knocked me over with such a powerful roar that I forgot what I was, I confess. I turned and started running like anyone who has close to his heart his own safety.
Again, I had the sensation of being plunge into a nightmare, hoping to wake up, sooner or later, next to my companion. That frantic run in the night with a growling beast behind me, getting closer, is something that I would have gladly avoided. Later, it was as if a truck had run me over: a violent collision on my back thrusted me up in the air and propelled me to the ground in a heap of dust and limbs. Upon impact with the ground, I stripped the flesh off from the palms of my hands and from a cheek, but I noticed it only later. The lycan, with his seven hundred pounds of muscles, landed on my back and crushed half of my ribcage, squeezing me under him and impeding me from reacting. I couldn't even scream: every particle of air was ejected from my lungs upon the first impact. Do you know what the predominant feeling was at that moment? Not fear. Not rage. Just sadness and disappointment. I closed my eyes with my head turned aside, arms outstretched and hands clenched in the ground, waiting for his fangs to sink into my neck. I just hoped that it would be quick. After all, in the end, Greylord had managed to gratify his obsession.
Instead of a blinding explosion of pain, I felt the warm caress and slimy tongue of a dog on my cheek, followed by the unmistakable sound of laughter from a lycan: a series of raucous puffs interspersed with short barks. The relief almost made me nauseous, but angry, too.
Ok, you, asshole. He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword, as the human proverb goes. Now, it was his turn. I remained motionless with blood dripping from my mouth and my eyes rolling in their sockets, a childish trick that always has a certain effect. In fact, blood was actually not a trick since my broken ribs had perforated my lungs in at least a dozen points, but I just had to wait until everything fixed itself. I didn’t believe that an old fox with his experience would fall for it. Even stones know that when we die… seriously, we dissolve into dust; more than anything, I wanted to give my body a chance to heal and make him feel guilty for the ignoble treatment he had reserved for his companion in plight. However, things quickly took a much funnier twist.
"Hell, man, I’ve never had so much fun, you should have seen your face," the bastard exclaimed, who just transformed back to his human form. I understood it from his diction, clear and intelligible. When he released me from under his weight, I had to grit my teeth not to howl in pain, but I did it discretely.
There was a moment of awkward silence. Now, came the fun part... and the hard part for me.
"Come on, I'll help you get up."
I felt myself being taken by an arm and lifted, but I let my head fall to the side and then forward, with my body limp and my mouth open from which a river of blood continued to pour. It would have been nice to see his face, but I thought that I wouldn’t have been able to restrain my laughs. His horrified silence said it all.
"Fuck. Oh, shit. Vampire, say something."
He was shaking me, making my head jerk back and forth more and more with motionless legs. Then, I found myself on the ground again, this time on my back. I hoped that, during this time of confusion, he didn’t decide to do CPR on me or he would have crushed what was left of my ribs that were intact. This thought, along with a trip in his mind in which I read disbelief and rising panic, put a strain on my determination not to laugh.
"It's not possible. I can't believe it. I just can't fucking believe it! I've been trying to kill him for centuries and now that it’s all a joke this asshole dies on me!" Crazy but true, I felt a weight on my chest and I realized that he had just put his ear on top of my chest to check for a heartbeat, as if it would have been indicative of life or death for someone like me. I bit the inner part of my cheek to prevent me from bursting into laughter. He slapped me, shook me again, and even sprayed me with the water from the lake in a crescendo of increasingly ridiculous attempts at resuscitation. Then, all of a sudden, a somber and mournful call a few steps from me induced me to have a look to see what was happening. Greylord had metamorphosed again and was crouched beside me with his paws on his snout, howling at the moon with true despair in his voice. He couldn’t see me because he was covering his eyes with those huge hairy hands with curved fingers, so I got up and slid quickly and quietly behind his back. I wrapped him with my arms and brought my mouth closer to his huge neck. Checkmate!
"Look what the power of love can do, dog. You brought me back from the dead…”
"You piece of..."
"Easy! Easy! We're even!" I shouted at him, my hand raised in a gesture of surrender. Eventually, we stretched ourselves out on the grass, relaxed, side by side, my ribs trying to get back in the right position, sharing a cigarette.
"You slaughtered me, you idiot. Don’t you have any idea of how much you weigh?"
"And I also scared you to death, admit it."
"You can be very... convincing."
"Thank you. So, how are things since we got back home?"
"I still have some dark days but... it's fine. And you?"
"The same. I still dream about him, you know. The doc, I mean."
"Ditto."
"So, are we going to do what we came here for? Or, do you declare yourself defeated from the start?"
"Dream on, my friend, just give me a few more minutes. My ribcage is reconstructing itself. How are your grandchildren?"
"They're fine. What about your human little girl? Did you give her the present?"
"Oh, yes. Now, she also has a little brother. They named him after me, his middle name that is."
"Really? Oh, poor thing!"
I gave him a sharp nudge with my elbow and we both chuckled.
"Did you ever imagine this?" I said after a while. "Me and you, meeting one day talking this way, I mean."
"Never, not in a lifetime. My only desire was always just to kill you."
"Why me? Why not Vincent? He's the big head."
"I saw you fight. I saw you many times. He was never in the forefront. You were always there, the obstacle we had to overcome to get the ultimate victory. With you dead, it would have been much easier to get to him, I thought. I never succeeded and now that I could, I'm not interested anymore. I thought about it earlier. I thought about it when you were crushed beneath me and that all I had to do was sink my teeth into your neck. I really did think about it. But, it would have been vile and I didn’t want to be like that. When I caught you the first time, it was a windfall. You were mine because you were trying to save your friend, not because I had defeated you. I could not forego the opportunity but I never really had the pleasure of having defeated you. Now, it doesn't matter anymore."
"To me, too. I'm out of those games. Now, my greatest danger is Vincent. He's always the same."
"You could tell me where he is, we deal with it, and you'd then be free."
I raised myself up on my elbows and stared at him.
"And what kind of respect would you have of me if I sold you my Supreme Master to save my skin? He's a dickhead, but he'll always be my Lord. And, I'll always be a vampire. Don't you ever forget that, lycan."
"Ok, sorry, I had to try. Are you ready or do we need to call an ambu
lance?"
"I'm ready, but you'll regret that you challenged me. I will use your fur to make a carpet in my living room."
"Yes, of course, like you did before."
We competed until dawn in a thousand different ways, putting all our efforts in it as if it was a matter of life or death, each with the desire to demonstrate the superiority of his own race in comparison to the other, but with no one succeeding.
We're lethal and fearsome creatures, in no way similar to the human race from which we derive. We borrow your world for our purposes, which can be summarized in only one: to live and see the next day rise, just like you. In this, we're all one big family.
That’s all for now. While waiting to continue with the story of his life, your vampire leaves you and goes back into the shadows to which he belongs. I hope to bump into you again, especially when I go out for the hunt and the moon is high in the sky. Maybe you'll see me coming, maybe you won't, but I promise you: the end will be sweet and veiled in red.
The End
Sommario
PROLOGUE
Paris, April 20
1
The Netherlands, end of 1600
SOPHIE
2- RUNNING AWAY
3- AMSTERDAMNED
4 - EN ROUTE
5 - LONDON
6 - LOSSES AND GAINS
7 - OLD DEATH, NEW LIFE
SOPHIE
1- TEACHINGS
2- ALONE AGAIN
3 - PLEASANT HABITS
4 - ENEMIES
5 - SAYING GOODBYE
6 - CRIME WITH NO PUNISHMENT
7 - NEW HORIZONS
8 - A BAD START
9 - TRAVELS AND CHANGES
10 - HOME SWEET HOME
11 - NEW ACQUAINTANCES
13 - MY NAME IS NOBODY
14 - SHIBEEN'S TALE
15 - HEALING
16 - DEATH LESSONS
17 - STEFAN
18 - UNDER A LUCKY STAR
19 - SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK
London, May 30
Dubai, June 1
Dubai, June 2
June 2, 4:15 a.m.
Paris, June 5
June 6
June 7
June 8, 8:00 p.m.
June 8, 2:18 a.m.
London, June 15
London, July 1
London, August 26
Tel-Aviv, August 27
Tel Aviv, August 28
GREYLORD'S TALE
Tel Aviv, August 29
GREYLORD'S TALE (II)
Tel Aviv, August 30
Tel Aviv, September 2
EPILOGUE
London, September 3
Some little thanks:
First of all, my thanks go to Marlet Trova, without whom this English version wouldn’t exist; better say, it would exist but it would suck.
Second, Kittrose, for the wonderful covers and the paintings and the drawings and all the stuff. And for loving Raistan, even though she calls him an asshole.
Third, you, readers of the world. If you’re here, it means you trusted this unknown Italian writer. That’s the best gift you could do to me.
Come and visit Raistan:
Website: www.raistanvanhoeck.jimdo.com
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/nh6vl75
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8420768.Lucia_Guglielminetti
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[1] Gaelic: father
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