The Nosferatu Chronicles: The Aztec God

by Susan Hamilton

  “My name is Emanui,” she said.

  “And Liselle?” asked Venomy.

  “Neutralized,” answered Emanui.

  Venomy flung the contents of the glass at her, but she easily ducked in time to prevent it from making contact with her face.

  Emanui shrugged. “I said I didn’t fancy the selection.”

  Venomy opened his mouth to scream for the guards, but in a blurred flash of motion, Emanui easily overtook and restrained him. Grasping his arm, she administered a drug intravenously. Venomy slumped into a chair as the drug took effect. He fought desperately to scream, but the only sound that came out of his mouth was a hoarse whisper.

  “Truth serum,” explained Emanui, “mixed with a sedative. It has limited success with Ferals, but humans easily succumb. Try to relax. The more you struggle, the more difficult it will be to breathe.”

  “You’re a…Stealth…Stalker,” whispered Venomy.

  “Is that what the Ferals call us now?” she asked. “We’ve heard much worse.”

  “I won’t…tell you…where they are,” said Venomy.

  “That’s because you don’t know,” said Emanui. “You’re a failed experiment, and I’m here to determine why.”

  Emanui sat close to Venomy and looked into his eyes.“Think back to the night Liselle attempted to transform you. You were drained to the point of death, and then she allowed some of her blood to enter your mouth, yes?”

  Venomy convulsed as he tried to stop the word from coming out of his mouth. “Yes.”

  “Your consumption of blood is a choice, not a necessity, yes?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Venomy.

  “Does your system still tolerate human food?” asked Emanui.

  “Yes,” said Venomy, “but…disgusting.”

  “Have you ever had contact with any original Vambir?” she asked.

  “No,” said Venomy, “only…Descendants.”

  “You’re sure Liselle never had contact with a Vambir?” asked Emanui. “How did you come to know of Lun?”

  “Stories…passed down,” said Venomy.

  Emanui inserted a needle into Venomy’s arm and filled up the collection tube attached to it.

  “Your blood may be the key to fighting the Vambir infestation,” she said to him.

  Venomy struggled against his restraints. “Stealth Stalkers…are the…infestation!” he cried. “You…corrupted…Liselle’s blood. That’s why…I suffer.”

  “We did no such thing,” said Emanui. “Hopefully your blood will tell us why your transformation failed.”

  “And you will use it…to infect Descendants,” he said, “while you keep…eternal life for yourselves!”

  “Everything dies,” said Emanui.

  “Liar!” cried Venomy.

  “Petulant child,” she said. “You’ve never known real hunger and hopelessness. I was born in the fifteenth century. My mother died giving birth to me, which was a common occurrence. When I was a small child, my father was killed on the battlefield, and my grandmother and I had to make ends meet without any help whatsoever. I should have been home playing with dolls, but I had to spend my days in the forest digging up roots and collecting herbs for my grandmother to make into skin tonics and perfume for the wives of wealthy merchants. I watched my grandmother take months to die from a wasting disease in her old age, and I was left alone to fight off a band of Strigoi that had surrounded our hut. They were easily kept at bay with garlic, but that was useless against the Vambir. They found me and my comrades in a barn just hours before dawn. We were going to leave Transylvania behind forever as soon as daylight came. If only we had made it until daylight, I would have lived out my life as a human and died over six hundred years ago. If I could go back and only change one thing, it would be that the Vambir never discovered that barn.”

  “Hmph!” sneered Venomy.

  “I still remember the feeling of my life force being drained from me,” said Emanui. “A coldness set in all over my body and just when I was about to lose consciousness, a foul, metallic taste in my mouth made its way down my throat. The coldness was replaced by an intense heat, but the heat was not the vigorous fire of life, but the malevolent burning of addiction. When I regained consciousness, my throat was dry and I was filled with an intense hunger. In the beginning the Vambir would hunt for us, and we fed on the unconscious bodies they supplied. I tried to resist such a despicable act, but my body convulsed in anticipation as soon as the blood scent reached my nostrils. Feeding never lead to satiety. There was never any rest. The hunger was always there. Then the Vambir stopped providing food, and I was forced to hunt in order to survive. Do you think you could master killing for food every night?”

  “Liselle…mastered it,” insisted Venomy.

  “Liselle never mastered anything,” said Emanui. “Like all Ferals, she learned to recruit others to do her dirty work. It’s obvious that you were not in her company for an extended period of time. If your transformation had been successful, she would never have been able to conceal the effects of withdrawal from you.”

  The expression on Venomy’s face changed from smug to pensive. Emanui was right. He wouldn’t see Liselle for weeks, then she would suddenly appear in his dressing room after a concert, and they would spend a passionate night together. He remembered begging her to go away with him when his tour was over, happily chatting about the places he wanted to show her. She had calmly listened to him reminisce about seeing the Northern Lights in Iceland, and he had taken her silence for agreement.

  “Did you really think that you could keep the same life once you had been transformed?” asked Emanui. “Your days as a pop star would be finished. Ferals must live in secret and are always on the run. The hunger controls everything about their lives.”

  “Because of…the likes of you!” retorted Venomy.

  “Even if we were out of the equation, you could never stay in once place for too long,” she said. “Too many unsolved missing persons would attract attention. What if you got arrested? Try telling the prison guards that they’re not allowed to transport you in the daytime.”

  “And how is it…any different…for you?” he asked.

  “We blend in quite well,” answered Emanui. “True, we have the same disadvantage of avoiding daylight, but the hemo-nectar we ingest allows us to enjoy an addiction-free existence.”

  “I want to live…not exist!” cried Venomy.

  Emanui sighed. “Then embrace your humanity.”

  Venomy’s eyes grew heavy, and he fell into a dreamless sleep. The next sensation he felt was his guards rousing him in order to transport him back to the hotel. When he inquired about the woman who had been in his dressing room, no one remembered seeing her leave.

  EXHIBITION

  The British Museum, 2011

  As J’Vor and Tariq took their seats, they perused the program of events scheduled for the evening. An uninformed observer would have guessed they were in their mid-thirties. The hemo-nectar in their systems had greatly expanded their lifespans, as Kevak had predicted centuries ago.

  After listening patiently to a presentation on Aztec antiquities, the professor of epidemiology they had been waiting to see walked to the podium.

  “When the Spanish army under the command of Hernando Cortés invaded Mexico in 1519, the native population was over twenty million,” began Professor Espinoza. “By the end of the century, only two million remained. This near-extinction event forever altered the culture of Mesoamerica. Yet this was not brought about by the invading Conquistadors but instead by germ warfare.”

  “Another boring dissertation on smallpox,” muttered a woman sitting directly behind J’Vor and Tariq.

  “It has long been believed that smallpox decimated the Aztecs,” Espinoza continued. “But smallpox was not introduced by the Spanish. The Aztecs were already familiar with the disease and referred to it as ‘zahuatl.’ Spanish colonists wrote that outbreaks of zahuatl occurred in 1520 and 1531, and, typical of smallpox,
lasted about a year. As many as eight million people died, but the epidemic that appeared in 1545 seemed to be another disease altogether. The Aztecs called that outbreak by a separate name: ‘cocolitzli.’ For them, cocolitzli was far more virulent than smallpox, resulting in unprecedented devastation that spread and killed quickly. I submit to you that the cocolitzli plague of the sixteenth century had nothing to do with smallpox or the Spanish invasion.”

  J’Vor and Tariq could hear snickering in the audience.

  “Consider this,” said Espinoza. “It makes no sense for the Aztecs to have invented a new word for smallpox. Why would smallpox, an Old World disease, cause death on a massive scale a quarter of a century after first contact? By that time, the Aztecs who survived smallpox would have been immune.”

  The audience now sat at attention, hanging on every word.

  Espinoza pressed a touch-pad on his console, illuminating a screen behind him. “This is a contemporary account recorded by a Franciscan friar.”

  The fevers were contagious, burning, and continuous; all of them pestilential, in most part lethal. The tongue was dry and black. Enormous thirst. Urine of the colors of sea-green, vegetal green, and black, sometimes passing from the greenish color to the pale. Pulse was frequent, fast, small, and weak — sometimes even null. The eyes and the whole body were yellow. This stage was followed by delirium and seizures. Then hard and painful nodules appeared behind one or both ears along with heartache, chest pain, abdominal pain, tremor, great anxiety, and dysentery. The blood that flowed when cutting a vein had a green color or was very pale, dry, and without serosity. Blood flowed from the ears and in many cases truly gushed from the nose. This epidemic attacked mainly young people and seldom the elder ones.

  "This is not a description of smallpox," said Espinoza. "This account clearly describes the symptoms of hemorrhagic fever.”

  “Ebola!” exclaimed the woman behind J’Vor and Tariq in a hushed whisper.

  “And it was definitely not introduced by the Spanish,” concluded Espinoza.

  *******

  “The Aztec kingdom of the sixteenth century was the last in a line of Mesoamerican states that emerged, flourished, and then vanished over the course of two and a half thousand years,” said the museum guide. “They had no written language but instead kept records using colorful pictographs, and the majority of those depicted ritual blood sacrifices. This horrified the Spanish, who set about destroying the kingdom's library. Luckily for us, some Spanish priests worked with the Aztecs to record their culture before it was lost.”

  J’Vor and Tariq silently walked past a pictograph showing a body lying on an altar. The bloodied chest was open, and a priest stood above him with arms outstretched, brandishing an obsidian knife in one hand and the victim’s heart in the other.

  Other images showed what happened to the remains of the victims. The extracted hearts were thrown into a fire, and the corpses were hurled down the steep steps of the pyramid temple to join a pile of the preceding victims. So much blood had been spilled that the steps leading down looked as if they were covered in a vibrant red carpet.

  The study of Aztec culture was part of every high school curriculum, and the pictographs displayed in the exhibition were standard textbook material, but being in the presence of the original graphic illustrations brought home the barbarity of the sacrifices that a classroom setting could not convey.

  The tour group passed a set of pictographs that were devoted to the nuances of the different methods of sacrifice.

  “For the god Huehueteotl, the ritual was slightly changed from what we saw in the first pictographs,” said the guide in a dull monotone. “The victim was first thrown into a fire, then pulled out with hooks before dying. The living heart was extracted and cast back into the fire. Rituals for the goddess Toci included the decapitation of a young woman who was first skinned alive, after which a young man would wear her skin. For the god Tlaloc, children were sacrificed, and heart extraction was accompanied by flaying and cannibalism.”

  Leaving the pictographs behind, the group proceeded to a section containing several sculptures. As J’Vor and Tariq stood impassively before a jade bust, they struggled to conceal the excitement building up inside them. The bust’s elongated head was bald, with pointed ears, and a pair of fangs protruded from the center of the mouth.

  Alongside the bust were several smaller sculptures of female statues with skulls instead of faces.

  “These ladies were called the Civatateo,” explained the guide. “They were the Aztec equivalent of vampires, formerly beautiful noblewomen who died in childbirth, and were said to wander the night looking for children to feed upon. Legend has it that once they were sated, the child was left either paralyzed or diseased. Some Civatateo held out hope that they could mate with human males and give birth to vampire children.”

  “As for the jade bust,” he continued, “you would all be familiar with the myriad of television shows that claim this in itself is proof of an ancient alien visitation, but the scientific community begs to differ. This is most likely a depiction of one of their many gods.”

  *******

  The final event of the evening was held in the planetarium and presented by a local physics professor. As the lights dimmed, a cloudless night as it would have appeared in Mesoamerica during the sixteenth century was projected onto the domed screen.

  “The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire is a perfect example of a self-fulfilling prophecy,” began Professor Hawkes. “The god Quetzalcoatl, a white-skinned priest-king who came from the east to bring enlightenment among the Native Indians, eventually departed by boat to the west. He promised to return on a specific date, and as that date approached, cosmic omens predicted the decimation of the Aztec culture. Each year until Hernando Cortés invaded Mexico in 1519, a new omen appeared, beginning with Montezuma’s sister falling into a catatonic state for days and regaining consciousness as she was being interred.”

  On the dome above, a fiery ball of the sun took shape with a small black dot in the lower hemisphere.

  “The Aztecs would have been able to see the Venus transit of 1518 just before sunset,” said Hawkes. “According to legend, Quetzalcoatl would return to Earth from Venus.”

  The Venus transit faded and a pictograph came into view.

  “This pictograph shows a figure of Quetzalcoatl wearing the sun as a neck ornament,” said Professor Hawkes. “It has been suggested that this represents the Venus transit of 1518.”

  A comet then appeared above the audience.

  “But the omen that struck the most fear in the Aztecs was a comet with three heads,” continued Hawkes. “Witnesses described a ‘pyramidal light which scattered sparks on all sides.’ Immediately after that, a thunderbolt struck and burned down the temple of Huitzilopochtli, while a lake just outside Tenochtitlan was ‘boiling deep.’ There were also accounts of the voice of a woman ‘from everywhere and nowhere’ sobbing for her lost child. These events were believed to be a precursor to war, famine, and pestilence.”

  The image of the triple-headed comet disappeared and was replaced by Spanish galleons navigating choppy seas.

  “Here is where things get interesting,” said Professor Hawkes. “Cortés landed on April 22, 1519, the very day that the Aztec calendar predicted Quetzalcoatl’s return. Anticipating this momentous event, Montezuma had posted spies on the coast to draw images of the arriving aliens and was amazed that the light-skinned figures matched the traditional description of Quetzalcoatl. This case of mistaken identity made it easy for the Spanish to conquer the Aztecs.”

  A pictograph of Montezuma welcoming Cortés came into view.

  “Believing Cortés to be Quetzalcoatl,” said Hawkes, “Montezuma paid homage to him:

  “‘Oh Lord, with what trouble have you journeyed to reach us and have arrived in your own country of Mexico, to sit on your throne that I have been guarding for you all this time. My ancestors foretold your return. Come and rest in your palace.’”


  The pictograph transitioned to a scene showing the death of Montezuma.

  “The Spanish seized Montezuma and displayed the captive king to his subjects,” said Professor Hawkes. “Reacting violently, his people stoned him to death. These are supposedly his last words:

  “‘After the long cycles have faded away, our tribes will rise again and in their midst will be the Priesthood with the Cross. Another battle shall take place, and only the Cross will remain. The children of the Aztecs will take their place with the deathless nations of the Earth.’”

  “The Aztecs found out too late that Cortés was not Quetzalcoatl,” said Professor Hawkes. “One can only wonder if their descendants still wait for him to return with each Venus transit. We live in fortunate times, having witnessed the transit in 2004 and will soon again in 2012. Will 2012 be the transit when Quetzalcoatl finally comes back to his people? If not, then the next chance won’t be until 2117.”

  *******

  “What do you think?” J’Vor asked Tariq as they walked to the underground train station.

  “The time frame does not fit,” answered Tariq. “The Vambir came to Earth in 1459.”

  “If any Vambir survived Mehmed’s raid,” said J’Vor, “they could have migrated to Mesoamerica by the sixteenth century.”

  “But they were all human hybrids by then,” said Tariq, “which does not explain the jade bust.”

  “The bust definitely depicts a Vambir,” insisted J’Vor. “It has every physical characteristic.”

  Tariq sighed. “It certainly does.”

  “Maybe some of the pods jettisoned by the Isla sustained damaged to their navigation systems and strayed off course,” said J’Vor. “The Vambir emerging from those pods would have appeared as gods to the Aztecs.”

  “But again, that would have been in 1459,” said Tariq. “The pods were only equipped with hemo-rations — there were no seeds. Eventually, the survivors would have had to ingest blood and within months would have completed the metamorphosis into human form.”