The Queen of Wolves

by Douglas Clegg

  “You have eaten of the dead and dying,” he said, admonishing them with a well-pointed finger. “Do not begrudge the demons your blood, for they will suck out the poison of your deeds. Those whom you have fed upon will forgive you. The ancestors you have dishonored will pray for you to the spirits. Many demons are omens of ill fortune, but these demons that come to us are from the blood of my own ancestor, called Illuyan the Fierce, who waged war against the enemies of our people in the kingdoms before memory. These bring us good fortune—this demon called Falconer, and the one who is called Pythia.”

  I felt a vague clutching at my throat. Pythia. I closed my eyes for a moment to feel for her in the stream. Her movements were overpowering. I felt her abovedeck as a mouse might feel an ox lumbering atop its nest.

  I rushed out of the bunk area and wandered the corridors to emerge in the fresh salt air.

  5

  I found her moments later. She had murdered two men who remained abovedeck. She had drunk too deeply from them. Their corpses lay beside each other, and she had just pushed herself off the most recent of her kills.

  “You fool!” I shouted. “I have just this moment bargained with those men on board to keep us safe in daylight but took an oath not to kill them.”

  “I have never taken such an oath,” she said haughtily. “Nor would I allow mortals to govern me as you do.”

  The gold mask of her face turned black-red from the life force she had drunk, her hair stained, her breasts shiny and soaked, I remembered how she had taken me in a tower once. How she had loved the slowness of death in mortal man.

  She was everything I hated in myself, in the world, and among vampyres. Even as I had these thoughts, I remembered her naked, her breasts high and heavy, and the slight swell of her belly as emerald and ruby snakes swarmed about her in Nezahual’s kingdom.

  I could not erase this from my mind. I could not keep from wanting her, yet she was promiscuous and devilish. She could not be trusted, and yet she had saved me. She had made me feel love the way that my companion Ewen had with his goodness, and Alienora had once—all too briefly—with her purity before the dark had descended.

  Wiping her chin as she approached me, Pythia gave a guttural laugh, and said, “Do not feel for him. He was a cannibal. No better than the worst of all men. Do you know what they called me? Demoness. Like a princess of Hell. They prayed for their speedy deaths. I blessed them as they went to sleep. They think they are headed for Heaven because of me, so do not lecture me. I need more blood than you. I drink for two.”

  Reading my thoughts, she leaned into me and pressed her lips to mine. I tasted the warmth of mortal life there, with the tinge of blood on her tongue. She drew back, laughing. Was she mocking me? Did she feel the same bond with me that I felt with her? For surely, we were bound together in some way as if we’d been chained to each other.

  “Throw the bodies to the sea,” I said. “For the men below do not need to see the evidence of your cruelty.”

  “Throw them yourself.”

  Not wishing to argue the point, I dragged the corpses to the side of the boat and let them drop. The splashes were loud, and echoed. I could only imagine what the men aboard would think of such noise.

  Pythia came up behind me as I looked out across the curtain of mist. She pressed her body against my back, wrapping her arms about me. “Death truly is a blessing for them,” she said. “They will die of terrible hunger here. You know that.”

  I turned toward her, holding her at arm’s length. “There are fewer than twenty men here. They need to live in order to guide the ship—for us. There is a storm on its way, and it is too distant to the nearest land to attempt flight across the sea.”

  “How do you know such things?”

  “A seer,” I said. “A vampyre had brought second sight to him when he was a boy. He is a descendant of vampyre and mortal, though many generations removed. Our child may be like him: mortal, but with the inner dark of our tribe.” A cloud seemed to cross her golden face, and I guessed that she was thinking about the child. Did she care deeply for it? I felt she did, but this lady was as volatile as the mask itself. I could not read her from expression or words. I had the sense that she always spoke from two understandings—the one that was evident in her words, and a hidden meaning far beyond my own mind’s grasp. “Illuyanket is his name.”

  She nodded as if understanding. “It is a name from the old worlds,” she said. “It must have been passed to him from his ancient ancestor, for it was a name of a vampyre whom mortals considered their god.”

  “The ship is named for him—Illuyanket—for this elder gained fame in his country for his storm dreams and prophecies. He is nearly a century old, and predicted our coming—and the storm, as well. I believe him.”

  The sneer within her voice returned. “Mortal prophecy. As good as mortal promises.”

  “You are mortal, Pythia. Our child may be mortal, as well. You were once a seer among mortals,” I said. “Was there truth to your visions? Is there truth to mine? I have met this man, and I believe him. You will do this—if not for me, then for that child you claim to care so much for. You are in more danger than I am—for they could kill you now with sword and arrow. Do not forget this. You are more like them than like me. If you do not kill them, they will allow us to drink from them as long as necessary. We do not know if we will have to remain here one night or three. I promised them this.”

  “I promise them pleasure followed by peace.” She smiled, exuberant with the mortal blood inside her, bringing a glow of strength and vitality with it.

  I did not even wish to argue with her. “I need to find the other ships nearby,” I said. “There may be more men, and food for these who will protect us in daylight. Do not kill again here. Do you understand?”

  “I do not take orders, even from the Maz-Sherah,” she said. “If we drain them of their blood, what do we need protectors for?”

  I controlled my fury. “We are in the middle of a vast sea. You cannot tell me where land lies. We do not know how many nights we will be here. We cannot take flight in the dark if we do not know that there is an island or a continent before sunrise. These sailors can head toward their lands when the wind picks up, to the west—our destination. We murder them; we meet a watery grave. Which oblivion would you prefer? Death at the bottom of the sea, rotting, or deep in this ship until its boards give way and it is torn by a gale? These men may save us, if we promise them life.”

  “You care too much for these mortals. Their deaths are sweet to them.”

  “Sweet?” I asked. “Will yours be so sweet? For as you kill them, remember what you will face when your own death comes.” I regretted these words as soon as they left my tongue, for I saw the stricken look in her eyes, and the slight flinch of her body as if I had slapped her. Then, weary of the argument, I said, “If you wish it, fly now. I do not need to go with you. Save your skin—fly away, little bird.”

  Her eyes seemed to burn with fury. “Do not test me, nor tempt me, Falconer. I made you. I brought you from the tomb of Ixtar. Do not forget this. You belong to me. In me your seed grows, and in my death, it dies.”

  I sighed, doing what I could to let go of my feeling of exasperation. “If you will not fly away, golden face, then you will come with me. We will find the food and water these men need. We will see if the wind picks up as the seer has predicted. If it does not, tomorrow night I will go with you to our deaths out over the dark sea, if need be.”

  “If you call me ‘golden face’ again, I will leave you,” she muttered.

  “Pythia, then,” I said. “Now, come. There is a ship not more than a few miles from here, and another beyond it. Gather what food and water you can from the closest one, and I will find the distant vessel.”

  Feeling the power of new blood in me, I opened my wings to their fullest and leapt from the ship. She flew after me, but I sensed her cursing within the stream. We communicated in our minds as I told her to fly toward the nearest of mas
ts, while I flew beyond it, seeing a phantom of a ship at some distance against the blanket of fog.

  6

  Within the quarter hour, I had located one of the sister ships of the Illuyanka. I landed upon it, and heard only the sounds of my own movements. The wall of fog all around created a kind of cave, encircling the ship with a stony silence.

  The first thing that met my eye was the fresh kill on the deck.

  7

  A sailor of this third ship had met a terrible death at the hand of one of my tribe, and based on the quivering of his fingers, the vampyre who had done this had departed just moments before.

  I put the man out of his misery, for he was not going to regain consciousness again. The brutality of the act was evident from the multiple bites along the arms and shoulders—the skin had been shredded as if the vampyre’s jaw had locked in place when he’d bitten down.

  This kill was not like that of the vampyres I knew—and I began to worry that several guards from Aztlanteum had followed us. I looked about the ship, among its ropes and barrels, and I found more evidence of this handiwork—always too vicious and inexact in the bite, which would have been unusual for even Nezahual’s tribe. I closed my eyes to feel the stream, and in its strange dark light, I neither sensed nor had a gut feeling that the vampyres who had committed these acts still lurked.

  But could I be wrong? Was there some trickery at work?

  I heard a human moan that was nearly a whistling sound—I will never forget it, for it chilled my blood just to hear it. I had still not gotten used to the worst of killing—when the death was slow and painful. I did not think then I would get used to it in a thousand years, for it reminded me too much of the sorrows of mortal existence.

  I followed the sound of the strange noise, and as I did, I began to get a vague sense in the stream of at least one vampyre feeding. I moved swiftly through the warren of rooms beneath the deck, following the stream, tuning my ears to the sound of the man who seemed to be dying.

  As I turned a corner, there was the victim of the vampyre—a man whose face had been obliterated by the attack, and blood everywhere around him. The strange sound from him had come because of the damage to his face and throat. Feeling pity for him, I closed off his breathing, and quickly sent him to the threshold of death.

  I felt a tug in the stream, and turned to the left, and saw a brief flash of movement.

  “Wait!” I called, but the creature moved swiftly along the low, narrow corridor that twisted suddenly to the right. All I saw of him was a cape and hood, and in his arms, he carried what seemed to be a boy—perhaps a kitchen servant on board, for the boy had left his handprints on the wall, the dust of flour upon them. By the size of the hands, the boy was not yet thirteen, and I knew what the vampyre meant to do with him once he had him in some quiet place.

  I rose to my height and bounded after him, following his scent all the way to the upper decks. There, I saw a ship’s boy whose head had been shaved as if to ward off lice, and whose flour-dusted tunic had been torn at the throat as if the vampyre had just begun feeding upon him when I caught up to him.

  The boy glanced at me, wide-eyed.

  “Do not be afraid,” I whispered. “I will not hurt you.”

  I reached for the shredding of skin at his shoulder, but the vampyre had not had time to bleed him much.

  The boy tried to speak, but instead took deep gulps of air, one after the other. His face was pale, and the terror in his eyes did not diminish as I tried to comfort him.

  I felt at his throat the too-quick beat of his pulse. His mouth opened as if in a scream, and then his jaw went slack.

  Dead, from the fright of it.

  I felt a cold wave of nausea go through me. Movement in the stream.

  The creature that had terrified the boy stood behind me.

  Without turning around, I knew that the vampyre leaned over me—as I crouched by the boy—and nearly tapped me on the shoulder. Challenging me to turn and fight him, probably for the boy’s blood.

  I slowly twisted my head to the left. For a quarter second, I saw a vampyre as if in the mirror—a skull with long dagger fangs and the white of bone where his lips and chin should have been, yet with leathered skin held tight to the skull, and strands of thin hair dangling over his sunken eyes which were red and soulless.

  Chapter 4

  ________________

  THE CORPSE-VAMPYRE

  1

  I could not move as I beheld him, though it was a mere second or two of time—and the creature seemed also to react as I did, as if seeing me at all was a shock to him.

  His hood fell down over his eyes. He moved like a wriggling worm upon a hook, a blur of motion as he leapt from a crouching position into the air. His cape billowed out from him, and I heard a screech like an owl’s as he shot up through the mist.

  After I laid the dead boy down upon planking and covered him with a torn bit of the sail’s matting, I looked up into the mist. No trace remained of this vampyre—nor did the stream reveal his presence to me.

  2

  The ship had been mostly abandoned, but a dozen or so men and boys had remained behind. The vampyre had worked quickly. I had not known any vampyre—except perhaps Pythia—to slaughter so well, so indiscriminately. One vampyre could not possibly have drunk deeply from all the men on board—his only object was to kill them. I wondered if he intended to use this ship as his sleeping quarters, and then had decided that he could not trust those on it to be protectors during the day.

  He was a throwback in vampyrism to some age when vampyres were truly nothing more than the rotting undead. He had no glamour, no semblance of health. The blood did not bring back his youth.

  In some respects, he reminded me of Artephius—one who held the essence of immortality, yet could not keep his flesh from falling away over the centuries. But Artephius was not a vampyre. He had stolen some of the secrets of the immortals, but not all.

  A vampyre without youth?

  The drinking of blood and the glamour—which was our youth and beauty—was part of our tribal energy. How could a vampyre have none of this? Surely such a vampyre would have extinguished long ago.

  Why did a member of my tribe follow us, and yet not reveal himself?

  3

  I went in search of supplies for the other ship. I found salted meat and barrels of water stored belowdecks. I poured some of the water into wineskins I found in the galley and carried as much of the salted pork as I could. There were bags of grain, also, which I tied at my waist. As I was about to leave, a flash of red along an upper shelf caught my eye. It was the beloved red box full of dusty leaf for smoking. I sniffed at it and found the aroma intoxicating. I grabbed two of the boxes, tucking them beneath my arms, above the sack of pork.

  When I returned to the other ship, I took these supplies to the young sailor and told him to give the red boxes to Illuyanket alone. “I am sorry that my friend has killed two of your men,” I said. “It was beyond my control.”

  “Sir Demon, we did not mean to offend her. Nor you,” he said, a tremble in his voice. “She brought us food and water from a ship, as well. I will not talk of the spirits of the dead, for they may lurk nearby.” He drank greedily from one of the wineskins, and tore off a chunk of the salted pork, chewing it as I spoke to him.

  “This will be good for all of you for several days, if you ration it carefully. The water, too. Tomorrow night, we will bring more of it. What they have in storage there might last another month or more.”

  “All the men are dead?” he asked. “None survive?”

  I tried to block out the face of the boy who had died from fright. “The ship is abandoned. I found no one.” I searched for Pythia within the stream and felt her presence far belowdecks.

  I went with him to the old seer, who wept tears of joy as he lit his bowl and sucked the yellow smoke from the stem. Pythia crouched beside him, and I gathered he had been regaling her with stories that had bewitched her, for she was genui
nely caring of his condition. I wanted to draw her to one side to speak of the vampyre who had followed our flight and now hid upon one of the other mired ships, but it was not the time to do so.

  She glanced up at me, and in that brief look I saw another side to her—the aspect of this Pythoness that had been missing beyond our night of passion. I dread to say it, but it was her mortal side—and when she returned her attention to Illuyanket, she seemed not like a terrible vampyre who had slaughtered many, but like his granddaughter, sitting by his bunk, listening to stories and legends of another country that she had heard once as a little girl.

  “Yes, Illuyan was the name of the great ancestor demon.” He nodded as he puffed on the stem. “There are many statues in the hills of my homeland of him dressed as a warrior, with sword raised so.” He lifted the pipe up as if it were a weapon and gave a fierce scowl. “He saved our people and drove back the enemy. These are ancient fairytales, but in my family, it is believed, for we are his bloodline. In those ancient days, demons and mortals mated, though when the demons were driven away, those of us with even a drop of demon blood were stripped of property and honor, driven to a life of hard work, and early death. Yet it was this same demon blood that awoke in me the dreaming. This Illuyan, my namesake.”

  “I have known Illuyan,” Pythia said, resting her hand on his shoulder. “He was a great ruler in the nights before the night and day had parted.”

  “Yes,” the old man nodded, grinning a smoke gust. “Before the moon held shadow, and in the days when the trees spoke of the treasures of the deep earth.”