Apollonius (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga)

by Joseph Duncan

  Julia plucked a small sponge from the box and began to apply the cosmetics to her face. “Like this?” she asked, and the magician nodded. Apollonius could not tear his eyes from her. His master, seeing the stars in the boy’s eyes, could certainly understood. It was how he gazed at his soul mate Zenzele. Her every movement was a wonder, her merest utterance a revelation.

  “There is another matter we should discuss,” the magician said after a few minutes. The youngsters looked at him, curious, and he told them of the warning he’d received from the blood drinkers of Baiae.

  “And you believe in this oracle?” Julia asked. “This immortal named Murcella?”

  “I have personally witnessed her prophecies come true,” the magician said, pacing the room, “often enough to give her warning serious consideration.”

  “But it is so vague!”

  “Yes, she could not discern a specific date, or even a general one, but that is to be expected. You will find, dear Julia, that our kind tend to be very careless of time. Time becomes an abstraction when senility and death are not breathing down your neck. Murcella’s prophecy will very likely come to pass, but it may be years, even decades, before the calamity she’s foreseen occurs.” He fixed them both with his eyes, the girl first, and then Apollonius. “Or it could be tomorrow,” he said.

  “So you want to join them in Rome?” Apollonius asked. In his passion for Julia, he had forgotten all about the striga of Baiae, but he was reminded now, and still curious of their brethren.

  “I don’t believe my father could be convinced to go to Rome,” Julia said worriedly. “Rome is too full of ghosts for my father. My mother’s shade is what chased him here to Pompeii.” She looked pleadingly at Apollonius. “I won’t leave him!”

  “I cannot return to Rome. I am a wanted man. Or, I should say, Gaius Vestallis is a wanted man. My rampage in the Villa Claudianis will not soon be forgotten, and my appearance is too distinctive to go unnoticed, even in the eternal city. We can conceal the color of our flesh but not the shape of our face. Or our hair. Cut it off and it regrows in moments.” He stroked his whiskers thoughtfully. “A holiday perhaps? To celebrate your union?”

  Julia nodded eagerly. “I might be able to convince him of that.”

  “The only problem is, we don’t know the timing of this disaster. We might tour for years and come back the very day it happens.”

  All three sighed, almost as one, and then shared a chuckle. Whatever tension was left between them melted in that moment, and they all felt the yoke of familial affection settle comfortably upon them. “I suppose we can worry about it tomorrow,” the magician said. “You should go and see your father, my dear. He’s been worried sick about you.”

  Julia put her sponge down. “How do I look?”

  “Alive,” the magician teased, but he looked worried.

  The youngsters departed and the magician returned to his scrolls. He read, and pretended he did not hear the row taking place next door.

  Varus flew into a rage at his daughter’s return. All the strain from three days worth of fretting exploded out of him in a torrent of angry recriminations. The magician might have been concerned for their safety if the young lovers were still mortal—Cornelius was that angry—but there was nothing the retired senator could do to physically harm the two. Not even Julia, who was a minor striga at best.

  Apparently the shouting was loud enough for the rest of the household to hear, even without a blood drinker’s amplified senses. Fulvius appeared in the magician’s doorway, his wizened features drawn with concern. “Germanis?” he croaked. He stood trembling in his nightgown, one hand at his collar.

  “Return to bed, my friend,” the master of the house said. “The children are safe. Cornelius could no more harm them than I could. He is furious, and rightly so, but he deserves to have his say.”

  The old man nodded and withdrew from the doorway.

  The magician returned to his scroll—“Brutus” by Gaius Cassius Parmensis-- only looking up once, with a wince, when Cornelius called his daughter a whore. But that was the climax of the confrontation. Julia ran away in tears, Apollonius at her heels, and her father got roaring drunk and threw pottery at the walls the rest of the evening.

  He will come to smooth things over tomorrow evening, the magician thought, and he was right.

  The two young lovers returned shortly before dawn, hand-in-hand, heads hanging. The magician was sitting in the big courtyard, enjoying the chorus of the crickets and the relatively cool breeze that was drifting in from the bay. It might smell of the fish sauce factory down by the harbor, but its chill was a welcome respite from the constricting heat of recent weeks. Tendrils of fog, thin and buoyant as spider silk, drifted in the air about head-height. The moon, nearly full, made the thin mist luminesce.

  The magician rose when he heard the tread of their feet and opened the door for them. Enuk was snoring in his quarters. No need to wake him.

  “Father,” Apollonius greeted him, misery incised into his features.

  Julia did not look up until Gon hooked a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face. Her cheeks were smeared with tarry black tears, her makeup streaked. She looked like a grotesque clown—and yet, still beautiful.

  “Dry your eyes, my dear,” the magician said. “Your father will come and patch things up soon enough. He did not mean the things he said tonight. Men like Cornelius do not know how to deal with fear-- they feel it so rarely-- so instead they get angry.”

  “Do you truly think so?” the girl asked. “He’s never spoken so roughly to me.”

  Gon smiled. “You’ve never run away with a boy before.”

  He was just grateful the man had finished cursing and breaking crockery. Cornelius had passed out drunk about an hour ago, and his servants had put him to bed. He had called for Julia as they tucked him into his covers, his speech slurred by wine and grief. “Where is Julia?” he had moaned. “She needs to come home!”

  The magician’s servants had prepared a spare bed for her, but she insisted on sleeping with Apollonius. “We are man and wife now,” she said firmly. “We exchanged our vows on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.”

  “I have no objection to that,” the magician said, “though I expect your father will insist on a more formal ceremony when he comes around.”

  And he was right on that point, too.

  Cornelius came the following evening, contrite and (thankfully) nearly sober. He apologized for his bad behavior and the hurtful things he had said to Julia the previous night. Julia wept in his arms and apologized for being willful and inconsiderate. Varus told her that he had no objections to their marriage, only let him arrange a formal ceremony, make their nuptials official. And, of course, they needed to draw up a formal marriage contract. “Why, you still have all your childhood toys!” the man cried. “You need to take them to the Temple of Venus and make your offering to the goddess. I know you don’t believe in the gods, but it is a tradition! Your mother did it when we were betrothed. Do it in her memory, if not for my sake.”

  Julie agreed to it all, relieved her father had forgiven her so quickly.

  “In truth, I can’t imagine a better arrangement,” the man said, eyes bright with excitement. “My daughter married to a handsome and wealthy young man, a father-in-law I can get drunk with when the mood strikes my fancy, and my beloved daughter living right next door! Toss a couple plump grandbabies into the mix and I can die a happy man!”

  The following afternoon… disaster.

  Vesuvius

  It happened shortly after noon, 24 Augustus, in the year 832 Ab Urbe Condita.

  There was first a mighty explosion, a great thunderclap that could be heard as far away as Rome, as the earth gave vent to the inconceivable pressures that had been building for hundred of years beneath the surface of the volcano. The kinetic energy of the explosion rolled across Pompeii like a vast invisible boulder, knocking people off their feet, shattering glass and causing the walls of the buildings
to tremble.

  Cornelius Varus was in his home when the mountain first erupted. He was consulting a wedding planner, a man named Aulus Rutilius. Both men cried out as the wave of sound crashed upon the villa like a tsunami, clapping their hands over their ears. Cornelius’s slave, Cirio, was pouring wine and dropped the pitcher he was holding, which shattered on the floor and splashed their feet with the sticky, honey-sweetened liquid.

  Next door, in the Villa Eyya, the magician leapt from his bed, baring his fangs instinctively. The explosion for the blood drinker, with his amplified senses, was a hundred times more painful than it was for the mortal citizens of Pompeii. It felt as if someone had impaled his skull with a blunt iron rod. He spun around in the dark chamber, searching for an attacker in his confusion, fingers curled into claws. In the adjoining room, his young wards, Apollonius and Julia, woke with matching cries of anguish, clutching one another in the dark.

  Screams from the servants in the villa, and, more faintly, from the pedestrians outside.

  The magician rushed into the corridor, wincing in the light. An instant later, Apollonius and Julia spilled into the hallway, crying out in pain.

  “What was that?” Apollonius hissed, forearm covering his eyes.

  “Return to your chambers,” the magician said. “I will go and see what it was!”

  “Dominus!” Fulvius cried, stumbling up the hallway. “The mountain!”

  “Vesuvius?” Julia said.

  The old man nodded, the wattles of his neck jiggling. “The mountain is on fire!”

  The ground shuddered, a minor quake. The old major domus tottered into a wall and almost fell. Dust drifted down from the rafters.

  “Stay here,” Gon said. “Find something sturdy to hide beneath. Tell the rest of the servants to do the same.”

  The magician started toward the courtyard, Murcella’s prophecy echoing in his thoughts. She says that the ground will tremble as of a great beast rising from its slumber... The explosion of sound and the trembling of the earth could only be the disaster she had envisioned! They should have fled Pompeii the moment the children returned.

  Ears still ringing from the thunderclap, the magician raced down the corridor, caroming into a wall as the ground lifted and fell beneath his feet.

  “Father!” Apollonius cried behind him. He and his bride had followed, were knocked to their hands and knees by the jolt.

  “I told you to go to your room,” the magician snapped.

  “We want to see,” Julia objected.

  He continued on with a snarl. No use arguing with the headstrong girl. He crossed the terrace, stepped out into the courtyard, and froze in disbelief. Mount Vesuvius, her peak just visible over the red tiled roof of the terrace, had sprouted a vast column of churning gray smoke. It did indeed look as if the mountain had caught fire, only there were no flames. None that he could discern.

  The magician’s eyes wept in the sunlight. He swabbed them from his cheeks with the back of his arm. It was only then that he realized, his pale flesh tightening in the noonday heat, that he was standing in the middle of the courtyard naked.

  Enuk, the porter, was standing on the other side of the courtyard, staring up at the heavens. He turned to look at his employer and seemed just as surprised by his master’s nakedness as he was the smoking mountain. The white, ossified flesh of the striga glinted in the sunlight.

  “Clothes,” Gon called to the Nubian. “Get me some clothes!”

  The giant porter raced toward the main house.

  “This is the disaster you spoke of last night, isn’t it?” Julia said. “The one the sybil predicted.”

  The magician nodded. “I’m fairly certain it is.”

  “What do we do?” Apollonius asked. “Do we abandon the city? Do we flee, or is it too late already?”

  “I do not know,” the magician said. He glanced around, making sure there were no mortal witnesses, then leapt to the roof of the terrace. Apollonius would have laughed at his maker, crouching there naked on the roof, his bulbous parts swinging in the breeze, if he were not half blind and in pain. If the world were not ending.

  The magician rose. Shading his eyes with his hand, he stood on the tips of his toes to get a better view. Five miles away, the roiling column of smoke continued to rise into the firmament, thick and gray. It was beginning to fan out at the top, dispersed by the wind. It’s shadow angled down the eastern slope of Vesuvius, casting the foothills in darkness.

  Enuk rushed from the villa with his employer’s robes. He looked around in confusion, then realized his master was on the roof.

  Gon pivoted to return to the ground. He saw that the porter had returned with his garments so he descended as a mortal man would do, scooting clumsily over the edge of the roof, legs dangling, then dropping in a sprawl.

  “Dominus,” Enuk said, approaching with his garments. “I—I mean, Germanis.”

  “Thank you, Enuk,” the magician said. As he clothed himself, several servants ventured into the courtyard. They cried out in horror, pointing at the mountain. Herminia, ladle in hand, shrieked.

  “It is not a fire on the mountain,” the magician said to Apollonius and his new bride. “I believe it is a volcanic eruption. Like Mount Aetna, in Sicily.”

  “Vesuvius is a volcano?” Julia cried, aghast.

  “Yes, and it is erupting.”

  Again, Apollonius asked, “What do we do?”

  Lowering his voice, the magician said, “It is not we three I am worried about. Save a flow of molten rock, the volcano poses little danger to us, and we could outrun that, too, if need be. My concern is for Julia’s father, and all our mortal servants. We must evacuate them from the city.”

  Cornelius let himself into the peristyle then, his face red and glistening with sweat. “Julia!” he yelled. “Are you unhurt?”

  Julia raced to her father and embraced him. “I am fine, but Germanis thinks we should abandon Pompeii. He says Vesuvius is a volcano, like Mount Aetna.”

  “A volcano?” Cornelius said with a scowl. He squinted toward the north. “It is just a fire on the mountainside… Isn’t it?”

  “I do not think so,” the magician said.

  “A volcano, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we won’t be escaping by Nola Gate,” the retired senator said. “The people have gone mad with fear. They have rushed the Nola. It is completely blocked. All the rest as well, I’d wager. There are people being trampled. Women. Children. It is a terrific sight.”

  The magician sighed, gazing down at his feet. “We will not be leaving by the gates,” he said.

  Apollonius and Julia gaped at him, realizing what he meant to do.

  The magician raised his head, looking at his neighbor. He opened his mouth to speak, and that is when a shadow passed across them.

  They looked up as one, and watched in horror and fascination as the first thin billows of ash and dust from the spewing volcano drifted across the sky overhead. The day dimmed as if a storm cloud were passing in front of the sun. A moment later, flakes of ash drifted down like snow. A large flake of ash settled on the senator’s cheekbone and he wiped it away, leaving a smear of black on his sweaty face.

  “What is this?” he demanded. He still had not accepted the reality of what was happening.

  “Ash,” Julia said. She shook her head, brushing out the soot that was accumulating rapidly in her hair.

  “It is falling more and more thickly,” Apollonius said.

  As the wind carried more of the volcano’s ejecta over the city of Pompeii, the haze of ash in the sky thickened. Within minutes, the cloud of ash grew opaque, then darker still. The sun faded from a blazing disk to a faintly glowing coin and then vanished altogether. A tremulous half-dusk fell over the city of Pompeii, though here and there a beam of light would stab down from the heavens, as the vagaries of the wind opened momentary tatters in the cloud cover. The churning veil flickered faintly as bolts of static electricity leapt like silver fish upon
its waves. It was a darkly beautiful sight, awesome and frightening.

  Enuk cried out as something struck him in the shoulder. He squatted and picked up a small gray pebble, held it out for them to see.

  And she saw a storm of stones…

  “Inside!” the magician yelled. Waving his arms, he herded them all toward the terrace. As another stone fell from the sky, splashing in one of the fountains, and then another, and another, he cried, “Inside! Inside! Everyone inside!”

  Stones rattled on the tiled roof of the terrace with an ever-quickening tempo. Stones thumped and popped in the courtyard. The peacocks yowled and flapped their wings indignantly before seeking cover with their human counterparts. More screams drifted from the streets outside, while the servants babbled and sobbed and spoke of the wrath of the gods.

  “The gods are not punishing us!” the magician said sternly. “This is a natural phenomenon. Vesuvius has erupted, and her ash has mixed with the moist air of the sea.” That seemed to him to be the most logical explanation, though he had never seen it rain stones—not even he, who was old before Babylon was born.

  Already, the grounds had vanished beneath a layer of small, gray pebbles. The stones were lighter than water. They floated in the fountains and in the garden’s shallow pool.

  “They are like sponges,” Julia said. She had bent to pick up one of the stones. She turned it in her hand as everyone peered at it over her shoulder, then crumbled it between her fingers. She brushed the fine dust from her palms.

  A minor quake shuddered through the earth and everyone cried out.

  “Cornelius, perhaps it would be best if you brought your servants over here,” the magician said. “We should gather under one roof. There is safety in numbers.”

  The senator nodded, looking distractedly out at the courtyard. The day was growing ever murkier. It was full dark now. A dark that smelled of ash and sulphur.