For beings such as myself—a true immortal vampire—there is no respite from that agony. I see their faces when I sleep. I wake up reaching to stroke their cheeks, only to realize, with horror, how long they have been lost to me… how very far away.
Dust… Only dust…
You think vampires feed on blood?
No, we are whitened creatures that choke on bitter dust.
Better by far to live and love and die, than chew on dust for thirty thousand years!
And we lived! Oh, how we lived! Before the darkness came to our fertile little valley in the Alps, we lived so hot and fast. Our people were a peaceful and un-superstitious folk. We had no religion other than a basic reverence for our ancestors, whose spirits, we believed, watched over us from the heavens. The stars, we thought, were their campfires in the spirit realm overhead, but though we sometimes appealed to them for good luck in hunting, or invoked their names in our fertility rituals, we did not worship them directly. As such, we had no silly made up concepts like sin. Sin, for us, was foolishness, careless acts that endangered our tribe or our loved ones. And our women were our equals, not chattel, to be bred and imprisoned and beaten when they disobeyed.
We revered our ancestors, and we celebrated our sexuality as the wellspring of our people’s continuation. We did not twist pleasure into shame to control one another through guilt and fear of ridicule. We did not make up ridiculous fables like our Neanderthal neighbors did to explain the motions of the moon and sun and the changing of the seasons. Things we did not understand were Nunhe, which meant, “who can know?” Blood sacrifice and genital mutilation were unheard of in our culture. We would have been shocked and horrified to even hear of such a thing.
Group families were a common thing in our society. They normally consisted of at least two men and two or three women, but were often larger, with as many children as the household could produce. It was easier to provide for a family in those savages days with a male partner at your side, and the burden of child-rearing was eased by the same token for our wives.
Of course, disease and predation were common, so to ensure the continuation of our people, we needed to make as many babies as we could, so sexuality was very open in our society.
I think our sexual practices would probably scandalize you modern people, with your tyrannical, pleasure-hating desert god and your unnatural embarrassment of your genitals. I think you would be outraged by the things we did in those primitive times. Our tribe held ritual orgies. Bisexuality and group couplings were common. When a guest slept in your wetus, it was our practice to comfort him with one of our wives, or to comfort his wives ourselves if he brought them with him.
I suppose it was a necessary adaptation in an untamed natural world, one stalked by great sabre-toothed cats, five hundred kilogram cave bears and raptors with wingspans the length of two men standing. I remember fending off wolves in the winter months with my fellow tribesmen, and had a fear of the dark because one of my brothers was snatched in the night by a beast when I was a child. I remember his little hand reaching out to me as he was pulled into the darkness, how wide and frightened his eyes were, and I never let my children sleep near the edge of the tent because of that. I always kept them between me and the fire, as close to my arms as I could keep those wiggling little whelps!
Men and women were ancient by the time they were fifty, and the world ate our young like an insatiable beast, but we lived free of shame and inhibition. We lived in a way I don’t think you modern humans can ever comprehend.
What of my lovers?
Brulde was my companion, my tent mate, my husband. He was a quiet, cautious man, steadfast and thoughtful. Perhaps you think it strange that I should call a man my husband, especially in these times when such a thought is so controversial, but I assure you, it was a common thing in ages past, a thing, even, to be desired: to have a loyal companion to hunt with, to fight at your side, especially one as brave and true as Brulde. Not a thing to be mocked or condemned.
A male partner was a good thing to have when there were six children and two wives at home to feed, when you had to shit in the wilderness, when you twisted your ankle far afield, or your wives were too tired to fuck.
And my wives… how I cherished them! My beloved female mates! In terms of beauty and kindness, Brulde and I were truly blessed, for our wives were both those things abundantly.
Eyya was our first wife, a dark-haired Neanderthal woman who hailed from a neighboring tribe. A gentle woman with an easy smile, that was my Eyya. Plump and smooth skinned, with wide curving hips. She was a woman made for ease, nights of slow lovemaking. How persistently we wooed her! It makes me chuckle to think of it.
Though the men of our village teased us for wedding a “Fat Hand”, Eyya was a great prize to both of us. I can shut my eyes now and picture her large, dark, dreamy eyes, her sweet, full lips, how she braided her hair with shells and feathers and painted her skin with gold ochre until she gleamed in the sunlight, an ethereal creature, a golden goddess.
She was joined later by Nyala, who was fair like Brulde, with long curling blonde hair and freckled cheeks-- a little young to be married, our Nyala, and tempestuous in her youth, but she was good with the children and kept Brulde and I in line.
Nyala was quite different from Eyya. Thin and lanky in form, demanding and bossy in spirit, but a sly and resourceful female, a fine woman to have when it came to bartering for goods or spanking our brats for their foolishness. Her appetite for our cocks, when we curled in our furs for the night, seemed almost insatiable. She kept us informed of all our neighbors’ comings and goings, too.
Sometimes I think she was the strongest of us all. Though I always favored Eyya for her gentleness and dark beauty, I loved Nyala no less for it.
Don’t be jealous, Nyala. I’ve cried a million black tears for you-- not one tear less, I swear to you, than I’ve cried for any of the rest. My bossy beauty. My fiery love.
If there was indeed a Devil, I would sell my soul a thousand times over to have you lash me with your tongue once more. To see you stomp your foot at my forgetfulness, your hands on your hips. To feel your body glide, hot and tight, upon the spire that your beauty has erected in my loins.
We were a happy clan, the four of us, with all our fussing babies.
But then the shadow came, the Foul One, the terrible Blood Drinker who stole me away.
His shadow fell upon our valley like the night falls, fast and cold over the jagged mountains. He came as the seasons changed from autumn to winter, as the leaves turned orange and brown and drifted to the earth, dying at the verge of winter.
As my body was soon to die.
The monster who made me into this thing that I am… I never knew his name. His origin was a mystery to me, his age unknown. He made me this thing, this terrible undying white thing, and then I killed him.
I can tell you only what he looked like, and that, to me, a living man, he was hideous, a revolting ogre. Cold, white and powerful, with teeth sharpened in the manner of the man-eating tribes who lived in the cold wastes to the North, his body was gaunt and wizened, his eyes always wide, as if he only thought of terrible, violent things. He painted his face with black pigment so that it looked like a leering skull, and his irises gleamed in the dark like coals. A wild thing, a demon, he adorned his body in the bones of his victims, and when he leapt, a cloak of animal furs spread out from his shoulders, making him appear to be a great bird of prey.
He was not a true immortal like me, but to me, a living man, he was a god. A god of death. A god of depravity. A god of corruption and rot.
Thirty millennia is not enough time to cool the flames of my hatred for him.
My maker roosted in the mountains that overlooked our valley like some dread vulture and commenced to devour the people of our neighboring tribe, the Neanderthals from which my wife Eyya descended. When our hunters spotted the last of Eyya’s people fleeing from their blighted mountain home, we sent a party to ask them why
they were leaving, after sharing the valley and river with us in peace for so many generations. The fleeing Neanderthals warned us of the terrible demon who stole their people by night. Our valley, they said, had been cursed, and we would be wise to flee it as well.
Well, they were a superstitious bunch! we kidded ourselves. The Fat Hands believed the moon and the sun were gods who chased one another across the sky. They worshipped cave bears. They saw spirits in the shadows at the back of their cave. The world, to them, was a haunted place, full of ghosts and monsters and evil spirits. We were certain our neighbors were being hectored by raiders from some other tribe, perhaps the Foul Ones from the North, who liked to dress up in the bones of the men and women they ate. Those silly Neanderthals could spy a lump of mammoth dung and imagine in it a terrible demon.
Nevertheless, we sent a scouting party to their mountaintop home to investigate their claims. Eleven men set out that morning for the land of the Gray Stone People, which is what we called the Neanderthals. There was myself and Brulde, my father Gan and his older cousin Kort-lenthe. There was Tavet, who was a hulking bear of a man, half-Neanderthal like the young ones Eyya bore for me. There was young Strom, beardless still but strong and brave, and his tent mate Hyde, who sported a thick shock of kinky black hair and a big, bushy beard, unusually full for one so young. There came also the three young brothers: Halde, Tetch and Git... and bringing up the rear: fat, clumsy Bukhult. Of the eleven who ascended the mount, only two of us returned. Brulde, and my father’s cousin Kort-lenthe.
My father was murdered by my savage maker, his head struck from his shoulders by the god-like being. The rest, except Bukhult, who died on the way, were hunted for sport the previous night. Kort-lenthe was the only one who escaped unscathed. My Brulde was nearly crippled, and I… I was taken captive.
My maker took me because I was the one who killed his foul pet.
There were two of them, you see, a master and a slave. When we approached the abandoned warren of the Gray Stone People, the little vampire attacked us first. He was small and fast, with the mannerisms of a lizard, and though he was the weaker of the two, he fell beneath my blade only after evading the simultaneous attacks of our four remaining warriors. He dodged bow and spear as he shot from the dark cave toward me, and in a fleeting moment of distraction, I plunged my knife into his heart.
I suppose my maker thought to press me into servitude, to enslave me as he had enslaved the little creature I’d destroyed. He was a powerful vampire, my maker, but not terribly clever. He was overconfident and cruel. He underestimated my stubbornness, and my desire to return to the family I so loved.
He threw me down into a charnel pit, a cavern full of dead Neanderthals, and that is where he made me into this thing that I am.
Do you know what it’s like to be made an immortal?
First, I suppose, I should tell you how it’s done.
There is a thing inside every vampire, something black and insatiable. It is an entity that dwells in us all, a foul blight threaded through every vein, coiled in every organ. It is a living creature, but mindless. Formless, it knows only hunger. None of us know from whence it came, only that it is unlike any other living creature that crawls or flies or swims upon this earth. It is amorphous and foul, black as pitch. I have seen it come out of a Blood Drinker like a tide of horrid worms, and once watched in mute horror as it poured forth from the jaws of an ancient fiend and spread out in the air like the wings of a bat—which may be how that particular myth was founded.
Over the millennia, I have heard it called many things: the Demon, the Hungry Spirit, the Venom. Ancient Greek vampires called it the Strix. I refer to it most often as the Living Blood, or the Hunger. I’ve also heard it called the Striges, the Strigoi, and the Ebu Potashu, which means “black blood”.
When we are hurt, it knits us back together again. When we go without feeding, it compels us to hunt. It transforms our flesh into gleaming white stone, enhances our mind, and quickens our senses. It amplifies our strength to the strength of a titan. It makes us into perfect predators, our speed inhuman, our pheromones irresistible. It preserves us. Protects us. Yet, ultimately, it enslaves.
When we go to make another of us, we put our lips over theirs and the Hungry Spirit comes up out of us, it comes up and a part of it goes into the other.
The taste as it slides down your throat is the foulest taste you can ever imagine. You feel it wriggle inside your mouth, squirm its way down your throat. You feel it wiggle down into your guts, and then the pain and the cold threads out through your limbs. You feel it moving through your arms. Worming its way down your legs. You thrash and scream as it knits itself through your entire being.
It pierces your heart. It sinks hooks in your brain. Pain! So much pain! You pray for death as its grip on you tightens. Make it stop! Oh, please, make it stop! And then, when it has filled you, when it has joined with every mote and molecule in your body, you feel the coldness spreading, and you hold your hand up before your eyes and see your warm, soft flesh begin to blanch. You see your flesh turn to stone, your nails turn to glass. The bones of your face suddenly crack and pop as your eyeteeth elongate into wolf-like fangs. The light stings your eyes, flashing like a bolt of lightning, as the transformation moves upwards into your skull. You feel your brain throb, and your thoughts begin to fly. Faster. Faster. You see… everything. You smell… everything. Every inch of the surface of your body becomes a thrumming organ of sensation. No! It’s too much! And then…
And then the darkness. Your brain overloaded, you slump into unconsciousness. A stupor, like death. You lie there, inert, as the Strix finishes its work. As it perfects you. As it removes you from time.
You awaken transformed.
A demon. A fiend.
You awaken, a predator.
When my maker descended into the charnel pit to make me his slave, he wrestled me to the ground, pried open my mouth, and vomited the Living Blood into my maw. He thought to make me his slave, but there was one thing he didn’t know. He didn’t know that, sometimes, very rarely, the black blood creates a whitened god.
I was remade into a being of enormous power. A true immortal. Drive a blade through my heart and I pluck it out like a thorn. Cut off my head, and I will bend to place it back on my neck. I have tried countless methods to destroy this body throughout the millennia, and each time I have failed. My flesh doesn’t burn. Corrosives drip right off me. I have thrown myself from great heights, shattering at the bottom like china, only to find the slivers drawn back together. I cannot drown. I do not become sick. I am an immortal, and my master, who was an imperfect Blood Drinker, met his fate at my hands.
I thought to return to my family when I was free, but my blood-thirst was new and fresh and ravening. The first member of my tribe who crossed my path died to slake my thirst. Horrified, I stayed at a distance after that. I watched my people from afar. I watched helplessly as Brulde and Eyya and Nyala aged, as my children grew up and took families of their own, and when they had all passed away, my children, my grandchildren, and their grandchildren’s children, when the earth grew cold and the glaciers began once more to creep over the mountains into my valley home, I went to the ice to kill myself.
Loneliness had driven me insane. All I longed for was death. I flew to the glacier that was devouring my valley and stood upon the great shelf of ice. The wind blew through my hair as I stood there, looking out across the world, and I thought: I don’t want this life anymore. This cold empty life. I am done with it. Everyone I have ever loved is dust. My tribe has abandoned this place. The cold is come over all, and I am finished. And thinking that, I found a deep and jagged crevasse in the creeping white leviathan and I threw myself inside.
I thought, Surely this will end me, this crawling continent of ice. And when the great shelves cracked and crushed me flat between them, and I saw my black blood burst out before my eyes, I thought: Finally!
But it was not the end of me.
It was just t
he beginning.
I awakened, seven thousand years later.
Tundra
23,000 Years Ago
Earth Spirit Man
1
I did not know how long I’d drifted in the slow ice when I first awoke. There were no thoughts in that great tomb of white, no sense of time, no sense of self. I’d floated within the cold’s embrace, insensate, as the glacier fileted the flesh from my bones and then ground those bones to slivers. For all intents and purposes, I was unmade, and it was a glorious release. Sweet oblivion. I can only imagine the damage it did to my body as the white juggernaut flowed, so slow and relentless, its snowy fingers clawing further and further south across the lands of Europe. I had no sense of myself, and if I had dreams, they did not follow me from the dark when I was reborn.
For seven thousand years, I slept in that womb of ice. I lay there, an insect trapped in white amber, as the world spun on, as the Earth chilled, as all the familiar flora and fauna I shared the world with when I was a living man shivered and passed away, and new orders of life flourished and filled the vacancies left behind by all those extinct creatures. When at last the Earth began to warm, and I was delivered like a baby into this new world, cast out by the retreating glacial floe like a half-formed fetus, I was, like a premature child, helpless and without memory, a new thing myself, and savage for that newness.
The first thing I remember is the smell of blood.
Of course.
I could not see. I could not feel. I could only smell, and I smelled blood.
My mind was like a dark and echoing cave, an empty gourd. Crushed flat a million times and repaired imperfectly by the living blood which animates my kind, my mind was a blank slate, a tabula rasa, upon which the demon within me scribbled its urgent and ghastly needs.
Must feed! Need blood!
Awaken! Awaken!
The Oldest Living Vampire on the Prowl (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 2) Page 3
