The Oldest Living Vampire Unleashed

by Joseph Duncan

  “And if we are discovered?”

  “They would destroy us,” he said. “Out of fear. Jealousy. Or they would destroy themselves trying to possess our Living Blood. Probably both.”

  They proceeded then to the roof of the nearest building.

  He instructed Nora to watch, then went to the wall and leapt upwards, clinging to the sooty bricks with his fingertips. He grinned down at her, teeth very keen and bright in the shadows, then scampered toward the roof like some kind of lizard.

  Nora observed closely, watching how he moved his fingers over the roughly textured bricks, trying to discern the trick of it. He moved his fingers very lightly over the wall as he ascended, almost seemed to pluck at it with his fingertips, like he was playing an invisible harp. She went to the wall of the alley then and attempted to imitate him. To her delight, she clung easily to the wall. It was as if there were tiny barbs coating the surface of her fingertips.

  He looked back at her over his shoulder and arched an eyebrow.

  “It’s easy,” she said, scurrying after him.

  Several pigeon lofts stood in a group in the corner of the roof. Lord Venport went to them and crouched forward, peering through the wires at the sleeping birds. “We are predators,” he said, putting his fingers between the links. “It is in our nature to hunt and devour the blood of the living. But we are also men, and we have the souls of men. Our appetite for mortal blood can and must be employed for the betterment of mankind.”

  “By feeding on the wicked?” Nora asked. She was standing on the edge of the building, the wind blowing through her hair. So far down, yet she felt no fear!

  “It is the only way. If you feed indiscriminately, if you kill the innocent along with the wicked, the guilt will overwhelm you. You will go mad with remorse. For an ethical creature such as yourself-- a moral, sentient being-- it is inescapable. You will destroy yourself out of horror. Or you will become the very monster that popular culture portrays us to be.”

  “Like Duke Crowden?”

  Lord Venport nodded with a pained expression. He had taken one of the pigeons from its coop, was cradling it carefully against his breast, stroking the fowl’s head with a fingertip. He replaced it in its cage very delicately then, latched the door and strode to her side.

  “I did not wish to destroy him,” Venport said. “Like all men, he had his flaws, but he was not beyond redemption. Or so I believed.” He stood beside her, the tips of his boots dangling over the drop, staring pensively across the city.

  The air was heavy and smelled of rain… or perhaps it was snow. Was it cold enough to snow tonight, she wondered. She could feel the cold, but it did not seem to affect her in any way, even though she was nearly naked. She did not quake. There was no pain. She blew out, expecting a cloud of steam to blossom from her lips, but there was no cloud. Her breath, her body, was as cold as the night air. Colder perhaps.

  “Come,” Lord Venport said. “Let us find some proper vestments for you. I know of a dress shop not far from here that caters to our kind. We can speak along the way.”

  He started across the rooftop, headed northeast.

  “There are businesses here devoted to our commerce?” Nora said, leaping across an alleyway with him. She did this as fearlessly as she had climbed the building, though she stumbled a little on the landing. “Are there so many of us in London?”

  “Too many,” Lord Venport said grimly. “That is why I came.”

  He did not expound upon that. She was curious to know more but didn’t press. It was hard enough just keeping up with him!

  They crossed a few more roofs, then dropped down into another alley, disturbing a tabby at her dinner. The big cat scrambled away in a panic, knocking over a trash can with a clatter. They went the opposite direction, slipping out onto the fog-shrouded street.

  Venport continued to speak—lecture her, really—but Nora only granted this a portion of her awareness. The majority of her attention had been seized by the halos that shimmered around each of the streetlamps, the way the light played upon the water droplets suspended in the air, as if each were a tiny weightless jewel. Though the sky was piled with clouds like sodden blankets, she could see as clearly as if it were noon.

  It seemed she could hear every beating heart in the neighborhood. She could hear the snores of every mortal around her. Their conversations. Their arguments. Their lovemaking. She found she could shut them out at will, or focus her powerfully amplified senses upon a single individual.

  There, in that apartment building across the street, a heavy middle-aged man was eating pickled eggs at his kitchen table. She could not see him, but she could smell the eggs, the distinctive odor of his body, the sweat of his skin, the soap his clothes were washed in. She could hear the gnashing of his teeth, the gurgling of his stomach as his digestive fluids dissolved the masticated eggs into their nutritive elements.

  It was a wonder, her new senses. She felt like a god, omniscient, omnipresent.

  She realized they were in the Tower Ward, just south of Whitechapel. The spires of the Tower of London poked at the lowering sky, and the air smelled strongly of the River Thames, which she could just see through the fog in between the warehouses that lined the avenue. Before this night, the thought of traversing such a desolate street after dark, even with an escort, would have paralyzed her with terror. No longer. She felt powerful and strangely lusty, and the nameless figures they passed in the fog, mostly drunks and prostitutes, held no menace, even when they beckoned to her.

  In fact, she found herself drawn to them, to the unwashed smell of them, and to the low percussive music of their heartbeats. She caught herself wondering how their blood might taste, the drunken men especially, and how easy it would be to seduce one of them, tempt him into an alley or doorway with promises of sexual favors, draw him into her arms, and then…

  And then, a kiss.

  A very deep kiss…!

  Lord Venport sensed the turn of her thoughts and cautioned her.

  “One must be very careful to guard one’s thoughts when it comes to the hunger,” he said. “It is very easy to be tempted to feed from the innocent. Their blood is particularly sweet. But our laws are not much different than the laws of mortal men. To kill the innocent is murder, punishable by death. To jeopardize the secrecy of our race is also punishable by death.”

  “And who enforces these laws? Who metes out the punishments?” Nora asked.

  “I do,” Lord Venport said. “And others like me. The elders of our race.”

  “Elders?” she said, thinking he only looked thirty years old. Maybe thirty-five. “How old are you?”

  He smiled at her. “I was ancient when Sumer was in its prime. I was old when the pharaoh Khufu built his great tomb in Giza. I was made this thing that I am when men still lived in caves and worshipped storm and beast.”

  “So old?” she gasped. “Surely not!”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Of course, I do,” she said. “Why would you lie? It’s just… it’s astonishing, that’s all. To live so long!”

  “It beggars the imagination,” Lord Venport agreed.

  A carriage clattered by, the light of its lamps playing across his features. His eyes flashed red as the light passed over them, and then he looked at her almost shyly.

  “It is hard for me to believe how old I am sometimes,” he said. “Our memories, all the things we’ve seen, they become like dreams. Especially for the eldest of our race. We are reborn with each age, and the people that we were are like strangers we have met in passing, once, a very long time ago. But it is like that for mortal men and women, too, I dare say. In sleep, they die each night and are reborn in waking. No one is the same person they were yesterday, and the people we are now will be alien to the men and women we will become tomorrow. Time makes us all strangers to ourselves.”

  “But you remember it all?” Nora asked.

  “Yes. For the most part,” he said. “Our memories are the only thin
g that connect our old selves to the new, but the thread is thin, like spider silk. We live in the moment, like everyone else.”

  Nora was about to question him again—she wanted to know where they had come from, how her strange new tribe was born, or had they always existed, a secret nation of immortal blood drinkers?—but Lord Venport stopped suddenly and said, “Ah! Here we are. Madame Elektra’s Women’s Emporium.”

  It was a small brick-faced shop situated between two larger and more impressive storefronts. Unlike the businesses that bookended it, however, Madame Electra’s boutique was open for business.

  Exquisite dresses in vivid hues of maroon and turquoise and violet stood in the lighted show window. Past the display, shoppers browsed the merchandise. They were all vampyres, she realized. She could tell by the way they moved, by their lambent eyes and smooth pale skin.

  Nora looked down at her ragged clothes and was reluctant to enter. She pulled the tatters of her bodice more tightly together, felt of her hair. It was a rat’s nest, stiff with dried blood.

  “Be not ashamed, my dear,” Lord Venport said as he reached for the door handle. “The clientele here has seen far worse. I can assure you of that.”

  A silver bell tinkled above the door. He gestured for her to enter. The men and women inside—more women than men, she saw—turned to look at them. Though their eyes gleamed like jewels, their white faces bore expressions of bland disinterest, and they returned to their shopping without judgement.

  Nora realized she had been holding her breath and let it out in a little sigh.

  The boutique was small but elaborately decorated, the walls and even the ceiling fit with ornately carved wood paneling with gilded moldings. There was not a great abundance of clothing on display, but what there was was fantastically beautiful and superbly made-- and all the latest fashions, so far as she could tell. Among all that finery, Nora felt worse than a pauper.

  A saleswoman scurried over to greet them.

  “My lord, you honor us with your patronage! How may I assist you tonight?” She spoke all in a rush, wringing her hands.

  Nora saw that the woman was perfectly terrified by her savior. Why the young lady should be so afraid, she could not fathom. Lord Venport had not made any overt gesture or remark that might have been construed as threatening. In fact, he affected the most genial smile, and bowed to the saleswoman in acceptance of her greeting.

  “My lovely companion here has had a spot of trouble, I’m afraid,” he said, “and is in dire need of some new attire.”

  “Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place, m’lord,” the saleswoman gushed. “We’ll get her sorted in two shakes. This way, dearie.”

  As the saleswoman ushered Nora towards the rear, the bell above the door jangled again. Nora looked back and saw that the store had emptied the moment her master turned away from the shoppers. Indeed, they had abandoned the establishment so quickly and quietly one might wonder if they were ever there at all!

  The saleswoman didn’t express her dismay, but the skin around her eyes tightened, and her lips went thin.

  “Not everyone is as enthusiastic of our company as yourself, I dare say,” Lord Venport observed.

  “So it would appear,” the woman replied. Her voice was carefully neutral.

  “Fear not, madam. Your kind assistance will be handsomely rewarded.”

  The saleswoman searched Lord Venport’s eyes. Something in his expression must have put her at ease because the muscles in her face and shoulders softened, and when she returned her attention to Nora, her smile was more heartfelt. “Follow me, love,” she said. “Let’s get you seen to. You look a dreadful fright. Whatever in the world happened to you?”

  They proceeded to a fitting room in the back of the salon where Nora was attended by the saleswoman, the seamstress and the seamstress’s assistant, all women… and all vampyres.

  Nora studied them with quiet fascination as they buzzed around her like bees, answering their questions while positioning her limbs at their direction. Their movements were strangely coordinated, as if they were performing some complex dance for four partners—five, if you counted Lord Venport. They were all flawlessly beautiful and pale, their fangs cat-like and sharp, their eyes vivid gemstones set in polished marble. None asked her master to leave the room-- and Nora would have objected if they had, propriety be damned—not even when they directed her to disrobe.

  Nora had always been a modest woman, but modesty seemed a triviality now. Lord Venport had already seen her naked. Duke Crowden was sexually assaulting her when the young lord came to her rescue. She disrobed, stood most brazenly upon the pedestal, shamed only by her lack of hygiene.

  She accepted a damp cloth from the seamstress’s assistant and scrubbed at the filth that caked her white skin. The rag came away bloody. The mugger, she thought. Nora brought the rag to her nose and inhaled. The smell was intoxicating. All four women were momentarily distracted, eyelids fluttering like moths’ wings.

  “There, m’lady, now don’t you feel better?” the saleswoman asked, nostrils flaring at the smell of the mugger’s blood.

  Nora nodded gratefully.

  For his part, Lord Venport sat and watched the whole affair with a bemused expression, his eyes half-lidded as if he were faintly bored, but he smiled and nodded when they complimented his new ward, and offered his opinion on the outfits they selected for her when his opinion was sought. Apart from that, he kept his own council, and allowed Nora to choose the garments that pleased her, saying only that she should not worry about the price, and that she should purchase a week’s worth of outfits.

  “You will need them,” he said. “You can never again return to your uncle’s home. Your wards would perceive the changes that have been wrought upon you in an instant. Intimate relations are the first sacrifice we children of the night must make on the altar of immortality. A stranger you may fool, but not your close relations.”

  “Not even to put their minds at ease?” Nora asked, horrified. “Not even to say goodbye?”

  “If they so much as suspect what you have become, their lives will be forfeit. Many of us still remember the Interneccion, when the Church, in secret, sought to exterminate our race. Those who did not experience it personally are offspring of the survivors, or have Shared with one who survived the harrowing. There are powerful immortals in this city who will destroy anyone or anything that threatens the secrecy of our race.”

  “Could you not protect them?” Nora asked.

  “I could try, but despite my great powers I am just one man,” Venport said.

  Nora’s attendants paused during this exchange, but only for the sake of politeness. They saw the way Nora hung onto Lord Venport’s every word, her expression earnest and somewhat dazzled, and turned their faces away to smile at one another in a condescending manner, taking satisfaction in their superiority.

  Nora barely noticed their smug grins. She was too impressed by the lexicon of her new reality: Interneccion, Sharing, Living Blood… For the first time, she sensed the scope of the new world she had taken her first faltering steps onto, and wondered at its history and the mysteries that might soon be revealed to her. It was like discovering a secret library stocked to the ceiling with tomes of rare and forbidden knowledge!

  A voice issued quietly from the back of the fitting room: “He speaks, of course, of the Prime Edict.”

  Nora started at the sound of the woman’s voice. It was a sweet Contralto, like the ringing of a crystal goblet, yet for some reason it was powerfully commanding.

  Nora’s attendants came instantly to attention. They stepped aside in deference as the owner of the voice moved into the chamber.

  A woman with a waspish figure, all dressed in black, glided around the bend, entering from some unseen ingress. Her features were hidden behind a veil of black lace, and she held her arms out at her sides, elbows bent, palms forward, fingers pointing upwards, as she walked. The pose was an affectation. Nora was perceptive enough to reco
gnize it as such, but she couldn’t guess why the woman would do such a thing.

  Lord Venport rose as the strange woman passed. Her movements were silent but for the rustle of her dress “Madame Elektra,” he said with a bow.

  “Lord Venport.”

  Madame Elektra barely acknowledged her master—a flick of the fingers of her right hand—but continued on to stand beneath Nora, gazing up at her. The room grew perceptibly cooler as she drew near. Were she still alive, Nora’s flesh would have rashed into goose pimples.

  Madame Elektra examined Nora silently, her face an enigma behind the folds of her dark veil. All Nora could make of her features was an occasional flash as the woman’s luminous eyes shone through some tiny gap in the stitching of the lace. She smelled of lavender and funereal soil. Nora crossed her arms in front of her breasts.

  “Newly made,” Madame Elektra said at last, as if she were speaking to herself. “So new we can smell the amniotic fluid. How old are you, child?”

  “I’m… sixteen,” Nora stammered.

  “No, child. We do not inquire of your mortal age. We mean how long have you been dead? A day perhaps? Surely no more than a week?”

  Nora looked to Lord Venport, unsure if she should answer the woman.

  Lord Venport stepped forward. “Surely, Madame Elektra, you of all people should know it is impolite to inquire of a woman’s age.” He spoke as if in jest, but the dark clad woman was not amused.

  “A woman, perhaps, but this is no woman,” Madame Elektra replied, faintly annoyed by his impertinence. “Barely more than a child, we’d say. Did you make this one, Lord Venport? If so, you may run afoul of the Court yourself. You know the rule against giving the Blood to children.”

  “It was not I who caused this one to be made an immortal,” Lord Venport said. It was not exactly true, Nora thought, but not exactly untrue either.