The Oldest Living Vampire Tells All: Revised and Expanded (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 1)

by Joseph Duncan

  As my father's body toppled to one side, my maker halted amidst the billowing cloud of his vaporized blood. My father's body hit the ground with a meaty thud, limbs convulsing violently. Blood jetted from the ragged stump of his neck. His fingers clawed at the ground for a moment or two before drawing up and falling still. His head was nowhere to be seen. It had been struck off, sent bouncing away, probably halfway down the side of the mountain. My maker smiled viciously, enjoying the sight of my father jerking in the dust. As the blood cloud settled around his face and shoulders, he looked to us, fleeing down the mountain, his eyes narrowing, his fingers curling desirously.

  His lips peeled back from his teeth and he laughed.

  All this I saw before Tavet bolted past me, face white with superstitious fear. I saw it, and then Tavet was hooking an arm around me, dragging me toward the forest.

  I was too stunned to do anything. I was paralyzed with shock. I remember one of my boots coming off as my heels dragged across the ground.

  “Father! No!” I yelled hoarsely.

  Brulde reached the woods ahead of us, diving into the tangled underbrush. He vanished into the foliage without a backwards glance. Tavet was only a few paces behind him, still towing me along. I began to push against Tavet’s arm, trying to break free of him. To what end I do not know. I cannot tell you whether I intended to flee on my own, run to my father’s aid or attack the creature that had decapitated my father. I was not thinking rationally.

  The master vampire blurred into motion.

  I tried to cry a warning to Tavet as the fiend rushed toward us, but there was no time to form the words. There was hardly enough time to even think the words. My maker sprang on Tavet as the stocky half-breed pelted desperately down the scree. He brought my big companion down like a speartooth pouncing on a buck deer, and me along with him.

  For a moment we were cheek-to-cheek, my maker and I, and I felt the cold of him, the chill radiating from his body as though he were a being composed entirely of ice, not a thing of flesh and blood.

  And then I was thrown free.

  I went down hard on the rocky slope and rolled several feet before coming to a rest in a cloud of dust. The impact knocked the wind out of me. I gulped, trying to draw breath into my lungs, trying, and failing, to rise to my feet. I clutched at my throat in panic, thinking I was strangling.

  Tavet cried out once and then the skeletal figure began to pummel him.

  My maker’s assault was awful in its violence. Tavet's sturdy Neanderthal bones cracked like brittle sticks beneath the vampire’s storming. His blood flew in bright red splashes as the Foul One rained down one blow after another. Tavet tried to rise and buck the fiend off, but my maker clamped onto him with his knees, clinging to the man’s back like some hideous parasite. Another vicious blow drove the half-breed to his belly. Tavet tried to shield his head with his arms but his attempts at self-defense were equally ineffective. My maker straddled Tavet’s back, muscular arms rising and falling with a savage rhythm, lips curled back from his teeth in a terrible, ape-like grin of murderous joy.

  I was trying to rise, trying to get my feet beneath me. I meant to go to Tavet’s aid, throw myself upon his attacker, but I was still breathless and dizzy. I couldn’t seem to get my legs under me. Black spots were dancing in my vision. I tried to push myself up to my hands and knees and the ground tilted drunkenly to the left.

  “Get off him!” I managed to croak, and then I tipped over. Dirt in my nose. Dirt in my mouth. I managed to rise back up in time to see the monster finish him off.

  As I clambered drunkenly to my feet, my maker grabbed a bloody fistful of the half-breed's hair and wrenched the big man’s head back. The bones in Tavet’s neck gave with a muffled popping sound, much like the sound your knee makes when you rise on a chilly morning. Tavet yelped once, his limbs falling limp. My maker tilted his head back, jaw unhinging like a snake preparing to devour a hare, and then he whipped his body forward and clamped onto the Neanderthal's neck.

  The vampire’s cheeks caved in as he sucked on Tavet’s neck. I could hear him gulping greedily, and the moist smacking sounds his lips made as he fed on Tavet’s blood.

  Tavet’s eyes had fixed. Already his skin was blanching. I could tell by the way that his head was twisted around that it was hopeless. The thing on his back was feeding on a corpse.

  There was nothing I could do to help him, no recourse but escape, and pray the ancestors I got word of this to the People before it was too late. Our valley was cursed. The demon of the Fat Hands was real. There was nothing we could do now but flee. Flee from our homes and hope we eluded the beast that had slaughtered our neighbors.

  How could we resist a being that could howl loudly enough to make a man’s ears bleed, that could move faster than the eye could follow, that could strike a man’s head from his shoulders with one blow? It was impossible!

  So while the monster was occupied, I turned and shambled down the scree.

  The wilderness enfolded me. The image of my father’s head vanishing in a haze of blood played over and over in my mind. I was running so fast my feet barely touched the ground, but it did not seem fast enough. Not nearly fast enough. In my shock, it seemed I was falling through the wooded landscape rather than running. Perhaps I would continue on, skidding down the side of the world until I fell right off into the sky. And why not? The world did not make sense anymore. Why should anything be as I was accustomed to it being?

  I caught sight of Brulde further down the mountainside. The speed at which he was running might have been comical if we weren’t fleeing for our lives. His arms and legs were pinwheeling crazily. His hair was streaming out behind him. He leapt a fallen tree without even breaking stride.

  I put on a burst of speed, trying to catch up to him, but I was battered and winded, and the wound I had received from the speartooth two days before had reopened and was bleeding profusely down my hip and thigh. I clutched my side and ran raggedly on, puffing and wheezing. Any moment I expected to feel the brutal claws of the Foul One catch me by the neck.

  Brulde cut to the left and I veered that way after him. He did not look back, though he must have been able to hear me by then. Perhaps he thought me the fiend who had defeated us.

  I shouted after him once, but he did not seem to hear me, and then I only tried to keep up with him, too breathless to shout again.

  We fled. Our retreat had been purchased with the lives of my father and Tavet, but we did not have time to think about that. No time to mourn. No time for shame. We scurried like mice from the shadow of the hawk.

  I ran until I thought I couldn't run any more, and then I found one last reserve of strength and was able to press my body on just a little bit further.

  As I stumbled through the woodland, I waited for the Foul One to pounce upon me. I imagined his teeth at my throat with such vivid detail that it was like a waking nightmare. I didn't dare slow or turn to check if he was following. Either of those things, fear whispered in my ear, would be the surest way to summon the fiend.

  For some reason, the Foul One did not follow us into the woodland. Perhaps he was suspicious of a trap. There were no more of us left. We were the last two who still lived, but he did not know that. For all he knew, there could have been a hundred of us in the woods, lying in ambush for him. Perhaps, glutted on Tavet’s blood, he sought his comfort in the darkness of the Fat Hands’ cave, as sunlight is so vexing to our sensitive eyes. Perhaps he simply planned to take us later. Whatever his reasons, he did not pursue us immediately. Brulde and I had managed to make good our escape.

  I caught up to Brulde just on the other side of a low hill. We were not far from the marshy lowlands that marked the border of the Fat Hands’ hunting grounds. He had collapsed beside a muddy rill, sprawled on his back like a dead man. He raised his head and looked at me as I trudged over the hill, and though he smiled in relief, he did not call out to me. I don’t think he had the wind for it. His chest was rising and falling like a bellows,
his face flushed bright red. I’m not sure how long we’d been running, but I knew that I could not take another step. I fell onto my knees beside him, wheezing and slick with sweat.

  After a while, I cried out in anguish.

  “Oh, Brulde! That demon killed my father!”

  Brulde could only watch, chest heaving, as I grieved.

  “Father, forgive me! Your son is a coward!” Hot tears coursed down my cheeks as I rocked on my knees beside the brook. I prayed to my father, to all of my ancestors, begging their spirits for absolution. I thought my heart would burst with shame. “Coward!” I seethed, clawing at myself suddenly. I hooked my fingers and furrowed my cheeks with my nails, scourging myself, trying to draw blood. “I am a coward, Brulde! That monster killed my father and all I did was run away!”

  Brulde rose and grabbed my wrists to stop me. “No, Gon, this is not the way,” he said.

  “I want to kill that thing!” I choked.

  “Stop it, Gon! We don't have time for this. We have to warn the People before it is too late.”

  I nodded. “Yes. Yes, you're right. This valley is cursed. We have to flee south like the Fat Hands did, before that creature comes looking for us.” Brulde had risen while I talked. I allowed him to drag me to my feet.

  “It will be dark before long,” Brulde said, looking toward the west. “Can you run?”

  “Yes.”

  He started away.

  I stumbled after my tent mate, clutching my wounded hip. Brulde noticed the blood seeping down my thigh and stopped.

  “You're bleeding,” he said, dropping to a knee. “Are you injured anywhere else? How badly are you hurt?”

  “I am fine,” I said, pushing his hands away. “We can lick our wounds after we get home.”

  Brulde nodded and rose without argument. He cast a worried glance over his shoulder, toward the land of the Gray Stone People, then set his eyes forward and leaned his body into a trot.

  Clutching my hip, I stumbled after him.

  I thought that we had escaped with our lives, but the demon of the Fat Hands was not finished with us yet.

  My maker came for us shortly after nightfall.

  14

  We huddled together as we hurried home, supporting one another in our exhaustion. Although some faint light still lingered on the horizon, night had swept the world into its tenebrous embrace. And with the dark our fear grew fat. We scurried through the open land like two girls dashing to the edge of the camp to piss, clutching one another at every snapping branch. At any moment, I expected a horde of white demon things to come storming out of the darkness, eyes blazing, fanged mouths champing. We were filthy, limping and covered in dried blood. My left leg had swollen so badly I could barely move it without my head swimming at the pain. My body felt like one big sore, and I doubt that Brulde was feeling much better. He had taken a spill earlier and twisted his knee. He was limping now almost as badly as I was. I couldn’t decide if I felt worse than I looked or if I looked worse than I felt. But the pain wasn’t as bad as the fear. You might think that pain trumps fear, but it does not. I can tell you from bitter experience that pain is nothing in comparison to fear.

  Brulde still had his bow, but I had lost my weapons and armed myself with a melon-sized rock and a tree branch. I was using the branch more as a walking stick than a weapon, however. I was in bad shape. Despite my father’s unguents, an infection had set up in the wound the speartooth had given me. I was blazing hot and the surface of my skin from my ribs down to my knee had begun to throb with every heartbeat, like a bad tooth. It wasn’t good. Infection was deadly business in those days. And I was slowing Brulde down. Despite his sprained knee, he was carrying me more than I was carrying him… but I also knew he would only get angry if I suggested he leave me behind. Arguing would simply be a waste of our time and energy, and we had precious little of either commodity.

  We had one goal, a single ambition, and that was to get ourselves back to the People with enough life left in our bodies to warn them of the creatures that had destroyed our Neanderthal neighbors. Nothing else mattered. Not our injuries. Not our pain. Not our lives. We had to get back and warn them. We had to make sure our people fled the valley before the monsters came to get them.

  The stars winked down brightly as we tramped through the reeds and low brush of the river flats. We had found the river and were following its meandering course to Bubbling Waters. Which of those stars, I wondered mournfully, was the campfire of my father’s spirit? I craned my head to take in the full breadth of the heavens, but there were so many stars, and no way of telling if any of them were newly minted.

  Pessimism crooned from the dark side of my mind: You may see for yourself very soon! I ignored that jeering gore-crow. Perhaps it was right. Perhaps I would see for myself soon enough, but what good does it do to worry about the things one cannot change? It is only needless suffering piled atop the suffering we must, as mortal men, endure. Worry is just suffering we inflict upon ourselves.

  Looking to the east, I noticed some of the stars were occulted by storm clouds. I could see the dark mass of them in the light of the moon. Low. Fat. Black.

  “More rain,” I said.

  “Snow, by the feel of it,” Brulde replied. “Or ice. How much further to Bubbling Waters?”

  I looked around, checking the landmarks. “We should get back well before dawn,” I said. We had already passed Big River Camp, which was half a day’s walk from the cave of the Gray Stone People. That was three-fourths of the journey. Not much further to go.

  “Before the storm?” Brulde asked.

  I shook my head. It might come. It might turn. Who could say? Such things were nuhnhe.

  “The Fat Hands were right,” Brulde said dolefully. “This valley is cursed now. I feel it in my heart. I never believed in evil spirits before but I don’t know what else you could call a thing like that.”

  His breath came out in puffs of vapor as he spoke. His teeth were chattering. The temperature had dropped considerably as the winter storm pushed in from the east. Brulde was right. It would be snow tonight. The air had that heaviness that promised icy precipitation. After a long and pleasant autumn, the season of cold was poised to pounce.

  I turned my attention from the heavens to look at my tent mate. His solemn eyes probed mine in the gloom. He was waiting for me to speak.

  “I don’t know if that thing was a man or a demon,” I said, “but it was like nothing I have ever seen. The speed of it was terrifying. And it’s voice. I thought my ears would rupture. And it was so cold. Its skin brushed mine when it tackled Tavet and it was like the wind that comes down from the glaciers. It was the kind of cold that’s sinks into your bones. But we killed the little one. We know that they can die. Perhaps we can kill the big one as well. Perhaps, if there are enough of us…”

  Brulde was unconvinced. “I do not think it was a living man,” he said. “I believe it was some kind of evil spirit, like the Fat Hands always talked about. Or perhaps it was one of their gods. Perhaps they offended one of their gods and he decided to sort them out. If it was a god, I hope we did not anger it.”

  I shrugged. “There is nothing we can do about it now. Poi-lot said neither offerings nor rituals had any effect on the creature. If it is one of their gods it will do as it pleases, whether that be kindness or cruelty. What are we to gods?”

  “Fleas on its back,” Brulde answered. “Or so the Fat Hands believed.”

  Fleas or food, I thought.

  And then I wondered, Are we the food of the gods? Is that what we are? And if that is all we are, do they take nourishment from our worship, or is it our suffering they crave?

  I shivered, and not just from the cold.

  The atmosphere was growing heavier by the moment, though with precipitation or menace I could not tell which. When we paused to rest about midways between Big River Camp and Bubbling waters, the first fine snowflakes began to drift gently earthward. I squinted to the heavens when I saw them, cling
ing to my walking stick as if it were a lifeline. The sky was a sodden and lightless plain, given the illusion of movement by the shifting shadow-patterns of the falling snow. The sight made me dizzy, or perhaps it was the infection. I was cooking with fever. My head thumped in rhythm with the pain in my hip, a drumbeat of misery.

  The riverbank was pitch dark and eerie in its silence. I could hear the watercourse burbling quietly nearby, but there were no other natural sounds, no hoots or cheeps or howls in the forest. A hush had fallen over the world. There was just the wind, sighing through the leafless branches of the trees, and the low chuckling of the water.

  “Our people will not want to leave the valley,” Brulde said. His voice seemed too loud in the stillness, and I winced at the sound of it.

  “Then we will have to convince them,” I said. “We cannot stay here. Not with that thing running loose. And what if there are more of them? What if the two we fought were not the only ones? Who is to say there are not three, or four, or a hundred?”

  “It will be hard on the children and elders, travelling at this time of year. Many will starve if we flee in the winter.”

  “What other choice do we have?” I asked. “If we stay, we risk the depredations of the demon-men who destroyed the Fat Hands. If we flee, we risk foul weather and starvation. I think I would rather take my chances with the weather.”

  A sudden gale of wind howled through the treetops, making their branches clatter together with a sound like bones rattling in a soothsayer’s cup. My subconscious shot up a red flare of alarm as the wind whistled and the snow swirled around us but I did not know the basis for my sudden anxiety. I could not tell where the fear was coming from. It was just the wind.