Growling in frustration, my captor jerked the animal to his mouth. He gashed the creature’s throat with his own fangs and then pressed the spurting wound back to my lips. “Now!” he snarled. “Now refuse, you stubborn worm!”
The animal’s blood sprayed into my face. It pulsated across my lips and cheeks in hot little rivulets. The poor thing had soiled itself. It quivered against my face. The smell of its blood finally broke my self-control. Cursing myself, I opened my jaws and allowed the briny red fluid to trickle into my mouth.
Orgasmic pleasure exploded through my body at the taste of the creature’s blood. I had never felt such bliss. It was like lightning bolts flashing inside my brain. Every cell in my body seemed to let out a collective squeal of delight.
Yes, finally! That is what I wanted!
Every vampire’s first taste of blood is like that—overwhelming pleasure, ecstasy to put all previous acts of sex to shame. The hot liquid slid down my throat and it was like I had never known satisfaction, like I had been thirsty all of my life and had just then, after dusty decades of dry cravings, been given to drink.
I seized the little beast in my hands. My maker released it to me, grinning shrewdly, and I pressed it to my lips, sucking greedily at the wound in its neck. The monkey shuddered, eyes growing dull as I drained the blood from its body. Its human-like hand fell limply to my forehead. Its entire body went lax as though it were embracing me as its small heart pumped once, then twice more, then went still in its furry chest. Its head lolled forward, eyes fixed. Still hungry, I squeezed out the last few drops of its lifeblood, crushing some of its bones. My maker laughed at the muffled crunching sounds. I looked up at him, forgetting my hatred for a moment, wanting more.
“Ah-ha! Such a greedy little piglet!” he cooed. “And still you hunger!”
He offered me the other monkey he’d brought. I threw the lifeless carcass of the first aside and killed the second one myself, panting in my eagerness. I did what I saw my maker do. I brought the side of its neck to my mouth and gashed its flesh with my fangs, opening the arteries there. I gulped the blood that came spurting out, enjoying the moist heat of it on my lips and tongue. I lost my mind in the pleasure of feeding, sucking and gulping, sucking and gulping.
“Now you understand,” my maker said as he rose from my side and walked away. “From this night forth, blood is the only thing that will satisfy your hunger.” He watched me feed over his shoulder, his eyes bright and avid, hot with his own need. “Tonight you have surrendered to your desire for living blood,” he purred. “Soon you will surrender to me as well.”
I opened my mouth to deny him again. Instead, I found myself begging. “More, please!” I gasped for breath, licking the monkey’s blood from my lips. “I’m still hungry!”
He laughed, a contemptuous cackle, then leapt straight up to the opening of the charnel pit.
As he flew upwards, his cloak spread out like the wings of a great raptor. He vanished through the mouth of the cavern. Then, as he had the night before, he turned to look back down at me.
“Rest now, little one. I must go and hunt for myself, but I will bring you more of what you desire.”
6
I struggled to a sitting position and my head spun.
“Rest now, little one. I must go and hunt for myself, but I will bring you more of what you desire.”
I kept my chin down with my hair hanging over my eyes so as to block out the sight of the cavern’s interior. I did not wish to see the animals I had just killed, or the unfortunate Neanderthals who had shared the same fate. I suppose there is little difference, ethically, between killing an animal to feed on its flesh and killing an animal to feed on its blood, but what I had just done seemed sordid and shameful. It filled me with self-loathing. Perhaps it was the overwhelming pleasure I had felt at the act. Great pleasure always makes men feel guilty when it’s done. I think it is a chemical thing. Or perhaps I was ashamed because I had surrendered to it, and I had sworn I would not submit. All I knew is that I wanted to retreat from that cold and terrible place. If I could I would have retreated from my own contaminated soul.
Yes, I wanted more!
I could feel the blood of the two simians sloshing inside my belly. I could feel the heat of it spreading out from the center of my being, threading its way through all of my veins, warm and soothing. The cravings diminished as the heat spread through me. It did not go away completely but it receded, and I was able to think a little more clearly. I felt a little more like myself. I brought a hand in front of my eyes and watched as it grew flush and warm for a moment. But for the unnaturally smooth texture of my skin, it almost looked like the hand of a mortal man again.
A glimmering of hope:
Perhaps, if I drank enough blood…!
But, no… the pink flush blanched swiftly back to chalk white. I felt the fire inside me gutter and grow cold. I closed my eyes, training my senses inward, and came to the conclusion that my body was rapidly utilizing the blood I had just ingested. Whatever it was the Beast had put inside me—be it infection, parasite, demon or his own vile seed—it seemed to require blood for nourishment. In return, it was restoring my vitality. I felt my strength returning. The wounds my maker had inflicted on me were knitting back together at a more rapid pace. Some of them had vanished altogether.
When he comes back I will fight him again, I promised myself.
I squeezed my hands into fists, grinning mirthlessly in the pit.
I will avenge you, father!
7
And I did, but not that night.
About midways through the night, my maker returned with two more monkeys for me to feed upon. I launched myself at him immediately. Again, I caught him by surprise. This time I believe he was surprised more by the rapidity of my recovery than the speed of my attack. Only a few hours before, I was too weak to stand. I had crawled across the corpses of his Neanderthal victims to attack him. Now here I was, leaping into the air at him, fangs bared, fingers hooked into claws.
The look of surprise on his face was almost comical. His eyes bugged out and his jaw dropped to his chest. He flung the monkeys away and just managed to grab my wrists before I collided into him. The force of the impact drove him into the wall and we danced there a moment, jaws clenched, muscles straining.
“You dare… pit your strength… against mine?” he gasped, but I could see that he was having difficulty holding me back. The muscles in his neck and shoulders and arms stood out like taut ropes, quivering.
“You killed my father… my friends,” I grunted, pressing my advantage. “I’m going… to destroy you!”
He lunged forward then, snapping at my face. His teeth came together with an audible clack and I jerked backed instinctively, closing my eyes. An instant later, he was swinging me into the wall.
He threw me so fast that centripetal force flung my legs out to the side of me. My body was nearly parallel to the ground when I smashed into the wall. From my hip, a muffled popping sound. It was the sound of my pelvis shattering inside me. There was a burst of starry pain, and then my entire left leg went numb. I crumpled to the earth in a shower of rubble. My maker fell with me, driving his knees into my stomach, and then he began to pound my face and upper torso with his fists.
Again.
He beat me until he had exhausted his rage. Finally, wheezing from his exertions, he grabbed my bloodied head and swung my entire body into the air with it. I pinwheeled across the chamber and hit the wall on the other side, breaking my spine. I slumped to the earth, paralyzed from the waist down, blinded by blood, but I did not lose consciousness. Unwilling to surrender, unwilling to submit, I rose to my elbows and began to drag myself across the ground at him.
He stalked toward me, livid with fury. “I try to be kind to you! I try to be a generous master, but I see that you recognize only cruelty. Ulh'wheh! You are as stubborn as a child! You will learn who your better is, little one!”
He turned and clutched one of the slick
stalagmites that ascended from the ground. With a grunt of effort, he snapped it off. It was nearly as long as the fiend was tall, and so wide at the base a man would have had trouble encircling it in his arms. Grinning, he brandished the stone like a club.
Realizing what he intended to do next, I turned to retreat. I started crawling away from him, using the stiff limbs of the dead Fat Hands to drag myself across the floor. My legs trailed out uselessly behind me. My injuries were healing, but not swiftly enough. Not swiftly enough by half.
“You will call me master!” he shouted.
“Never!”
He raised the limestone bludgeon, holding it high over his head, then with a gleeful flash of his teeth, he brought it down on my legs in a whistling arc. The pit resounded with the thunder of the assault. He crushed my legs in one fell swoop.
The force of the impact shattered the limestone. Chunks of rock skipped across the dead Neanderthals. Others caromed off the walls, some of them breaking into smaller pieces to ricochet again. Several large pieces struck my head and shoulders.
I screamed in agony. In all my life, I’d never experienced such pain. The Living Blood had repaired my spine just in time to feel it all.
The Foul One cast aside his broken bludgeon, then set upon me with his fists again, pummeling my back and shoulders and head. I tried to protect my skull with my arms, still screaming, my vision bursting with black dots and bright flashes.
At any moment, I expected the killing blow. In truth I would have welcomed it. That, too, would have been an escape. An escape from the pain. An escape from the horrors of the charnel pit. An escape from the temptation to submit to him, to surrender, and accept him as my master.
But there would be no escape that night. The killing blow never fell. Oblivion eluded.
After a while, my maker grew bored. I ceased to struggle and he lost interest. He rose from my back in disgust.
“It is only you who insists on this cruelty,” he said. “Just submit to me, little one. Submit and I will show you wonders you never knew existed.”
I turned on my side and drew my body into a ball, closing my eyes. I closed my eyes to the nightmare world that I’d been imprisoned in. I closed my eyes to my hateful imprisoner. I pressed my bloody brow to my shattered knees and removed myself from reality. I withdrew as if I were diving into a dark pool. I swam away from the world.
My body was a network of fissured flesh and shattered bones. My skull was cracked open, my flesh hanging in flaps. The pain pulsed like a living thing in the darkness. My physical body seemed a shadow-twin that floated slightly separate from me, connected by only the faintest umbilicus. I was closer to death than I have ever been in my life. But for the Living Blood, the frayed thread that held me to the world would have snapped. It would have been a mercy.
But life is as merciless as it is unfair. Already the Blood was reknitting the thread. Already it was pulling me back from the dark. I struggled for oblivion. I fought to stay away. But the Blood was implacable. It would not set me free.
“I will break you, stubborn one,” my maker promised. “Fight me all you want, but you will call me master. You will serve me. You will serve me, and you will love me.”
I didn't respond. I swam further within my mind-- down, down, to its deepest recesses. I fled as far away from the monster that tormented me as I could. I dived into the abyss.
Finally, frustrated, he left.
8
I lay as if dead while the Blood repaired my injuries. After a while, the monkeys my maker had brought for me to feed on emerged from their fear-induced catatonia and began, tentatively, to explore the cavern. They circled the dark chamber, poking into all the nooks and crannies, investigating the stiff carcasses of the dead Neanderthals with nervous little hoots. They endeavored to climb the walls and remove themselves from the charnel pit but the inclination of the slick surface defeated each attempt. Finally, exhausted, one of the apes removed itself to the far side of the room and hunkered down. It picked anxiously at its ass, blinking its big brown eyes. The other, restless, sauntered in my direction. It did not know that I was not quite as dead as the rest of the dead men in the chamber. The instant it ventured too near to my body, my armed flashed out as if it had a will of its own. Before the beast had even a chance to cry out, I had snapped its neck and opened its veins with my fangs.
Its companion howled, eyes bulging, lips curling back from its teeth, and then it began to leap and scrabble at the wall in a panic.
I drained the beast, then threw the limp carcass aside. “Sorry little fellow,” I panted, struggling to sit up. I wiped the blood from my lips with the back of my arm and eyed the other monkey hungrily. “Hello,” I said with a titter. The blood I had just ingested was making me giddy.
The second monkey looked back over its shoulder, its fearful expression pitifully human, and then it began to spring at the wall again.
I dragged myself toward him, all shining eyes and blood-dripping fangs. “Come here, little guy,” I cooed. “I won’t hurt you.”
What a horror I must have looked, hauling myself over the Neanderthals’ corpses! The panicked ape leapt and shrieked, hair standing on end. I licked my lips, drooling in hunger, giggling as I writhed across the floor on my belly.
“Come here. Come here, little fellow!”
Even the meekest of animals will attack when they’re cornered, and that is exactly what my fourth victim did. As I drew near, the monkey quit trying to scramble up the wall. The beast wheeled around and charged at me without warning, howling ferociously and baring its blunt yellow canines. It galloped at me, pounding its knuckles on the ground as it came, and then it sprang.
I seized the animal by the throat in mid-air and sank my teeth into its neck.
Ah, the blood!
That warm flush! That rush of vitality!
I tossed the final monkey away and basked in the fleeting glow of satiation. For a moment I felt warm and bright, as if I were bathing in summer sunshine. The pain had abated. I felt strong and fine, my senses exquisitely sharp, my thoughts clear and quick. I held my hands up and watched the wounds on them healing over and fading from sight. For a moment they were ruddy and healthy-looking. Mortal. Human. My entire body was tingling with good health. I fell onto my back and laughed, looking up at the entrance of the cave. It did not seem so far away now. Perhaps, when I had mended some more, I would attempt to leap out of there as I’d seen my maker do. I couldn’t do it yet. My legs were still shattered. But when they healed…!
Dawn came on cat’s paws, slowly filling the charnel pit with pastel light. As I had not healed enough to attempt escape, I decided to search the bodies of the Fat Hands before the light grew bright enough to pain me. Surely one of the Fat Hands had been tossed down here still clutching a knife or some tool I might use as a weapon against my captor. Perhaps one of my maker’s victims, trapped down here as I was trapped, had secreted a blade on his person. Or perhaps I could fashion a weapon myself, using the materials lying about the cave. I had killed the little one with a dirk to the heart. Perhaps his master could be destroyed the same way. I need only find a weapon or a piece of stone sharp enough to pierce his strange white skin.
The Neanderthals were stiff and frozen to one another. Their flesh, when I pulled them apart to search their bodies, made the most hideous crackling sounds, but I persisted.
I recognized some, though their faces were disfigured by horror and pain. Most had terrible wounds to their necks—like Fodar and my tribesman Tetch. Others had been decapitated like my father. A few had wounds at their wrists or inner thighs. The motive behind the mutilations was no longer a mystery. I knew now first hand the desires that moved the Foul Ones to such extreme acts of violence. My own appetite was stirring again. I was just glad the light was still low and I did not have to examine their faces too closely. They were too pitiable. Too grotesque. And the sight of their injuries, especially the ones to the throat, made me salivate helplessly. I kept picturing myself
biting them, drinking their blood. The fantasies filled me with self-loathing but I could not help myself.
I moved haltingly, stopping from time to time when the pain was too much to bear. I had not fully healed from the previous night’s battle. There were places where my stone-like skin was still broken open. And my legs… my legs were the worst of the lot. My legs looked like bloody rags, and trailed behind me just as limply. Broken bones, I discovered, mended at a much slower rate than flesh wounds. I could still feel jagged pieces of bone stabbing into the surrounding tissue when I moved my legs.
But I was healing. I was healing at a stupendous rate. I could feel the Blood working to repair my internal injuries. My fractured ribs snapped back with a sound like cracking knuckles. I was frisking the body of a Fat Hand I used to gossip with at the river—a chubby fellow named Alb—when the dent in my forehead filled back out to its natural dimensions. I clutched my head like a man with a migraine as the pieces of my skull slotted back together all at once. It felt like someone had hammered a stake into my head.
It was almost magical, the restoration of my physical injuries. It would have filled me with wonder if it were not so damned painful. And where my wounds had healed completely, the skin was smooth and unblemished, as if I’d never been injured at all. I think the saying is “smooth as a baby’s butt.” I still bore the scars I had received before my transformation, but the injuries I sustained after I received the demon blood healed without a sign they had ever been. Despite its terrible alienness, my new skin was quite beautiful. Lustrous. Perfect.
Yet as I healed, my hunger for blood grew stronger and stronger. By midmorning, I found myself returning to the bodies of the monkeys to see if I could drain any more nourishment from them. I brought their throats to my mouth and sucked on the wounds, but it was like sucking on stones. I had drained them dry, and the taste of their cold flesh was foul beyond tolerance.
The Oldest Living Vampire Tells All: Revised and Expanded (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 1) Page 20
