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

by Joseph Duncan

  I resumed my search, hungry and frustrated.

  I had to crawl into direct sunlight to continue picking through the mounds of dead Fat Hands. The light felt strange on my new white skin-- too hot, too penetrating. It stung my eyes and made them weep a tacky, tar-like substance. This substance was much like the terrible black ejaculate the Foul One had made me swallow, and mixed in with the black, like marbles of fat in meat, were streaks of red blood. I wiped my bloody tears from my cheeks and then licked the teardrops from my fingers, closing my eyes at the little zaps of pleasure.

  Exhaustion was settling over me like a shroud. I wanted to retreat into a dark corner and curl into a ball. I found myself slipping in and out of consciousness and pinched myself on the cheeks to bring me back to wakefulness.

  No rest! I scolded myself. Not until you’ve found a weapon!

  Ignoring the pain, the hunger, the exhaustion, I continued on. My eyes felt raw and sore, as it they’d been scored by sand. My skin throbbed from its exposure to the light like a mild sunburn. Now I knew why the little one had been so hesitant to step into the light when we confronted it at Gray Stone. The sunlight hurt!

  As the day progressed, I realized I had not passed waste from my body since the Foul One transformed me into this blood-craving thing. It had been two days and I had not made water or emptied my bowels once. When I realized I no longer needed to shit or piss, I did seek out a shadowy alcove and mourned quietly for my lost humanity for a little while.

  I know it seems like a petty thing. Regardless, I mourned. Like death, elimination is universal to all men. We are not guaranteed happiness, health or children, but all men die and all men shit. Often they shit at the same time they die. It is a trivial thing perhaps, but the fact that I had ceased to eliminate was just more proof that I had lost my humanity, that I had become something monstrous and unnatural.

  Mourning gave way to anger, and I resumed my search for a weapon.

  As I sorted through the bodies, the disk of bright sunshine that slanted down from the opening of the pit crawled inexorably across the chamber and slithered up the wall. As it climbed the wall, the light dimmed from a cheery gold hue to a sullen red. Soon it would be night, and the Foul One would return with it. I was running out of time!

  At last, under a tangle of putrefying limbs, I unearthed a fine stone knife. It was a big weapon. The blade, made of obsidian, was nearly eight inches long, with a four inch braided leather handle. The blade was knapped to a fine, deadly edge. I tested it on the ball of my thumb and my skin parted like water. I started to suck the wound, but it healed almost instantly.

  “Yes,” I whispered to myself. “Yes, this will do just fine. Thank you, ancestors! Thank you!”

  Grinning, holding the weapon against my body to conceal it, I huddled against a wall and contemplated strategies.

  I ran through every possible scenario I could imagine. Finally, I came to the conclusion that my best chance of success lied with trickery. My maker was stronger, faster and more brutal than me—or so I believed at the time. I had no hope of overpowering him with the injuries I had sustained. My enemy’s only weakness, as far as I could tell, was his intellect. He was arrogant, hot-tempered and overly confident of his abilities. His violent disposition betrayed a lack of imagination. Those were all weaknesses I could exploit.

  So I will be clever, I thought. I will outwit my foe.

  But how?

  I tried to devise some brilliant deception, some way to catch my adversary off guard, but I did not have much to work with—a knife, a pit, several dozen dead Neanderthals. Oh, and four monkey carcasses! Also, I was all but crippled. My legs no longer looked like tattered rags but they were not much better than that. I could barely hobble around a few steps, and if I twisted more than a couple of centimeters to the left or right, my back convulsed in agony, paralyzing me for an instant. To make matters even more hopeless, my thirst for blood was clamoring in my belly. The hunger was making me anxious and distractible. I jumped at every sound, thinking my maker had returned. How could I come up with a decent plan when all I could think about was drinking blood? I couldn’t get it out of my head!

  Just think, Gon, I said to myself. Try to concentrate!

  I replayed our last two battles in my mind, looking for some flaw in his fighting style. It was hard to concentrate as the hunger kept interrupting my thoughts but I pressed stubbornly on. I watched myself leap at him, saw how he grabbed my wrists and threw me. And then an idea struck me! I imagined how I might deceive him, and the image of it in my mind was both brilliant and bizarre … and potentially deadly for my father’s killer!

  I searched through the tangled corpses until I located a pair of arms that were roughly the same size and shape as my own. With a grimace of disgust, I used the knife to saw through the flesh at the elbows. The arms were frozen stiff, and I had to disjoint the bones to get them loose, but I finally prevailed.

  I prayed to the spirit of the Fat Hand whose body I was desecrating. “Forgive me, brother. I mean no disrespect.”

  The last thing I needed was a perturbed spirit mucking up my plans!

  I had no clothing in which to hide the knife or the two arms, so I sought a patch of deep shadow and curled my body into a ball. I concealed the severed arms between my belly and the wall, and then I shut my eyes and awaited my maker.

  Help me strike down my foe, ancestors, I prayed. Cloud his eyes so that he does not see his doom. Guide my blade so that it stills his cursed heart.

  Or let him finish me and be done with it.

  Clutching the blade to my breast, I waited.

  And waited.

  Evening deepened into night but my maker did not return. I did not sleep, yet I dared not move, for I knew that he could come swooping down at any moment like some great bird of prey. He would come, thinking to torment me further... yes... thinking to break my spirit or seduce me with another meal of blood, but I would be waiting for him. I would spring at him when he came close and drive my blade into his heart. I would kill him as I had killed the little beast he'd kept as a pet.

  Once again, the sky clouded over and snow fell through the opening of the charnel pit, sawing and spinning down the stone throat of the cavern to light upon the tangled mounds of all the murdered Fat Hands. The snowflakes drifted down in darkness for there was no moon this night. Yet despite the lack of light, I found that I could see them. I could see the snowflakes spiraling down. I could even hear them when they alighted-- a very tiny sound, like a baby’s dreaming sigh. My eyes seemed to be growing more and more sensitive. My other senses, too. Hearing. Touch. Taste. Smell. The snowflakes had a wonderful smell! Much more pleasing than all the dead bodies lying around me.

  I wondered if my eyes were gleaming in the dark like my maker’s eyes gleamed.

  I watched a snowflake settle on my arm and waited for it to melt.

  It did not.

  I was not even warm enough to melt a single snowflake! More proof that I had become a creature of the spirit world. I was as cold and lifeless as the bodies underneath me. A dead thing. Inhuman.

  The snow collected on my body throughout the night. Still my maker did not return. By morning, I was a white drift curled against the wall.

  I waited.

  More snow fell.

  It felt good to be covered in that blanket of ice. It was comforting. To be enshrouded. Alone. A cold white child in an icy womb. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to sink into a light doze. My dreams, when they came, were strange and disjointed. I dreamed of flying through the treetops and catching small animals to feed on. I dreamed that I had returned to my family, and that I was a man again, soft and warm and alive. I dreamed I was a saber-tooth cat, stalking my prey through a grassy green meadow, and when I leapt upon my victim, he wheeled around in horror and it was me.

  I slept most of the day, waiting to kill the monster that had corrupted me. I slept and I dreamed and I healed. The snow finally quit and the daylight not long after.

>   I sensed movement above. I heard a cloak whipping in the air, the thump of two booted feet landing lightly nearby.

  My thoughts quickened and my fingers tightened on the handle of the knife I held to my chest.

  My maker had finally returned!

  “Rise, little one, and attend to your master,” he called out, his voice hatefully cheery. “I know you are hungry. Rise and see what feast I've brought you tonight!”

  9

  I didn't respond. Slowly, furtively, I opened my jaws and slid the blade between my teeth. I had to angle it a little to fit it under my new fangs but I managed to fasten my mouth around it adequately enough.

  “I said arise, stubborn one!” my maker snarled.

  I reached beneath me and grasped the severed limbs I had hidden in the gap between my body and the wall. As I did, the snow piled atop me trickled down around my nose and lips and chin. I gripped the arms by the rough-hewn meat of the elbows, where I had sawed them off of the Neanderthal’s body.

  I heard my maker stomp toward me. “You will obey me, worm!”

  I summoned to my mind the image of my father’s head vanishing in a cloud of vaporized blood, the way his legs had kicked when his body collapsed to the ground, and then I sprang at my adversary. The snow that had gathered around my body exploded in a white haze. It swirled around me as I flew at my opponent, a tiny blizzard that obfuscated my attack. I brought up the two severed arms as I yelled around the knife in my mouth.

  “Yaaaaahhh!”

  My maker mistook the dismembered arms as mine. He grabbed them by the wrists, just as he had before, and yanked them from my grasp. In his surprise and anger, I think he meant to split me in two, for he threw his arms out side-to-side with terrible force rather than pivoting to throw me across the chamber.

  He stumbled back in confusion, arms thrown wide, a dismembered limb dangling from each fist.

  For a moment, he gaped at me. His mind could not quite process what his eyes were seeing. He must have thought I’d grown an extra pair of arms.

  I pulled the Neanderthal’s blade from my mouth. Plunging it into his heart, I declared, “Foul spirit, I claim my vengeance!”

  My maker fell back, howling. Black blood gushed from his lips and spilled down his chest as he reeled away from me. “No!” he shouted in a terrible gurgling voice. “You must not! You must not!”

  I pursued him, catching ahold of his cloak, and when he tripped over the leg of one of his victims, I followed him to the ground. I threw my weight upon his thrashing form, pinning him beneath me. His nails drew furrows in my cheeks. Cold black blood sprayed across my face and neck. I grasped the handle of the blade and yanked the knife from his chest, then plunged it into his heart again. Then one more time for good measure.

  He was still struggling. Blood bubbled and splashed from the wounds in his chest like boiling water. There was blood all over him. Blood all over me. I pulled the knife out of his chest and drove the blade into his throat, angling it in just beneath the arch of his jawbone, aiming for his brain. He tried to heave me off but he had lost a lot of blood and was weakening rapidly. The advantage was mine.

  Yanking the knife from his jaw, I gripped the handle in both hands. Quickly, before he could defend himself, I swung the blade down into his throat and began to saw at it rapidly. He bucked and twisted but could not dislodge me. When I had cut his throat from ear to ear, I tossed the knife aside and drove my fingers into the bloody grin I had carved into his neck. I leaned forward, pushing down, digging into the cold meat of him, twisting my hands at the wrists so that I could hook my fingers in his bisected esophagus. Then, with a final grunt of effort, I pulled the two sides apart and ripped his head entirely from his body.

  Ebony fluid pumped from the ragged stump of his neck. I staggered up and fetched his head and held it up by the hair, a gory trophy. I was amazed to see that there was still life in his head. His eyes glared at me. His lips writhed. And then the eyes shifted. He looked down at his headless body.

  The body behind me sat up with a lurch. One of the Foul One’s hands took flight, catching me between the legs. I yelped and threw my maker’s head across the chamber, but the hand did not release me. If anything, its grip tightened, dirty claws sinking into the most sensitive part of my anatomy.

  “Let go!” I grunted, but I was afraid to wrestle too energetically with my foe lest I unman myself.

  Incredibly, the other arm began to flop around, fingers groping for the knife I’d used to part his head from his body.

  Starting to panic, I grasped the fingers clutching my testicles and began to bend them backwards, snapping the bones in them one by one until I was free.

  I stumbled to a distance, cupping my aching anatomy. The Foul One’s body was still sitting up, black blood geysering from the stump of its neck. The arms swept around, searching blindly for me.

  What if he didn’t die, I wondered. What if the fiend managed to find his severed head and replace it on his shoulders? Would the two parts rejoin, the flesh knitting together as my wounds had repaired themselves?

  I saw the head lying nearby and scrambled over to it.

  Still alive!

  Those hate-filled eyes rolled in their sockets, fixing me, promising retribution. I retrieved the knife and returned. Sinking to my knees beside the disembodied head, I began to stab the blade into its skull. “Die! Die!” I panted.

  It was horrible-- yes, I know. Gory and depraved. But thinking on it now, I would have to say that there was an element of it that was also perversely comic. Horrible things often have a way of tickling our funny bones, do they not? That is because fear and comedy are quite similar in nature—both prompted by the grotesque and unexpected. So it was with me, stabbing my maker’s head again and again, trying to put out the light in those eyes, to sever its connection to a body that was thrashing around like a fish. I began to laugh as I drove the blade into his skull. My hysteric peals echoed off the walls, flapping around the charnel pit like black-winged birds. Terror, triumph, relief, disgust… it all came exploding from me in clangors of uncontrollable hilarity. My fate might be a tragic joke, but my maker’s ignominious defeat was the ultimate punch line.

  Sitting here at my laptop in my sitting room in Liege, it still makes me chuckle a little to think on it, even thirty millennia later.

  10

  As I have said, my maker was strong... but he was not a true immortal. I do not think that something as simple as a knife to the heart could have killed him, but taking his head off did.

  Eventually.

  His limbs thrashed for a long time before they fell still. Even decapitated and stabbed through the heart, he did not give up the ghost easily. At one point, his headless body even tried to stand up. Thankfully, the gruesome thing overbalanced and fell onto its belly before it could go crashing blindly around the chamber. After that it just writhed around like a turtle flipped onto its shell, its vitality waning. My maker’s death was slow and agonizing.

  Satisfyingly slow.

  Satisfyingly agonizing.

  I had fallen into a state of shock-numb lethargy after pulping the sadistic creature’s head, crouched against the far wall, brains and flesh and dried black blood caked on my body. My knife had snapped in half while I was stabbing his decapitated head. I had tossed the handle aside, exhausted, then sent the pulp of tattered flesh rolling after it before stumbling away to rest. Now I slumped against the wall, watching the Foul One’s slowly writhing body, afraid it might try to rise again. When the headless body twitched its last, I finally took notice of the “meal” my maker had brought me.

  It was a Cro-Magnon female. She lay motionless on her side, her face turned away from me. She was naked but for some tattered rags draped around her waist. Scrapes and whelps crisscrossed her body where she had been cruelly dragged through the treetops by the Foul One. I could tell by the rise and fall of her shoulders that she still breathed, but she did not shiver or rouse herself, despite her nakedness and the frigid col
d of the pit. She had not stirred, even during my final climactic battle with our captor. It was a certainty she was injured... badly, I imagined.

  I shrugged off my fatigue and moved to tend to the female's injuries. Perhaps I could help her. I swear that was my sole intent. I rolled her gently onto her back and saw with a shock that it was a member of my clan, a woman named Pendra. She was a mother in one of the larger group families in the village. I did not know her very well but I remembered her to be a quiet and kind woman with two subordinate wives, three husbands and many, many children.

  It took only a moment to see how extraordinarily severe her injuries were. At some point she had suffered a terrible blow to the head. There was a large discolored dent in her brow where her skull had been shattered. Her eyes were purple and swollen shut. Her nose and lips were crusted with blood.

  “Pendra,” I said gently, stroking her cheek. “Pendra, good mother, can you hear me?”

  Pendra's eyes fluttered, showing their whites, but that was the extent of her response to my words.

  “Pendra, can you hear me?”

  I caught myself staring at the blood smeared on her flesh and realized that my hunger for it was guiding my eyes and my touch. My filthy fingertips ran lovingly through the blood that trickled from her nostrils. I crouched over her, staring intently at her puffy, bleeding lips, my face scant inches from hers. The aroma of her body drew me closer, closer. I squeezed my eyes shut and inhaled her scent, devouring it with my nose as I ached to devour her blood with my mouth.

  The smell of her excited my appetite. The scent of her blood overrode my restraints.

  “Ahh!” I exhaled. I could feel my mouth watering. I couldn't stop myself. I leaned closer and began to lick the dried blood from her face. As my tongue slid moistly along her cheekbone, the taste of her blood sent sparks of pleasure sizzling through my brain. I wasn't worried about my tribe or my family, who must have been visited by the Foul One tonight. I was only thinking about that taste. That wonderful, coppery taste!