Pendra began to convulse. Her limbs trembled and she made guttural choking noises in her throat. I could see that she was dying. I thought, It would be a mercy to finish this, to release her from this broken body. I knew somewhere deep down that I was deceiving myself. My motive was not mercy but the satiation of my maddening hunger. Yet, I could not let myself think this. It was easier to pretend. It was easier to tell myself that I meant only to hasten her death, to spare her some of the pain of her passing.
“Here, my darling, let me help you,” I whispered.
With the edge of my teeth, I sliced into the soft flesh of her neck. I opened the arteries there with two parallel incisions. She made no sound as the blood pulsed out in warm streams. Pressing my cheek to her shoulder, sealing my lips to the wound, I began to draw on the pumping founts, my eyes drifting shut in ecstasy, my body atop hers. I cradled her head in one hand and held her wrist in the other, my pelvis settling between her thighs without conscious thought. Her thighs were very plump and warm, her breasts full and soft beneath my chest. As I swallowed her blood, I writhed in pleasure atop her body. I moaned as I sucked and gulped the red, hot spurts. I let my hand stray down to her breast and ground my stiffening cock against her pubis. It slipped down, settled into the fleshy cusp of her sex, and I sank slowly into her.
She did not make a noise as I swallowed the last draughts of her life, not even to choke her last breath. She simply expired, slipping gently into the afterworld as I sucked the blood from her neck. One moment alive, the next moment still.
For all eternity: still.
Yet, I continued to suck the wound in her neck. I continued to defile her corpse until my body tensed with orgasm and I jerked my mouth from her bloodless flesh with a frustrated growl.
It wasn't until some time later, after her blood had cooled inside my body, that the horror of what I had just done struck me with full force.
But first... oh, the satisfaction!
I rolled onto my back beside her, smacking my lips with a smile. I was looking up at the sky through the opening of the pit, feeling the blood wend its way through my body, a tingling flush of heat. For a moment, the unrelenting thirst was gone. I was at peace. I floated in dreamy contentedness. Imagine a golden haze suffusing your body, that post-coital rush of endorphins multiplied a thousand fold. That is how it felt!
Then the horror. The guilt and shame.
I looked at the gore speckling my hands.
I sat up and turned to Pendra. How still and pale and fragile she appeared. Like a child’s discarded doll, damaged and defenseless, and I had preyed upon her. I had violated her helpless body.
And I called my maker “Foul One”!
I glanced down at my drooping cock. Black fluid still drooled from the slit at the tip. Even that—defiled by my curse! No longer the pearly white sparker of life, my seed had turned as black as my soul!
With a moan of disgust and self-loathing, I scrambled to my feet. All around me, the cold and rotting dead! My eyes grew wider and wider until I let out an echoing shriek. I clawed furrows into my cheeks (scratches that healed a moment after I made them). I ran to a wall and began to scrabble at it, trying to find a purchase with my fingertips, trying to climb out. I had to get out! I had to remove myself from all this death!
Bits of stone and earth crumbled down upon my face, into my open mouth and eyes. Yet still I did not discover my vampiric abilities. I moved my limbs as a mortal would move them because that is what I was in my mind. That is what I knew. I threw myself at the wall until I was overwhelmed by the futility of it all.
I collapsed to my knees, sobbing. I stayed that way, crying black tears, until the hysteria subsided and I could think a little more rationally.
Wiping my cheeks, I rose and tried to order my thoughts.
You can get out of here, I said to myself. Remember how he sprang into the air? He has remade you into his image. Your flesh is as cold and white as his. Why can you not do the same things that he could do?
I sketched a path with my eyes, seeing how I might leap from side to side up the walls of the pit. It seemed impossible, but I had watched my maker do it more than once, and with little apparent effort on his part. I stepped back, took a deep breath and then launched myself into the air.
I jumped too hard the first time.
Thinking I must use all of my strength to propel myself into the air as my maker had done, I left the ground with such velocity that I made what I think might have been a miniature sonic boom. It was a sound like a clap of thunder, and the subterranean chamber resounded with the sound like a vast bell. The violence with which I collided into the wall stunned me, and I fell onto my back and lay there for a minute, dazed, before climbing back to my feet.
Not so fast, I said to myself.
I tried again, this time with less force, and managed to leap to the wall and bound off of it to a higher purchase.
I mistimed my movements and landed back on the floor of the charnel pit, but I was not frustrated this time. I knew I would be able to free myself if I could just time my movements correctly. My new body, cold and white though it was, had strength that was beginning to amaze me.
I tried again, bounding from one side to the other, before my fingers slipped in a channel of ice two thirds of the way to the opening, and I dropped back to the bottom.
On my fourth attempt, I grasped the ledge of the opening and pulled myself up and out of the charnel pit.
11
I heaved myself out of the pit and stood on the rocky rim of the opening. The stars were like chips of ice in the sky. Moonlight silvered the mountaintops as they humped away into the darkness. To the south: the land of the Gray Stone People, forsaken and still. To the west: the valley of my own tribe, the People of the River. The wind smelled of the glaciers to the north, sharp and pure but somehow desolate. As far as I could see, the world was blanketed in snow, stark and white, like my own bewitched flesh. For a moment, it seemed I was the only living soul in the universe, standing on the peaked roof of a world that had been abandoned in my absence.
I remembered that the Foul One had visited my people at Bubbling Waters, kidnapping poor Pendra and carrying her here to her doom. I could only guess what other terrible deeds he had visited on my tribe the past few nights. I prayed to my ancestors that my wives and children had been spared the fiend's depredations, that the bloodthirsty beast had not ravaged my people as thoroughly as he had the Neanderthals.
No time to bask in my freedom. No time to celebrate the destruction of my adversary. I had to return now. I had to make sure my wives and children were safe!
I set out immediately for Bubbling Waters.
I had been removed to a great distance by the creature that had abducted me, even from the cave of the Gray Stone People, but I could see the way back from my high vantage and I started down the mountainside straightaway. At first I walked as a man would walk, on the earth, on two bare feet. In some places the drifts were as high as my hips and I waded through them as a man might wade through water: arms out to my sides, driving through them with my legs. I noted with some dismay that my breath did not steam in the air, nor was I distressed by the drifts of snow I waded through, despite the fact that I was completely naked. I could feel the cold, but it was only slightly uncomfortable, like a remembrance of pain rather than the suffering of it. When I descended past the tree line, I recalled how the Foul One had traveled through the treetops and wondered if I dare attempt the same thing. It would be faster than trying to plow through all this snow!
I did dare it.
In fact, it was easy. I sprang up onto the bough of a tree and then launched myself through the forest canopy, hopping from limb to limb, even swinging from them like a monkey from time to time. I found that I need only think a thing and this strange new body could perform the act with very little effort. My muscles were tireless, my strength unbelievable. My only limits appeared to be the speed of my thoughts and the bounds of my imagination. I envisi
oned what I wished to do and my limbs translated that image into reality. I made a few mistakes, and earned a couple nasty scratches from pointy branches, but the wounds healed quickly and did not impede my progress in any way.
It was not long before my nervousness was replaced by exhilaration. I laughed as the snowy woodland rushed past me, the wind blowing through my hair, the ground rushing past below me. The branches blurred past me with a sort of low whistling sound, like a fusillade of arrows. It was like I was rushing through a windy gray tunnel. It was like flying.
I came upon a natural break in the forest, a gap in the trees where a creek ambled through the wilderness. I launched myself into the open sky without hesitation, trusting in my newfound abilities to usher me to the other side without injury. I flew across the space like a bird, catching my own reflection in the water below-- just for an instant!-- then plunged into the treetops on the other side and continued on without so much as a bobble.
Before an hour had passed, I had gone half a day’s journey by my old standard of travel. I slipped earthward near the spot where poor Bukhult had perished, killed by a speartooth after trotting behind some bushes to shit. I squatted near the cold ash of our war party’s campfire and stared westwards pensively.
What would my wives think of me now, I wondered. Would my children still want to climb in my lap, or would they recoil from this cold white flesh as if I were a monster? Would my family welcome me home or would they flee from me in terror, thinking me some devil that had stolen my form? For that matter, were they even still alive?
Please, grandfathers, let them still be alive!
I don’t know if my heart could bear the anguish if the Foul One had visited our home in the night. My father was lost to me. Brulde was probably dead as well. No mortal man could have suffered such a blow and survived. I did not think I could survive the blow to my heart if any more of my loved ones had perished at the hands of the Beast. The guilt would consume me, though I knew there was nothing more I could have done. I was lucky that I’d survived at all-- if this was what you considered surviving, this cursed white flesh!
Please, ancestors, I prayed. Please, let them be alive! Let them be well!
I scratched my head in agitation, then inspected my hands, realizing for the first time just how filthy I was. My hands were crusted with brains and blood and bits of torn flesh. My chest as well, and probably my face. I looked the very part, even if my soul was still my own. My wives would run screaming in terror from our wetus.
I hurried on to Big River and waded in to the waist.
Oh, this water! I thought, closing my eyes in pleasure.
Grandfathers, bless this river, the lifeblood of our tribe. Long has it cleansed our bodies! Long has it quenched our thirst.
The water was swift and cold. The chill should have set my teeth to chattering, and my body to uncontrollable tremors, but not tonight. Tonight, it felt pleasant. Bracing. Pure.
I cleaned myself in the burbling waters. I scooped some gritty mud from the bed of the river and scrubbed my hands and arms and chest. Taking a breath, I submerged myself completely and washed my hair and beard. I did not need to take that breath, but I did not know it yet.
Cleaning myself in the ice-flecked river was like a Christian baptism. I felt the horrors of the previous week washing away from my soul as the filth and gore washed away from my flesh. I emerged from the water blameless, reborn, like a man conceived of glacial ice. When I examined my hands and arms in the moonlight, my skin was so clean and white it seemed to glow with its own interior light.
I washed my legs and ass and balls, and then I left the water.
I traveled to our old campgrounds, my wet body steaming in the cold night air, and searched through the detritus we'd cast off when we moved to Bubbling Waters. Poking around the deserted village, I gathered enough scraps and bindings to fashion myself a crude outfit: a loincloth and a shoulder mantle. I bound my wet hair with a leather thong and continued on my way.
I returned to the treetops and moved through them effortlessly, flashing through the boughs and branches like a pale bird. I prayed to my ancestors as I flew home. I prayed that my wives and children still lived.
The Ghost Who Is a Man
1
I only stopped once more after I bathed myself in the river, and that was to search for the body of my companion.
That Brulde was dead was all but a certainty in my mind. It was inconceivable to me that any mortal man could have survived a blow powerful enough to send his body flying into the treetops. Even if the blow did not kill him instantly, my tent mate must have been terribly injured. He would have died of exposure long before anyone thought to come looking for any of us. And if he’d survived both of those things, the assault and the cold, the Foul One would have sniffed him out and fed on him on his way to raid the village. In truth, I did not hold out even a twinkling of hope that my husband still lived. So, about midways between Big River Camp and Bubbling Waters, near the log where we had huddled together to rest, I came down from the treetops and searched the area for his body.
I was so certain he was dead that I would not give up the search. I looked for him long after I should have given it up as a lost cause and continued on to the village to check on the rest of my family. I scoured the grounds in an ever-widening circle, scowling in confusion. I found where he had crashed through the treetops. I located the spot where his body had returned to the earth. His scent was strong there, and there were several splashes of dry blood on the ground. But there was no body! Convinced that some beast had dragged him away, I continued searching, growing more and more agitated. I even shouted his name, though I knew in my heart of hearts that he was dead.
“Brulde!” I shouted. “It is me, Gon! If you can hear me, cry out! Help me to find you! I do not know where you are! Brulde! BRULDE!”
At last, overcome with frustration and loss, I fell to my knees and wept.
“Oh, Brulde,” I sobbed. “I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry!”
I felt that I had failed him. I did not feel responsible for his death—that black sin lay on my maker’s heart-- but I had wanted to bring his body back home, to inter him properly among his forebears. In that I had failed. Someone, or something, had made away with his body. I could not find it, even with my enhanced senses.
At last, I gave it up. It broke my heart to do it but I needed to check on the welfare of my family. I wanted to see my wives. I wanted to draw my children into my arms and kiss each and every one of them. I needed to tell everyone what had happened. They needed to know they were safe, that I had killed the monsters that had stalked our valley and honor the warriors that had fallen along the way.
I rose, dried my eyes, said farewell to my companion and continued on.
Home.
A number of guards patrolled the perimeter of our Bubbling Waters camp. I divined their presence long before I came near. I could smell the odor of their bodies, hear the tread of their feet— hear even the beating of their hearts! A surfeit of torches illuminated the village with a tremulous golden radiance. Even the looming cliffs were gilded by their glow. My heightened perceptions were a miracle to me, and I paused in my flight through the treetops to test the limits of my newfound abilities, wondering at all I could see and hear and smell.
I crouched in a tree just outside the glow of the village and cocked my head to one side. I opened myself fully to my senses then and nearly tumbled from my perch as a flood of sensory information poured into my awareness. It was like standing in the center of a whirlwind. For a moment, I lost all sense of self in the vortex of sights and sounds and smells and tastes that swept me into its howling embrace. For a moment, I floundered, panicked by my loss of control. And then I thought: Ride them! Ride the winds, Gon!
Slowly, I learned to ride the cyclone. I learned to turn the sail of my thoughts so that those winds carried me where I wanted to go. Little by little, I tamed the vortex. I learned to close my thoughts to the sensations po
uring into my brain, to block them out, letting in only what I wanted to hear or smell or taste, and then it was like a ray, a single and very intense beam of light that I could train on anything I wanted to examine more closely. It was like peering at a distant object through a spyglass, only with all of my available senses, not just my sense of sight.
Not very far away, a man was humming softly under his breath. It was one of the night’s watch. I trained my enhanced senses on him and recognized the tune. It was a children’s song we sometimes sang, a song about rabbits; I forget how it goes now. I caught his scent and realized with a smile that I could identify the man, even though he was standing behind some bushes and I did not have a direct line of sight.
It was a glum fellow named Ludd, one of my father’s cousins. The sound of his voice was familiar to me, of course, but that I could recognize him by his smell—that was the miracle!
Good old Ludd, I thought. Good old gloomy Ludd!
I didn’t want to frighten him so I dropped from the tree and approached him as a normal man might do. I was pleased to see that I was leaving footprints on the dusting of snow that whitened the forest path. Not a ghost then, I reassured myself. We had legends of ghosts, and in those legends, ghosts never left footprints when they walked. It was how you could tell the difference between the living and the dead.
“Who goes there?” Ludd demanded when he finally heard my footfalls. I could just see him through a lattice of tree limbs and saplings. He was gripping the shaft of his spear with fearful tightness, the lines of his face deep and dark in the torchlight. I could smell his anxiety, a bitter chemical odor that was both repellent and appealing.
“It is I, Gon,” I declared.
“Gon?”
“Yes.”
And then he said it again because he did not quite believe me. “It is Gon?”
The Oldest Living Vampire Tells All: Revised and Expanded (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 1) Page 22
