Tapas looked suddenly appalled. I think he was ashamed he hadn’t thought of it himself. “Yes… yes, of course! If you would grant us such a favor--!”
Of the two dozen men who had engaged the Oombai in battle, nearly half that number had fallen before I joined the fray. Of those, only three were strong enough to recover from their injuries. The rest were either dead or too far gone into the ghost world to be summoned back to the land of the living.
I moved from man to man, hunkering down over the wounded so that I could examine them. I was no medicine man, but I could tell the living from the dead, especially with my enhanced senses. If I did not hear the heart beating inside a man, I moved on. There was nothing I could do for them. Those I found still clinging to life, no matter how grievous their injuries, I tried to heal.
To do this, I summoned the living blood up from the pit of my stomach, then spat it onto my fingers and smeared the glistening fluid onto their wounds. I had learned the trick of it from the Oombai. It is always painful to summon up the Strix. It is easier to slice my tongue with my teeth, but that only renders a few drops of the precious liquid, and the injuries I tried to heal that day required more than just a drop or two. I was trying to heal men who had been gutted, their throats slashed, their heads bashed in. I worked my way across the field of battle as the Neirie observed with superstitious awe, anointing the injuries of their wounded with my blood, then waiting to see if the flesh would respond.
Sometimes it did. If they were not too far gone, their injuries melted away. Vitality returned to their bodies with shocking abruptness, and then they rose, grinning and blinking in disbelief, their compatriots rushing in to embrace them.
One man fell to his knees and began to kiss my feet, sobbing, “Thest! Thest!” over and over.
The awed whispers of the Neirie circled the open field like a swarm of buzzing insects, a low susurration of worshipful voices.
And the carcasses of the Oombai who’d attacked them?
Already the vultures were circling.
8
Tapas invited me to travel with his people, which I graciously declined. “My son is waiting for me back at our camp,” I explained. “He is young and inexperienced, not yet strong enough to resist our hunger for blood. I would not be able to trust his restraint around your people, and I cannot abandon him.”
“The boy is a blood drinker?” Tapas asked, raising his eyebrows. “I thought he was a mortal child.”
He was confused. These men did not understand how a blood drinker was made, not completely.
“He is T’sukuru now,” I replied. I was reluctant to say more to the giant, to reveal the mysteries of our vampire nature. I feared I might provoke the desires of these long suffering men. Who wouldn’t covet our powers, especially if they didn’t understand the cost? I did not like the way his companions were watching me either, as if they were ready to drop to their knees and worship me at the slightest indication that I might desire it. I did not want to be worshipped, nor did I wish to fuel their messianic fantasies.
Tapas sensed my reservations. “I am happy your boy lives,” he said. “I had a family of my own before the Oombai captured me. A wife, two young daughters. I doubt my wife still waits for me. It has been years since I was taken, but I would like to see them anyway. I would like to know if they still live.”
While we conversed, some of the Neirie warriors were picking through the bodies of the Oombai I had slain. They were taking what they could salvage: clothing and armor that was not too bloodied or broken by my rampage to be of use to them, the dead men’s weapons and shields. Others hovered near us like sycophants, watching me with awestruck eyes. They whispered to one another when they thought I wasn’t looking.
“What are your plans? Where do you go from here?” I asked.
Tapas squinted toward the southeast, his upper lip peeled back from his teeth. “We travel first to the land of the Tanti, the home of these men who stare at you so worshipfully.” He nodded to our whispering attendants with a twinkle in his eyes. “They are a spiritual people, and you have the good fortune of sharing a name with one of their gods,” he said.
I glanced toward the men who continued to hover. “I don’t know if I’d call that good luck,” I murmured. “My people did not believe in gods. We revered our ancestors. From what I’ve seen of gods, they’re much too generous with suffering in exchange for all this bowing and scraping.”
Tapas laughed. “That could certainly be debated,” he said. “My people also had little use for gods. The Tanti’s gods certainly did not free us from the Oombai, despite all their prayers. Except through death, perhaps… but what good is that?” He sighed, looking away pensively. Remembering, perhaps, the indignities he had suffered. Finally, he blinked, resumed our conversation. “When we reach the Tanti homeland, we shall all rest for a while,” he continued. “The Tanti might bore you to death with talk of gods and fishing, but they are a generous people and do not turn away foreigners. Once we have recovered from our journey, those who are not Tanti will continue on to their own lands. The Grell. The Pruss. Their lands lie to the north of the Tanti. I and my fellow Vis’hantu will journey south, to our lands.” He glanced at me, curious. “Where lies your homeland, T’sukuru? Do you live in the east, where the other blood drinkers dwell?”
“No,” I answered quickly. I didn’t want to be associated with such brutal creatures. “I come from the northwest, from a land far removed from these climes. My people, however, are long departed from this world. I have become a wanderer. Alone, but for my adopted son.”
“It is a hard thing for a man to be without a home,” Tapas mused. “Are you certain you will not accompany us on our journey? You are T’sukuru, but my people would welcome you. It might take a while for them to trust you fully, but we have played host to your kind in the past. Other wandering blood drinkers, I should say. Not the T’sukuru of the east. You could have a home again. Men you could call brother.” He grinned slyly. “Maybe even a wife-- or many wives, if that is your custom.”
I laughed. “You tempt me, Tapas! I will consider it. My son and I watch over your group from a distance. We have sworn to protect you during your journey, but once you are safely home…” I shrugged. “I know not where we will go after that.”
I did not tell him that I was tempted to continue east, to find this land of the blood drinkers that everyone spoke of. If not for the reputation they had among the mortal men of this region, I would seek them out for certain, but I feared for Ilio’s safety. The blood drinkers of the east had such a fearsome reputation!
The fiery globe of the sun hung suspended over the horizon, casting a gold, slanting light across the great open plains. It would be dark in a couple more hours. I needed to return to Ilio. He would be worried, no doubt, of the outcome of the battle. Also, once it was dark, he would be free to move about on his own. If I did not return soon, he’d come to investigate, and I did not want him to chance across any of these mortals, not without me at his side to help guard his behavior. Mortal blood is always so tempting!
“It’s encouraging to know that we have such powerful guardians looking after us,” Tapas said. He looked as if he wanted to clap me on the back, but he restrained himself, hesitant to take such a familiar attitude with me. “Know that you have our gratitude, Thest. If not for you, the Oombai would have slain every man on this battlefield today. And they would have caught the rest shortly after. Dragged them back to those horrible pens. Or worse. I have no doubt of it.”
Glancing at the Oombai corpses, I said, “I do not think you need worry about them anymore.”
The Neirie scavengers were fighting with the vultures over the bodies now, waving their spears and clubs at the birds and cursing them. The vultures did not seem overly concerned with the mortals, however. They merely waddled away, wings spread out, or flapped to a less disputed locale. There were plenty of dead bodies.
More scavengers would come soon, though, I thought. Larger animal
s. Dangerous ones, perhaps.
“I think the threat of the Oombai has passed this day, as well,” Tapas said, looking in the same direction, his face unreadable. “We are truly free now.”
9
“Father?” Ilio called. “Are you unharmed?”
I had landed several meters away and approached the boy from the south. As I suspected, Ilio had remained awake, anxious of my return.
“I am unharmed, boy,” I said, trying to contain my amusement.
The young man sat beside the ash of last night’s fire, my cloak still draped over his body. As I drew near, I saw him quake. “I smell blood,” the lad whispered urgently.
I looked at my arms, which were covered in a veneer of glazed blood. Much of the blood had been absorbed through my flesh, but not all. What remained was black and crusting, falling away in flakes. My clothing was stiff with it. Ruined, I suspected.
“I need to bathe,” I said. “I wear the blood of many Oombai warriors.”
“I heard the cries of your enemies in the distance,” the boy said. “Screams of fear… then the sound of them dying.” The cloak shifted as he turned his head toward me. “You killed them all, didn’t you?”
“Every last one,” I said.
It was not a boast. I was simply speaking the truth. Now that the battle was over, I felt only weariness and remorse. I do not like to kill. Or perhaps I should say, my higher spirit does not like to kill. There is a pit in every man’s soul wherein lies the most ancient part of us, the reptile spirit, which revels in violence and mayhem and the satiation of our basest desires. I am no exception. It is what makes war so terrible for the men who partake of it: remembering the part of their spirit which reveled in the killing. It is enough to give a man nightmares… and an immortal an eternity of them.
I looked to the west, where the sun was melting upon a scrim of blue-gray mountains. The clouds above were the color of lacerated flesh. I wiped tacky red tears from my cheeks, squinting into the molten sky, then turned to my young companion.
“The sun is setting,” I said. “Why don’t you remove the cloak? Let’s see if you can tolerate the light.”
Ilio eased back one edge of the cloak. He yelped and jerked it closed. I waited while he gathered his resolve, and then he surprised me by tossing the entire thing off.
He sat cross-legged, his eyes squeezed down to slits. I saw his fingers curling into the folds of the cloak. Black tears streaked down his cheeks, but he endured the pain. “It burns!” he hissed, but he did not relent.
My brave, strong son!
I hauled him to his feet. “Can you walk? I would like to bathe. I want this repulsive blood off me. Then we can hunt, if you’d like.”
Ilio nodded, his lips split back from his teeth. He had very fine, very white vampire fangs. He wiped his cheeks, smearing tarry blood.
“Yes… I’m starving,” he said.
His flesh was like mine: milky white and with a faint crystalline texture. Glints of orange and yellow and blue winked upon the contours of his face when he turned his head to look at me.
“Can you see?” I asked, pushing through the grass beside him.
“The pain is abating a little.”
“The light will always sting your eyes, but a man can learn to put aside his pain if he sets his mind to it. It is a simple skill to master, even for a mortal.”
“Yes, Father,” Ilio murmured, opening his eyes a little wider. His pupils had constricted to tiny pinpricks, but he suffered without complaint.
“Good, good. Never surrender to pain. Embrace it. Defy it.”
I sniffed the air, then angled away to the north.
“This way.”
Ilio stumbled over a hummock, not yet accustomed to the daylight, but I did not have to tarry for him.
Not far from our camp, a shallow rill of water meandered through a sodden flat choked with reeds. We removed our boots and tiptoed across the slurping mud. Ilio washed his hands and face in the idle stream while I stripped off my stiff clothes. As I hung my bloody garments upon the bulrushes, I told him of the battle, and the invitation the Neirie had made to us.
“Perhaps we could visit their camp after we feed,” Ilio suggested. “I would not be so tempted by their blood with a full belly. You see how well I am able to endure the sunlight. I can endure my thirst for blood as well.”
I came across a human ear in the pocket of my breeches and threw it away with a grunt. “We shall see,” I said.
Ilio sighed and splashed his hand through the water.
“Don’t pout,” I said. “It is not becoming.”
“Easy for you to say. You make all the decisions,” Ilio complained.
“True,” I laughed, shucking off my breeches. I squatted in the middle of the stream and began to splash the water up onto my arms and chest. Ilio twitched, his nose wrinkling at the smell of the blood that swirled toward him in the current.
“What if I leave the decision to you, Ilio? Can you judge your self-control honestly, despite what your desires urge you to do?”
“Yes!”
“So tell me true. Can you resist the lure of their blood? Have you the strength to endure the hunger if we should go and walk among them?”
I sidled closer to him as I spoke, allowing the blood of the Oombai to drip from my skin. The moistened blood trickled down my abdomen and limbs.
Ilio’s eyes flashed at me, and his body began to tremble. I could see the desire welling up in him, seizing control of his mind. He wanted to throw himself upon me and lick up all the blood. Perhaps he even fantasized of biting me.
He scrambled away with a cry.
“Ilio...!” I called after him.
“No,” he moaned, crouching amid the reeds. He hung his head in defeat. “Not yet. I am not yet strong enough to resist it.”
“Take heart, Son. You see your weakness and confess it aloud. That is a good thing,” I said proudly. “A man cannot address his weaknesses if he refuses to see them. We will try to strengthen your will. Tonight, when we hunt, you will only drink half your fill of blood.”
10
It was many night’s journey to the land of the Tanti. We followed the slave refugees from a safe distance, staying close enough to aid them in the event of some threat, but far enough away that we were not tempted to prey upon them.
In the evenings, when we roused, we enjoyed the simple music the people made around their fires, though from time to time it also filled me with a great melancholy. Many of their songs reminded me of the songs my own people used to sing in the evening, when our bellies were full and our children were sleeping in our laps and we had gathered outside the Elder Siede for community.
It was enough to bring a black tear to my eye, listening to the melodies. I remembered laying with my wives to music like that, making love as our tribesmen sang at the cave of the elders, night not quite come but the evening insects chirruping, the flesh of my wives moving sinuously beneath my body, the heat and smoky smell of our wetus mingling with the scent of our sweat.
I wanted to reach out and grasp those memories, pull them to me and press them into my heart. I wanted to fly from this cold existence and take refuge in the arms of my old lovers, but they were gone to me now, never to return.
Ilio saw the melancholy come over me and would try to distract me with idle talk. He would talk about the gods of his people, the extinct Denghoi, or badger me with his endless questions.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes my mood would lighten, and I forgot the past for a little while. Other times, he could not draw me from my gloom, and I had to leave him for a while.
I would run through the grassy plains at full speed, racing beneath the moon and stars, run so fast my passage ripped the grass from the ground by its roots, run and run until I was far away and I could rage in solitude at my fate… or weep.
One night, Ilio looked up at me in surprise as he hardened the tip of a spear in the fire. “Do you hear that, Father?” he asked with a grin. “
They are singing to you! They are singing to Thest!”
I had been listening absently to the melody but paying little attention to the words. I never knew what they were saying anyway. I craned my head so that I could listen more closely and was shocked to hear my name woven into their song.
“That must be the Tanti,” I said after a while. “One of their gods is named Thest, too.”
“I believe they sing to you, not their god,” Ilio replied. “They are praising you for saving them from the Oombai.”
“Your stick is burning merrily, boy,” I said, nodding toward the fire.
“Oh!” he cried, and shook it out.
The next evening, we woke to find that the Neirie had left an offering to us. We smelled it immediately upon rising. A gourd was perched upon a stone a short distance from our camp. Inside was a small amount of blood. Cold, congealed, but human.
“Superstitious fools,” I growled, after we had identified the source of the blood tribute. “Do they mean to tempt us to murder?”
Ilio stared at the gourd with wide, glittering eyes, his nostrils flaring. He looked like he was about to snatch the gourd from my hands. He had been trying to strengthen his willpower the last few nights, drinking as little blood as he could manage. The offering those silly Tanti put out for us—I was fairly certain it was the Tanti who left it—had nearly pushed the boy over the edge. He was trembling, his fingers opening and closing compulsively.
“Ilio!” I shouted.
The boy jumped, his eyes jerking from the gourd to my face.
“We cannot accept this tribute,” I said. “It would only strengthen the temptation to feed on them.”
“Yes, I… I understand,” Ilio whispered. “But, Father… the smell!”
I held the gourd out to him. He jumped back as if I’d tried to strike him.
“Take it,” I said. “Pour it out upon the earth.”
The Oldest Living Vampire In Love (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 3) Page 7
