“I… I don’t think that I can!”
“Yes, you can,” I insisted. “Pour it out. Then we will hunt.”
He nodded, took the gourd into his hands. The blood inside was thick and dark. Several insects had drowned in the sticky fluid, tempted to their deaths by the rich, salty scent. I wondered if the boy could do it. Could he pour it out, as I’d commanded, or would he give in to his bloodlust and try to gulp it like a greedy child before I stopped him?
He made a noise that was halfway between a choke and a sob, his hands trembling, but he tipped the gourd and poured the scarlet fluid into the grass.
“I’m very proud of you,” I said, patting him on the shoulder.
“Foolish mortals!” he snarled, throwing the gourd into the dark.
He threw it with his full vampire strength, and it shot away like an arrow into the night sky, hooting.
“Come, let us hunt. You shall drink your fill tonight. Your will has already been proven this evening.”
As we continued to travel, keeping pace with the Neirie refugees, the featureless topography of the Pannonian Plains became increasingly hilly and forested. The hazy blue scrim of the mountains grew higher and more distinct with each passing night. We were nearing the lands of the Tanti… a region called Romania in your modern era. The mountains we were approaching were the Southern Carpathians. Rugged, their flanks swathed in thick pine forests, and beyond the Carpathians: the Black Sea. But we were not to reach that sea. Only I, many years later, would breach those waters. The home of the Tanti sat in a valley at the base of the Southern Carpathians, near a lake that no longer exists, in the middle of what is now called the Retezat National Park.
The lonely Pannonian Plains had fallen behind us. The region we passed through now was more densely populated. Twice, in the weeks that followed, the Neirie refugees crossed paths with small groups of roving hunters. Though Ilio and I watched nervously from afar, the encounters were relatively peaceful. It seemed, at long last, that the Neirie’s luck had changed.
By day, the men hunted while the women gathered. There was an abundance of game to be caught—hares, deer, squirrels, birds. Plenty of forage on the hillsides and in the forests to collect-- herbs and vegetables, fruit and berries and mushrooms The Neirie began to look plump and strong once again. They were no longer the walking skeletons they’d been when they won their freedom from their Oombai overlords.
It was midsummer now, the weather hot and humid. Tapas, the leader of the refugees, left their camp one evening and walked a good distance toward us, torch in hand. I watched from our camp as he shoved the handle of the torch into the earth and sat. I waited to see what he would do next, but he did not move. He just sat there with the wind blowing his red hair to and fro.
“I think he wishes to speak with me,” I said to Ilio finally.
“Are you going to meet with him?” the boy asked.
It was a blustery evening, cumulus clouds piling up in the sky like great black boulders. The dark base of the storm clouds gathering to the north of us flickered with lightning. The air felt energized. Judging by the wind, the deluge was headed our way, but I estimated that it would be hours yet before we needed to seek shelter.
“I suppose I should,” I said. In fact, I was eager to visit with the giant. It had been weeks since I spoke with anyone other than my adopted son. I enjoyed Ilio’s company, but Tapas was a man, and did not speak only in questions.
“Perhaps I could accompany you,” Ilio suggested.
“I believe that would be allowable,” I replied. “You have made good progress learning to control your hunger. I think Tapas would be safe from your appetite.” I smiled at the boy. “Or you could hunt by yourself tonight. Bring us back a tasty meal to share beside the fire.”
I had to restrain my laughter, watching him try to decide. Each option was equally tempting. His glinting eyes twitched swiftly to and fro. Speak with a mortal… or hunt on his own. His decision surprised me.
“I will hunt while you converse with the mortal,” the boy said.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
Ilio shrugged, rising to his feet. “It is just a man.”
I rose as well, dusting off my leggings. “Do not stray too far,” I said, and then I yelled after him, “And do not bite off anything bigger than you can chew!”
Teasing him just a little.
“I’ll be fine,” he said, exasperated, as he hurried away from the fire. He grinned back at me, eyes bright. “Now watch me fly, Father! The wind is so strong tonight!”
He took several running steps and lifted into the air, his garments flapping. I watched his figure diminish into the distance, arms thrown out to his sides. The gusting winds tossed him back and forth a bit as he sailed through the dark, but he was right. I worried too much. He would be fine.
Smiling indulgently, I headed toward Tapas.
11
The giant rose as I appeared at the perimeter of his torch’s dancing light. “Thest!” he greeted me. “I was beginning to think you hadn’t noticed me!” He shouted to be heard above the gusting winds, but he needn’t have bothered. I heard him just fine.
“Tapas,” I nodded, showing him the palms of my hands. “How do you fare?”
“I fare well,” he answered. “We all have, under your protection.”
He spoke true. His cheeks were no longer sunken, his eyes no longer pits. His body had grown plumper and regained the pink hues of good health. He was not handsome, not this great beast of a man, but he would no longer frighten women and little children if he should chance to cross their path.
“A storm approaches from the north,” I said over the whipping of our clothes.
“Yes, and a powerful one, too, by the look of it.”
He clasped my hand and I patted him on the shoulder. In another time, another place, I would have offered him my home, the comforts of one of my wives. I sat on the ground at his feet, and he joined me, crossing his legs. “What did you wish to speak of?” I asked. I was very curious.
“I have two things to tell you, T’sukuru,” the giant answered. He was grinning so it must be happy news, I thought. He cast his gaze in the direction I had come. “Where is your boy? One of the things I come to tell you involves your son.”
“Ilio?” I asked, surprised. “He is hunting on his own tonight. I am trying to wean him.”
Tapas laughed, nodding in understanding.
“What news do you have of my son?” I asked. I worried: had he snuck away and caused these people mischief? I did not know how he might have done so. Perhaps, while I was sleeping...
“In due time. First, I wished to let you know that I will be departing from camp at sunrise.”
“Departing? Where are you going?”
“The hunters we met a few days ago hail from a tribe very near to my people’s lands. They are starting their journey home in the morning. I and my Vis’hantu brothers and sisters will accompany them.”
“I hate to hear that. I’m sure the others will miss your wise counsel.”
Tapas nodded, spreading his hands. “All things joined must also part,” he said. “That is a saying my people have. I only wished to let you know so that you did not wonder when we departed. The Tanti camp is only a few days journey east from here, if you wish to accompany them the rest of the way… or you may join our party.”
“I would have been curious. Thank you for keeping us informed,” I said.
“No, Thest, thank you,” Tapas said, his expression very sincere. “If not for your assistance… I… These people…” He choked on his emotions suddenly, his eyes growing misty. He looked embarrassed.
“No need for that,” I said, feeling a great affection for the man. I hardly knew him, but there was something in his nature that reminded me of my father-- his sense of honor, perhaps, or maybe it was just the great frizzy mane of red hair. My father’s hair was red when I was a boy, and just as unruly. I patted the giant on the leg. “I hope your journey is a
safe one, Tapas. And I hope you find your wife and daughters in good health.”
“Yes, I too,” he said.
“Now... what of your other news? What must you tell me regarding my son? Has he done something that I’m not aware of?”
Tapas grinned very broadly. “Your boy will soon be a man. That is the other thing I came to speak with you about.”
I frowned, thinking I had misunderstood him. Some Denghoi words had several interpretations. “A man? What do you mean?” I asked.
“One of the Tanti women is with child, T’sukuru. She claims the father is your son.”
Ilio
1
“With child...?” Lukas interrupted. “I thought you said that vampires were impotent.”
“Not impotent,” I corrected him. “Sterile. There is a difference.”
“You can fuck. You’re just shooting blanks, right?” Lukas grinned.
“Vulgar as always, but yes. Our seed is as lifeless as the rest of the human cells in our bodies, incapable of striking the spark of life. A vampire is really only the transmogrified host of the parasite which dwells within him. A means to an end for the organism we vampires call the Strix. We function only to feed its hunger, and to carry out its natural desire to reproduce, which we do by spreading the vampiric curse to others.”
“So how did…?” Lukas’s voice trailed off, then his eyebrows shot up. “Oh!”
“Yes. Ilio, my adopted son, mated with a mortal female only once before he was made into a vampire. When we were visited by the Neirie sisters in the village of the Oombai.”
Lukas snorted. “The kid must have been quite a marksman.”
I nodded with a smile. “Bullseye.”
2
Tapas embraced me as we parted. “Fare well, T’sukuru,” he said. “Know that you will always be welcome in the lands of the Vis’hantu.”
“Fare well, Tapas.”
The giant plucked his torch from the ground and turned away, stormwinds tossing his frizzy red hair. I watched the big man walk back to the Neirie camp, the news he had brought me still bouncing around inside my skull.
Ilio, to be a father? I marveled.
The Oombai Elders had sent slave women to see to our ease when we first arrived at the village of the ground scratchers. It was just a ploy to get some of my T’sukuru blood, of course, and we had played right into their hands. Allowed ourselves to be distracted, seduced. Ilio had mated with two of them while I was occupied with the third-- their doomed sister, Aioa. He was still mortal then, a fecund man-child, his bow nocked and ready.
Ilio, a father! I thought, amused.
It seemed too soon for the woman to know she was with child, but then again, I did tend to lose track of time. It was midsummer now. An entire season had passed since we came down from the mountains. We had been trailing after the Neirie for weeks. Plenty of time for her belly to grow.
Truth be told, the news that Tapas just delivered pleased me to no end. As the giant’s massive figure dwindled into the night, I stood in the darkness trying to contain my excitement.
From the moment I’d adopted the young mammoth hunter, it had been my ambition to give the lad a normal mortal life. The Oombai Elders had spoiled my plans, but not—as it turned out—without hope of redemption. If this Neirie woman carried his child to term, delivered it without complication, my son might yet know the joys of fatherhood-- a family, perhaps even a wife!
It would not be a simple thing. He would have to master his thirst for human blood to be able to enjoy any kind of interaction with his mortal offspring, but he did not seem to be ruled by his hunger as desperately as I was when I was first made into a blood drinker. In fact, he already seemed to have a firmer grasp on his lethal impulses than I ever had!
Perhaps it was because he was weaker than I, more human-like. Perhaps his will was stronger than mine. Or maybe I was just more self-indulgent. Whatever the reason, I could easily imagine him living alongside a human wife and child, having something very like a natural mortal life—despite the stumbling blocks fate had seen fit to throw beneath the lad’s feet.
Ilio… a father!
Of course, it was possible the Neirie woman might miscarry. Both mother and child might die during childbirth. It was not uncommon.
Perhaps it would be wise to keep this news from him. If anything were to happen to either of them, the lad would be devastated.
I knew I couldn’t do that, however. I wouldn’t want someone to keep news like that from me, not even out of love.
Ilio... a father! I mused one more time, and then I went to find my fertile little brat.
3
I found him in a stand of conifers just to the north of our camp, sobbing quietly.
I knew what he had done even before I saw him. I could smell the blood on the seesawing wind. Mortal blood, rich and fresh. The aroma was so strong it stopped me in my tracks, and I had to wrestle down my own hunger before I could continue.
“Ilio?” I called out gently.
His weeping wrenched at my heart. Such remorse! Such self-loathing! Despite all his training, his ambition to master the bloodthirst, he had chanced upon a mortal and surrendered to temptation.
“I’m so sorry, Father,” he sobbed, crouching in the shadows. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
The pines creaked as the wind tossed them to and fro. The drumming of the thunder was louder now, the storm closer. I crept into the deeper shadows of the grove, moving silently over the blanket of pine needles, and found the boy squatting beside the body of a mortal man. Ilio had wrapped his arms around himself and was rocking back and forth. His cheeks were stained red with bloody tears. His lips and chin were smeared with blood, too. There was blood on his hands. Blood on his clothing. My stomach gurgled at the sight.
I glanced at the mortal the boy had killed. Even in the starless dark, I had no trouble identifying the man. It was one of the Neirie who had turned back to battle the Oombai-- one of the Tanti men who’d stared at me so worshipfully that day. An ill-fated fellow, he had survived the skirmish with the Oombai only to run afoul of my son.
He was a pitiful sight, his eyes staring fixedly, glazed and slightly crossed, tongue protruding from slack lips. The sad, confused expression of all dead creatures.
I saw that Ilio had broken his body. Shards of bone protruded from his twisted left arm. His left leg had too many joints. He had suffered terrible violence at the boy’s hands. I wondered: had he startled the lad, or had my son done this to him out of savagery?
“Tell me what happened,” I said. I kept my voice neutral, neither condemning nor condoning.
Ilio snuffled. He was reluctant to answer.
“Ilio…?” I pressed him.
“I was tracking a deer,” the boy confessed. “I guess the mortal was doing the same. I didn’t even know he was there. He was crawling through the grass on his belly.”
“You didn’t smell him?” I asked.
Ilio shook his head. “The wind was blowing the other direction.”
“What happened then?”
“I was making a game of it. I wanted to see how close I could come before the deer sensed that I was there. Then all of a sudden this mortal stood up out of the grass! He was just a few strides ahead of me, but his back was turned. He didn’t see me. He nocked an arrow, took aim at the deer. I was so close I could have reached out and tapped him on the shoulder. I was going to leave him, but then the wind changed direction and the smell of him washed over me...” Ilio groaned as if the memory was causing him physical pain. “I couldn’t stop myself. I leapt onto his back, tore his neck open with my fangs. He fell beneath me, screaming. I wanted to stop myself, but I couldn’t. His blood tasted so good, and I was so hungry--!”
“All right, Son,” I said. “That’s enough.”
“I can feel him inside me,” he said quietly. “I don’t mean his blood. I mean his mind. I can feel his thoughts inside my head. His memories.”
A rash of goosebumps shi
vered up my spine. “What do you mean?”
“He’s in here, inside my skull,” he said, and then he shrieked, grabbing coils of his hair and tearing them from his scalp. I froze for a moment, shocked by his outburst, and then I rushed forward and took ahold of his wrists.
“Stop it, Ilio!” I shouted. “What are you doing? Get ahold of yourself!”
“He’s in my mind!” Ilio exclaimed, struggling, and then he collapsed against me.
“Tell me what you see,” I said to the boy, pulling him to my chest.
“He had a son,” Ilio murmured. “His son was my age when the Oombai took them.”
Ilio looked up at me, the whites of his eyes very bright in the dark.
“I can hear his thoughts inside my own. He keeps saying a word. He says it over and over. Gart. Gart... I think it’s the name of his son.”
“What else do you see?”
“He was teaching the boy to hunt. The Oombai came across them in the middle of the forest. He knew who the Oombai were. He knew why they had come into his people’s lands. He surrendered to them without a fight. Gart was his only son. He didn’t want them to injure his son. He told the boy to surrender, to give himself up peacefully, but the boy wouldn’t submit to them. He fought them. He fought them so fiercely! No, Gart! Put down your weapon! There are too many of them!”
The timber of Ilio’s voice had changed. It sounded deeper, more man-like. I could feel him shaking in my arms, but there was nothing I could do to ease him. I did not, in truth, know exactly what was happening to him. I never experienced visions when I fed, and up until that point, neither had the boy. Probably because we mostly fed on animals. It never happens with animal blood. I know now that some blood drinkers see visions when they feed. It is a rare gift, but it was one I did not share with the lad, so I did not know how to comfort him, and to be honest, I was a little afraid he’d gone insane.
“Oh, Thest, they beat him so badly!” Ilio sobbed. “They took great pleasure in it. They beat him until he was unconscious. His father tried to carry him to the village of the ground scratchers, but the boy died the next day. He died in his father’s arms. The Oombai made him put the boy down when they saw that he was dead. They wouldn’t let him bury his son. They just left him. Left him behind for the scavengers.”
The Oldest Living Vampire In Love (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 3) Page 8
