I tried to conceal my amusement, looking toward Ilio to see if he understood the jest.
But Ilio had retreated into his thoughts. He stared straight ahead as he walked, his brow furrowed.
I could see past his troubled expression, however. We had been companions for two whole cycles of the seasons. He was pleased, despite his worries, that this woman called Priss was the one who carried his child.
As for me, I could not recall which one was which. In all honesty, I had paid little attention to the slave women who tended to Ilio that day. Their eldest sister, Aioa, had commanded the lion’s share of my attention. A fiery and self-possessed woman, Aioa had given me to drink of her blood, seduced me with her body, whispering sweet venom in my ears in hopes of setting me against her Oombai oppressors. I knew Ilio had mated with the two subordinate sisters, but I was deaf and blind to the rather vigorous activities on the boy’s side of the hut that afternoon.
As we walked, I made small talk with Tapas. “I wager you’re excited to be headed home at last,” I said.
Tapas nodded. “Excited, but weary. Leading these people has become a tiresome burden. Everyone worships a different god, and each man thinks his is the only true faith. Now that we are safe from the Oombai, thanks to you, these people have taken to bickering endlessly about their beliefs. It gives me headaches. I cannot wait to be free of such fruitless concerns.”
We were walking through the outskirts of the camp now. The whole group had roused and moved to surround us. It was as if they shared a single mind, dogging our steps as Tapas led us to the center of the settlement. They whispered to one another fretfully-- thin, dirty men and women, eyes round with curiosity and fear. The drizzle helped to subdue the smell of their bodies, the scent of their blood, but only a little, and certainly not enough for comfort.
I glanced toward Ilio nervously, but he still had control of his bloodthirst.
Barely.
Though I am sure the signs would be indiscernible to a mortal, I could see him wrestling with the impulse to attack them. I could see it in the dilation of his pupils, the tiny flutters in the muscles of his jaw. I heard his stomach gurgle, and then he swallowed.
So did I.
We were assailed by a multitude of tongues. Some of the words sounded familiar, but most of their talk was nonsensical. The babble of lunatics.
Tapas threw his arms into the air. He yelled for their attention and the crowd instantly fell silent. He had the voice of a natural born leader, deep and rich and carrying. In the village of the ground scratchers, he had been an object of scorn, employed as a sex performer because of his unusually generous endowments. Now he was the provisional chieftain of a large group of freed slaves. Even I was impressed by the man, and I worried what would become of the Neirie once he departed.
He spoke for a long time, switching between several different languages. A few men standing in the crowd translated his words even further, muttering under their breath to their own individual cliques. Every time the giant gestured toward us, the eyes of the crowd turned obediently in our direction, and each time they turned toward us, it seemed, their expressions were more and more awestruck. I could hear my name being whispered in the throng: “Thest… Thest…!” Some of the Tanti men standing in a cluster near the back of the crowd were jabbering at one another anxiously, gesticulating. I could see two women standing in their midst, though the bodies of their tribesmen blocked most of their features from my sight.
Tapas finished speaking and the crowd shifted toward us. Many of the men and women laid their hands upon us, their faces beaming with gratitude and acceptance. “Thest! Ilio!” they said, nodding their heads and patting us. Ilio made a low groaning sound, his hands twitching, and I grabbed ahold of him by the upper arm, yanking him nearer to my side.
A dozen languages, a hundred hands.
“T’sukuru gi onho!”
“Ilio on’n ma sumbun!”
“Che wheh? Ulg! Ulg!”
I could feel the boy trembling against me. Endure! I thought intently, as if that might somehow transmit the unspoken command to his mind.
Then the crowd parted and the Tanti strode forward in a group. They were stout, proud men-- much like the people of my own lost tribe-- their chins thrust out, their eyes fervid and shining with what I surmised was some species of religious ecstasy.
Watching them approach, I again felt that nagging sense of familiarity. It was as if I recognized some part of myself in them. A modern person might call that feeling déjà vu, but it was not déjà vu… not exactly.
Something is different about these Tanti people, I thought. But what…?
I did not have time to ponder it further. The men in the front turned sharply on their heels, stepping aside with an abbreviated bow. From the center of their protective circle strode two young Tanti women. It was Aioa’s sisters, the slave women who had seduced my mortal son.
Ilio gasped at the sight of them. “Priss!” he exclaimed.
The smaller one, the one who commanded Ilio’s attention, stepped to the fore. She was as lovely as Aioa had been, though frailer, her features unspoiled by the passions that had tempered her older sister’s looks, and though she was dressed in little more than rags, I found myself moved by her placid beauty. Priss’s other sister (who, I learned later, was called Lorn) was a taller, more voluptuous woman, just as attractive in her own way, though not as finely featured.
Priss smiled at Ilio, one pale hand cupping the gentle curve of her bare belly.
“Ilio,” she nodded, and then she said something to him I could not understand.
Ilio went to his knees in front of her, moving faster than I could react. For a second I feared he meant to attack her, that he had finally lost control of the bloodthirst.
Instead, he put his ear to her belly.
As if he could hear such a tiny thing! I thought. She couldn’t have been more than two moons gone by!
As the rest of the Tanti watched, nervousness and wonder warring in their expressions, the young slave woman cupped Ilio’s chin and urged him to his feet.
They were both small in stature. In fact, they stood almost eye-to-eye-- Ilio being a scant shade taller. Priss, still holding his chin, turned Ilio’s face from one side to the other. She took in the changes the living blood had wrought upon his features. His skin: smooth and hard as stone. His complexion: white and bloodless. She stared into his gleaming jewel-like eyes, and an expression of sympathy stole over her countenance.
She smiled and spoke to him again. Soft words. A promise, perhaps? I could not understand their meaning, but Ilio could, it seemed. He nodded and replied to her in the Tanti tongue, and then stepped backwards—very formally-- to my side.
The Tanti slave women withdrew inside their ring of protectors. The men enclosed the females, then, bowing once more to us, they huddled the women away.
I looked from Ilio to the retreating Tanti, wondering what, exactly, I had just bore witness to.
8
The sky remained overcast all through the morning, the rain falling intermittently. Every leaf, every blade of grass, every mortal face around us was beaded with water-- dripping, dripping. It was as if the entire world had been dunked in a great pool. The sodden gloom was a blessing to us, however, as it kept our discomfort to a minimum. I doubt the Neirie would have been so welcoming if blood-streaked tears were dribbling down our faces.
I was curious to find out what Ilio and Priss had said to one another, and how the boy had understood the Tanti tongue—even spoke it himself!-- but I did not press him for details. We had plenty of time to speak of it later, when we weren’t so tormented by the smell of mortal blood.
The Neirie continued to accost us after the Tanti hustled away. Most of the escaped slaves spoke Oombai, which I was somewhat able to decipher, but they said little of import to this narrative. They introduced themselves to us. Thanked us for slaying the Elders, and for interceding when the Oombai warriors tried to retake them.
All around us shifted grinning mortal faces, eyes gleaming with superstitious awe, their soft mortal flesh flush with pulsing blood. Dirty hands clutched at our clothing, patted our arms and backs. I don’t think I’ve ever been groped so much in my life, not even when I was a mortal man, and the tribe I hailed from had engaged in ritual orgies!
Ilio was trying his best to follow what they were saying, but there were too many people talking all at once. He was starting to become overwhelmed.
“He says that he prayed every night for deliverance,” Ilio translated for me as some toothless old man gabbled in my face. “He thinks the gods sent you to strike down the Elders. He says that you’re… Ne w’ae?”
Someone stumbled against the boy then, and he hissed, baring his fangs.
“Kwa Wa’elah!” he snarled, a Denghoi pejorative.
I grabbed Ilio by the arm as quick as I could. As he brought his free hand up to strike the clumsy mortal, his fingers curled into claws, I yanked the boy from the throng, moving to a safe distance at superhuman speed.
“Father!” Ilio cried out breathlessly, shocked by the speed that I had moved us from the Neirie. His knees went weak and he fell against me.
“I’m sorry, Son. I had to get us away from that crowd. Are you unhurt?”
He nodded as I helped him to his feet. “Yes… I-- I am fine.”
He recovered quickly, turned to look at the horde in the center of the Neirie camp. I had swept him just beyond the furthest lean-to, away from all the chaos, the maddening smell of blood.
“I almost lost control,” he confessed shakily. “If you hadn’t pulled me away—“
“I know.”
“We should go now!” he said.
“I agree. We’ve done what we came here to do. They have seen us, laid hands on us. You’ve spoken to the woman who claims to bear your child. We should retire to our own camp before we push our luck too far.” I glanced to the sky, which was showing a few patches of blue. “The storm has nearly spent itself. The sun will come out soon. Let me bid Tapas farewell, and then we will fly away from here. Can you hold on just a moment longer?”
“Yes, just… let me wait for you here.”
Tapas was looking for me in the camp. Moving at great speed, I appeared at his side. He started, his red hair lifting at the swirl of wind that accompanied my arrival, then he chuckled in appreciation of the trick.
“Your sudden disappearance has sealed your reputation,” he said teasingly. “Now they are certain of your divinity. Was that your intention all along, T’sukuru?”
“Not at all,” I said. “The crowd was making us uncomfortable.”
Tapas noticed Ilio in the distance. The man-child stood slouching with his elbows in his hands, watching us impatiently. From where we stood, he looked like any other teenage boy. Short, slim, just on the cusp of manhood, his chest and shoulders developed, but his waist narrow, his legs gangling. As he was now, so would he remain forever.
“They cannot figure out where you’ve vanished to,” Tapas said with amusement. The Neirie were milling around aimlessly, everyone babbling at once. I moved subtly to put the giant between us. I didn’t want to be spotted before we could make good on our escape.
“We are returning to our camp momentarily. I just wanted to bid you farewell, Tapas. Perhaps I will come visit you when my chick has flown the nest.”
“I would welcome that, Thest,” Tapas said, turning away from the Neirie with a grin. “The Vis’hantu territory is but two fists walk to the south of the Tanti village. Come see me if you tire of fables and fishing stories. And good luck with that boy of yours. I have a feeling he’s quite a handful.”
I smiled and nodded my head, and then I was away. I moved at full speed to where my vampire child awaited. “Come, Ilio!” I said, pausing at his side only long enough to speak, and then I was in motion again, the wind whistling in my ears. I sped to the top of the hill, and then I threw my arms out and flew.
9
The sky was clear when we arose, the moon a bright sickle skimming the rugged peaks of the Carpathian Mountains. We had found a relatively dry location in which to sleep the remainder of the daylight hours. It was a sandy crevice tucked beneath a shelf of stone, one that looked as if it might host a waterfall during the spring season, when snowmelt sent torrents of icy water coursing down the mountains. The falls were all but dried up now, just a serene pool standing below the rocky recession we’d slept in, the water green and full of wriggling tadpoles.
I slipped from beneath the overhanging rocks, dropping lightly to the ground below. We were in a lush wood not far from the Neirie camp, a beautiful location with ferns drooping from the stony ledges and flowering plants crowding around the evaporating pool. I noticed soapwart among the crocuses and lilies and decided to scrub my filthy clothes. But first I needed to build a fire.
There are many different methods of making a fire, most of them terribly laborious for mortal men. For a vampire, however, it is a simple thing to do. Our great speed allows us to generate enormous friction, which in turn creates heat. I can rub two sticks together fast enough to make them burst into flames in just a couple seconds. It might take a mortal hours to do the same.
I gathered some stones, then dug a shallow pit in the earth. Ilio rose as I was placing the stones in a circle and I sent him off to collect some firewood.
We did not need a fire. We had no fear of animals, nor did we need it to cook our evening meal. We did not need its light to see by, nor its heat to warm our flesh, but a campfire has always comforted me. I enjoy watching the flames curl and lap at the wood, the smell of the smoke, the pop and crackle of the glowing embers. It connects me to my mortal life in a way few other things do, reminding me of a home that no longer exists, a family long returned to the earth. The memories ache like the bones of the elderly, but I hold them close to me nonetheless.
Ilio returned, dragging an enormous log behind him.
“Will this do?” he grinned.
“Ilio…!” I sighed, and then I had to laugh.
I rose and helped the boy break the log into useful sized pieces. It wasn’t difficult. The log was half-rotted. We positioned the remainder near the firepit as a place to rest our backs.
“So tell me, Son,” I said, arranging tinder in the middle of the pit, “what did you speak of with the slave woman down in the Neirie camp?” I hadn’t had time to ask him earlier. The sun had come out and we were preoccupied with finding a comfortable place to rest. I plucked the fluff from the seedhead of a cattail, placing it into a small mound of birch bark and dried grass.
Ilio looked embarrassed. “She didn’t really say much.”
“So tell me,” I badgered him. “Or have you suddenly grown bashful?”
I got my kindling ready, then took up a long, sturdy stick and placed its tip upon the flat surface of a split log. Holding the stick between my palms, I moved my hands back and forth, pressing down. My hands moved in a blur, the wood squealing. Within moments, a curl of smoke was rising from the log. I tipped my ember into the tinder and blew softly. A tiny flame blossomed from the spark, hungry to devour the meal of cattail fluff and birch bark I’d prepared for it. I fed it kindling, watching it grow, then roofed it with larger pieces. Our campfire sputtered and hissed as the moisture from the morning’s rains boiled out of the wood.
“Well?” I prompted the boy, sitting back.
The firelight glimmered in the vampire boy’s eyes, red embers winking in their depths. “She said that I was acceptable,” Ilio confessed.
“Acceptable?” I chuckled. It sounded like something one of the women from my tribe might have said.
He nodded. “She said she would take me for a mate, but I would have to prove myself worthy first.”
“Do you want her for a mate?” I asked.
He smiled and nodded his head. “Yes. I find her appealing.”
“Do you realize how difficult such a marriage will be? Every moment you are around her, you will have
to fight the urge to kill her. You will be like a wolf mated to a doe.”
“I can resist the hunger,” he insisted. “Look how well I did today.”
“Yes, but… a wife, Ilio! Think about it rationally. You would be with her at all times. She would expect sexual intercourse. Ilio, she is a mortal. As fragile as a flower. One slip and you would crush her, and then how would you feel, especially if you’ve grown to love her?”
“I will be careful of my strength,” he said. “It is not so hard to do. And you coupled with a mortal woman without harming her. I saw it myself. It is not impossible.”
I could see that no argument would sway him from the idea. Though the complications of taking a mortal woman as a mate should have been intimidating to him, I let it go. He would do what he would do. I was not his master. Not even, really, his father. Besides, who could know the future? Perhaps he would succeed.
And if he could do it, did that not also mean the same could be said of me?
10
At that point in time, I had only just awakened from the ice. If you recall from the first volume of my memoirs, I had cast my body into a glacial crevasse, trying to end my immortal suffering. I had outlived my wives and children. My descendants had abandoned the valley that had been our home from time immemorial, fleeing before the advancing cold. In my loneliness, I was seduced by Death, and so I had climbed atop the largest of the icy floes clawing their way into the valley, and I had thrown myself into the deepest, darkest fissure I could find. My last thought had been a declaration of satisfaction and relief as massive planes of jagged ice crushed me to a pulp.
But I had not perished. I lay in the womb of the glacier, locked in dreamless slumber, preserved by the Strix until the ice retreated once again, several thousand years later. Cast out, crushed and senseless, I was a stillborn thing awakening in the middle of a desolate tundra.
The Oldest Living Vampire In Love (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 3) Page 10
