“Then you wish to be freed?” she asked.
“What if I do not?” I replied. “What if I wish to remain bound to you for all eternity?”
She laughed mockingly, her hands sliding from around my shoulders. Her fingertips trailed down my chest, my stomach, finally to my breeches. She pushed them down my thighs with a brusque motion, took my organ in her hand. “This is the only leash I need to lead a beast like you around.”
I laughed, even as she pressed me to the ground.
“Palifver will urge Khronos to destroy you,” she said, sinking down upon me. “I’m not certain whose tongue wields more influence with him, my old lover’s or mine, but have no doubt: he will try to poison Khronos against you.”
“I do not fear Palifver,” I said huskily. Through her memories, I had intimate knowledge of the blood drinker. More than I cared to know! Memories of a passionate affair, their constant battle of wills, and in the end, betrayal. Once lovers, now there was only bitterness between them. I hated him, just as venomously as Zenzele did.
“I will destroy him at the first opportunity,” I promised her.
“Don’t even think it!” she gasped, rising and falling upon me. “You invite condemnation!”
I didn’t pursue the matter, thinking to spare her from complicity. I brought my arm up, placed my wrist against her lips.
“I would have you know me,” I said. “Experience my life as I have experienced yours.”
Her golden eyes sought mine. There was uncertainty, fear, in those gleaming prisms.
“Do it,” I urged her. “Please!”
She hesitated, then plunged her fangs into my flesh.
Uroboros
1
When we finished making love, we hunted.
Fully clothed again, we set forth, slipping through the shadowcut moonlight. Zenzele was quiet, as if lost in thought, but seemed absurdly aware of my presence. She startled each time I made some noise or crossed in front of her path. Finally, I could stand no more of it.
“What is the matter?” I whispered, and when she did not answer, I took hold of her arm. “Zenzele!”
I feared the memories I had Shared with her had offended her somehow, had extinguished the growing affection she felt for me.
She looked from the hand that clasped her upper arm to my eyes, and the coolness in her expression melted. For a moment, she seemed all too fragile, the mortal woman she might have been.
She shook her head, but then relented. “I never had children of my own,” she murmured. “When I was a mortal child, all I wanted to be was a mother. To be mated and have a home full of babies! Through your memories, I know that joy now, but it has broken my heart.”
“Have you not Shared with others who--?”
Zenzele shook her head. “I have only Shared with Palifver, and he fathered no mortal children.”
My mortal children.
Seven millennia separated me from the offspring I had sired, but my heart still ached at the memory of them. I imagined waking from a dream to find that my children belonged to another. Yes, it would break my heart!
“Do you need a moment? We can rest for a little while, talk if you want.”
Zenzele laughed. “I am fine. Only tell me… how can you stand it? It is like someone has reached inside my chest and ripped out my heart.”
“My father always said ‘no man should outlive his own children’,” I replied thoughtfully. “Not a single one of my beautiful babies will pass from this living realm, however. Not so long as I hold them here, in my memories. If I must live for all eternity, then they shall live eternally as well. In my soul. I will never let them go.”
Zenzele stared at me for a long time, as silent as the snow drifting down around us. Finally she nodded. “And now I keep them safe for you as well,” she whispered. “Our beautiful babies.”
I wanted to embrace her. I wanted to plant a thousand kisses on her. On her lips, her cheeks, her forehead. On her eyelids, her breasts, her inner thighs. My loins stirred like the loins of a mortal man at the thought of it, but we did not have the time.
We did not have the time!
Ha!
You’d think immortals would have no end of time, but not us. Not that night. We needed to hunt quickly and return to the slave caravan before the others grew suspicious. As Zenzele had said, I must be above reproach if Khronos was to accept me. I understood her motives now that I had Shared with her. If I found favor with Khronos, he might extend that sympathy to the Tanti. It was really the only chance I had of protecting my adopted tribe.
2
It was an easy thing to find the mortal settlement that Goro had discovered. It nestled in a narrow valley beside a frozen creek, deep in the wilderness at the foot of the Carpathians. The smell of smoke is what led us to the village, the wood they burned in their hearths to ward off the wintry cold. There were six huts, built in much the same manner the Tanti built their homes, and from the center of each snow-laden roof: a curl of gray, winding heavenward.
We crept down from the pines, flitting from one dark pool of moon-shadow to the next. It was late, and there was little chance that any of the mortals who lived below were still awake, but it is an instinctive thing with vampires to move in such a manner. That terrible, sneaking advance.
I did not want to do this.
Though human blood is delectable to me, animal blood is perfectly nourishing for our kind. A vampire can live on animal blood indefinitely. The bloodthirst will grow-- slowly, inexorably-- until the desire to feast on human blood is maddening, all but irresistible, but a vampire does not need to kill men to survive. It is only the excuse that we make to justify our loathsome acts.
It had been years since I’d fed on a mortal human being. I had not fed in such a manner since killing the fools who’d tried to steal my vampire blood: Kuhl, and his Pruss cohorts. As we approached the little village in the valley, my guts constricted and my flesh began to tingle. I was suddenly aware of my teeth. My fangs felt very large and very sharp in my mouth. The muscles of my jaws began to twitch.
I did not want to do this, but I could smell them. Two dozen mortals, their minds adrift in sleep’s slow currents. I could smell their flesh and blood. I imagined I could hear their hearts beating, a soft susurration, like tiny drums.
They were only a few paces away now.
Zenzele slipped silently beside me.
“Which ones do we take?” she whispered.
“The old ones,” I whispered back. “Here. In this hut.”
Perhaps you think me cruel, but I wished only to spare the children here the terror of being devoured, the hardship of losing a mother or a father. The old man and woman in the tiny thatch hut we crouched beside had led a full life. They were arthritic, and, judging by the scent of the old man, soon to pass on to the spirit world.
A lesser wickedness, perhaps, but I still despaired. I did not want to do this, but I had little choice. If only the Hunger inside me were not so urgent, my hands so eager to the deed!
Zenzele nodded.
We glided to the door.
Silent as we were, the old woman woke when we slipped inside her home. Old bones rest uneasily, or perhaps it was the wisp of cold air that stole through the doorway around our ankles.
In the low red light of the hearth, her eyes glittered. Her husband lay on his side, his back to her, a fat old man with thick gray hair, snoring phlegmatically. She blinked at me in confusion, and then sudden dawning fear. Her eyes widened and her lips parted to loose a cry, but before she could yell for her mate, Zenzele struck.
The old man was a fighter, but a sharp blow to the temple sent him right back to the dream world. The old woman we killed immediately. We fed from her quickly, the two of us, and then fled back to the wilderness, our prize sagging in my arms, limbs flopping bonelessly.
The others would not like the meal we brought back to them tonight. I only hoped, in their frustration, they did not torment the old man needlessly.
“If the opportunity arises,” I replied.
I’m not certain why I was so set upon destroying the blood drinker. Was it self-defense or simple jealousy? Was it because he threatened me and mine, or because he had once been Zenzele’s lover. I knew the man intimately, knew him through Zenzele’s memories, although the images of her life were beginning to dim, as dreams fade after awakening. I felt more like my old self, though I knew I could immerse myself in the part of her that still lingered in my psyche if that was something that I wished to do.
I knew him. Born in Uroboros into a life of privilege, the son of a high caste slave. He had found favor in the eyes of his father’s vampire master because of his beauty and because of his ruthless nature. He was made an immortal by that same clan master. Vain. Selfish. Arrogant. He was everything I despised, and so I wanted to kill him.
But Zenzele would not have it.
“This is something you must put out of your thoughts!” she insisted. “Don’t you understand the danger? Are you really so stubborn? You will have to Share with Khronos when we arrive in Uroboros, and there is nothing you can hide from him. Your desire to kill Palifver will not provoke Khronos. We all have murderous impulses, but if you act on that desire…”
We had found the tracks of the slave caravan and turned east. We followed them through the pass.
Zenzele was silent for a long while. Finally, she turned to me and said firmly, “I cannot allow it.”
I raised my eyebrows, but I did not argue.
As it turned out, the question was irrelevant. When we caught up with the caravan, we discovered that Palifver had absconded. While we were hunting in the valley, he had fled east, leaving Tribtoc in command of the raiding party. He’d made no excuses, Tribtoc said, when Zenzele questioned him about Palifver’s desertion. He had simply left, taking to the sky moments after announcing his intentions.
“So he thinks to race ahead of us,” Zenzele glowered later in private, “to poison Khronos against you, no doubt.”
“Should we give chase?” I asked.
“It would be pointless,” she replied. “He has too much of a lead. He can move just as quickly as either of us. We would never catch up to him.”
It was nearly dawn. We were standing outside the main tent. The old man was long dead, drained dry by the others. We were preparing to retire for the day. The camp was secure, the captives under guard.
I looked to the east. The sky there was a delicate coral pink. The sun was not yet risen, but it was just below the rim of the world, ready to spring out at any moment.
Mountains behind. Mountains to the north and south.
There was but one path for me now. East. To Uroboros. And whatever fate awaited me there.
I said as much, and Zenzele nodded broodingly.
What else could we do?
3
When we had passed through the Carpathian Mountains, our party turned south, and we journeyed through the country that is now named the Ukraine. We continued on in a southeasterly direction until we came to the land the Greeks called Tauris, which you know as the Republic of Crimea, and from there, not far inland from the northern shores of the Black Sea, to the city of Uroboros.
Uroboros was built upon the flank of a dormant volcano. The T’sukuru called this volcano Fen’Dagher, which meant “Heaven Spear”. I cannot point to any modern map and tell you, “Here is the place once called Uroboros.” Fen’Dagher awakened after the war of the blood gods and destroyed itself in one titanic eruption. Later, as the world warmed, the entire region was subsumed by rising sea levels. It is gone, like most of the coastal settlements of the prehistoric world, and the world of man is better for it. This, I assure you.
But in its prime, Uroboros was a fantastical sight.
Though I had seen the city through Zenzele’s memories, my first view of its splendors still had the power to dazzle me… even as its horrors outraged my sensibilities.
In an age when most humans still huddled in caves or crude wooden domiciles, Uroboros was a marvel. It was a three-tiered metropolis, a towering conurbation, each district stacked upon the next, running up the side of the mountain and connected by a complex network of ramps and staircases and ladders and bridges.
At the foot of the sleeping volcano was the Shol. This was the residence of the slave caste. Here, the blood gods maintained a vast population of mortals, keeping them penned like animals behind high stone walls. Emaciated, more dead than alive, the mortals labored for their masters without rest. I knew from Zenzele’s experiences that a denizen of the Shol, the lowest of the low, could expect only abuse and exploitation at the hands of his immortal overseers, but to see it for myself--! It was unendurable! For a slave of the Shol, death, whether from disease or deprivation-- or the fangs of his ravenous masters—was the only hope for release, and a quick demise the best end one dare pray for.
Hovering over the pits of the Shol, sheltered beneath a great outcrop of stone, was the Arth, the dwelling place of Uroboros’s high caste mortal slaves. These mortals had found favor with the blood gods of Uroboros. They served as overseers and skilled laborers, functionaries and valets. Here, in stone structures reminiscent of the Anasazi cliff dwellings, the mortal elite resided in relative luxury. There were hanging gardens and temples of worship, markets and bathhouses. For these traitors, life was good. They were spoiled, corrupt, and spoke only in disdain of the inhabitants of the slave district below. They were no less slaves, but they at least had the prospect of advancement.
When a new blood god was made in Uroboros, the mortal who was elevated was usually from the Arth, a favored servant or a cherished lover, a functionary who had impressed his vampire master with his loyalty or cleverness. When one of their number was exalted, there were great festivals in the district of Arth. The temples ran red with blood tribute. There were games, feasts, orgies. The blood drinkers of Uroboros dangled the prospect of immortality like a worm from a hook, and the selfish, the vain, the amoral and the cruel, competed fiercely for the chance of being made into a god.
At the apex of the three-tiered city dwelled the masters of Fen’Dagher. It was from this level, called the Fen, that the city’s undying rulers reined over all.
The society of the vampires was hierarchal in nature. Their population was organized into Clans, each Clan ruled by an Eternal—vampires, like Zenzele and I, who were truly immortal. The Clans were further divided into Houses, which were governed by the oldest and most powerful of the lesser immortals. Their god king Khronos held absolute power, but the Clan Masters, and, to a lesser extent, the House Mothers and Fathers, acted as a kind of unofficial senate. They were the god king’s advisors, and served as administrators of the city.
Fen’Dagher was a honeycomb of subterranean chambers, and it was there, in that sunless realm, that the Potashu T’sukuru made their home.
I could see the cold creatures who ruled this realm moving up and down from their vaunted aerie as we approached the city. Some of them glided upon the zigzagging stairways that bridged their abode with the mortal districts below. Others scaled the sheer rock face like insects.
How easy it would be to think of them as gods if I were still a mortal man, I thought. And yet they had fashioned their kingdom into a kind of hell. Had I thought the Oombai wicked? The depravity of the Ground Scratchers paled in comparison to these immortal monsters!
Even from a distance, I could smell the rot and corruption of the hellish city. We approached from the west, at the foot of the mountain, in full view of the endlessly toiling mortals. Though it was night, the slaves worked by the light of greasy fire pits and countless crackling torches. From a distance, it looked like the stars themselves had been plucked down from the heavens. If not for the omnipresent stench, if not for the unending horrors, it would have been a wondrous sight.
As we drew nearer, our captives cried out at the specta
cle of indignities that were soon to be enjoined on them: the starved bodies of the laborers, the brutality of the overseers, the great nadirs of rotting human corpses, mass graves where those who could no longer work were bled dry and disposed of. Even the fires, so beautiful from a distance, were fueled by human misery. The smell of sizzling human fat caused my gorge to rise. For a moment I feared my sanity would revolt. Picture in your mind Hieronymus Bosch’s surreal depictions of the Inferno. That was the Shol, with its cowl of black smoke, its decay, its suffering.
I cannot bear this horror! I thought.
But I must.
For Ilio.
For the Tanti.
I knew this hell. I knew it from Zenzele’s memories. What I could not fathom was how she could set her soul apart from these outrages, how she could take part in such cruelty.
As if sensing my thoughts, she looked down at me from her mount, but her eyes were hooded, her countenance impenetrable.
I knew from our Sharing that she believed there was no alternative, that Khronos’s power was supreme, but I could not believe it was true, that there was no escape.
There must be a way out!
Our mortal captives balked at each new atrocity. They had to be flogged mercilessly before they would continue. They prayed to their various divinities for deliverance, for absolution, for vengeance, but their continuous rebellion only served to slow our passage through the Shol.
After gaining admittance through the outer barricades, we wound our way around the charnel pits. On the far side of the mortuary, mortal men fought to the death in a crude amphitheater, their audience, mortal and immortal alike, cheering them on lustily. We passed through areas that were being excavated, winning annoyed glances from the mortal overseers as our procession interrupted the labors of their charges. Further on, an open-air brothel, and beyond that, a district of squalid slave quarters.
There, gaunt faces peered at us from dark doorways. The smell of human waste was overpowering. In a lightless alley, a pair of immortals fed, their cheeks and chins smeared with fresh blood, their victim hanging limp and naked between them. I turned my eyes away as the blood drinkers worried the neck of the corpse, grunting and making soft wet sucking sounds. Somewhere in the maze of tenements a woman was sobbing, and in another quarter, maniacal laughter.
The Oldest Living Vampire In Love (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 3) Page 33
