They left to hunt shortly after. A skilled tracker, Minos had fed the clan well, but his flesh was nearly gone already, and they would be hungry again on the morrow.
7
Perhaps you expected me to tell you how wicked he was, but Khronos, the God King of the vampires, was no soulless monster, no black-hearted demon. Not when he was a mortal man, at least. He was, like most men, merely a product of his environment, made violent and unsympathetic by a violent and unsympathetic world. Not all that different from you, Lukas, now that I think about it.
Oh, you can say that he was evil, if you judged him strictly by our modern standards. A killer, a rapist, a cannibal. He was all those things and more. His mate, Trava, was only ten years old when he forced himself upon her. Before the Strix transformed him, he had raped, killed and eaten at least six Neanderthal women—and one Neanderthal male, and I can think of no fate more humiliating for a warrior than to be sodomized and eaten by his adversaries. He killed Neanderthals, male and female, by the dozens. He killed one fellow clan member in a dispute over the boundaries of their living spaces, and another who had tried to couple with his woman Trava. He was brutal and demanding with the clan women, and later, when he became the chief, he enforced his rule on the entire clan, both male and female, with violence more often than reason. He beat his brother Nash nearly to death when the young man questioned one of his decisions. He tired of Old Zambi’s meddling one evening and struck the shaman down with a stone. But those things were not unusual for a man of his era, and so I cannot say that he was a monster.
But he became a monster, and I’ll tell you how it happened in just a little while. Let us quit this filthy alley first. I promised to teach you how to hunt, and we need to get on with it before we must retreat from the sun to our beds. I can feel the world rolling over, see the star-specked sky beginning to brighten, imperceptible to mortal eyes but as plain to our vampire senses as the moon peeking over that roof, the steam boiling up from that sewer grate, that rumbling taxi, those drunken college students staggering arm-in-arm down the sidewalk.
No, Lukas! Not them! Down, boy! Control of yourself! Haven’t we talked about this already? We don’t kill the innocent.
Don’t glare at me, you insolent pup! My prohibition against feeding on the innocent is not simply a moral proscription. It is also a pragmatic one. In this technological era, with its advanced forensic medicine, with video cameras mounted on every street corner, and the transnational cooperation of law enforcement agencies, preying on the innocent is a practice fraught with peril for our kind. Despite our supernatural speed, we can be captured on video. Despite our strangely textured flesh, we do leave fingerprints. Our only recourse is to feed upon the wicked. Right or wrong, the police do not investigate the murders of criminals as thoroughly as they do the deaths of the innocent. I have been preying on the criminal element of Liege for decades without arousing more than fleeting interest by the police. Their tacit opinion is “good riddance to bad rubbish”.
Do you think anyone has missed your cohorts Maurice or Hans? Do you think anyone is looking for you?
But kill a pretty college student, one with a family and a bright road winding ahead of her, and you’ll find your neck in an ever-tightening noose of media attention and highly motivated criminal investigators. If your luck is especially bad, you may have to give up your lair and move to another city—if you are not dispatched by an irritated fellow immortal first. The strigoi value our anonymity, and there are many who will seek out and destroy any youngsters foolish enough to attract the scrutiny of mortals.
Now, come with me. Forget your lust for those drunken schoolboys. Let me show you how to scale a vertical surface without coming loose. There is a trick to it, you know. You have to keep your muscles rigid and lean into the wall or you will fall off, and there is nothing more embarrassing for a seasoned vampire than slipping off a wall!
Yes, like that. You’re doing quite well. No, spread your limbs out wider. Really hug your body to the wall. Remember: move quickly, and try to keep to the shadows. And always be mindful of those electronic surveillance cameras. Before long they’ll be strapping them to the pigeons!
Now leap!
Don’t be afraid. The Strix has made you a powerful immortal. A fall from this height cannot possible harm you. Not permanently. Your flesh might crack; you might even snap off a limb, but you won’t die.
Up… up… now onto the roof beside me.
There, safe and sound!
Yes, I know it is frightening. You are a vampire now, but you still possess the instincts of a mortal. Fear of heights. Fear of drowning. They will be with you for a while yet. In a few years, those instinctive fears will begin to fade, and you will fly audaciously through the glittering heights, throwing your body to the winds without the slightest concern for your physical safety. You will feel as if your vampiric powers are growing exponentially, but it is really only the waning of your mortal limitations.
Now, lower your mental barriers and allow your preternatural senses to flood into your consciousness. Yes, I know it hurts. It can be quite overwhelming at first, but you must learn to use your senses to their fullest extent if you want to be a successful predator.
Let it all in. The sights. The sounds. The smell. The tastes.
There! Do you hear that? In that highrise building three blocks away. The one with the red flashing lights at the top. There is a man inside, in an apartment near the top floor. He is hiring a hitman to murder his estranged wife. Concentrate. Filter through your sensory input. Block out everything but that apartment building, that room, the voices of the men planning a woman’s murder. They will be our victims for the night. Our company for dinner, you might say. Two murderers. One for you and one for me. It could not be more perfect!
The men have struck a bargain. Two thousand Euros for the life of the woman. It does not seem like much, does it, but I’ve seen men kill for far less. I’ve seen them kill for the simple enjoyment of it. Yes, I am looking at you, Lukas.
He’ll do it tomorrow, he says, as she journeys home from work. He’ll wait for her in the parking garage of the apartment building she lives in. He’ll do it as she walks to the elevator. He’ll slip up behind her and…
Hurry, before they part ways! Leap with me across the street. Your immortal body, hollowed by the Strix, can glide so long as you’re not too well fed. Just spread your arms and fly!
Here, across that rooftop. Leap again, and now with me! Climb! Up, up and we slither like vipers over the balcony rail-- Wait! Use your preternatural senses to scan the apartment first. Let us make sure there is no one else present, someone we didn’t sense before. Some mortals can elude our senses, though I know not how they do it.
Can you smell the gunpowder? The hitman is armed. That one, the tall mortal in the jeans and black leather jacket. He is the killer for hire.
Don’t worry. Bullets can do you no harm. Not anymore. But gunfire might alert the neighbors. They might call the police if they hear. We have to be quick with these two. Our prey must not make a sound.
When I force the balcony door, we strike as one. Move as quickly as you can.
I will take the husband. You can have the assassin.
The husband rises from the sofa! He is heading for the door.
Now!
You are mine, coward! Yes, see my shining eyes! See my glinting fangs! You might not have the fortitude to kill with your own hands, but I have no such reservations.
Oh, the blood… the glorious blood!
Kill him quickly, Lukas, or cover his mouth! Do not let him scream!
Kill you, coward. Drink you. Devour your life.
The red, orgasmic haze envelopes my soul. The hot fluid gushes down my throat. Filling my belly. Feeding the Strix.
Ahhhhh… No mortal will ever know such pleasure, not even in the throes of passion. I lie atop my victim like a lover, my mouth latched like a lamprey to his neck, sucking, swallowing, and when the sweet vermilion nectar is
all gone, I rise. Reluctantly. Dizzily. Wipe my chin with the back of my hand.
Lukas sits huddled in the corner of the room, his flesh flush with the blood of the hitman he’s devoured. He is trembling, his face and chest smeared with blood. Oh, my wicked protégé. My killer. My savior. How beautiful you are with your dripping red cravat.
You are a vicious little bloodsucker, aren’t you? Why, you’ve nearly gnawed clean through your victim’s neck! Ordinarily, we bite our own tongues and use a drop of the living blood to close the wounds we make on our victim’s necks, but there’s no repairing that!
Rise, my child. We’ve not much time to spare. We need to dispose of these bodies before daybreak. And all this blood you’ve wastefully spilled? We’ll have to clean that up as well. Not a trace of our victims must be left behind. A hundred years ago, it might have been acceptable to leave our victims lying where they fell, but not in these times, not in this age of electron microscopes and spectral analysis.
Up, Lukas. Go and fetch a mop. While we clean, I’ll finish telling you of our beginning.
Yes, I realize the memories will be yours after you have killed me, but it will pass the time, and besides, in case you hadn’t noticed, I like telling stories. I’m a talkative old monster.
Perhaps you find me tedious, as mortal youngsters consider their elder’s stories wearisome. Nevertheless, you are mine for now, and I mean to make good use of you.
Did you find the mop? Good! You can start over there.
No, I’m not going to help. I didn’t make a mess of my dinner, now did I? I hardly spilled a drop. I’m going to sit right here on this nice leather couch and tell you the rest of my tale.
Ahh, comfy.
Now… where was I?
Ah, yes.
The Event.
8
“The sun will shine in the night… The trees will lie like dead men on the earth,” Minos had said as he lay dying. He also said, “beware the black egg”, but Khronos remembered none of it. Not even when his father’s prophesies came to pass.
Of course, you can’t really blame the young man for forgetting his father’s prophesies. When his father said those things, Khronos dismissed them almost immediately as the ravings of a delirious mind. They weren’t even the craziest things his father said that day. He had talked about ghosts visiting him in the night. He had shouted at people who weren’t there, and cursed the guardian spirits of the tribe. The only difference was, those things really were hallucinations, but his father’s visions of a bright light in the night and trees lying shattered on the earth weren’t.
I can’t really explain how men and women can sometimes predict the future. Though I have roamed this world for 30,000 years, it is as much a mystery to me as it is to anyone else. I know that it is real. I have dreamed the future myself-- once, when I was a mortal man. Some say that time is not linear, only our perception of it. Perhaps that is why men sometimes glimpse the future. When we are dreaming, when we are delirious with illness or gripped by religious fervor, our linear minds fly free of the rails that guide us along through time, allowing us a peek of events that have not yet occurred.
It is only a theory.
All I can tell you is that Minos’s visions were real. Thirteen years after Khronos’s father passed into their ghost world, which they called the Land of Warm Days, three years after Khronos assumed leadership of the clan, the dead man’s visions came to pass.
I call it the Event.
It was the birthing pangs of our species.
It happened at night, during a brief respite from the deadly cold. The weather had been unusually tumultuous that summer, with temperatures rising into the balmy seventies during the day, and many violent storms. Most of the clan had come in for the night, which was a lucky thing for them. If the Event had happened during the day, while the men were outside hunting and the women gathering food, the death toll would have been much higher. Perhaps total. As it was, several members of the Gray Wolf Clan perished that night, even sheltered inside the cave.
The light came silently, and struck without warning. One moment it was dark, the clan gathered around their various hearths, doing the ordinary things that men and woman of that era did: tending to children, talking, eating, mating. The next moment, the mouth of the cave flashed brilliantly, as if a stroke of lightning had lanced down just outside.
Only it was no stroke of lightning. The light wavered, growing brighter and brighter until it was so bright that they were all forced to shield their eyes from the glare. The women and children cried out in alarm and fear. Some of the men did too.
Khronos was near the back of the cave, allowing his mate Trava to shave his head. A new tribe of Neanderthals had been spotted hunting at the edge of their territory a few days earlier, and Khronos planned to make war on them. The warriors of the Gray Wolf Clan had taken to shaving their faces and their scalps because the Others found the look frightening and otherworldly.
Khronos squinted into the blue-tinted brilliance at the entrance of the cave, his lips peeled back from his teeth. Trava ducked behind him as the light grew in stuttering intensity, her fingernails digging into the flesh of his shoulders. Khronos covered his eyes, feeling the light on his skin like a physical thing. He pushed Trava away and started to rise, and then the light died away, as quickly as it had appeared.
A few moments passed.
The tribe blinked their dazzled eyes and looked at one another in confusion.
“Khronos?” Trava squeaked.
He shushed her.
The people of the Gray Wolf Clan had framed the entrance of the cave with wooden poles lashed together with leather thongs. They hung furs upon that wooden frame to block out the worst of the cold in the wintertime. As Khronos stood there, blinking his dazzled eyes, the frame began to rattle. An instant later, it vanished. The clan members nearest to the mouth of the cave vanished as well, sucked into the howling darkness. All their fires went out at once, the embers swirling in the screaming dark.
Khronos fell to his hands and knees, his ears popping, the breath snatched from his lungs.
The ground trembled next, leaping beneath Khronos’s palms like a startled beast. Stones broke away from the roof of the cave and fell to the earth below. Some of the falling stones struck tribesmen. He heard them yell out in pain. Khronos tried to crawl forward, thinking to protect his mother—she was sitting near his hearth when the darkness grew bright, repairing one of his boots—but Trava was clinging to his legs like a frightened infant. He couldn’t move.
Finally, the winds quieted. The earth stopped shaking.
Ears ringing in the sudden silence, Khronos got dizzily to his feet. Around him in the dark, the members of the Gray Wolf Clan moaned and sobbed, or called out for their loved ones. The only light was the dim red glow of burning coals, strewn across the floor of the cave.
“Mother?” Khronos called, fumbling in the dark.
“I am here, Khronos,” Ona said nearby. “I am unhurt.”
For a moment he went weak with relief, and then he turned his thoughts to the rest of the clan. Khronos shouted for order, commanded his people to quit their shameful keening and get their fires rebuilt. He stumbled toward the mouth of the cave to see what had happened to the outside world, picking his way between the glowing coals the wind had scattered. He did not know what he expected to see. Perhaps the world cracked open like the shell of an egg.
He peered outside, chest heaving, but could see very little in the darkness. The moon had been bright and full only a little while before, but an impenetrable haze of clouds obscured the shining orb now. The outside world was just as dark as the interior of the cave. He smelled dust and ash on the wind.
“Khronos,” Tulpac, his second-in-command, called out, “we have many injured. And little Yimmi is dead.” Nearly every member of the clan had sustained scrapes and bruises during the brief earthquake following the flashing light. There were a few broken bones, and one child had died when a large ston
e struck her on the head. Little Yimmi. His cousin Tulpa’s youngest child.
Khronos turned away from the cave entrance. Some of the men had gotten their fires going again, and dim yellow light licked the walls of the cavern, making their shadows caper.
“What was that light?” Tulpac asked as Khronos strode past. “Why did the ground tremble? Is it over?”
“How would I know?” Khronos snapped. “Perhaps when daylight comes we will see what it was. Perhaps not. For now we must tend to the injured.”
But Wali had overheard their exchange. Now that Old Zambi was dead, she was the eldest member of the clan. The medicine woman was nursing Umbra, whose arm had been broken by a falling stone. “It was Death,” she said as Khronos moved past.
Khronos stopped and glared at her, his lips bowed down in a scowl. He considered striking her for alarming the rest of the clan—he could hear the others muttering nervously at her pronouncement—but they needed her healing magic tonight.
Encouraged by his leniency, the old woman rose. Wali gestured toward the dark entrance of the cave, her hands trembling, her wrinkled old face slack. “What we witnessed was the birthing pains of Death, Khronos,” she croaked. “The god of death was born tonight. He has come to devour the world.”
Her words sent a tickle of fear running down his spine, and that infuriated Khronos even further. “Silence, crone!” he snapped. “I won’t hear your foolish talk tonight! Use your healing magic, or join Yimmi in the Land of Warm Days! The clan needs your skills right now more than your ravings.”
The old crone scurried off, but her words stayed with Khronos all through the night. They haunted him like an evil spirit, and when daylight finally came—a weak, rainy daylight, the sky churning with thick, ash-gray clouds—he couldn’t help but think that maybe she was right. Perhaps Death had been born that night, and perhaps it did mean to devour the world.
The Oldest Living Vampire Betrayed (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 4) Page 3
