Death, he thought, appeared exactly as he had imagined it.
Khronos woke with a jerk, relieved to see that night had gone. Even better, the churning clouds that had veiled the sun the last two days was beginning to disperse. It was not warm, but the sun was much brighter than it had been the day before. He was actually sweating a little beneath his layered garments.
He sat up, looked around, scowled when he saw that no one was standing guard.
“Tulpac!” he barked. The man was sleeping nearby. Khronos slapped him on the head.
“Huh! What?” his cousin gasped, sitting up.
“Who took watch after you last night?”
“Uh… Gimli,” Tulpac answered, blinking around in confusion. He looked child-like without his mane of auburn hair. His cheeks and eyes were puffy with sleep.
“Well, no one is guarding us now,” Khronos snarled, leaping to his feet. “Curse you, Gimli! GIMLI!”
“He’s gone,” Tulpac said. He had clambered to his feet after Khronos. Tulpac counted the men still present, then added, “So is Hagar.”
“Cowards!” Khronos raged.
The others, awakened by Khronos’s shouting, scrambled to their feet. They clutched their weapons, instinctively forming an outward facing circle. “What is it? Are we being attacked? Is it the Ananaki?” they clamored.
“It is not the Ananaki,” Khronos seethed. “It is betrayal!”
There was nothing he could do.
They were six now.
After they pissed and shit and finished the remains of last night’s meal, the Hunters of Death continued on, but this latest desertion had shaken what little confidence they had remaining. Was six men enough to hunt down and kill the god of death? No one gave voice to the question, for they were too fearful or too devoted to the leader of their clan to dare it, but they worried it in their minds, as a dog will worry a bone. Even Khronos wondered. The zeal that he had felt yesterday, to find the god of death and kill it, seemed more like a child’s dream now.
They trudged stubbornly on, each man clutching his thoughts to his chest. By midday they were straggled in a loose line, Khronos at the head, his uncle, the eldest, bringing up the rear. The column of black smoke was nearer now than ever. Each time they rounded a hill, Khronos expected the source of the smoke to be waiting in the vale below.
Behind him, Tulpac stumbled and fell to his knees.
“Tulpac?” Khronos said, turning tiredly back.
“I can’t keep my eyes open,” his friend said, head hanging. “I feel like I’m walking through quicksand.”
Behind Tulpac, Edric stumbled to a halt and cried out, “The ground is trembling beneath my feet!”
Khronos looked down with the frown. The ground wasn’t moving!
A moment later, Edric collapsed.
Now his uncle was sitting, moaning like woman giving birth. Some evil spell was sapping the strength of his tribesmen!
It was said the god of death was a trickster. What finer jest than to rob them of their strength, and with their goal so close at hand!
“Get up! It is Omak who is sapping you of vitality!” Khronos exhorted them. “On your feet, dogs! We are too close to give up now!”
But they could not obey. As Khronos tried to goad them to their feet, Tulpac fell forward onto his face, and then the others followed suit, one after the other. A couple of the men began to snore.
Khronos turned his back on his companions and stumbled doggedly forward. He was not giving up! He stamped to the top of the next hill, tottered down the other side, each footstep heavier than the one before. The world spun around his head, even though he could clearly see it wasn’t moving. Strange sounds blared in his ears, in his head. Screams. Laughter. Terrible odors assaulted his nose. His skin tingled like an army of ants was crawling all over his flesh.
He began to run, breathing in ragged whoops, his head back, his eyes turned sightlessly to the heavens. For a moment he felt like he was running through two worlds at once, neither of them quite real, and then he tripped, rolled down a steep slope, and came to a rest on a rocky scree.
Clutching his head between his hands, he screamed his defiance into the maelstrom.
And then it was gone.
All was still again. His senses were his own.
He sat up, saw that he was sitting near the bottom of a bowl-shaped declivity. Before him, in the center of the crater, rose the column of smoke he had journeyed to see. Favoring his left leg, Khronos rose and stumbled toward the wavering black cloud.
“Omak,” he croaked. “God of death, Khronos has come to kill you.”
At the base of the column of smoke was a glossy black orb.
14
He drew his knife as he approached, blinking his eyes to clear them. The smoke, now that he was near, had a terrible odor, and stung his eyes when the wind blew a puff of it in his direction.
“Is this the god of death?” he said aloud. “If it is, I am… disappointed.”
The black egg, if it had sense to understand his words, was not moved by his derision.
It was about the size of a man’s head, and looked like nothing more than a blob of crude oil, although Khronos had no way of knowing what that was. It sat in another, smaller declivity, looking for all the world like a large black egg in a nest.
He heard a hissing sound as he drew near. The surface of the black egg seemed to be boiling away in the air. That was the source of the column of smoke. The god of death was… evaporating.
Khronos edged cautiously closer. He stretched out his arm and pricked the surface of the egg with the tip of his blade.
The glistening black surface was soft. Its shining skin dimpled slightly but did not allow his knife to pass through it.
Khronos withdrew, looked at the thing thoughtfully, then shrugged and thrust his blade into it. If this was the god of death, he meant to do what he had sworn.
The ball of black goo exploded.
Cold pitchy fluid splattered his hand and face. It was in his eyes, his nose. He gasped instinctively and somehow it got into his mouth.
Blinded, he stumbled back and fell onto his rump. Before he could jump back to his feet, he felt a great weight smash down upon him, and then the foul tasting fluid was forcing its way into his mouth, forcing its way down his throat. He felt his insides turn to ice. And pain! More pain than he had ever felt in his life. Like a hundred spears were piercing him at once. Like he was being devoured from the inside out. Like he was freezing. Like he was on fire.
He howled in despair.
I have been deceived!
It was his last thought as a mortal man.
15
He did not know where he was when he came to. Not at first. It took a moment before it all came back to him, and then he wondered that he was still alive at all.
Khronos rolled onto his side, then pushed himself onto his hands and knees. He groaned. Pain coiled in his guts like a serpent, one skinned with poison barbs. It twined and knotted, stabbing and tearing at his insides. He pushed himself up, stumbled to his feet.
He stood swaying for a moment, doubled over from the pain in his abdomen, then remembered the black egg and whirled around.
The egg, and the column of smoke boiling off of it, was gone. There was a small depression in the ground where it had rested, but no sign of the glistening orb.
He looked up at the sky to gauge how long he had been unconscious. Stars twinkled between patches of cloud. The glowing disc of the moon hovered just above the horizon, dim and orange, yet he could see just as clearly as if it were day!
I’m sure you can imagine the thoughts that must have raced through his mind. He was confused, frightened, in pain. The Strix was still working inside of him, worming its way through his veins, transforming the cells of his body into a matrix of hollow chambers, petrifying him bit by painful bit. The agony was exquisite. Few mortals are able to move while the Strix transforms their body, but Khronos rose, and he began to stumble homeward,
groaning and breathing raggedly as white hot agony threaded through his veins.
He knew that the Strix had invaded his body. He did not understand what it was, but he could feel it moving inside of him. He could sense its alien thoughts, just at the edge of his awareness. The eager, hungry nature of them.
It is devouring me from within, he said to himself.
He believed that he was dying, and he didn’t want to die. Worse than the thought of dying was the thought of dying alone. He wanted to be among his people. Like all dying men, he wanted his woman. He wanted his mother. So he walked, though each footstep was like treading on jagged rocks, though each movement sent searing agony bolting through his body. He stumbled to the rim of the crater and climbed, even though his arms felt like they were lashed to invisible boulders. He lost his footing and slid down the crumbling slope again and again, but he persevered. When he finally got to the top of the declivity, he laid on his back, staring at the sky as he tried to catch his breath.
His hands were buzzing and he brought them in front of his eyes. His heart jumped at the sight of them. His hands were white as bone now, their texture similar to granite. Smooth, hard, glinting, as if tiny flecks of quartz crystal were imbedded in their surface. His nails were clear and inflexible. And all the cuts and scrapes that he had suffered as he journeyed to this place (of which there were many) had vanished, healed so perfectly there was no sign of them.
He felt an intense pressure on his heart and clutched his chest, groaning aloud. The breath was being squeezed out of him.
Frightened, he leapt to his feet and shambled on, grunting like an animal.
“I… defy you,” he snarled.
He stumbled to the place where Tulpac and the others had collapsed, hoping they were still there, but they were gone. They had abandoned him, or perhaps the earth had opened up and devoured them.
At the thought of Tulpac, an intense hunger seized him, and he fell to his knees, clutching his belly. He searched the area around him, hoping to find some stray animal carcass or scrap of food, fantasizing about hot, raw, bloody meat, and tearing into it with his teeth. And then he thought about Tulpac again. The two images were jumbled together in his head, and he saw himself biting into Tulpac’s flesh, rending his flesh and sucking the hot juice that came pulsing out of the wounds. He remembered devouring his father’s heart, raw and dripping, and his want was so great that he thought he’d go mad.
He leapt to his feet and raced on.
16
I wonder sometimes what we might have become if the Strix had bonded with a more civilized man. Would we be now a race of chupacabras, sucking the blood from goats, if the First One had been a goat herder instead of a Paleolithic cannibal?
How much of an influence was Khronos on the creatures that we have become?
It is an intriguing question, though ultimately a fruitless one to pursue, as our predatory nature has been long fixed upon our instincts. Still, I know that we can subsist on the blood of animals. I have done so for great swatches of time. We do not have to feed on our fellow man. We only do so because of the great satisfaction we derive from the act. It is a deed that gives us enormous physical pleasure, pleasure so consuming that even the ecstasy of orgasm pales in comparison to it.
If cannibalism had been taboo for Khronos and his people, as it is in modern human society, we might have become a very different race.
Vampirism is, after all, an act of cannibalism.
But as the saying goes, one cannot change the past.
17
Tulpac and the others had indeed abandoned their leader. Fearful, confused, and weakened by their nearness to the dimensional rift, they fled from the devastated forest.
Khronos came upon them as dawn hovered at the edge of the sky.
They were sleeping, their prone forms encircling a small fire that had burnt down to its embers.
At the sight of them—indeed, at the smell of them, an intoxicating blend of sweat and blood, and all the other odors that seep from the orifices and pores of mortal men—the hunger that had been tormenting the God King slipped its bonds and he threw himself upon his tribesmen like an enraged beast.
They did not stand a chance.
He tore them to pieces, even Tulpac, so mindless was he in his need. It was only when he came to his senses, their ravaged bodies strewn all around him, that he realized how strong he’d become, and marveled at his strength.
But he did not marvel long. His hunger was too insistent.
He dropped to his knees beside Tulpac and tore the man’s clothes from his body. He bit into the muscular flesh of his companion’s chest, his fangs (which he hadn’t noticed yet) slicing easily through the meat. He swallowed a few chunks of his friend’s flesh before he realized it was the blood he needed, not the tissue. His stomach revolted at the flesh and he vomited it back up, then he returned to Tulpac’s chest and lapped at the blood dribbling from the wounds.
He discovered, through trial and error, that the best way to get at the blood was to suck it from the arteries of the neck and wrist and inner thigh. He drank until his stomach was sloshing, then stumbled away from their camp to find someplace to rest.
He did not yet feel the horror at what he’d done. That came later, when he woke to the hunger again.
I have killed and devoured my own tribesmen! he thought, when his glinting eyes shot open in the dark. Tulpac’s face rose up in his mind, eyes bulging with terror, hands flailing to hold him back, and then he remembered what he had done to his old friend, and he clawed his way from the fallen trees he’d sought shelter beneath during the day.
Khronos stumbled through the darkness, thinking, I killed him! I drank his blood!
He felt horror, yes. He had loved Tulpac. Loved him more than his own brothers. But he also felt that terrible, ravening hunger. He wanted more blood, craved it as a young man craves the act of sex. His need was urgent, relentless. The blood hunger drove him forward, toward the only place he knew he might find more of it.
18
I confess, I have always felt an affinity with the God King. Yes, I swore to raise an army of the undead to depose him. I swore to bring down his perverse empire, but I’ve always felt a bit of sympathy for the man. I know what it is to stumble into this terrible life alone. My maker was a cruel and violent fiend. He taught me nothing of our ways. I knew only hunger and pain and fear, and had no control of my bloodlust. Khronos was no less tragic a victim. Orphans, the both of us, only he chose a darker path than I, and for that I had to oppose him.
I suppose I should wrap up our little bedtime story. We need to get you tucked in for the day. You are a freshly minted monster, after all, and the sunlight will feel like two white-hot pokers stabbing in your eyes.
Come, Lukas, our victims are hidden away. No one will ever find them in this remote wood, not until time and the elements have destroyed any forensic evidence the authorities might recover.
Yes, Khronos returned to his home, and like the untrained monster that he was, he preyed upon his people. He slew them without mercy or any thought to the consequences. None escaped his hunger but his mother, whom he transformed into one of us quite by accident. Even Trava, his mate, who was pregnant with his unborn child, succumbed to his irrepressible hunger.
Khronos and Ona traveled the world then, mother and father of death, sewing our curse to the four corners of the earth. For millennia they wandered the globe, which froze over and thawed and froze over again. Eventually, Ona weakened and perished, as the Strix had not made her as perfectly as it had her brutal son. Out of loneliness, Khronos sought out others of our kind, his own dark progeny. At the foot of Fen’Dagher, he formed the first vampire coven, and from there his kingdom of blood took root.
I will tell you now how I waged war upon our Father, what happened to me after I escaped from Khronos, and how I was betrayed.
But not tonight.
The sun gleams on the horizon like a band of burnished copper. The world has turned
over again. I still have preparations to make before I take my final journey. I have a great deal of money that needs to be transferred. Property and other assets to deed to my dark children. And you, dear Lukas, you need a new identity, unless you plan to live on the streets. Don’t worry, it should only take a day or two, and then I’ll let you end my life.
We’ll call it my final arrangements.
Final Arrangements
1
There are very few mortals in this enlightened age who believe in vampires. To most of the modern world, we are just mythological creatures, no more real than unicorns or fairies or trolls. Or worse, pop culture heartthrobs. Pale and moody boyfriends created solely for the purpose of satisfying the omega male fantasies of lonely young women. Oh, how those Byronic pretty boys irritate me! Those works of fiction unerringly fail to portray just how truly deadly we are, the depravity of our desires, our terrifying inhumanness.
Of those of you who actually believe that we are real, very few have met a vampire, or have had any dealings with our kind. Our race was nearly annihilated during the Dark Ages, so we are exceedingly rare creatures. Most mortals who chance across a member of our race rarely live to tell the tale. They end up, like our dinner companions tonight, drained of their blood and buried in some remote wooded lot.
But there are a few mortals who live among us. A few lucky men and women (or unlucky, depending upon your point of view) admitted into our inner circle. Some have captivated an immortal, made one of us fall in love with them. They are fated, usually, to be inducted into our ranks-- whether they want to be or not. Some have sworn their allegiance to our kind and become our mortal agents. Others have survived a close encounter and dedicated their lives to destroying us— fearless vampire killers, ha!
The Oldest Living Vampire Betrayed (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 4) Page 5
