The Oldest Living Vampire Betrayed (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 4)

by Joseph Duncan

  “We need to be far enough away that he cannot track us. We do not give off pheromones as mortal men do, but the odors of our environment can cling to our flesh and clothing. It is very faint, but a vampire with a keen sense of smell can follow it, and Apollonius has very keen senses. He is a powerful immortal. Almost two thousand years old.”

  Lukas wriggled his feet into the heavy winter boots I had purchased for him for our journey. He tied the laces, then slapped his thighs and leapt to his feet.

  “Let’s go!”

  I tossed his parka and backpack to him in the parlor. “Put on a coat tonight,” I said. “The cold cannot harm you, but it will become tiresome after awhile.”

  I was so excited I was trembling. I felt giddy. I slipped on my parka, shoved my arms into the straps of my backpack, then raced around my apartment shutting off the lights. I threw open the balcony doors, closing my eyes at the gust of frigid wind that blew inside, relishing the cold blast of air. It was windy tonight. The curtains billowed, making flapping sounds, like giant leather wings.

  “The balcony?” Lukas gulped.

  “Just do as I do,” I said, stepping outside. “You are nearly as powerful as I.”

  “You know I don’t like heights.”

  “Your thoughts limit you. You still think like a mortal, but you are no longer a living man, Lukas. You are a god.” I leapt up onto the balcony rail. “Close the balcony doors, please,” I said over my shoulder, and then I flew.

  The heavy clothing and backpack threw off my trajectory a little. I missed the balcony I’d aimed for, hit the wall below instead, but I recovered easily enough. I dropped to the balcony directly beneath, waited there for my protégé to follow.

  Lukas looked to the street below, his shoulders rising and falling rapidly, tendrils of his black hair blowing straight up. I heard him murmur under his breath, “I’m a god. I’m a god. I’m a fucking GOD!” And then he hopped up onto the balcony railing as I had, and launched himself across the gulf.

  He fell short.

  I reached out and snagged his wrist, hauling him onto the balcony.

  “Jesus!” he hissed, looking to the streets below.

  “Stop looking down, you fool!” I snapped.

  “I can’t help myself.”

  “Yes, you can. Now follow me, and be quick about it.”

  After we had climbed to the roof, I turned and looked at my apartment building one last time. I had promised myself I wouldn’t do it, afraid it might dampen my sense of excitement, but the elation that had suffused my spirit these past twenty-four hours did not diminish. 39 Ave du Luxembourg. I felt a nostalgic tingle at the sight of its brightly glowing windows, and all the memories that came rushing to my mind, but my enthusiasm for my final journey did not waver in the slightest.

  I had no regrets, no reservations.

  It was a great relief.

  “Come, Lukas,” I said, and then I hurried across the roof.

  11

  The dead travel fast, I’m sure you’ve heard it said, and we did. We flew west, racing across the rooftops of the city of Liege. Lukas kept up remarkably well once we had left the highrises behind. He was much more certain of himself when we were only three or four stories in the air, which was about the maximum height of most of Liege’s architecture.

  We leapt from roof to roof across the alleyways and streets, and where the gaps between the buildings were too far to leap across, we descended to the ground, moving through the narrow, winding avenues and dimly lit backstreets like death’s messenger boys.

  I was fairly certain Apollonius would not be able to track us even this far. It is hard to follow a scent when your quarry is airborne half the time. Just to be certain, however, I lead us to the thruway. There beside the Meuse, in the tangle of concrete overpasses and underpasses that comprise the heart of the city’s transportation network, I crouched upon the A-432 bridge.

  I did not care that a hundred mortals saw me crouching there like a jumper judging the drop. As Lukas had said, it did not matter if any mortals saw us now. We were never coming back to this city, and I would soon be dead.

  Fatalism, as you can image, can be a very liberating thing.

  After a few minutes, a large bus came roaring down the highway. I timed my jump the best that I could, waiting, waiting, and then I grabbed Lukas by the collar of his parka and propelled myself over the guardrail.

  Lukas cried out in surprise. I don’t think he expected me to do such a reckless thing. In truth, I’d never tried anything like that before. But we landed atop the bus and I managed, somehow, to find some purchase on its smooth metallic surface. My fingers latched onto the seams and rivets that held its curved hide together. Laughing, I watched the city careen around us as Lukas scrambled to find his own handholds, his curses drowned out by the wind.

  This is it, I thought. I am really doing this!

  If, by chance, Apollonius managed to track me to that bridge, there was no way he’d be able follow my scent any further.

  I had escaped.

  12

  “I’m hungry,” Lukas groused. “You said we’d find someone to eat along the way.”

  The city had fallen behind us. We were tramping across a broad empty field, one that was completely encircled, but for a solitary dirt road, by dense woodland. Frozen stalks of harvested corn, smashed flat and limned in brittle ice, crunched beneath our boots. Jutting above the canopy of the forest was a solitary cellphone tower, warning lights blinking red. I could feel the signal it transmitted thrumming in the air.

  “I said we’d find you something to eat, not someone,” I corrected him.

  “Some thing? Like what?”

  “There will be times when it is not safe to feed from mortals, regardless of whether they are evildoers or not. There will be times you’ll have to feed on animals instead. Tonight we hunt a different prey.”

  “And so we resume my education,” Lukas scoffed.

  “I am your maker. It is my responsibility to teach you these things.”

  “I think you enjoy it. It allows you to lord your superiority over me.”

  “I do enjoy it, but not for that reason. I do not need to affirm my superiority. I know it for a fact.”

  Lukas laughed.

  Wildlife is much more scarce now than it was even fifty years ago. The forests have become nature’s mausoleums. Life once thrived upon this globe in abundance, before mankind raped and pillaged the Earth, leaving it desolate and poisoned with their waste, but we managed to track and kill a large buck in the neighboring woodland without too much difficulty. Strangely, I felt guiltier about killing the buck than I had my mortal brethren last night. The world had changed, and I with it. Once, I raised an army of vampires to defend mankind. Now it was the world that needed to be defended from man.

  Lukas enjoyed the killing part, delivering the coup de grace himself, but he complained fiercely at the taste of the animal’s blood.

  “I know it’s not as satisfying as human blood, but you can learn to like it,” I said. “It’s what they call an acquired taste, and it will nourish you when you cannot feed from humans.”

  “For example?” Lukas asked, wiping deer blood from his chin with the sleeve of his parka.

  “If mortals become suspicious of your presence, for instance. Or you are far from civilization and there are no men around to feed from. Believe it or not, there are still places in this world that mankind has not descended upon like a swarm of locusts.”

  “Ah.”

  He pushed the animal’s carcass from his lap and rose, still smacking his lips. “And now?”

  “Now we walk to Germany,” I said, starting away from him.

  “I still don’t see why we couldn’t just take a train. Or drive. I’d love to drive your Spider.”

  “This is my final hour, and I will spend it as I see fit,” I answered. “We walk because that is how we traveled in my mortal life. Call it nostalgia if you’d like. I wish to experience the world as I reme
mber it, before I join my ancestors in the next one.”

  We walked in silence for a time after that, Lukas a few paces behind me. A forest is only truly silent in the winter, when all its denizens have either fled south to warmer climes or battened down to hibernate through the frozen months. The only sound was the crunch of the snow and the pop and crackle of tree branches snapping beneath our heels.

  I breathed, just for the sake of doing it, though it did not steam the air. If I could have willed my heart to beat, I would have done that, too. It felt good to be away from the city. To be free. In the forest, I felt almost like a living man again.

  Finally, Lukas said, “I’m bored.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Tell me the rest of your story.”

  “Which one? There are so many.”

  Lukas stumbled over a fallen branch, cursing softly. “You know what one I’m talking about! I want to know what happened after you escaped from the God King. You said you were going to raise an army of vampires to fight him.”

  “Yes, I did. At the foot of Fen’Dagher. Right after we escaped.”

  “So tell me what happened. I want to know how you defeated Khronos.”

  “You want to know about the vampire war?” I said. “All right. I’ll tell you.”

  Blood Gods in Exile

  1

  I had tasted the God King’s blood during our battle in the depths of Fen’Dagher. Slashed his flesh with my nails and brought the blood to my mouth. And with that blood I had seen into his soul. I had seen his life as a mortal man, brutal leader of a clan of ice age cannibals, and how he was transformed by the alien Strix into a god-- the very god he’d sworn once to destroy. The god of death. And I had seen something else as well. I had seen the future. The fate that lay in wait for all of us, mortal and immortal alike, if the God King’s reign went unchallenged: a world overrun by ravenous blood drinkers. If left to his own devices, Khronos would expand his terrible empire until the whole world was a reflection of his kingdom here at the foot of Fen’Dagher. It was inevitable, as a spot of rot expands to ruin the fruit, and so I swore to stop him. There in the forest on the eastern slope of the God King’s mountain, I swore to raise an army against him.

  But there were only five of us, and before we could ever hope to challenge the God King, we would have to escape him, not just from the Fen, the subterranean lair of the God King’s perverse followers, but from his kingdom completely. Beyond Uroboros. Beyond the Dominions. Beyond the God King’s influence.

  Out there, perhaps, in undiscovered lands untainted by his lust, in lands his conqueror’s fist had not yet crushed, we might have hope of raising an army to oppose him.

  But we would have to get there first. And that undiscovered country seemed very far away right then.

  We huddled there in the ice-locked forest, too shocked by our unlikely victory, temporary as it might be, to do ought but blink at one another in disbelief. Only five were left: my beloved Zenzele, the giant warrior Bhorg, the Neanderthal Goro, the vampire wolf Vehnfear and myself. Tribtoc, who had stood with us against the God King, had been destroyed during our escape. Khronos himself had laid hands on the blood drinker and ripped the poor fellow apart.

  “What I saw in your god king’s mind, Zenzele… my heart cannot abide it. No, I do not intend to hide from him forever… I intend to raise an army against him.”

  It seemed a rather foolish thing to say, in light of our numbers. We had barely escaped from the tunnels of Uroboros. It was sheer luck that we’d even made it this far. I felt like an impotent braggart, shaking my fists at the heavens and shouting, “You will fall!”

  Zenzele turned to look toward the mountain, her eyes narrowing in thought. I could only imagine what she was thinking. She had just betrayed her god king, made an exile of herself and her companions to save me, and now I was asking her to make war on her own people. To help me destroy them!

  Even though I meant them, I wanted to reach out and snatch my words from the air.

  Embarrassed, I ran my fingers through the vampire wolf’s coarse fur. Vehnfear lapped my cheek with his icy tongue, golden eyes gleaming. I wondered if he, too, thought I was a fool.

  Finally, Bhorg laughed.

  “Well, we’re not likely to find your army here, little man,” he said. He swung his great stone hammer to rest across his shoulder. “Not unless you have one hidden in the snow. We should get going before Khronos figures out where we are. We’ll worry about making war on the cock-biter later, when we’re not outnumbered a thousand to one.”

  I could not help myself. I laughed. And then, a moment later, Zenzele joined me.

  Even Vehnfear wagged his tail in amusement.

  We started away from the mountain, headed east through the cold and silent forest. Goro took the lead and the rest of us fell into step behind him. He was the only one in our group who had an actual objective. He meant to find his people, a tribe of Neanderthals who dwelled beyond the Eastern Dominions, and live among them, as I had lived among the Tanti. For lack of a better plan, we followed.

  The land rose and fell in a series of rocky ridges. We moved at a steady pace, not quite a run, as there were no sign of pursuit just yet.

  Even at the peaks of the jagged hills we could not see the three-tiered city, though we constantly turned to look as we retreated. Uroboros was on the southern face of the mountain so we could not tell if there was much activity in the city of the blood drinkers, but I imagined the blood gods boiling out of their aerie like angry hornets, crawling down the face of the mountain to look for us in the lower sections of the city.

  The smell of the Shol came to me then—a mélange of blood and decay, burning flesh and human waste—and my resolve to destroy the God King hardened. I imagined my loved ones in that terrible pit of human misery, condemned to a brief life of pain and degradation, hard labor and humiliation, before being consumed by their vampire masters.

  How many of my mortal descendants had that terrible city devoured? How many Tanti had been captured by the God King’s ruthless raiders? Marched without pity to an ignominious death in the pits of Uroboros?

  It didn’t matter. I could not allow it to continue. I could not live in a world where that awful place existed. But I could nothing about it. Not now. Not alone. I could only flee. Flee from the city, and from the God King who had built it.

  “What did you see, my love?” Zenzele asked softly, coming up behind me. I felt her hands on my shoulders, her thin form pressed against my back. “What did you see in his blood?”

  “I saw the world consumed,” I answered. “I saw the world overrun by T’sukuru, and all mortal men enslaved by them. I saw misery and horror without end. The world dying, shriveling like a fruit on the ground.”

  Goro and Bhorg had turned to listen. Goro did not seem much disturbed, but Bhorg scowled at me, then gazed toward the mountain with a thoughtful expression on his face.

  Vehnfear was up ahead, sniffing at the trunk of a pine tree. He hiked his leg as any canine would do.

  I turned on Zenzele suddenly, grabbing her by the shoulders. She tried to jerk away from me, frightened for a moment, then angry, her eyes flashing. “How could you stand it?” I demanded. “Have you forgotten your mortal life? Did you not love the woman who birthed to you? Would you condemn your father to that hell? Your brothers and sisters? How could you breathe with the stench of those pits rising to your quarters?”

  Bhorg and Goro started toward me, coming to Zenzele’s defense, but I released her and stepped away. I meant their mistress no harm.

  Zenzele stroked her upper arms. She looked angry and hurt at the same time.

  “It wasn’t like that at first,” she said. “There weren’t so many of us then. And, yes, we did raid the villages of the mortals. We brought them back to Uroboros to feed on. We are predators. It is our nature. It was only later, as the city grew, and the mortals came to worship us, that we began to keep them like slave animals. We even bred them. We had to. There
weren’t enough mortals for everyone to feed on. The T’sukuru began to starve. We fought amongst ourselves. We even preyed upon our own kind, until the God King forbid it. Some went mad with hunger and threw themselves from the mountain. You know this, Gon. You have Shared my memories. I did what I had to do. Uroboros was my home.”

  I felt ashamed of myself then. I was not a blameless man. “I’m sorry, my love,” I whispered fiercely. “That was unkind of me. I have also done things I am not proud of.”

  “It has become an awful place,” Zenzele admitted, looking to the mountain. “That is why I became a slaver. Uroboros was my home, but in the end, I could not endure the suffering there. Out here, roaming the Dominions, was the only time I had peace. You are right, my love. I have not forgotten my mortal life. I have not forgotten the mortal woman who birthed me. That is why I fought for you. That is why I—“ She stiffened then, her face going slack. “He has found us!” she gasped. “The Eye of Khronos turns in our direction!”

  She spoke, of course, of the strange intuition she shared with the God King, the invisible tendrils she sent out with her mind. They allowed her to see things from a distance, hear the thoughts of others. It was how she had touched me that night at the lake, after Ilio left me and I was half-mad with loneliness and loss. I thought a ghost had reached out to me, that a disembodied spirit had briefly brushed my soul. It was no revenant. It was Zenzele. Her spirit calling out to me from afar. Solitude had drawn us together.

  The God King possessed the same invisible Eye, and he had found us with it.

  It was much sooner than I had expected.

  Zenzele began to tremble. Staring toward Fen’Dagher, eyes blank except for fear, Zenzele whispered, “He is sending his warriors after us! They are racing through the tunnels even now!” She dragged her gaze from the mountain and hissed, “We have to run, my love! They mean to tear us apart!”