“I said get out!” he shouted.
I rose. Reached out to my one-time companion.
He struck my hand away. “Please… just go, Gyozo. Go find your acolyte before he harms anyone else. This is not your fault. This is that little monster’s doing. But go. Go away.”
I nodded and started for the door.
“Just know,” he called after me. “When you are dead and gone… I am going to hunt him down and destroy him.”
I paused to look back. Agnes, flesh white, eyes glinting, fangs very long and sharp, continued to thrash beside him.
“Good,” I said.
19
I overtook him in the marshes. Threw him down. Held him to the ground by the throat. My other hand was poised to strike him dead, fingers clamped tightly together. I was going to drive them into his brain, smash the faulty machine that drove his polluted thoughts. I wanted to do it. I was going to do it! My entire body trembled with the desire. Kill him! Kill him and bide your time for the next one, I said to myself. I was thirty thousand years old. What was another hundred years? Another thousand?
“Why?” I demanded. “Why did you do it?”
He couldn’t speak. I was squeezing his throat too hard. I loosened my grip and he coughed. “I… just wanted to see,” he croaked.
“Don’t you understand what you’ve done?” I shouted.
“What do you care?” he hissed. “You’re going to be dead soon anyway!” And then he laughed in my face.
I lowered my hand. Released him and walked away.
“You idiot! You’ve made an enemy of a very powerful blood drinker,” I said to him. “Yes, I’ll be dead soon. And he is going to hunt you down and destroy you after I’m gone.”
Lukas rose, rubbing his injured throat. He wiped cold mud from his clothing, pulled up and straightened his pants. “I’d like to see him try,” he snarled, grinning fiercely.
I smiled back at him. “He will do it. Strength does not mean everything. He has been trained to destroy immortals. He hunted ghouls at my side for a hundred years. You are newly made, inexperienced, barely able to use your vampire gifts. Destroying you will be child’s play for him.”
Lukas stared at me, his grin fading by degrees. He looked suddenly fearful, and then petulant. “Let’s go if you want me to kill you!” he said.
“He will do it,” I assured him once more. I matched his foolish grin, mocked him with it, and then I returned to the abbey to gather our belongings.
They were in a heap outside the walls of the complex. I knew how to take a hint. I dressed, hefted our packs and departed.
Lukas was waiting in the exact spot I’d left him, scowling into the blazing heavens, fangs exposed, cheeks smeared with the living blood. I passed him without speaking and he fell into step behind me. We walked in silence for several hours, our eyes bleeding in the sunlight. We walked until sundown.
“So, tell me the rest of the story,” he finally said, as the first faint stars twinkled in the east. “Might as well finish it. What else are we going to do to pass the time?”
“You made an Eternal of her,” I said.
“Oh, yeah?” Lukas replied. He looked pleased. “That’s cool. Now they can be together forever. They should be happy.”
“Not every human being wants to live forever,” I said. “She wanted to die, Lukas. Die and meet her creator. You’ve stolen that from her. And Justus is not an Eternal. He will perish long before she does.”
“Oh… Well, that sucks. So, tell me the rest of your story. I want to know how you defeated Khronos.”
I had to think for a moment where I’d left off with it. I was telling him of the Orda before I got sidetracked by Brother Justus and our adventure in the village of Getvar. It was always so easy to get distracted by Justus!
Where was I? I thought. Then: Ah, yes, we had just made the Orda into blood drinkers.
Zenzele had sensed that there was another group of Khronos’s warriors in pursuit of us, so we fled east.
“We fled east,” I said.
Army of the Undead
1
We fled east, but we fled with a purpose now.
As we abandoned the Ural Mountains, we tried to come up with a plan to defeat Khronos. Our problem, we decided, was threefold. We needed to recruit an army of mortals willing to fight, and die, for our cause. We had to make more blood drinkers-- who were also willing to fight, and die, for our cause. And we had to discover some way to kill a true immortal.
That last seemed the most hopeless of the three. I had attempted to destroy my own immortal body countless times. I had tried to drown myself, only to discover that my remade flesh no longer required oxygen to live. I had impaled myself and let open my veins with a knife, only to watch the injuries heal as quickly as I could inflict them. I had tried fire and found that my ossified flesh would not burn. I had even thrown myself from a mountaintop. My body had shattered on impact like a piece of crockery, but an instant later the Strix sent out slithering tendrils, like frenzied black eels, and drew the pieces back together again. And let’s not forget the millennium I had spent in the grinding maw of a glacier! It had reduced me to a mindless, crippled beast, but I had survived-- even that was not enough to destroy me-- and the living blood had restored me without a mark after my long imprisonment.
How could we destroy a foe that could not be drowned or burned? Who could be stabbed and speared and even torn to pieces, and still rise up whole an instant later?
The Ural Mountains had long faded into the dark behind us when Zenzele offered a solution.
“Perhaps we do not need to destroy them,” she said. “Perhaps we only need to dismember them. Do as Khronos does: take them apart, and remove the pieces to great distances so that the blood cannot restore them.”
Loping beside her through the grassy plains, I replied, “The idea is repellent to me. Must we become as cruel as our enemies in order to defeat them?”
Zenzele caught me with a glance. In each of her eyes was a tiny reflection of the moon, silver and shining. “We may have no choice.”
Making new blood drinkers would be the easiest task. Who would not want our powers? Who would not want a shot at immortality?
We had already doubled our numbers. Hammon and his tribesmen raced alongside us, still unsure of their newfound gifts. They reminded me of baby birds, trying to learn how to fly. They moved too fast and blundered into everything in their path-- trees, pools, outcrops of rock. They jumped too high and fouled their landings. It would have been quite entertaining if we were not fleeing for our lives. All but Stine, the eldest member of their tribe, had survived the transformation. In one night, our group had swelled from five to ten, and one of them, the hermaphrodite Eris, had become an Eternal. That was a stroke of luck.
And we would need luck, lots of luck, if we hoped to defeat the God King’s minions-- especially the Clan Masters.
Of all the blood gods in Uroboros, our most dangerous foes, apart from Khronos himself, was the Clan Masters. They were Eternals, like the three of us, impossible to kill, and just as powerful as their God King.
I had met only one, an ancient creature called Edron, with silver eyes and skin like the bark of a tree. An officious and humorless creature, he was the God King’s majordomo.
There were twelve others, some with strange mental faculties, like Zenzele’s “eye”, others with exceptional physical gifts: prodigious strength, extraordinary speed and grace. They were not all warriors. In fact, half of them were debauched and indolent creatures, accustomed to lives of ease and self-indulgence. They were craven and cruel, but if we sought to depose the God King, we would have to contend with all of them. We would have to defeat them or persuade them to change allegiance, which was not something I thought very likely to happen.
“Tell me of the Clan Masters,” I said to Zenzele as we travelled.
“Can you not access the memories I have Shared with you?” Zenzele asked.
“I can, but I would have
your present opinion of them,” I said. “Besides, it will help to pass the time.”
“Counting me, there were fourteen,” Zenzele said. “Edron you met. Like me, he is a clan of one. He ruled several houses at one time, but turned them over to his Eternal child Ghanima when she was made, so that he could better serve his God King. He is fiercely devoted to Khronos. He is probably the most powerful of all the Eternals, apart from his master. He might look like a wizened old man, but he is physically very powerful, and completely merciless.
“His T’sukuru daughter, Ghanima, is just as powerful and ruthless,” Zenzele continued. “She controls three houses, comprised mostly of warrior caste blood gods. There is Epault, a red-haired T’Sukuru from the north, like you. There is Lethe, and Yul, and Nesthe. All three are fierce warriors, and control several powerful houses. Some others, like Horas and Jelt and Moira, we do not need to worry about. They are weak-willed. Cowards, really. They might fight if their back is to the wall, but they are more likely to flee from battle than put their precious hides in harm’s way. There are two who might ally themselves with us. They are Druas and Wen. They have no love for Khronos, and nothing but contempt for T’sukuru society. Like you, they revere their former mortal lives. Then there is Palivfer’s maker Qor, and an Eternal named Baalt. Baalt is quite mad, a very dangerous blood god. He is able to drink the potashu of other T’sukuru without Sharing their memories. He has been known to feed on weaker blood drinkers rather than mortal men. It is a terrible thing to witness. The God King forbids it, unless a T’sukuru needs to be executed. Then he allows Baalt to do it for his entertainment.” She glared at me, her lips peeled back from her teeth. “He likes to watch it.”
I stopped. “This kills them?” I asked.
Zenzele leapt past me, then bound back. “Kills them?” she echoed. “Yes. Of course it does.”
“Has Baalt ever attacked another Eternal? Drained them of their living blood?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I wonder,” I mused, stroking my beard, “what would happen if Baalt fed on another Eternal? What if he drained one dry?”
Zenzele shook her head. “I do not know.”
“Perhaps we should try to find out, if the opportunity ever presents itself.”
“Try to drain a Master of their potashu?” Zenzele said dubiously. “We would not be able to do it. The Sharing would prevent us from harming them. You know what it is like. It would be like destroying yourself. Murdering the one you love most in the world.”
“Many men and women have killed the ones they loved,” I said, but I could see that the idea horrified her. The Sharing is so powerfully intimate. It would be like murdering your soul’s mate while making love to them—but again, that is something I am sure men and women have done before. Many someones, I would wager, and many times.
Perhaps, I thought. Perhaps…
2
The lands to the east of the Urals were wildly varied. Flat and densely wooded. Then mountainous. Then frigid steppes. Then desert.
I had never seen a desert so vast, and the sight of all those dunes receding into the distance, a sea of tan-colored waves, motionless and glowing in the moonlight, filled me with awe. It was beautiful, but so very desolate! I imagined I could hear the labored breathing of its denizens as they clung so desperately to life in this arid and sunbaked realm. I could feel their grim determination, and their thirst.
They are like us, the creatures of this barren place, I thought.
I felt as if I had crossed into another world, a world that we vampires belonged to more than the comparative paradise we had so recently forsaken.
That desert is called the Gobi now. We had traveled all the way across Russia, then the steppes of northwestern Mongolia. If we had continued in the direction we were traveling, we would have come to China, and finally North Korea and the Sea of Japan, but we did not continue. The desert seemed too vast and frightening to attempt a crossing. We did not know how big it was, or even if there was an end to it, and there was talk among the Orda that there was no end to it, that we had come to the end of the world, and it was an infinite and motionless sea of sand, and we stood now on the shore of it. Also, Zenzele sensed that our pursuers had given up the chase again, so there was no need for us to keep running.
Finally, gratefully, we could stop.
A month had passed since we abandoned the Urals, and our bodies were shriveled to the bone again. We looked like wizened mummies, skin drawn tight across the contours of our skulls, eyes sunken, fangs jutting from the lipless slits of our mouths. We turned north at the edge of the Gobi, heading toward a range of low mountains. There we found a large cave, and after we had rested, our small tribe of blood drinkers ranged out to look for sustenance.
Goro, who had rejoined us three days after quitting the Urals, departed with the Orda. He had not found his own people while he was apart from us, not so much as a trace of them, and he was quick losing hope that there were any Neanderthals left at all. “I fear my race has passed from the world of the living,” he had said on his return.
His sadness was a palpable thing. I could see that it weighed upon him-- to be the last of his kind-- and how could it not? It is a terrible thing to outlive your own people. I think that despair would have crushed his spirit utterly if not for Morgruss. Morgruss’s fangs had come in from his lower jaw, like tusks, a feature that was unique to vampires of Neanderthal stock. The Orda were not Neanderthal, but some ancestor of Morgruss must have been a Fat Hand. Because of this, Goro bonded with the humorless hunter during our flight across Russia, and went with him that night when they departed to seek nourishment.
Eris stayed with us.
The two-spirited creature had transformed in ways other than just the obvious. The living blood had made the hermaphrodite a true immortal—a powerful Eternal—and in that changing had released him from his tribesmen’s subjugation. Since the night that he was made into a blood god, he had gradually but very resolutely set himself apart from his former comrades. He resented the way they had used him when they were mortal men. He had accepted his fate at the time, tried to make the best of his circumstances—it was all he’d ever known-- but now he was more powerful than all of his tribesmen combined, and he did not bother to conceal the resentment that had built up in his heart over the years. He no longer tolerated his tribesmen’s mockery. He ignored them when they tried to command him, or cursed at them, and just the previous night, when Neolas tried to lie upon him, Eris had thrown the man off.
They had fought briefly but vociferously before Eris overpowered him. “Never again,” the exotic blood drinker hissed at his tribesman, gripping him by the neck so tight his fingers sank into the flesh.
Neolas had nodded quickly enough, eyes wide with shock, then slunk sheepishly away to his bedding, muttering under his breath.
Both Zenzele and I found it quite amusing.
Eris was hopelessly infatuated with Zenzele. I might have been jealous, but the hermaphrodite didn’t have the proper equipment to make good his obvious desires. His genitals were an incomprehensible jumble to my eyes. I didn’t know what to make of all that tangled, furry flesh, and neither did Bhorg.
“I know he wants us to call him a ‘he’,” Bhorg confided in me, “but I cannot see him as a male or a female. He’s just a… thing to me. I have to admit though, I wouldn’t mind laying with him just to see what it’s like.” And then he had elbowed me with an explosion of vulgar laughter.
I had no such curiosity.
I do not like to think that I am or have ever been prejudiced in any way. I have always found beauty in both the male and female forms, but Eris was both and neither at the same time, and I didn’t know quite how to act around the creature.
His fascination was Zenzele had also begun to grow wearisome.
He followed her constantly, worse than her wolf Vehnfear, but unlike the vampire wolf, he tended to monopolize her attention. They were always talking in low voices, their heads d
ucked toward one another, snickering and stealing glances at the rest of us. They were like giggly sisters. When we lay down to sleep, there was either an indignant wolf or a clinging Eris to roust from Zenzele’s side, and sometimes both. When I wanted some time with Zenzele alone, Eris tried to tag along. I didn’t consider him a rival, but I’d be lying if I said he didn’t annoy me. He was like a jealous little brother… or sister.
Worse, Zenzele encouraged this behavior. She had always had a soft spot for strays and wounded animals, and Eris was a bit of both—not unlike myself, now that I think about it.
But I’m rambling again, aren’t I? And I do not have that luxury. Soon we will come to the land of my birth, and my journey, both literal and figurative, shall come to its end.
Let us get on with it then.
So, we found a cave at the edge of the Gobi. It was large and dry and comfortable, although there was a crevice nearby that tended to whistle when the wind blew from the desert in the south. Mortal men had occupied the cave sometime in the recent past. There were cave paintings, mostly handprints and stylized animals. Stone circles and cinders marked the placement of several abandoned hearths. We found broken spear tips and animal bones and small bright stones with holes drilled through them for jewelry. The typical leavings of an abandoned mortal settlement.
Goro and the Orda departed as soon as we had settled upon our temporary shelter, and we left shortly after. They headed north, moving deeper into the mountains. We decided to go in the opposite direction. We went to hunt the desert.
We did not venture too far into that wasteland. It was still too new and strange to us. I had seen wastes like it before, of course, but none so broad and barren. We all tried with our vampire senses to find the end of it. Zenzele claimed she could sense a great green country on the other side of it, with winding rivers and jagged mountains and multitudes of living men, but that country was far beyond the reach of my senses.
The Oldest Living Vampire Betrayed (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 4) Page 21
