“He has already unleashed his assault. There is an Eternal among them, and a powerful blood god with the gift of blocking my far-sight. They are nearly upon us, and there are hundreds of them! I can’t believe I didn’t sense them sooner!”
She crossed swiftly to the entrance of our dwelling and peered into the night. The moon was a dim sliver and low in the sky, the valley a dark rift but for the glowing fires of the mortal settlement below.
We followed, all of us, and gazed out into the dark.
“Can you see where they are? What direction they’re coming from?” I questioned her urgently.
She had already sent out her Eye, and gazed blankly into the starry heavens, her face slack. I could feel the energy streaming from her, stabbing out into the darkness, moving, searching. Finally, she came back to us. Her eyes fluttered and she looked at me with a fierce scowl. “I cannot see them. They’ve blinded my Eye. But their army is vast. I can feel them out there, drawing nearer by the moment.”
I looked down upon Penthos, upon all the tiny communities of our mortal devotees. The villages seemed so terribly small and vulnerable suddenly. Most of the mortal settlements had no walls, and very few defenses. Penthos was the only settlement with any real fortifications. Our mortal followers relied on us to protect them. Ordinarily, our scouts, or Zenzele with her Eye, were able to give us enough forewarning to evacuate the mortal settlers to Penthos, where we could defend them, but not this time. This time we had been caught with our loincloths down. This time we had failed them.
That fragment of Khronos’s intellect chortled gleefully in the back of my mind. Yes, he meant to attack the mortals! They were the most vulnerable segment of our society, and he knew we would be powerfully demoralized if he destroyed the very thing we were trying so hard to preserve.
I turned to my advisers, shouting at them in my panic. “Bhorg, Goro, Drago, Hammon! Gather your warriors. Bring them to Penthos if you are able to, if it is not already too late! Position them around the village. We must shield them from Khronos’s wrath! Move quickly!”
“And I?” Neolas asked, after my generals had vanished through the entrance.
“Summon the Abuellas. Send them to the outer settlements. Evacuate as many as you can to Penthos, then stay there. Your priests must tend to the injured, and help to shield the mortals from harm.”
Neolas nodded, and then he was gone as well.
Only Zenzele remained.
Her body was tense, all her muscles taut and twitching, but her smile for me was warm and gentle. “My beautiful one,” she said.
I went to her and put my arms around her, laid my forehead upon her shoulder. She placed her cheek upon my chest, yielding to my embrace for a moment. She sighed, and then she pushed away from me, and the smile was gone. All softness had fled her countenance.
“Let us go to war,” she said-- she purred-- and her teeth flashed dangerously.
I nodded, and she went to the ledge of our cave dwelling, her slim body moving sinuously, cat-like. She looked down for a moment, and then she gave herself to the dark.
I followed.
14
The attack came from the north and south simultaneously. They overran the defenses we had positioned at the mountain passes and converged on Penthos in nearly incomprehensible numbers. We were lucky that Zenzele had pierced their psychic camouflage in time to rally our troops, for if she had not, I am certain there wouldn’t have been a mortal left breathing in Penthos by daybreak. As it was, all of my generals managed to bring in their divisions and encircle the village as the mortals from the surrounding settlements came streaming in. All but Goro. Goro’s unit was positioned further from Asharoth than some of the others, and they were caught by the howling horde that poured through the north pass as they raced back to us.
I did not witness Goro fall with my own eyes, but Zenzele perceived it. We were organizing our inner perimeter when she felt him die. She faltered when it happened, and let out a furious howl, her lips peeled back from her fangs. “Goro has fallen!” she cried. “They caught him by the northern pass and ripped him apart!”
I paused to look in that direction, but his unit was too far away, the night too dark, for me to see.
I was surprised by the agony that stabbed into my heart at his destruction. Of all Zenzele’s lieutenants, Bhorg was the only one I had developed a strong emotional attachment to. I had never felt particularly close to Goro. He was too much of a loner, always lighting off on his own, always setting himself apart from us. But I felt his loss tremendously. He had been a loyal companion for a little over two decades. So far as I knew, he was also the last of his kind, the last pureblood Neanderthal, and I had always admired their race. Three of my mortal children were half Neanderthal.
“There’s nothing we can do,” I said, and Zenzele nodded, putting aside her dismay. She wiped a bloody tear from her cheek and continued with her duties.
Bhorg came running. “They are nearly upon us!” he shouted, brandishing his monstrous stone hammer. He was grinning. His powerful frame thrummed with excitement as he faced the coming storm.
Our troops were positioned around the mortal settlement in a series of concentric circles, just as we had planned it. The strongest blood drinkers manned the outer perimeter, spearmen and archers positioned behind them. Behind the archers awaited our finest mortal warriors, and finally, in the innermost circle, the Abuellas and mortal non-combatants… and us, the Eternals, the last defense of our mortal allies. There were gaps, I saw, due mostly to the absence of Goro’s troops, but I was surprised we had formed up so proficiently, and with so little advance warning. It was a testament to Zenzele’s training.
“Stand fast!” I shouted as the footfalls of the approaching vampire horde made the earth tremble. My ears throbbed with the din of their combined yowling. “Remember what it is you fight for!”
And then they were upon us, and the natural flow of time seemed fractured by the violence that ensued.
In numbers we were only slightly outmatched. If Goro and his men had not fallen, we probably would have been evenly matched, blood drinker for blood drinker. Despite their vast numbers, the God King’s army was not quite able to overrun our front lines, and outer perimeter arrested the horde’s forward momentum. They did not fall back, but they could not batter their way through our lines either.
“Archers!” Zenzele screeched, as some of the enemy blood drinkers attempted to leap over our front lines.
Arrows and lances whistled overhead.
The zephyr of hurtling projectiles felled any enemy blood drinker foolish enough to take to the air, and those who made it through the whistling torrent of arrows and spears landed amidst our most powerful blood drinkers.
“Back to oblivion!” Bhorg roared, crushing them two and three at a time with his hammer.
Most remained on the ground, however, and their shields protected them from our archers. Some of them managed to wend their way through the gaps in our lines. They raced forward at full speed, intent on killing as many mortals as possible.
I sprang forward to meet them, striking out at them as Zenzele had trained me, aiming my blows at their necks, their spines, wrenching their limbs from their sockets and flinging their bodies into the river of arrows still wailing overhead.
Zenzele fought at my side, her attacks impossibly fast, unerringly lethal. Her eyes blazed. Her white fangs ripped and snapped. Vehnfear circled us, snarling and biting our foes. The immortal wolf leapt upon a blood drinker who tried to run me through with a spear and ripped the warrior’s head from his shoulders. He looked at me with a grin, tail wagging, then loped after another.
There were casualties on our side, too. A great many casualties. I saw Petra, one of Hammon’s tribesmen, trying to defend himself from two of Khronos’s warriors. I raced to the young man’s aid, but was not fast enough to save him. His assailants laid hands on him and pulled him apart. All I could do was avenge him.
I saw Usus and Eris fighting b
ack to back. The two had been lovers for many years, the hermaphrodite and the desert warrior. Usus fell to an enemy’s weapon, a type of bladed staff I had never seen before. The weapon cleaved the man in two, and Eris, screaming in outrage, struck his attacker so hard the immortal all but exploded from the waist up, like a rotten melon.
I raced to them. Eris, kneeling over Usus’s broken body, was trying to heal him with the living blood.
“Don’t die,” the Eternal sobbed, opening his veins for his lover. “Please, Usus, I don’t want to live without you!”
Usus gulped and flailed, but he was no Eternal. The life was fading from his ashen face.
“Here, drink,” I cried, and I tore open my wrist with my fangs and thrust it to his lips. “Put his body back together, Eris,” I commanded through gritted teeth. “He will not heal if his body is laying apart.”
My blood, so much older and more potent than the blood of the hermaphrodite, quickened Usus. His injuries began to mend. I turned the two of them over to a passing abuella. “Return to the battle when you can,” I said to Eris, and the young Eternal nodded gratefully.
“Thank you, Father,” he said, helping the abuella lift and carry Usus from the battleground.
I spotted Palifver then, Zenzele’s old lover, among the combatants. He met my gaze and rushed toward me, fingers hooked into claws, fangs bared. We collided together like stags.
“You are defeated!” he exclaimed.
“Fool!” I hissed. “You know I cannot die! You have thrown your life away!”
I pulled him into my embrace and sank my teeth into his neck.
15
“Hello, Thest,” the God King said, lazing on his throne. “Or would you prefer that I call you by your real name, the name your father gave you when you were voided, bloody and howling, from your mother’s womb? Gon… Gon, of the River People. Look what I’ve trapped here in my web, Gon, what tender morsel wriggles on my fangs.”
At his feet, with broken limbs and pleading eyes, my immortal child Ilio!
“Father!” Ilio cried, and Khronos kicked the lad to silence him.
The God King rose and approached me, his lips splitting into a taunting grin. “Your child came in search of his wayward sire. I suppose he wanted to know why his father had abandoned him. Why you abandoned him, Gon. And let us not forget your mortal descendants, the Tanti. Oh, yes. I have them, too. They are all here in Uroboros, Gon. Screaming. Dying. In agony.”
He drew closer so that his leering face was all that I could see. His eyes gleamed. His tongue slid forth to lick his teeth. Then, with a chuckle, he turned and paced back to his throne.
“Should I hurt your boy some more, Gon? Maybe I will rape him. Take him right here and now, like a woman, and force you to watch every moment of it. Or I could order Palifver here to do it, so that you can experience it first hand. The child’s pain and humiliation.” He laughed. “Oh, there are so many things that I might do to him. To your beloved vampire child. And to your helpless mortal Tanti, too! There are so many games we can play! So many games we have played! I’m afraid I’ve already broken a good number of them, but do not worry, there are plenty of them left, and they are all mine. Here, in the belly of Fen’Dagher.”
He sat, leaned forward, curled his fingers in Ilio’s dark locks. With a sneer, he jerked the boy’s head up and pressed his face into his lap. Ilio cried out, pushing feebly against the man’s chest.
“I send this memory as a message to you, Gon, borne on the blood of my most trusted warriors,” Khronos said. “Surrender to me, Gon of the River People. Come to Fen’Dagher, alone and unarmed, and I will release your immortal child. I will free your Tanti offspring-- those who still live. I will allow them to depart in peace, and never harm them again.”
He leaned forward, lips curling back from his teeth.
“Refuse my offer, continue to defy me, and I will make them suffer.”
He seized one of Ilio’s flailing arms and twisted it. Bones snapped and Ilio wailed.
“I will make blood gods of them all, and torment them for endless ages!”
16
“No!” I cried in outrage, and pushed Palifver away from me. I had bitten him instinctively, jealous, vengeful, and now I was suffering the consequences. Khronos had placed a memory in the blood drinker’s mind, sent it as a message to me. They had my son! They had Ilio, and they had my mortal descendants, the Tanti!
Palifver, laughing, seized my head. He meant to tear my head from my neck as I stood helpless, transfixed by the Sharing.
And then Palifver’s head was gone, ripped from his shoulders by my beloved Zenzele.
She thrust his headless body away from me, then took my cheeks into her hands.
“What is it, my love?” she said, searching my eyes. “What did you see?”
“Ilio,” I choked. “They have my son.”
“The God King has the boy?”
“Yes, I… I saw him in Palifver’s thoughts. He has the Tanti, too. He sent Palifver as a message to me. He wanted me to see the boy. To witness it through his eyes, so there was no doubt of it in my mind. He is torturing them, my beloved, night after night without end.”
She winced, and for a moment she gazed at me with sympathy, sharing in my anguish, then her eyes hardened. “I’m sorry, my love. I truly am. But you must put your loved ones from your thoughts. The battle still rages. Nothing can be done for them if we fall.”
“Yes,” I nodded, and then I did as she said. I put Ilio and the Tanti from my thoughts.
Another blood drinker who had slipped through the gaps in our defenses rushed at Zenzele from behind. He was a tall, thin vampire with streaming blond hair and fearsome fangs. Before he could reach us, however, Bhorg shattered him with a swing of his hammer. The giant struck him so hard he shattered. The remains fell to dust almost instantly. He must have been an old one.
“Make love when the battle is over, you two,” Bhorg yelled at us merrily. “We still have mosquitos to swat!”
17
The battle raged until dawn, but we emerged victorious.
A few of Khronos’s minions escaped, but most lay dead at our feet, dead and fallen to dust and bones. And we had taken the Clan Master captive.
His name was Yul. He was an Eternal, as all Clan Masters are, and impossible to kill, but our warriors had torn the limbs from his body, as Zenzele had instructed them to do. All they brought to me was a very angry torso.
Judging by the length and breadth of his torso, he had been a large man until recently, almost as tall as myself. He had a proportionally large, broad head, and blunt, crude features: a heavy brow, flat nose with flaring nostrils and long fangs. His arms had been removed at the shoulders, and his legs broken off at the knees, and he was naked.
“Usurper!” he roared as my warriors bore his crippled body across the battlefield. “Traitor! Fiend! Restore my limbs to me now or your suffering will be a thing of legend!”
Seeing the creature-- pale, limbless, genitals flopping—I could not help but laugh at his impotent threat.
“You dare?” he howled, bucking in the arms of his captors. “You DARE?” He wriggled loose of the men holding him and fell to the earth with a thud.
“My suffering is already a thing of legend,” I said.
The Clan Master had landed face down. They rolled him over as I approached so that we could look each other in the eyes.
Zenzele glared at the immortal with contempt. As a former Clan Master, Zenzele knew all of the God King’s Eternals, though she had no great love for any of them.
Yul spit dirt from his mouth. “The God King has your blood child,” he said with a grin. “He sent us to carry a message to you, to demand your surrender. Taste my blood and see for yourself.”
“I know,” I said evenly. “I have already seen it in Palifver’s blood.”
“Then restore me, and I will accompany you to Uroboros,” Yul said. “Perhaps the God King will be merciful. You can swear your allegiance to
him. Beg him for forgiveness. I will be your advocate.”
“Oh, yes! We all know just how merciful your God King is,” I said mockingly.
He trembled. “Fucker of dogs! Eater of mortal shit! I will enjoy watching the God King tear you limb from limb!”
“I don’t know how you’ll do that. You are not leaving these mountains alive.”
He laughed. “I am an Eternal! You cannot kill me! Carry my pieces to the furthest corners of the world if you wish, my clan will search them out. They’ll find every part of me and restore me.”
“That is not the fate I had in mind for you,” I said.
He looked suddenly, pitifully, encouraged. “Then you do intend to release me? What would you have of me? Do you wish me to carry a message to the God King for you? Bring me my arms and legs and I will do it!”
“No,” I said sympathetically. “I plan to employ you as an instructor. You, fiend, shall teach us how to destroy an Eternal. I’m sorry. I’m sure it will not be pleasant. In fact, I’m certain the pain will be worse than anything you remotely deserve, regardless of how cruel you’ve become in the God King’s service. But it must be done. We must find a way to do it if we hope to destroy Khronos.”
“What? No!” Yul shouted. “I cannot die! I will not!”
“Take him to Neolas,” I said to the warriors who had carried him to me. “He knows what must be done, and keep a guard posted on him at all times. I don’t want him… wiggling away like a worm.”
The Eternal cursed me some more as they jogged away with him. Nothing too original. Mostly what animals I had a proclivity for fucking. What nasty excretions I was fond of devouring.
“You intend to drain him?” Zenzele asked.
I had been surveying the battleground, taking an inventory of our casualties, healing whomever I could. I continued on with a nod. “It is the living blood that animates us, that heals our injuries when we are wounded. Most blood drinkers die when they are wounded too grievously for the living blood to repair. The blood is vulnerable to the air that we breathe, I think. That is the impression I got when I Shared with Khronos, anyway. Our bodies insulate it from the atmosphere. That it why it dies when our bodies are pierced or torn apart. But for some reason, the living blood of Eternals is more resilient. It does not fall to dust when it is exposed to the ether. We need to find out why, and how we might circumvent it.”
The Oldest Living Vampire Betrayed (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 4) Page 26
