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

by Joseph Duncan

  “Khronos has tried,” Zenzele said. “He is ancient and merciless. He has tried a hundred different ways to destroy an Eternal, surely.”

  “You might think so, but he has not,” I said. “He enjoys quartering his foes too much. He likes the idea of their endless suffering. I am not so cruel as that, but I am determined to find a way to destroy an Eternal. We must find a way.”

  “So you will not be surrendering to the God King? Not even for the Tanti?”

  I kneeled down beside a writhing warrior. It was a new blood drinker. Young. He had been ripped in half. His intestines stretched out between his gaping ribs and the bottom half of his body, which was lying several meters away.

  “Please, Father, heal me,” he gurgled. “Heal me or… or kill me. I don’t care. Just make the pain stop.”

  He was a beardless young man with short, curly, dark hair and fine features. He reminded me of Ilio. So young!

  I could sense that he would not survive, even if I Shared my living blood with him. He was dying. He was just too strong a blood drinker to die quickly.

  “Thank you for your sacrifice,” I said to him, and I felt the black tears well up in my eyes.

  “My sons,” he said, and I nodded.

  “They will know that you died for them,” I said. “I swear it. What is your name?”

  “Ranolf,” he answered.

  “With your permission, Ranolf, I will Share with you so that your soul resides within me for all time. You will watch your children grow into men through my eyes. You will cradle your children’s children with my arms, and love them with all my heart.”

  He nodded gratefully. I lifted him into my arms, so like a baby, and put my mouth to his throat.

  “Father,” he whispered.

  After I had saved him, I set his remains aside. I rose shakily, my mind still trying to process the thoughts and memories I had absorbed from his blood. Zenzele took my hand and steadied me.

  “Sacrifices must be made if we are going to win this war against the God King,” I said to her. “I must weigh the worth of the Tanti against the worth of the whole world. If I must let them go to preserve all living men, then I will, no matter how much it pains me.”

  Zenzele narrowed her eyes.

  “Please do not press me about it,” I said. “It torments me badly enough as it is.”

  We went on to the next casualty.

  18

  That afternoon, as Zenzele lay sleeping by my side, I rose and walked as quietly as I could to the entrance of my lodgings. I gazed out upon the Urals, squinting my eyes in the sunlight. Its peaks were jagged and gray, not at all like the green mountains of my birthplace.

  Suddenly I missed it, the rolling wooded hills and broad river valley of my mortal life. I missed it with a fierceness that was nearly unendurable. I pulled my furs tighter about my shoulders as the high wind blustered around me, tugging my long hair to and fro, and I thought of all that I had lost so far-- homes, families, lovers. Time had devoured them, as it devoured all. Someday, even these mountains would be ground down to gravel.

  Vehnfear rose and padded to my side.

  “Do not follow me, old man,” I said to the wolf as he stood there wagging his tail. “And do not rouse your mistress.”

  The animal glanced back at Zenzele, still sleeping in the darkest corner of our cave. Naked beauty wrapped in furs. Oh, how I wanted to make love to her one last time!

  But I couldn’t.

  I could not rouse her. I could not take that chance. I had to be as far away as possible before the sun sat and the vampires of Asharoth arose from their slumbers.

  I knew what the God King meant to do to me, but it did not matter what happened to me. Only Ilio mattered. Only the Tanti mattered. I was fairly certain that Khronos would betray me. That he would renege on his promise, kill all of them, whether I surrendered to him or not, but he might keep his word, he might let them go, and so I must try.

  Zenzele would carry on this war without me. The God King would fall, whether I was a part of the rebellion or not. She held my confidence no less than my love. It was the only way I could do this—sacrifice myself in the hopes of freeing my loved ones.

  “Keep her safe,” I said to Vehnfear, and then I dropped over the ledge.

  I went to surrender to the God King.

  The Divided God

  1

  I can move very quickly when I want to, faster than the human eye can follow, actually. Even when traversing a vertical surface.

  I climbed down the face of Asharoth, moving as rapidly as I could. I did not want to be seen by anyone, not the mortals of Penthos, nor any of my fellow blood drinkers, for I felt that I was abandoning them. I felt that I was betraying them. I felt that I was being selfish and foolish, that I was endangering them all in order to save my vampire child Ilio and my own mortal descendants. I had started this war against the God King, and now I was abandoning it, but I did not have a choice. I could not let Ilio and the Tanti suffer. I could not let them die if there was a chance that I could save them.

  I sprang from the face of the mountain when I neared the bottom, vanishing into the canopy of the wilderness below, and then I swam through the leaves and boughs of the pines and hardwood trees until I came to the river.

  There, I dropped lightly to the earth and paused a moment.

  I was not tired. My rapid descent from the mountain had not taxed my strength in the least. Not physically, anyway. I merely wished to stop for a moment and take in the sight of the Urals. I was fairly certain it would be the last time I ever saw them.

  How silent and grand they were, their peaks capped in snow and hazed by low, misty rafters of cloud. It was so still by the shore of the meandering river. I had moved far enough away from the village of Penthos that I could no longer hear the activities of the mortals who resided there, and all my vampire brethren were still fast asleep in whatever cave or burrow or tent they had claimed for their abodes. I felt a profound peace listening to the chuckling currents of the river, and I wondered how anyone could want anything other than this feeling, this timeless peace. Madness—it was the only thing I could think of to explain man’s acquisitiveness, his thirst for war, his need to dominate his brothers and sisters. Madness was the only reason a man would choose conflict over tranquility, pain over pleasure, domination over unity. Well not me! Give me a fine, powerful woman—or a handsome, passionate man—over bloodshed and hatred any day!

  “You have no time for this,” I said to myself, only I found I was reluctant now to continue.

  I was going to Uroboros to surrender to the God King, to sacrifice myself for Ilio and the Tanti. It was a brave and noble thing to do-- yes, yes-- but I will not lie to you. I cannot say that I was not frightened. I had no idea what the God King planned to do to me, not really, but I knew it would hurt, and I knew it would be degrading and depraved, and I was understandably reluctant to hurry to that fate. In fact, I was shaking all over.

  Then I called to my thoughts the image of Khronos shoving my son’s face into his crotch, grabbing his arm and twisting it until the bones snapped like dry tree branches, and my resolve quickened.

  I hardened my heart, put aside my fear, and continued.

  2

  I crossed the mountains through the southern passage, the same route the God King’s forces had taken when they attacked us during the night. Those forces had overrun our outpost, killing every man there, but there was little sign of the battle that had taken place only hours before. The tents the guards had slept in still stood. The coals of their campfire were still warm. The grass was trampled, and I saw a few stray arrows imbedded in the earth, but those were the only signs that men had battled in this place, had given their lives for the sake of my cause. If their bodies remained intact after they perished, if they hadn’t fallen to dust, consumed by the living blood inside them, then someone had come and taken them away. It was only right. It was respectful. It made me proud of the men and women I had allied myself wi
th.

  “Look after them in the Ghost World, fathers,” I prayed quickly to my ancestors, and then I moved on.

  Even traveling at top speed, it would take days to journey to Fen’Dagher. By nightfall I was clear of the mountains and hurrying across the vast steppes of the God King’s Eastern Dominions.

  The air was brisk-- cold actually-- but it felt pleasant to me. It felt pure and invigorating. I only wished the moon were brighter. It was but a dim and ruddy sliver riding low over the horizon.

  I could see well enough, but there was no beauty in this nighted world. Moonshine can transform the dreariest of settings, especially to the keen eyesight of a vampire, glinting on the frost, limning the edges of the leaves and grass, shimmering on every body of water, but moonlight was in short supply that night. My journey would be a dark one, but that seemed fitting, too.

  It was not long after nightfall when I felt Zenzele’s Eye pass over me.

  It was silent and invisible, yet I had a sense of it as if it were a fleeting shadow. I paused when I landed on the ground, and turned back in the direction of the Urals. There was no use in hiding from it, hiding from her, even if I could. I only hoped that I could send an impression back to her: that I was resolute, and that I did not wish for her to follow me.

  I waited for the Eye to return, and when it did, when it passed again and then focused suddenly upon me, I thrust out my chin and concentrated on my thoughts.

  I am sorry, my love, I said to her in my mind. Do not try to stop me. I do this because I must.

  I felt a flush of warmth, and it seemed for a moment I could smell her skin, feel her fingers trace lightly over my face, a thing she sometimes did when we were making love, and then the Eye, and her presence, was gone, as if I had only imagined it.

  She will come, I thought.

  I turned and raced on.

  3

  She came, of course, and because I feared she would follow me to Uroboros, I gave up my flight and allowed my lover to overtake me. She would follow me all the way to Khronos’s throne room if she had to, I knew, and that was something I could not permit. Our rebellion would endure if one of us were lost, but not, I thought, both—and especially not her.

  Had I actually believed she would allow me to sneak away, that she would sit idly by while I gave myself to our enemies? It seemed foolish of me now.

  So I waited. I sat upon a stone and waited for her to catch up to me.

  It took several hours, but I waited as the starry heavens turned like a wheel above my head. Frost formed on my flesh as the cold wind of the steppes swirled across the grassy plain. A wolf padded by, and somewhere a raptor cried out. I tried to think of what I would say to her, the arguments I might make, running them through my mind. I could not be sure of how she would react to any one of them. Though I loved her, though I had Shared with her, Zenzele’s heart was a wild animal, and ever unpredictable.

  I sensed her before she arrived. I felt her Eye upon me, and then she swooped out of the sky. She fell to the earth like a beautiful black demigoddess, landing in a crouch and then rising and striding angrily toward me, her eyes flashing, her lips curled back from her teeth. The people of the Western Dominions had called her the Goddess of Death, but that was not my Zenzele. Death was never so beautiful, nor so furious.

  “What are you thinking?” she demanded. “I cannot believe you would lie to me!”

  Still sitting, I peeked up at her shamefully. “I was afraid you would try to stop me.”

  “And you did not think I would follow you?”

  I shrugged, then chuckled. “I guess I did not think it through.”

  Zenzele put her hands on her hips. “You do not think a lot of things through, Gon! Have you considered how your sacrifice will affect our cause? You are the father of this rebellion. If you fall to Khronos, they will believe our war to be hopeless. Our alliance will crumble, and Khronos will triumph. He will have every single one of us hunted down and destroyed.”

  “Our alliance will not crumble. They have you still, and that is enough. You are their Mother. The Goddess of Heaven. They will follow you to the underworld and back. You will see this war through. And perhaps, when it is over, you might even be able to restore me.”

  “Gon--!”

  “I cannot just leave him to the God King!” I said desperately, interrupting her. I rose and took her shoulders in my hands. “He is my son, Zenzele. If I do not return to Uroboros, Khronos will destroy him, and then I will die. The part of me you love will perish. Let me go, Zenzele, and do not follow, or it will be you who kills me, not the God King.”

  “I will not mourn for you,” she said angrily.

  And because I was going to meet my fate, I kissed her. I pressed my mouth upon hers and squeezed her body to mine.

  She resisted for an instant, still angry, and then she melted against me. She opened her mouth to me and I slid my tongue inside so that she could bite it and Share with me one last time.

  “Take it,” I whispered urgently. “Drink my blood. Take the last of me and keep it safe.”

  “Gon, no!” she moaned, but she did as I bid her to.

  I pulled her down on the frozen grass, pushed her back and tore her clothes away, parted her knees.

  “Gon!”

  “Let me have this!” I hissed. “I need it! It will give me something to hold in my thoughts when he is tearing me apart!”

  She made a sharp sound of pain and turned her face away from me, and then she pushed aside her fear and looked into my eyes. She smiled and nodded. “Then slip inside me, beautiful one,” she said, spreading herself for me, “if it will help you to endure the horrors to come.”

  My hands shook as I ripped open my breeches and tore off my loincloth. I was rigid as stone. I fell upon her and stabbed the full length of it inside her. I sank down upon her with a wavering groan.

  “Fuck me, you beautiful fool!” she snarled. She drove her fangs into my neck. Her nails slashed open the flesh of my back.

  “I love you, Zenzele!” I groaned, ramming my cock into her again and again. “I love you!”

  Such desperate lust! It is a common human reaction in times of mortal peril, a last-ditch effort to carry out the reproductive mandate, to preserve one’s DNA, to continue on. I no longer possessed the living seed of a mortal man to give to her, to entrust to the protective vault of her womb, but the instinct remained, and I was driven by it.

  I came, my body shuddering from head to toe, but I did not stop until I came again, and the cold black fluid which was my seed overspilled her lips and trickled down her inner thighs.

  I collapsed atop her, and she held me—with her arms and with her womb.

  “He will have you quartered,” she whispered.

  “I know.”

  “He will torment you for ages.”

  “Yes.”

  “I will try to collect the pieces when it is over,” she said. “If we win this war. I will do my best to restore you.”

  “I know you will.”

  “I don’t want you to go. I want you to come back home with me.”

  “I know.”

  “But you can’t.”

  “No.”

  She pushed against me, and I rolled off of her. The frozen grass crackled. She sat up and tried to mend her garments. “Then go,” she said. She rose and started walking away. “Go surrender to our enemy.”

  4

  The city of Uroboros had grown exponentially in the twenty years since our escape from the God King. The upper tier of the city, the Fen, home of Khronos and his depraved blood gods, had not much changed. But the lower two levels, the sections occupied by the city’s mortal population, had expanded greatly. Arth, the abode of the city’s freemen and high caste mortal slaves, had spread horizontally across the mountain’s sheer face. It was a city of multi-story stone dwellings and verdant hanging gardens, sweeping rope bridges and sprawling walled villas. The Shol, the slum district that housed the city’s slave caste, was four times th
e size it had once been, and was surrounded by numerous low dwellings made of stone and mud and wood and a great stone wall, a new one that rose twice as high as the walls that once kept the God King’s sorry mortal captives penned. In modern parlance, you might call the Shol a ghetto, but it was so much worse than that. It was a hell, a blight, a spot of cancer on the face of the earth. Picture in your mind the painting Hell by the brilliant mortal artist Hieronymus Bosch, and you hold in your mind the spirit of Khronos’s kingdom.

  The t’sukuru had named this mountain Fen’Dagher, which roughly translated as “Heaven Spear”, and I thought it was an apt name, for if there really were a heaven, this place would be an affront to it, a lance hurled at the heart of God.

  I remembered my first sight of the city, how its splendors had dazzled my eyes even as its horrors outraged my sensibilities. In a time when fire and cave drawings were the pinnacle of man’s technology, Uroboros looked every bit the city of the gods it claimed to be. A heaven and a hell, and the stink of it dizzied me, even from a distance.

  Several roads wound away from the gates of the high new wall that surrounded the Shol. I set along one of these roads after exiting the forest, striding purposefully toward the city.

  A continuous stream of mortal wayfarers shared the thoroughfare with me, traveling to and from the city gates. Some were on horseback, high caste overseers or freemen of the Arth. Others traveled by foot, half-starved slaves dressed in rags. Or naked. Naked and shivering like animals. All of them bowed deferentially to me, or cowered in fear. They did not know who I was, only what I was. My hard white skin declared my social standing, which was enough to cow every mortal I passed.