Chapter 85 - The Country of the Ground Scratchers part 3

It saddened me to think of leaving our little burrow in the mountains. There were so many things I knew I'd miss. I'd miss its grand view of the Pannonian Plain, the sight of the endless grasslands shining under the moon, so still and calm and peaceful. I'd miss the forest and the falls. I'd miss my nightly hunting excursions, the abundant wildlife, the simplicity of the life we'd made together, all alone here on this mountain, but Ilio was becoming a man, and I knew it was time for him to seek out others of his kind. I'd possessed him long enough.

It was time to find a new home for him.

We gathered what belongings we could comfortably carry and said good-bye to our cozy little warren. As Ilio bent to his preparations, I surveyed our home for the last time: the plush furs we'd covered the floor with, and all the boy's wall paintings. Ilio had covered the walls with handprints and paintings of deer and fish. He'd even made a drawing of me, a white humanoid figure with two orange dots for eyes. I was not too keen of his paintings at first. My people were superstitious of such things, but I grew accustomed to them eventually. Even came to appreciate their beauty. I would miss our home.

"Are you ready to go?" I asked him, placing my torch against a rock near the entrance. Its flames whipped and made a sputtering sound in the wind that swirled through the mouth of the cavern.

Ilio tied off his pack and sat back with a sigh. He looked all around the cave, his eyes large and grave, and I watched his brow furrow with emotion. I was glad to see the hesitation on his face. I felt less maudlin, then.

"This was a good home," he said.

"Yes, it was."

I made a point not to look back as we departed.

We picked our way down the familiar footpaths toward the grassy plains, the moon high and bright, the late spring breeze balmy and pleasant. Ilio walked ahead of me, excited to be underway.

"Do you think we'll ever come back here?" he asked as we descended the rocky scree, sliding a little in the loose soil.

"No," I answered.

I was tempted to reach out and snag him, lest he turn his ankle. Young men are so careless!

"Oh." He ducked his head and dropped back beside me, lost in his thoughts for a good distance. The mountain slope had leveled out. Our legs swished through knee-high grass. "I'll miss our home," he said finally.

"As will I," I replied, and I put my hand on his shoulder.

The country of the Ground Scratchers was many days travel across the southern plains, but the dry sea basin was flat, and the grass, so early in the year, was rarely higher than our hips. We were lucky. The weather was mild and game was abundant. We only had difficulty once, and it was my fault.

Four days journey from the cave where we'd stayed so long, I ranged out further than I ever had during my nightly hunts. The moon was fat and bright, and I had detected a strange scent on the wind, a thing I'd never smelled before. I followed the strange scent out into the plains, roaming so far from our camp I could no longer see the light of its fire or sense my young companion sleeping next to it.

Without Ilio's limitations to accommodate, I could take to the winds, which was a pleasure to me.

Vampires cannot actually fly, just so you know. We can leap great distances. We can move at such speeds that we skate through the air, guiding our movements with our bodies. The trillions of tiny cells that compose our physical form, you see, are hollow chambers. We are not sloshing bags of water, like you humans. Though we are very resilient, we are mostly empty things, granular masses of lifeless, dried up cell capsules. You'd be surprised how little we actually weigh, and it's that emptiness, like the hollow bones of a bird, or dry cork, which allows us to glide through the air, an outlandish trick, to be sure, but quite exhilarating.

But I digress.

On a wooded hill, I found the black scorch mark of a months-old campfire. There were several faded footprints on the ground around the coals, the markings of leather-clad feet and canines, and near the trees, the same crescent markings I'd encountered in the desolated village of the Denghoi, the moon-shaped imprints of an unfamiliar beast-- heavy things, I could tell, because the impressions were deeper than the others. It was the first signs I'd encountered of the mysterious Others in more than a year!

The camp was long abandoned, but their smell and the smell of their beasts lingered, albeit faintly.

Sometime the previous autumn, my vampire brethren had passed within a few days journey of our home. So close, and yet I had failed to sense them! Touching the faded markings in the earth, I inhaled their ghostly scents and fixed them in my memory. 

The discovery was terribly exciting for me. I wanted to meet these other vampires. I wanted to lay eyes on other beings like myself.

They could be brutal, I knew. These Others had devastated Ilio's people, but was I any less vicious? In my hunger, I could be just as cruel.

I decided I would seek them out, once I'd found a suitable home for my adopted human child, and thinking that, I rose and resumed my hunt for blood.

I was tracking a wild boar through the grassland when I heard, very weak with distance, a frightened cry arise in the moonlight.

Ilio--!

I heard him call my name, his voice gone shrill with fear. It echoed across the open plains. "The-eeeeeest!"

For half a second, I froze where I was standing, paralyzed by the terror in the young man's voice, then I turned on my heel and bolted across the undulating plain. I shot across the grassy prairie, fear transforming my heart to ice. I cut through the savanna with such speed that the hip-high grass parted behind me in a widening V, hissing like the surface of the sea in the wake of a fast boat.

As I arrowed through the plains, my feet barely touching the ground, my ears picked up snatches of a confrontation: crude demands and low, cruel laughter. I heard Ilio's grunts and cries of pain, and caught the smell of strange, filthy men.

There--! Now I could see them! They were still small with distance but drawing rapidly nearer by the second.

Two nomads had stumbled across our camp and were accosting the boy. I could see the interlopers in the firelight. Burly men with spears and long tangled hair, their faces painted red and black.

My adopted son was struggling with the smaller of the two marauders while the bigger one was lowering his leggings in preparation of sodomizing the young man.

Ilio kicked his legs and yelled in protest. They'd already peeled off his breeches.

Laughing, the smaller man wrestled the boy to submission.

As I swept through the campsite like a hurricane wind, whistling past the struggling trio, I threw out my right hand and let it collide with the back of the smaller bandit's head. My fist struck his skull with enough force to tear his head clear off his neck. Blood and brains sprayed in the air, splattering my arm and chest and face. The brigand's pulped head went spinning off into the grassland. Where it landed, I knew not… nor did I really care.

The impact fissured the flawless white flesh of my right hand. As I skidded to a stop and turned to launch myself at the bigger man, the Living Blood inside me healed the webbing of cracks almost instantly. Before the smaller man's decapitated head even hit the ground, my hand was whole again.

The headless man was still holding Ilio's wrists. His body hadn't realized its top was missing yet.

With a snarl, I flew toward the bandit trying to assault my child. I hooked my fingers into his tunic and lifted him from the ground, his leggings tangled round his ankles. We sailed twenty feet past the campsite before returning to the earth and went rolling in the grass. I came up overtop him and loosed a ferocious hiss, letting him get a good look at my blazing eyes and wolf-like fangs, then my jaws lunged down into the unwashed meat of his neck and I tore his pudgy flesh open.

He screamed as I ripped and gnawed into him. He caught my hair and tried to pull my fangs from his throat, but it was too late. He was dead already. He just didn't know it yet.

In my outrage and fury, I was wanton. I drained him dry, ripping and mauling his body in the process. I always lose control of myself when I feed, but when I kill in anger, I'm a raging demon.

When I was done with him, he lay in pieces, and I was soaked in his blood.

I sat back, blinking in horror at the mess I had made. My body was covered in blood and flesh and slivers of shivering organ meat.

"Thest?" Ilio murmured, approaching me cautiously.

"Stay back, Ilio!" I commanded gruffly. "Don't come near me!"

I felt him stiffen in fear, then said more gently. "Please, boy. Go back to the fire."

I sensed him withdraw and tried to get a grip on my blood-hunger. For a second, I'd almost lunged at him. I took a deep breath and wrestled the ravening demon in me. I felt the hunger abate. It coiled up inside me, grudgingly, grumbling in complaint. I surveyed the mess beneath me with distaste, then rose from the mound of torn meat and slippery entrails.

I looked at my hands. Gore dripped and dribbled from my cold white fingers. I felt the sticky fluids trickle down my beard and chest and legs.

"Close your eyes, Ilio," I implored when I returned to the fire. "I don't want you to look at me."

"Thest—" he started to protest.

"Please, Ilio. I ask this for me. Not for you."

"Yes, Thest."

When I saw that he had closed his eyes, I stepped into the firelight and seized the body of the smaller bandit. I grasped it by the ankle and dragged the corpse away into the grass. I carried the flopping cadaver to the carnage of its companion and heaped it onto the deconstructed remains, then walked away to find a pool to bathe in.

It was a good thing I'd disrobed to hunt that night, as was my habit. If not, my clothing would have been ruined by all the blood.

The pool was marshy and surrounded by reeds, but it was deep and refreshing, and I walked into it until the water came up to my chest. I stood for a moment, looking at the gelid reflection of the moon on the surface of the pond. Wisps of fog rose from the tiny, rippling mere, drifting in pale tendrils in the chill night air.

How many times have I washed the blood of murdered men from this cold white body? I wondered. That was a question I could not answer. Countless times, for sure, and I did it one more time that night-- washed the blood of murdered men from my skin-- feeling sullied and morose, before I returned to check on Ilio.

"Are you hurt?" I asked, stepping into the firelight.

Ilio was sitting near the fire, swaddled in his bedding. He jumped a little at my question, turned his head to look at me. "I am uninjured," he answered, relieved to see me. "They said they wanted our belongings, then the smaller one tried to hold me down and so his big companion could mate with me."

"I know. I'm sorry. I was far away and didn't know there were others nearby. I was careless."

"It's not your fault, Thest. You saved me." He looked away, his bulging blue eyes turned toward the dark horizon, his face troubled, as it often seemed troubled, with too many thoughts. I was struck once again by his resemblance to my old companion Brulde. That same pensive stare. "I tried to fight them off, but I was not strong enough."

"You are still growing," I said, drawing near the fire so that its warmth could dry my skin. "You'll be big enough to protect yourself soon. Don't be ashamed. I've been bested in combat myself, when I was still a…" I let my words trail off.

"Man?" Ilio suggested.

"Yes," I said softly.

"You were a man like me once, weren't you, Thest?" Ilio asked, his eyes turning to my face suddenly.

"I'm a man still. You see the evidence hanging here," I said, trying to make the boy laugh.

Ilio smiled wanly. "You know what I mean."

I sighed. I picked up my clothing and began to dress myself. "Yes. I was a man like you once. My skin was ruddy. I had no fangs. I was soft and warm and alive."

"So what happened to you?" Ilio asked. His eyes bored into me. His look made me anxious. How could one so young look so deeply into another's heart?

I sat cross-legged near the fire with him. "I will tell you that story, Ilio. I promise. But not tonight. It unsettles me to kill. It's not in my nature to be violent."

Ilio smiled sympathetically. "I understand." He scooted beside me and put his head on my shoulder. After a moment or two, he raised his head up and squinted at me. "Your flesh is warm."

I nodded. With a bitter smile, I said, "Yes… but only for a little while."