Chapter 90 - The Raising of a Dead Child part 1

I could smell the blood pouring out of him, but worse than that, I could smell the life pouring out of him. Every moment I delayed, my adopted child emptied of blood… and filled up with death. I was out of my mind with despair and anger. He had so little time left--!

Love was probably the only thing which kept me from succumbing to my appetite. I felt no temptation to drink the boy's blood as I fled across the plains, despite the fact that I was covered in the oozing, hot fluid. My clothes were soaked with it. It blew off my body in whirling droplets, falling to the grass below in a scant and horrid rain. But in my love for the boy, I had no desire to drink it. I did not even think of such a thing.

I thought only of my love for the boy as I shot through the moonlit heavens. I thought only of saving him.

As I angled toward the haven of a darkened copse of pine, well away from the menace of the Oombai, I promised myself vengeance on those greedy, wicked elders. If my young charge passed into the afterlife, they would join him shortly.

Yes! I swore to myself. If Ilio died, I would return and slaughter them all!

I would extinguish their race like a mad white god.

I would bathe in a river of corpses! 

I arced through the night with the boy in my arms. The plains rushed up to me. My feet touched the earth and I slowed the speed of my movement as gently as I could. The moon flickered behind a lattice of tree branches and foliage. I glided within the shadows of the copse and laid Ilio on a soft hump of grass and fallen pine needles.

Ilio's eyes rolled toward me. He was pale, shivering.

The crickets, which had fallen silent at our arrival, resumed their nightly choir. I made quick work of my injuries. Gritting my teeth, I yanked the arrows from my flesh, giving no thought to the pain or the black blood rising within the wounds to erase them from existence. With a snarl, I wrenched the javelin from my rump and tossed it in the underbrush.

"Thest," my adopted son murmured, "It hurts."

He coughed and blood seeped from the corner of his lips.

"Hush, now, boy," I said sternly. "Let me tend to your wounds."

I sat back on my knees and examined the arrow protruding from his ribs. It was so deep! Did I dare pull it out?

Of course, I knew what I had to do. I could smell death on his tremulous exhalations. I had but a moment. Make him immortal… or allow him to die.

My motives required no deeper examination. I was weak. I could not lose him as I'd lost my human family, so many ages ago.

"I think I'm dying," Ilio sputtered. "Stay with me til it's over, Thest. It's dark here. I'm… scared."

"You don't have to die, boy. I can heal you. I can make you like me." I spoke quickly, brushing his bangs back from his brow. "It will hurt, but you will rise from this place an immortal being."

Did he nod, or was it only my imagination? Foolish monster--! Foolish, careless monster--!

His eyelids fluttered. The boy's eyes rolled up white. Panicked, I opened his jaws with my fingers and leaned over his face, moving my mouth over his, our lips just a centimeter apart. I did then by instinct the thing that my maker had done to me, so many eons ago. I summoned the black blood from inside me—the Venom, the Demon, the Strix—and I poured it into his mouth.

It rose from within like an angry living thing, clawing its way out of the altered cells of my tissue, uncoiling itself from my internal organs. The pain was stark and tearing. It felt like I was being ripped inside out.

With a convulsive croak, the ebu potashu poured from my lips, an ebon gout of fibrous tissue and fluid, thick and syrupy and stinking. Ilio's lips and cheeks were painted black. His mouth filled up with it. Then, as if by some trick of light, it seemed to rear up in his maw and plunge straight down his gullet.

He shot upright, clawing at his throat.

His eyes locked to mine, bulging with terror and pain.

"It will last only a moment," I promised, falling back from him weakly. I scooted a couple feet away, clutching my stomach. "Be brave!"

I watched, helpless, as the boy jerked back, then began to writhe and twist on the ground, sobbing and crying out as the living hunger worked its way through his veins. I relived my own transformation as I watched him shudder and claw in agony at the ground beneath him. Sympathetic pain worked its way through my limbs as he contorted.

I remembered the charnel pit where my vampire father imprisoned me, the ground piled with his stiff, frozen victims. I remembered the way the monster had come to steal my humanity, dropping down through the entrance of the pit like a great bird of prey, his fur cloak spread out around him. He took me by force, the wicked creature, prized my lips open and vomited the foul black blood into my mouth. And the pain. I remembered the horrible, engulfing pain… how it spread through my veins in burning cold threads, devouring all that was human in me, turning me into a thing of ice and hunger.

"Ilio… Ilio, I'm sorry," I gasped.

His body went taut, his back arching up. His spine bent so far I feared it would snap. The shaft in his ribs quivered, then he collapsed. His head lolled on his neck like a flower with a broken stem.

He stopped breathing. His eyes went blank, staring into the black forest, staring into the blackness of death.

The spark of life had left him.

"Ilio…?"

I choked back a sob, scrubbing my eyes. Too late--!

Then I saw his flesh begin to whiten. I dared to hope.

The transformation spread slowly from the center of his body, working down his arms, his hands, down to the very tips of his fingers. His nails turned to glass. His bronze skin faded to the color of bone. His face became a sculpture of gleaming marble. His glazed eyes glimmered, then blinked, then rolled toward me. For a moment, they caught the moonlight, and his pupils filled with gibbous light. It was beautiful and horrible all at the same time.

"I live," he murmured, his voice full of disbelief. Then he smiled and I saw his eyeteeth elongating.