Chapter 93 - The Raising of a Dead Child part 4

My vampire child fell asleep quickly, but I lay awake long into the day. Sunlight glimmered around the edges of the stone I'd used to cover the entrance of the crevice. By its light, I looked at the boy… and looking at the boy, condemned myself.

He was so pale and motionless. In sleep, we vampires give up the pretense of breathing and lie inert. It was horrible to see my child in such death-like repose. He looked, for all intents and purposes, like a frozen white corpse.

I weighed my love for him against my crimes, and came up guilty.

If I lavished him with love the rest of eternity, I could not compensate the boy for the things I'd stolen from him: his family, his innocence, his life. Out of selfishness, I'd made a monster of him, and for that I could never forgive myself.

After a time, he stirred and murmured in his sleep, and for that instant, he looked alive. Wan and unearthly, but alive… but then he fell still again. I had to close my eyes to the travesty. I could not stand to look upon my handiwork any further.

Instead, I contemplated the villains we'd fled from, the men who'd forced me onto this path of death and damnation. Old, wicked and greedy, the elders of the Oombai were worse than any vampires. At least I had the excuse of physical compulsion—the ravening thirst that sometimes drove me to immoral acts. They had no curse compelling them to their behavior, only avarice and evil.

The memory of Aioa's cruel fate kindled my anger further.

I am not a vengeful man, but there must be a reckoning for Ilio's corruption and the murder of the slave woman Aioa. Those Elders had to be taken to task. It was my obligation to mete out their comeuppance, for I was the only one with the power to do it. If I avoided that responsibility, I knew I would forever condemn myself a coward.

Aioa's last words rang in my mind: "I was not born a slave, Blood Drinker. If I had the strength of your kind, I would kill those old men and end the rule of the wicked Oombai, once and for all."

I'd killed their leader Bhulloch, but there remained four others—all just as cruel and greedy as their chieftain.

I recalled their faces in my memory. Tall, imperious Hault. Wizened Y'vort and his nursemaid son Gant, and the fat, hairy boar named Ungst. Callous, grasping men, each one. Slave-keepers. Murderers. Kidnappers of children. For Ilio, I would hunt them down. For Aioa, I would murder them all, and if I could, I would free her sisters and return them to the land they'd been stolen from.

It seemed a noble thing to do. Perhaps, in some small way, I could atone for some of the horrors I myself was responsible for.

Free of their degenerate leaders, perhaps something good would come of the odd tribe of the Ground Scratchers.

Planning my vengeance, I drifted to sleep.