Chapter 104 - The Battle with the Elders part 3

"Thest! You're all right!" Ilio exclaimed. He was sitting cross-legged by the fire he'd made, waiting for me in the clearing outside the entrance of our warren. He flew to his feet to welcome me, relief etched in his features.

"Of course I'm all right," I smiled at him. "Did you think otherwise?"

He shrugged, embarrassed. "Who can know the future?" he asked. "I only know I do not want to be an orphan again."

I hugged him and promised, "I will not let that happen."

"Come sit with me. Tell me what happened," he said anxiously.

We sat near the crackling fire. He'd made a good one in my absence. It could probably be seen by the warriors who pursued us on the plains, blazing as it did on the side of the mountain, but I was not worried about them. They were far across the grasslands and had not moved much nearer when I'd checked from the treetops on my return. I relaxed and watched the flames. The logs popped and hissed as the blue and orange tongues lapped over them. I could feel its heat tighten the surface of my cold, white flesh. It felt good.

The boy looked ethereal in the orange glow of the leaping flames, his skin smooth and shimmering. His curiosity was plain to see in those glittering blue eyes, so plain it almost made me laugh.

"Did you find us some clothes?" Ilio asked.

I shook my head. "Unfortunately, no. I was forced to retreat from the Oombai village. The Elders have a secret which caught me by surprise."

"What is that?"

I quickly recounted my adventure. Ilio's eyes grew wide as I told him the effect our brethren's blood had wrought on the old men I'd sworn vengeance against. When I finished my tale, he said, "We should leave this country, Thest. Who cares what these people do? They're all mad!"

Thinking of Aioa's accusing last glare, seeing the boy's white lifeless flesh, my countenance darkened with indignation. "I care, boy. Those old men have offended me. They have offended us both. They're wicked and they must be brought to task."

Ilio recoiled from my angry tone. "I'm sorry, Thest. I only worry for your safety. We are strong, but I know we can die. I see it in your eyes when you look at me. Your fear for me."

I sighed. "Don't apologize, Ilio. Your counsel is wise." I looked to the south, toward the country of the Ground Scratchers, then chuckled, turning back to him. "You remind me of an old companion. I rarely took his advice either. It was a habit that often got me in trouble."

"So we will leave this country?" he asked hopefully.

"Yes," I answered. "Tomorrow night, I will return and kill those old men, and then we will leave."

Ilio grinned, rueful at my stubbornness. "Then come and rest, father," he said, rising. "You need to be refreshed when you return to your war."

I did not reproach him for calling me "father", though it troubled me. I rose and followed him into our earthen burrow. The sky was lightening, the horizon aflame. There were thick clouds drifting in from the north, promising rain. Ilio scurried in before me, then I squatted down and slid inside too. I closed our hole to the coming light and curled up next to my adopted child to rest, and though I thought my sleep would be slow in coming, my mind drifted away quickly.

I dreamed that morning.

I dreamed of the fiend who made me a vampire. I dreamed of the charnel pit and the mounds of dead Neanderthals therein. That pit was where he held me captive, where he stole away my humanity. In my dream, I was a man, and I was clawing at the slick stone walls, trying to climb, trying to escape the cavern full of cold, stiff corpses, but every time I managed to ascend a meter or two, the slippery limestone crumbled under my fingers and I fell back onto the lifeless, savaged bodies of his victims. I railed at the moon peeking through the entrance of the pit, frustrated and afraid. My terror felt real in my dream. Although the event had transpired in the far distant past, my dream that morning had an immediacy that convinced my sleeping mind that it was real, it was all real, and it was happening right now.

I rose to try the wall again, and that's when his shadow fell across me.

The monster, my maker, dropped silently from the entrance of the charnel pit, his fur cloak spreading out like the wings of a great carrion bird. There was no place in the gourd-shaped pit to run or hide. I could only throw my back against the slick wall and squeeze my eyes shut. I slid down until I was sitting on the gruesome floor of the cavern. It was only when I heard no other sound from the monster that I dared to peek out.

My maker was gone. In his stead, the Elders of the Oombai glowered.

The five old men stood in a semi-circle around me, their bodies bent and leathered by time. Bhulloch, Y'Vort, Gant, Ungst and Hault—all glared down at me with furious contempt. At their feet lay the bloodless corpse of my adopted son Ilio, his flesh white as snow, his eyes empty of all but a lingering expression of pain. The faces of the old men were masks of spiteful pleasure, and in each of their eyes, drowned in pools of black shadow, was a tiny, glowing moon, moist and silvery. Those terrible eyes were angled down at the corpse of my child, but as I sat shivering just a few feet away, they twitched in my direction, and I was frozen to my soul at the terrible hunger in them.

I feared, not for what they were, but for what they might become.