Chapter 124 - Exodus of the Neirie, 23,000 Years Ago part 2

I patted him on the shoulder as I rose.

"It won't be forever, Ilio," I assured him. "Though it may seem like that right now."

I scanned the surrounding plains, trying to decide which direction we should go.

"What are you looking for?" Ilio asked.

"You are just made a blood drinker, boy," I explained, squinting toward a distant copse. I could sense many small animals moving in its shadows, tiny warm-blooded creatures that had risen with the night, looking-- like us-- to fill their bellies with food. But I sensed no large animals. Not large enough to satisfy our hunger, anyway. "The living blood inside you must be fed often when you are newly made, or your hunger will torment you unceasingly."

"The Hunger," he muttered, his dark eyes grim. He already knew the relentless hunger of which I spoke. It is maddening in the first few years of immortality. In fact, it is pretty much all a vampire can think about, like a young man who's just had his first fine taste of sex.

"Yes, let us go hunt now!" he said. "I am starving!"

The urgency in his voice made me laugh. He had eaten just a couple hours ago-- filled his gut on the blood of one of the Oombai warriors who'd pursued us on the plains. If you've ever raised teenagers, however, you know how it is with young vampires. Their bellies are bottomless pits. Still, I didn't want Ilio to be tempted by the blood of the Neirie. We had sworn to protect them, not feed on them like parasites.

"We'll go in just a moment," I assured him. "I'm just trying to find some game so we do not wander the grasslands aimlessly."

"Trying to find some game?"

"Yes, now be quiet!" I answered, irritated.

Always so many questions!

I turned in a circle, sending my senses out like invisible tentacles. That is how I imagined them. My senses probing into the high grass, the dry washes, the shadowy copses. Like delicate antennae. I detected insects, hares, a solitary fox. Ilio waited impatiently, then interrupted me again.

"Do you sense anything?"

I sighed.

I decided to take the opportunity to educate him. Turning to address the young man, I said, "You know that your senses are more finely tuned now that you are a blood drinker. Do you remember the first night that I changed you? How the world around you became a whirlwind of sight and sound and smell?"

"Yes…?"

"I taught you how to close your thoughts to it that night," I continued, "but now you must learn something a little more difficult."

He understood. "Now I must learn how to master the whirlwind!"

"It would be a valuable weapon in your arsenal of skills," I said.

He nodded, stepping away from me and squinting into the distance.

"Take your time," I advised him. "Lower the barriers in your mind one at a time, but do it cautiously. Only let in the sensations as you are able to absorb them."

"All right."

Moving behind the boy, I said, "First, allow yourself to see to the full extent that your eyes are capable…"

Ilio gasped, squeezing his eyes shut.

I waited.

After a moment, he opened his eyes to narrow slits.

"I can see… everything!" he hissed.

"I know."

"Every star… every blade of grass…"

"I know."

"There is a cloud of mosquitos swirling above a pool of water. It is so far away… but I can see it like I am standing right beside the pond."

He groaned.

"I can see their wings flapping!"

Tears beaded his eyelashes-- the tarry black tears that blood drinkers weep. He jerked back suddenly, as if dodging a spear. "It is too much!" he exclaimed.

"It's all right," I said soothingly.

"I'm sorry, Thest. It is just too much!"

"You have an eternity to master your new skills," I said reassuringly. "You cannot expect to learn them all in one night. "

He nodded, wiping the black tears from his cheeks, but I wondered—I worried... Did he really have an eternity to master his new skills? I had survived the grinding teeth of the glaciers. How many millennia I'd slept in their dreamless embrace I could not say. But I had survived, and I did not look a day older than the moment I was made into this thing that I am. Ilio, however, seemed made of more fragile material. Perhaps it was because he was made so young—only half a man. Perhaps the gifts the living blood bequeathed weakened with each descendent generation. I only knew that Ilio was a far more delicate blood drinker than I. I suspected that he could die, just as my maker had died, and the thought of it was a horror to me.

To lose so fine a son--!

I slapped him on the back.

"Come. Let us fly on the wind. I spied a fine stag while you were trying out your skills."

Ilio nodded, looking morose.

"You can practice some more after we've fed," I promised. I grinned to cheer him, bending down to catch his eye. "I will even tell you tales of my most embarrassing failures. I was a clumsy fool when I was first made into a blood drinker."

Ilio smiled, peeking up at me. "You were?"

"Of course! Did you think I sprang from my maker's lair a master of all of these powers?"

Ilio laughed, and laughing with him, I took three running steps and leapt into the chill night air. "Come, Ilio! Follow me!" I cried back to him as the wind lashed through my great feathered cloak.