Chapter 170 - The Vampire Thief part 4

I had little hope we could rescue the children, but I was more than willing to make the attempt. I had helped Iltep with his labors many an evening. We were not close, but his rough tongue and bawdy humor had always amused me. The others tried to persuade the man to remain behind—saying he was too overwrought to be of any help—but he refused. I understood completely. I wouldn't have been able to stay behind either.

I think most of the men who took off in pursuit of the stolen children were about as optimistic as I of the boys' safe return. I was confident of my abilities. I had no fear of being harmed. But I knew the Hunger. The beast we hunted would have no mercy for his victims—not even for children so young and innocent.

The Tanti were well acquainted with the cruelty of the T'sukuru. This was not the first time a blood drinker had abducted someone from the village, though it had been many years since the last time a vampire had preyed on them. Long before our arrival. If not for my presence, and the trust they had in my strength, I doubt they would have pursued the T'sukuru into the wilderness. Like Valas said: no man can prevail against the T'sukuru. And for the most part, that was true. I had killed one such creature when I was a mortal, but only with the aid of four other men, not to mention a good deal of luck. And it had been a weak one. And day when the battle took place.

At least the beast was keeping to the ground.

So long as he stayed on the ground, it would be easy to track the creature. The snow was deep. In some places, the drifts were knee high. The beast's tracks were plain to see in the jumping gold light of our torches, but I could see in the dark, regardless of moonlight or torch.

I wasn't certain why the villain had not taken to the treetops. It was what I would have done, rather than leave such a plain trail for vengeful villagers to pursue. There were plenty of trees to which the creature could take flight. The forest to the east of the village was dense, full of great old oaks and soaring pine, acacia and beech. Perhaps the vampire could not move into the treetops with two squirming children in his arms, or maybe he just wasn't accustomed to flying through the trees as I was, or he didn't believe the mortals were a threat to him. Whatever the reason, I was grateful the creature had not taken flight. I might have been able to track him through the canopy of the forest, but it would have been a much more difficult task.

"Why do we hold back, Thest?" Ilio asked as he jogged through the snow at my side. "We're much faster than these mortals. We should race ahead, catch the foolish blood drinker before he has a chance to harm the children!"

"And what if there is more than one of them lurking in the forest?" I asked. "What if the one we pursue doubles back on us? He could slaughter our entire party in moments."

Ilio's eyes widened, and then he looked grim and nodded. "I understand. I apologize for questioning your wisdom."

"No need," I replied. "Just be on your guard."

As I raced through the snow, the Tanti villagers at my back, I was helpless but to recall my people's battle with the fiend who made me. I do not know the name of my maker, only that he was powerful, cruel, and insatiable. He had glutted himself on the blood of our neighboring tribe, and would have killed them all if they had not fled from the region. When we went to make war on the beast, marching to the land of the Gray Stone People, my powerful maker and his strange vampire pet had killed nearly every single member of our war party. Only two had survived, my uncle and my companion Brulde, and I… I was made into this.

I would not let the same fate befall my Tanti brethren. And if I got my hands on the leech that had raided my new home, I would rend the bloodsucker limb from limb!

No! First, I would question him! Where are you from? Are there others nearby? We needed to know if there were more of them. And if there were, I would make him tell me if they were just passing through, or did they intend to make war? It would be nice if I could make him answer some of my own questions, things I'd always wondered about—where do we come from, how many more of us are there, is there some way to undo this cursed affliction—but I knew this was no time for selfish concerns. Not with so many lives at stake.

I smelled blood.

Freshly spilled mortal blood!

I faltered and saw Ilio, a moment later, do the same. We exchanged an anxious glance. The smell of blood, so strong… it did not bode well.

"It's close," I said to the boy, and he nodded.

It had begun to snow again. Heavy flakes, like puffs of cattail fluff, spiraled down from the lowering heavens. Far to the east, a sheet of ice broke loose from some steep mountain slope with a reverberating crack: an avalanche on the distant Carpathians. The rumble of all that falling ice thrummed in the still winter air as we rounded the hill.

There, on the far side, lay one of the children.

It was Emoch.

The boy sprawled in a shallow ditch, a gully carved into the hill by spring runoff, empty now but for pebbles, the snow, and the little boy's body. His clothes had been rent from his bruised white flesh, his throat torn savagely as if by a wild animal.

As soon as his father caught sight of the boy, the fisherman fell to his knees. Iltep threw back his head and howled at the sky, the hundreds of little muscles in his neck standing out like ropes, his face turning purple. I and a few other Tanti men approached the pitiful corpse as the rest of the group encircled the bereaved father, trying to comfort him, to shield him from the sight.

"Oh, that poor baby!" Valas murmured.

The snow around the boy was splattered liberally with blood, still steaming. A spiral of tracks circled the spot where the boy lay, then continued east. I went to my knees beside the child, wrestling with my own blood hunger, and put my hand on his pale, bruised chest. There was no need of it. I could hear, even from a distance, that his heart no longer beat. I only did it to comfort the boy, should any awareness linger in his mind.

"May the ancestors guide you to the Ghost World, little one," I whispered.

The tracks of the T'sukuru angled away to the northeast, trailed by splashes of errant blood. Not far away, at the base of a gnarled oak, the footprints vanished. The killer had taken to the trees.

I gestured to Valas. I needed to confer with him. We needed to change our tactics. Before we could speak, however, Iltep broke away from his comforters. He pelted through the snow, falling, rising, then collapsing to his knees beside his son.

"Menoch!" he sobbed hoarsely. "Oh, Menoch, my son! I am so sorry! Look what that monster has done to you!"

He pulled the mangled child into his lap and began to rock him, stroking the lad's curly bangs from his brow. I had to look away. The sight of the boy's arm flopping lifelessly as his father cradled him was too heart-wrenching.

"The raider has taken to the trees with the other child," I said to Valas in a low voice. "There will be no catching him now, unless Ilio and I take to the trees after him. Your men won't be able to keep up."

The others had gathered around-- Gibbus and Sephram, Valas's sons, the men who fished on the lake, our strongest and fiercest tribesmen. Some of them listened in on my conversation with Valas. The others were trying to sooth Iltep. Snow whirled around us, falling more thickly now.

"Do what you must," Valas said, his words steaming in the cold. "We will follow."

I told him what I'd already discussed with Ilio, that I feared leaving the group unprotected, that there could be more of my kind lurking in the snowy wilderness, that the blood drinker might double back and slaughter them in my absence.

"So we are slowing you down," Valas sighed. He shivered, snot frozen to his mustache. He looked back in the direction of the village, eyes narrowed, thinking, then announced, "Then we will turn back… for the other boy's sake."

Several of the men objected.

"How can we trust him to continue the pursuit?" one of the men demanded. This was a fisherman named Gilt. He'd always been suspicious of me. "How do we know he won't let the fiend go? Or join the foul thing in feasting on poor Pudhu? They are kin--!"

Before he could finish what he was saying, Valas stomped forward and clouted the man, sending him stumbling back into the fellow behind him.

"Bite your tongue or spit your teeth on the ground!" Valas hissed.

I was shocked. I did not expect Valas to defend my honor to such an extent, and with the revelation, a fierce love for the man swelled in my breast.

Gilt lurched upright, wiping blood from his lips. For a moment I was afraid the two men would come to further blows, but Iltep intervened.

"For my son's sake, don't fight," he said. Though he did not speak loudly, the ragged pain in his voice froze us all. He looked up at me and said, "Go on, Thest, if you think you can save my little Pudhu. I trust you. You have never done us harm. We will return to the village so you do not have to worry about us. We will take my poor Emoch home to his mother."

I glanced at Ilio and he nodded.

"I will save your son," I told the man. "If I fail in that, I will bring back the villain's head so that you may spit upon his face."

Iltep nodded, his dead son in his arms. Valas and Gibbus helped the bereaved father to his feet. "See that you do," Iltep said hoarsely, clutching the boy to his breast. "See that you do!"

"What if the beast kills you first, Brother?" Valas asked.

"Then know that I die content," I answered. "For the first time in many, many years." 

The men turned and began to make their way back to the village. I watched them shuffle through the snow for a moment, their torches glittering on the snowdrifts, impressed by the way they closed around Iltep in a protective circle, their hands going out to the dead child's cheek, the father's shoulders. They were good men. As compassionate as they were brave, and then it struck me again that they were my descendants, all of these men, and I felt such pride and love for them that I thought my heart would burst. The children of my children's children. Recompense for all that I had suffered.

"Come, Ilio!" I called, my voice tight with emotion, and then we were away.