Chapter 183 - Zenzele, My Love part 2

Zenzele said that Khronos would spare me if I surrendered to him, if I adopted his philosophies as my own, but her promise was no solace to me. My people had understood the nature of the world. The cycle of life and death was a cruel and beautiful thing, but the thought of this new role I would have to assume if I wished to be accepted by their god king did not sit well with me. Yes, I was a predator. Even when I was a mortal man, I had killed to feed my belly. Legions of rabbits and deer and fish had perished to sustain my family, and I'd given very little thought to their sacrifice. I had honored their spirits, of course, as our elders taught us to, but it had never disturbed me as Zenzele's words disturbed me now. Men suffer-- in ways that animals do not-- when the life-spirit flees from their bodies. I had seen it with my own eyes too many times: their pain, their fear, their regrets. All too often I had been the cause of that suffering. Yet it was a rare thing when I did not suffer with them, even as they died. If I were to become like her, some kind of god of death... I did not believe that I could bear such pain. To kill and kill and kill… and for all eternity!

I could not!

"You are uncharacteristically silent," Zenzele said as she strode beside me through the wilderness. I knew without looking that she was worried.

The goddess of death… fretting over me!

I did not speak for several minutes. I listened to the snow crunch beneath my feet. Finally, I sighed. "Is there no way for our kind to truly die?" I asked.

"No," she answered. "Not the eternal ones. Not that I have ever seen. But why would you ask that?"

"I think that I would rather die than live forever as you have chosen to live," I said.

I expected my reply to anger her, but she answered thoughtfully, "You only believe that because you are still attached to your mortal life. You have never lived among your own kind. Your heart is still the heart of a mortal man."

"I would have it no other way."

"You believe that now, but it will not always be so. I tell you this because I was once like you." She laughed softly. "I would not feed from mortals. I drank the blood of lions and hyenas. Only predators, I promised myself. If I do this, my conscience will be clear."

She stopped, and I turned to look at her.

"But do you not see the error of that reasoning?" she asked.

I shook my head.

"Men are predators!" she exclaimed.

She smiled at me, her tiny fangs bright and white in the dark.

"Tell me: how many men have you spied in your lifetime grazing on a field of clover?"

Despite my dark mood, I couldn't help but chuckle at the image. "None."

"And how many times have you seen mortal men kill other living creatures? Even one another, often for no discernible reason, only that they feel compelled to do it. To kill their own kind. Because it gives them pleasure to kill."

I shook my head. I didn't want to answer that. She was right. And yet, there was something morally repugnant about her philosophy. These vampires piled an even greater evil upon man's wickedness and bowed down in worship of it. They called it good. Holy. There was nothing sacred about it, though! It was just more killing, more suffering.

"And so their wickedness gives us license to be even more depraved?" I asked. "To be crueler, more brutal? To kill and enslave and pillage and rape?"

"We deal with them in the manner they are accustomed," she retorted.

"Why wallow in filth? Men can be good. They can be noble and loving and fine, and so can we. We have the power to be finer! We can guide them to greater things."

"To what end?" she snapped. I could see that I was angering her now, but I couldn't hold my tongue.

"We can live among them!" I said. "I have done so without harming a single one of them. We can help one another to grow in wisdom and understanding and love."

"You give them more credit than they deserve. Watch them spread across the world unchecked? They would devour it like a disease."

"The same could be said for us."

"That is why we have the laws."

"Laws are easily broken. Usually by the very men who make them."

Her body trembled with rage, and then she sighed. Her shoulders fell and she shook her head. "You are a stubborn man," she said.

I could not see the humor in our impasse. I wanted her to recognize the truth as I beheld it, that her way was only a cycle of misery, and the philosophy of the Potashu T'sukuru a flimsy justification for self-indulgence.

"I will lead you to the true path," she said.

I shook my head. "I do not think so."

"Then Khronos will destroy you."

"I will deceive him."

"You cannot. He will see the lie in your blood."

"How?"

"See? You are like a willful child who presumes he knows all there is to know! You know nothing! When Khronos summons you to his court, he will partake of your Eloa. He will experience your life as if he has lived it himself. He will know your thoughts as if it is he who thinks them. You can hide nothing from him. Yahi! Have you never shared with another blood god? Not even the one you made?"

I shook my head. I was not certain I knew what she meant. Not entirely.

"What about the mortals you have killed? You never feel their thoughts as their lifeblood pulses inside you?"

"Sometimes, like a fading echo. My vampire child Ilio has more of a talent for that than I."

"When you share with another blood drinker, it is different. It is more intense, the sharing deeper and more intimate, but not all T'sukuru are adept at it. It is like everything else we can do. Our strengths and weaknesses vary. But this is why we say 'the soul is the blood'."

I absorbed that, wrestling with my distaste at the idea-- my thoughts are my own!-- then I asked, "Why then did I not know my maker's thoughts when he changed me?"

Zenzele shrugged. "Because you were still a mortal man."

"I am doomed then," I said, and I wondered what it would feel like to have my body pulled to pieces. My limbs torn from my torso. My head ripped from my shoulders. Would I still be aware of my surroundings, or would the pain drive me to madness?

And then what?

An eternity of pain and madness.

I could flee, but I would be abandoning all whom I claimed to love. Ilio, my beautiful babies, Aioa and Irema, Priss and Valas… Everyone!

No! Better an eternity of torment than allow any of them to come to harm!

Zenzele saw my suffering, and a terrible expression of pity came into her eyes. "Here, beautiful one, let me show you," she said softly. She stepped near to me and turned her chin to her shoulder, exposing her neck to my teeth. "Perhaps where words have failed, my life can persuade you to our cause."

"What must I do?" I asked, frightened suddenly of what I might see inside her soul.

"Just bite me and drink my blood," she said. "That is all that you have to do. The blood will do the rest."

"I do not wish to harm you."

"My flesh will heal before you get more than a mouthful."

"I do not know that I wish to be persuaded to your philosophy."

"Perhaps it will be enough for Khronos simply that you try."

I pulled her to me and placed my lips upon her neck. "I've never drunk the blood of another vampire," I said, and my breath on her smooth skin teased a ripple of gooseflesh from her.

"Don't be afraid," she whispered.

Her hand slid around my waist, then rose up beneath my arm. Her delicate fingers slid into my auburn mane, and then she pressed my face more firmly to her neck, a lover's embrace. 

"It will seem like a lifetime to you, but for me: a moment of pain," she said. "And then we will hunt."

I curled my lips back from my fangs and bit into her flesh.

Her fingers tightened in my hair as she cried out, and then her blood-- her black, icy blood-- spurted into my mouth, and my entire body convulsed as if I had been struck by a bolt of lightning.

Her blood washed across my tongue, tingling, and then I swallowed, and it was like swallowing ice, and then it was inside me, she was inside me, and I could feel my own immortal blood coiling around her's. My stomach lurched as if our blood was warring.

Pain!

My knees buckled. Bursts of light flashed in my eyes—red, blue, green. Voices, like peals of thunder, rattled in my brain. I felt heat on my flesh, smelled dust and grass and mortal sweat.

I fell against Zenzele, my arms and legs twitching helplessly. She held me easily, our limbs entwined even as the essence of our souls entwined inside me. She put her lips to my face, to my forehead and cheek and mouth, kissing me all over, fast and light, and I could not tell where one ended and the other one began.

We were one.

We were Zenzele.

Rolling my eyes toward the heavens, I behold a sweltering sun.