Chapter 258 - Blood Gods in Exile part 3

Now when I say we ran for twenty years, I do not mean that literally. I don't think any creature can run for twenty years, not without rest, not even the most powerful Eternals. But Khronos's hordes did pursue us, off and on, for a little over two decades, until we had gathered an army powerful enough to challenge him, until we had made our own fortress city, Asharoth, in the Ural Mountains. Sometimes they lost our trail, and we could stop for a time, rest and try to plan our next step, but they unerringly found us out, and we were forced to flee again. Khronos would not relent, and when one group of warriors returned to Uroboros empty-handed, he sent three more to hunt us in their stead.

We ran east, to the shores of the Caspian Sea, and from there we turned north, continuing on through what is now Kazakhstan. In the arid plains of central Kazakhstan, which was not much different than it is today-- which is to say, in the kindest terms possible, "unremarkable"-- we enjoyed a brief respite. We took shelter in a large cave, more of a sinkhole really, near Shoyyndykol Lake, which was also not much different than it is today. There we rested, too exhausted to do anything but sleep. We didn't even feed, though a small tribe of fishermen lived not too far away.

The smell of their blood drifted into our cave from across the lake, tantalizingly near, but we were just too tired to go out and hunt them. We lay in the dark, still and cold as reptiles, as the sun rolled past the maw of the cave again and again.

I slept and dreamed about my experiences in Uroboros. Sometimes I dreamed the life I had Shared with the God King. They were terrible dreams, filled with violence and despair. Sometimes I forgot myself, and it was I who was forced to eat my father's heart, still warm and dripping. It was I who went out to destroy Death and instead became a slave to it. It was I who reigned over the city of the vampires, my will absolute, my heart pitiless and cruel. And running through all of those dreams, like veins of poisoned blood in stinking flesh: the inscrutable thoughts of the Strix, the formless thing from beyond our universe, which had made us what we are.

I could hear its thoughts inside my mind. They were like the whispers of a demon in a deep and lightless shaft. I plunged into the cold currents of its consciousness and saw the universe it came from. It was a dark and ever shifting realm, a dreamworld where nothing was solid and all was hunger and pain.

Just a glimpse of it and I woke screaming.

Zenzele was there when those images drove me from my rest. She would shush me, pressing her cold lips to my mouth and neck and chest. "Ssssshhhh," she comforted me. "It is only dreams," she would say. Sometimes she slid atop me and took me inside of herself. She did not do it to give me pleasure, but lay there on top of me, her nearness, her cool flesh, calming me, driving away the terrors.

Vehnfear was the only one of our number who seemed to have any vitality. The immortal wolf slept with us during the day, usually at Zenzele's side, but he rose at night and loped outside as soon as the sun had set. He would return just before dawn, reeking of mortal blood, his snout tacky and red with it, and lay back down beside us. Sometimes he would make a quizzical huffing sound, his golden eyes glinting anxiously. Zenzele might rouse for a moment to stroke him, but more often she did not. She just lay asleep on top of me, or on her side beside me, childlike in repose.

Bhorg didn't move a centimeter from where he first fell. Not the whole time. And he snored. He was the only immortal I'd ever heard snore.

Goro went out once. He went looking for his people, I think. Vehnfear accompanied him. He did not find them. He returned, made fire a few times. Mostly he just slept. He slept at the far side of the pit, his back turned to the rest of us. He was not a very sociable blood drinker.

Finally, after a week of this, sleeping all day and all night, Zenzele lurched upright, the muscles beneath her dark flesh standing out. "They have found us again!" she gasped.

We all leapt to our feet. It was as if we'd been waiting for her signal.

"How close?" I asked.

She turned in a circle, her head cocked to one side. "I can't tell," she said. "Let's go outside. Perhaps I'll be able to see more clearly."

Outside, under the moon and stars, I looked toward the mortal village on the lakeshore while Zenzele sent out her Eye. Their campfires, like orange embers, winked along the edge of the water. I could smell the smoke of their fires, the meat they cooked for their suppers (mostly fish) and, of course, their blood. Hot, salty, tantalizing mortal blood. My nostrils flared as I breathed them in, devouring them with my nose.

"They're close," Zenzele finally said. "Not as close as they were that first night, but we have to go now. We can't wait." She smiled at me knowingly. "If you intend to feed on those mortals, we'll have to grab them on the run."

I started to protest. Could we not feed on animals? I was going to say.

"We must!" Zenzele said before I could speak. "I know we can live on the blood of animals, but we need to be strong, and human blood will give us strength. We won't be able to run much further on the blood of squirrels and pigs, my love."

I took in her gauntness. Her glossy skin was stretched taut across her skull. Her teeth seemed much too large for her mouth. Her small breasts dangled from the scaffold of her ribcage.

"Yes, all right," I said. I glanced in the direction of our pursuers. I could not see them, but I was beginning to sense them. I could feel their malice like a storm on the horizon. "We feed tonight as we go. But kill them quickly," I said, speaking more to Bhorg and Goro than to my beloved. "Don't make them suffer. There's no need for it."

We ran north, following the shore of the lake, and whipped through the little village of fishermen like a deadly wind. All four of us snatched a mortal victim from their home as we rushed by. Goro and Bhorg took young men, but Zenzele and I took an elderly couple, an old man and his mate, gray-headed and bent. She knew that I would be less troubled if we were only hurrying death a little, rather than devouring a youth who had a great span of life ahead.

As we pelted away from Shoyyndykol Lake, I seized the old man by the top of the head and snapped his neck with one quick jerk. I don't think he even knew what was happening to him, he was too stunned by the rapidity of our assault.

I fed from him hungrily, biting into the wattled flesh of his neck even as I ran. His blood was sluggish and thick, with the bitter taste of some intoxicating herb, but I was too hungry to care. I'd like to say I didn't enjoy it, but I did.

I always do.

From Shoyyndykol Lake we continued in a northeasterly direction, losing our pursuers once more in the rugged mountains of central Russia. This time our flight lasted nearly three weeks.

For three weeks we ran, with only brief stops to rest. Even during the daylight hours, cheeks streaked with blood, we ran. We ran until the flesh of our feet fractured and bled, pausing only long enough for the Strix to mend the wear before continuing on. We ran until we were mad from exhaustion. We slept and dreamed on our feet.

In the Urals, a gray and brooding mountain range, we finally lost our pursuers. The Urals are one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, with strangely shaped outcroppings of rock, vast caverns and underground streams. It is the dividing line between Europe and Asia in the modern world. 23,000 years ago, it marked the far edge of Khronos's Eastern Dominions. We entered at the southern tail of the mountains and went north, winding our way through its river valleys and passes, caves and subterranean waterways, ever on the move, always looking back.

I'm not sure when our pursuers finally gave up the chase. I estimate we ran about 1,200 kilometers, halfway to the Arctic Sea, before we stopped. By then I was little more than an automaton. I ran without thinking, my body moving without conscious thought. I ran until Zenzele grasped my shoulder, her flesh shriveled to the bone.

"We can stop now, my love," she said, her voice a hideous rasp. "They have turned back. We have defeated them!" There were tears in her eyes. Tacky black tears. Her face was a leering skull beneath a thin veneer of leathery skin. I don't know how she could speak without her skin tearing open, it looked so thin and stiff.

I don't think I even heard her words, or if I did, I did not understand them. I was beyond thinking. I was a wraith, dreaming in one world, running in another.

"Don't you hear me, my love?" Zenzele cried. "We can finally stop!"

And then she collapsed into my arms.

I caught her, moving without conscious volition. I held her as we sank slowly to our knees.

The Urals, those ancient grey sentries of stone, watched us subside, unmoved by our triumph. In the river beside us, chunks of melting ice dashed down the burbling cataracts. The stars wheeled overhead, or maybe it was just me, falling on my side.

It didn't matter.