Chapter 324 - Utah, One Week Ago part 9

He took the boy's cheeks in his fingers and turned his head so that his mouth was only a breath away from the vampire's lips. Sydney, who had never been intimate with another human being, found the moment powerfully sensual, almost sexual in nature. His body responded to the vampire's nearness and he blushed furiously, but his companion took no notice of his arousal, or if he did he pretended not to notice.

"Open your mouth," the vampire said, and Sydney opened his mouth. The vampire tilted his head back, cradling the back of his skull in his palm, and Sydney closed his eyes. A moment later, he felt something wet spurt across his lips. A cold, bitter substance trickled into his mouth. "Drink!" the immortal commanded, and Sydney swallowed convulsively. He sputtered and turned his head away. The taste was so vile!

"You must drink more!" the vampire said.

"Ugh! No! It's so awful!" Sydney gasped.

The vampire seized his head and pulled it towards him, prying open his jaws with his fingers, and then he pressed his lips firmly over Sydney's, forming a seal, and more of the rank liquid surged into his mouth.

It was like having cold sewage poured down his throat, but Sydney swallowed. He would have choked if he hadn't. He felt it course down his throat, could actually feel it pooling inside his belly. He had a sense that it had moved of its own accord, that he had not so much swallowed it as he had been penetrated by the cold, rancid liquid.

An instant later, icy tendrils unspooled from his guts, racing down every one of his limbs. The tendrils wound through his veins like ice water, spreading through his entire body in moments, from the tips of his toes to the very top of his head, and then he began to scream, scream because it hurt so bad, hurt worse than anything he had ever experienced before. He was on fire, but it was a cold fire.

So cold!

The vampire released him. Sydney slumped back, moaning, "I'm dying! Oh, God, I'm dying!" It did not seem possible that he could hurt so bad and live. "It's not working! The Blood is killing me!"

"It is not killing you," the vampire said. He shifted Sydney onto his lap, hugging the boy as he trembled. He brushed Sydney's hair from his brow, trying to soothe him. "It is remaking you. Your color is already fading, your eyeteeth sprouting into fangs. You are not dying, Sydney. You are becoming an immortal!"

Many years later, Sydney would overhear a woman speaking of childbirth. She spoke of the pain and how quickly it was forgotten when the baby was delivered and the doctor had placed the child into her arms. When he heard this, he recalled the night his maker gave him the Blood, and how quickly he forgot the agonies of his transformation when it was over and he saw the world with his new vampire eyes.

He was not made an Eternal, but that was more of a blessing than a curse. He did not wish to be trapped by time as his master was trapped. He was made strong, strong enough to last a thousand years or more, and that was good enough for him. That was near enough to forever from his perspective, and it was a comfort to know that he could end it should he ever grow weary of living.

Grow weary of living!

What a preposterous suggestion!

From the moment he arose, a new-blooded vampire, he shed his fear of death as a snake sheds its old skin. He was never again stricken by the terrible paroxysms of horror that had plagued him on the way to Tucson. What was death to him now but a vague and distant prospect, an idea that was more hypothetical than real? Someday, many hundreds of years in the future, he might die, but it was not enough of a concern for him now to stir his soul to terror. He could not be killed by sling or arrow or any mortal ailment, and only the gravest of injuries could threaten him in any way, or so his maker promised him.

"The Strix has made you strong," the vampire counseled him. "The only thing that could possibly harm you now is another blood drinker, but it would have to be a very powerful blood drinker. An Eternal, perhaps. No lesser fiend can possibly hurt you. But I would never allow it. Not so long as you keep to the Way. Kill only the wicked. Protect the innocent. Preserve the secrecy of our race."

Not that they saw any other immortals. Not in any of the villages they passed on their journey to Arizona, which was then a part of the New Mexico Territory. It was not until they arrived in the small city of Tucson, several weeks later, that they encountered another un-living soul—the first vampire Sydney had met apart from his maker.

In fact, two unliving souls resided in Tucson.

Tucson in those days was the largest city in the Arizona Territory, a small but thriving community of some 6,000 mortal souls. It was a sprawling conurbation of squat square and somewhat crudely constructed adobe dwellings bisected by a broad paved thoroughfare called Stone Avenue. Sydney found the city to be quite exotic and beautiful, especially the more modern and ornate Mission-style homes, although it was very hot and arid when they arrived, and stayed hot and dry the entire time they remained.

The vampires' names were Valentino and Isadora. They were Spaniards with skin like varnished teakwood and great black shimmering eyes. Sydney had never beheld a woman so beautiful in his life—nor, for that matter, so beautiful a man, though he had never looked at a man in such a light before Valentino. The couple were man and wife, Gon said. The woman, Isadora, was made an immortal against her will, and transformed her mortal lover Valentino after escaping from her lawless maker. Gon had come as a sort of good will ambassador. There were not many vampires in the Americas as yet, he confided to Sydney, and he had come to insure that they knew the Way, and did not, out of ignorance, expose their kind to the mortal world.

They found the couple quite hospitable. More than hospitable, actually. Isadora and Valentino were ecstatic to finally meet Sydney's maker, with whom they had been corresponding for several years already. They were fascinated by Sydney's maker, and pressed Gon for tales of the Old World vampires. It didn't matter what he spoke of—history, philosophy, folk tales, anecdotes—they hung breathlessly on his every syllable. Like Sydney, they were "Newly Blooded" and knew next to nothing about the creatures they had become, only wives' tales and superstitions and what they had discovered through trial and error. Gon instructed them, training them how to use their newfound powers, teaching them the history of their race. Sydney they took as a lover. He would only ever know what it was to make love as a vampire, never as a mortal man, but he was so beguiled by his new paramours that it did not even occur to him to regret it. How could it be any finer?

They enjoyed the hospitality of the Ferrarras for several months, but Gon finally proclaimed that they must continue on, and Sydney reluctantly accompanied him. They went west, passing into California and then following the Pacific Coast north to the city of San Francisco, where there was a new and thriving community of immortals, and where Sydney's maker, Gon, was greeted with the same deference the Ferrarras had shown to the immortal. Sydney, who had watched his maker feed and fuck, pick dusty boogers from his nose and trip and fall once into a creek, was amused by the almost reverential manner in which the San Franciscan blood drinkers regarded his maker.

"It is because I am so old," Gon explained. "I am an Eternal, and none of them have met an Eternal before. They do not know how to behave around me. The proper vampire… etiquette."

"And what is the proper etiquette?" Sydney asked with a sardonic grin.

His maker shrugged. "There is none," he said. "Not anymore. Most of the old ways died with the Interneccion, when the Holy Roman Empire nearly succeeded in exterminating our race. Those who survived seek only to ensure our continuance. We are so few now. We could not endure another Catholic pogrom."

Gon did not tell those vampires his true name, nor did he share with any of those Californian blood drinkers just how old he really was. He called himself Gregory Vincent, and would only smile mysteriously if one of the San Franciscans inquired of his past. Sydney thought his maker's chariness a wise decision. He did not trust the Californian vampires. They were very entertaining at parties, but otherwise he found them to be feckless snobs. Pompous. Shallow. Capricious. If not for his maker's great powers of persuasion, Gon might never have impressed upon them the importance of discretion. They were slow to come around, the haughty Californians, but Gon was a charismatic figure, and he finally tamed the American vampires. Sydney thought his maker would wish to move on then, but Gon had fallen in love with the city, and announced that he wished to reside there for a little while.

"These willful children need someone to look after them," Gon said. That was his excuse anyway. And several of the "children" Gon spoke of were fifty or sixty years old. Most of them were given the Blood before Sydney was even born!

Sydney was not so in love with the city, but he loved his maker, and so he resigned himself to a more sedentary lifestyle.

Ever after, when Sydney recalled that era, he thought of it as their Golden Age. His maker opened an account at an American bank and transferred a vast fortune from his European holdings. He used a very small portion of these riches to purchase a "painted lady" just blocks from Hyde Street Pier. Sydney's room on the third floor of this brightly painted Victorian commanded a breathtaking view of the Bay. They lived like kings, Sydney and his maker. They wore the finest clothes. They joined the most exclusive social clubs. They were an even bigger hit in mortal society than they were the society of the undead. His master was the first in their circle of friends to purchase a horseless carriage, and Sydney spent many a night racing up and down the streets of San Francisco in the rattling contraption, the wind blowing through his hair, his mortal acquaintances laughing and encouraging him to ever more reckless maneuvers. He slept all day, rising at sundown to entertain the rich and the powerful, the brilliant and the mad. He took as lovers only the most beautiful women, the most passionate and accomplished men, and paid no thought to the religious training given him as a boy. And why should he? He was no longer human. Why allow himself to be shackled by human morality? He was scrupulously compliant of his maker's moral ethos. He fed only upon the corrupt, he protected the innocent where and when he could, and made absolutely certain no mortal so much as suspected he was anything other than a normal mortal man. That was all that mattered to him. He had but one regret from the time he spent in San Francisco, and it was that his mother died before he thought to go back home and fetch her.